For some reason, it seems like a lot of my sign picture collection comes from Canada. Maybe I just paid more attention to signs because I was traveling alone, and I had the freedom to take the time to stop and take pictures. But I also think that there was a greater number of interesting signage.

Whatever the reason, here are a few more signs for your sign-spotting enjoyment.

On the ferry to Grand Manan Island

What does this mean?

I think it has to do with emergency procedures, in the event that the ferry has technical difficulties and starts sinking or otherwise becomes unusable.

As far as I can tell, this sign is instructing you to do the following:

Gather in a group, small children in front. You will change from a small power-walking person into either a large white-bodied person, or a small or medium-sized green-bodied person.

Hanging lifeboat. (How is this an instruction? Do you gather at the hanging lifeboat? If so, it shouldn’t be in it’s own seperate square on the sign. Or is this just informative, to let you know that there is a hanging lifeboat?)

Run towards the white rectangle (I’m guessing this is the door). Question: is this the door out to the deck? Also, it’s a good thing that stick-figure is hunched over, because he definitely would hit his head if he wasn’t.

I’m confused by the order. Gather and then run? Shouldn’t you maybe run outside and gather at the lifeboat? The gathering of people and the lifeboat are seperate pictures, hence the confusion with the order. And aren’t you not supposed to run in case of emergency? Don’t they always tell you to calmly walk to the nearest exit? And in that running picture, are you running inside or outside? Though you can’t tell from this picture, the way out to the deck was actually to the right, not the left, as the arrow is indicating.

Confusion.

Anyway, here is where I believe you are meant to gather, in case of an event necessitating such measures:

At one of these fun-looking lifeboat pods. Well, I’m assuming that these are lifeboat pods, based on the pictures on them. To me they look like giant barrels, but apparently they open up into lifeboats.

Which, if you follow these instructions, turn into life boats. Not sure how that happens, but I guess it works.

Somehow this goes from being a white barrel to a giant orange lifeboat (See steps 5 to 6, 3rd row down). I guess when you pull the cord magic transformation happens.

These seem to make more sense than that first sign at least. However, I’m not sure where you go to get the green suit which all the people in the diagram are wearing.

Luckily, we didn’t have to test this on either of my trips on the ferry.

Riverside Albert

One last picture, also from Canada, a tiny town outside of Fundy National Park, in New Brunswick.

The sign reads:

Welcome to Riverside Albert

Home Of

Heritage Buildings * Old Bank Museum

Crooked Creek Trail/ Park & Lookout

NB Trail System * Free Email

Free email?!?!?! Whaaaaat? No way!

I’m definitely stopping there!

(note: I didn’t stop there. Other than to take this picture. I didn’t want to be the one to them that you can get free email from anywhere with an internet connection.)

There’s a few more pictures yet to come, so stay tuned!

My little brother loves the Signspotting books. He owns them all. I know this, because he has shown them all to me. Repeatedly.

He typically goes through phases where he is fairly obsessed with one particular set of reading and/or movie materials (sometimes there is a clear connection between the reading materials and DVDs in his stack, other times not). He’s really into series of things, like, say, all of the Star Wars movies, or Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers, or a stack of Cleveland Cavs paraphernalia and Media Guides from the past five years, from which he will regale us with various statistical tidbits, staring intently at me over his glasses, and talking as if I know anyone other than LeBron on the team– wait, he left, right? Haha, just kidding. That’s a terrible joke. I’m sorry).

Anyway, the Signspotting books are on regular rotation. Over the years, I’ve seen most of them. Repeatedly, as I may have mentioned. So I started taking my own sign-spotting pictures as I traveled. And here they are.

To make it even more fun, they’re going to be spread out across a few posts. Then you have to come back and read my blog for more. Though I’m sure you come back regularly and read it anyway. (Thanks Grandma, I love you 🙂 )

So here we go:

Lauren’s Sign Spotting: Part 1- Personal Safety

Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada

Caution: if you run enthusiastically off the cliff, popcorn will fall out of your feet.

Somewhere in Florida, USA

“No fireworks discharge within 300 feet.”

This is a gas station, somewhere in Florida, that sells fireworks. And gasoline. One stop shopping. Because I generally want to buy fireworks and diesel fuel at the same time. Doesn’t everyone?

But at least there is a fire extinguisher handy. Just in case you don’t pace out those 300 feet quite right.

I took this picture a few years ago, as I was driving back to Ohio from Titusville, Florida, where I had an internship at Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.

I am alarmed that this needs to be put up as a warning on a gas station. And why only 300 feet? I’m fairly certain I don’t want someone shooting off fireworks 400 feet from where I’m pumping gas, let alone 300. And does that 300 feet start from the door, or from the furthest gas pump?

Phi Phi Island, Thailand

Remember, our body is not a life buoy. Because we, collectively, only have one body, and apparently it doesn’t float all that well.

Also, getting run over by a boat is bad.

Prince Edward Island, Canada

The sign:

Interpretation: It is unstable to stand on a tilty platform on the edge of a kite, because you might fall on the floating rocks.

Honestly, that picture doesn’t make the bank look all that steep. That’s barely one body length. In real life, the drop is much, much, much steeper. Also, in real life you can’t even get to the edge because they put up a fence. Probably because all the tourists accidentally drive their cars off or something.

This is next to the East Point Lighthouse on PEI, which is on the northeastern tip of the island. It’s all open and exposed around the lighthouse (which I was too cheap to pay to climb, because as I visited on a rainy day, I suspected the view would be similar to the one from the ground– foggy).

If they’re so concerned about erosion, then they probably shouldn’t put unsecured platforms on the cliff edge. Or lighthouses, for that matter.

Conclusion: They are very concerned about you falling off the edges of things in Canada (see first sign).

Thác Datanla, Dalat, Vietnam

This sign was posted along the edge of the waterfall, either because the slippery rocks are dangerous and they don’t want you to fall and get hurt, or because it’s poisonous. Slightly different things. If you read neither English nor Vietnamese, I would think you’d be a little confused. Though I’m sure that if you drank the water in the waterfall you’d probably get sick, so maybe that’s what they meant.

Oh, and this was the waterfall where a man dressed in an elaborate red monkey costume stuck his finger in my ear. He almost got an elbow in the jugular (since I’m taller than most Asian men, the elbow meant for his gut would have hit a bit higher), which would have definitely knocked him into the “poisonous” area behind the sign. Because where I come from, we don’t do that. I do realize that I’m a visitor to your country, and that Ohioans can be a strange breed sometimes, but there are a few core values that I refuse to compromise. Such as having foreign objects and appendages stuck in my ears. That would be a no-no.

As my sister would say:

False. You will not be doing that.

And there we have it. Look for part 2 coming soon!

For more entertainment until then, you should read more about Eric in this blog post:

Things My Brother Says

It makes me giggle every time I read it.

Tales From A Wandering Albatross

Grand Manan Island

Sign Spotting: Part 2– Canadian Signage

On the ferry to Grand Manan Island

Riverside Albert