P.E.I. and Nova Scotia

First some news from earlier:

Since winter is over, the church in Alma has resumed services until October:

The restroom door signs at a convenience store seemed a little different from what I remembered:

Ferry Ride #1:
After riding across the Confederation Bridge to P.E.I., I rode to the other end of the island and took the ferry back to Nova Scotia. It's about a 75-minute ride, and would be good practice for tomorrow's 7-hour ride to Newfoundland.
Since I was on a motorcycle, they let me ride all the way to the front of lane #1 because they board bikes and pedestrians first. Awesome!
We were still a couple hundred yards back from where the boat would be docking.

I saw that everybody had left their vehicles in the waiting lanes and had gone into the visitor center/cafeteria to wait. Since I was hungry anyway, I did the same.
I asked a guy inside how much time we had until boarding, and he said "About 45 minutes."
Cool.  Plenty of time to grab some food.

I ordered a burger and fries and waited to be called.
After a while, the lady at the counter asked me what I had ordered, and I told her.
She said that somebody had grabbed my order and so she put it in again.
It came out in a few minutes, steaming hot, but I still had plenty of time.
I sat down with the food and an announcement came over the P.A. - "Boarding will begin in 15 minutes - please return to your vehicles."

Remember what I said about boarding first?
I looked out and saw a woman in an orange vest standing at the motorcycle lane waiting.
So I stuffed as much food in me as I could and went out to the bike.
By that time, several Canadian bikers had gotten in line behind my bike.
I was a little nervous, being the only foreigner there, and not knowing the procedure well since I hadn't ridden that ferry since 2008.

Then the woman announces to the other bikers: "I'm going to explain to this man where to go, and you all follow him."

Uh-oh.
She chose me to be the leader?!

I don't know what's about to happen here, but I have the eery feeling that it's going to be EPIC.

Then she started:
"See that guardrail over there? Go past it to a handrail, and take a right.
Then follow that rail down to where you see the glass walls where the pedestrians assemble.
Pull over next to that."

Dear God.
4 STEPS??!!
This poor woman has no idea what kind of brain she is talking to.
A guy who gets into fights with his GPS on a regular basis?
I pretended I had it all under control and took off.
When I got to the handrails, I saw the open doors of the ferry, so I rode right up to it.
Made sense to me.  That's why we all came here, wasn't it?

Then I realized that the ferry had just docked, and was still.....  umm... full of cars and trucks.
I'm at the bottom of the loading ramp looking up at an 18-wheeler, and a line of crew members staring at me in disbelief.
So I backed up a bit and pulled off to the side.
Then I noticed that the other bikers hadn't followed me - they had pulled off where she told me to.
:-)
Fortunately, they didn't speak English.

I tried to get reservations to the Newfoundland Ferry to Port aux Basques for the midnight trip with a berth, so I could sleep while traveling. But they were filled up tonight, so I'm on the noon ferry tomorrow. That will put me on "The Rock" tomorrow around 8:00 pm. Hopefully, I can find a campground nearby.

For tonight, I made it to the Trailsman Motel - a place I remembered from my 2008 trip. I'm supposed to be at the ferry 2 hours before departure.