Last night in Quebec City, about 100 rather vocal and pushy public sector workers made their way into a Liberal campaign office in the riding of Vanier.

They blared electronic noisemakers and plastered the windows with stickers.

Jean Charest missed the whole thing – showing up half an hour after the last of the Transport Quebec workers had gone back to their orange school bus to drive off into the night.

My colleague from the Montreal Gazette astutely noticed there had also been orange school buses the previous night at a massive rally in Laval.

Smooth-talking PQ leader Pauline Marois has a "secret weapon" to ensure her campaign speeches come off just right.

She is the only party leader in this election who uses a teleprompter. At each event, a special technical team sets up two transparent glass plates on each side of the PQ podium, which reflect rolling text from upturned television screens hidden from view. Marois reads her lines, while appearing to simply speak from memory.

Few politicians in Canada use such a technique. Stephen Harper also turns to a teleprompter when delivering his public addresses.

The contrast is glaring. Changing buses from the ADQ to the Liberals is like riding public transportation and then hitching a ride in a limousine.

First off, there’s food on this bus. Real meals, Not just snacks. And they’re available when you’re hungry – not two hours later. No more stopping in out-of-the-way fast food joints because the campaign schedule is so tight, and the bus is so late, that there is no time to stop.

The internet works as well. All the time (or almost.)

So I'm on the ADQ bus now.

I can't say I was terribly happy about the proposition of switching campaign buses for a week.

As rocky as things can sometimes get, the Parti Québécois bus - at least logistically - was a relatively smooth-running ship.

Plus, I had heard all of the horror stories about life on the ADQ bus: Intermittent internet, last-minute schedule changes, less-than-ideal hotel accommodations...but nothing could have prepared me for the Hell that awaited me this morning.

For a few worrisome moments during Pauline Marois' campaign stop at l'Université de Montréal on Wednesday, it looked like maybe stumping on campus isn't what it used to be for sovereigntist politicians.

Marois was speaking to some 300 students in a large auditorium, outlining how she would seek more powers from Ottawa without necessarily seeking outright sovereignty, at least not as a first step.

"We can broaden Quebecers' freedoms without constantly chasing after another referendum," she said in French.

In the radio business, we call quotes ‘clips.’ And in the business of covering politics, Mario Dumont is among the top ‘clip-machines.’

His best yet came out this week at a startup recycling company in Magog on Thursday.

Prompted to comment reports of Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois’ ‘mellow’ campaign schedule, Dumont said this in French:

Earlier this week, my colleague Tim Duboyce on the Liberal bus wrote about Premier Jean Charest signing autographs at a shopping mall on Montreal’s north shore.

A lot has been made of the ADQ’s inability to reach Montrealers and get them to vote for him. So it seemed odd this week when Mario Dumont had a similar moment in front of the Ste-Justine hospital Wednesday.

After watching him rail on Liberal health policies, a group of young male students walked up to the ADQ leader to ask for his autograph.

Liberal leader Jean Charest is challenging the suggestion Pauline Marois is the only politician in Quebec working to stay in shape during the election campaign.

Marois has been facing some scrutiny for running a low-key campaign, with few media events. Some are suggesting the PQ leader, who will turn 60 next spring, is tired and out of shape. Marois set out to prove the contrary by inviting reporters to join her for a pre-dawn power walk Friday.

Charest is insisting Marois is not the only sporty leader on the hustings.

Okay, so it was more of a brisk power walk than a jog.

Most of us survived the trek, but a few journalists couldn't keep up and a photographer fell into a ditch walking backwards.

And for her part, Pauline Marois fared admirably. She kept a vigorous marching pace any soldier would be proud of, and quick-minded too, telling journalists, when asked, that she was listening to "Les Cowboys Fringants" and "Jacques Brel" on her iPod.

Were The Bard along for the ride as a reporter covering this election campaign, he might write, "Methinks they doth protest too... little".

Organized pickets and demonstrations have thus far been scant throughout the first half of Jean Charest's campaign to win back the majority he lost in March 2007.

The few protests which have greeted the Liberal leader along the way have been put on by FRAPRU, which wants more government-subsidized housing, and trade organizations such as the CSN Labour Federation (especially the local representing locked-out Casino workers), and CUPE.