I am waiting for my flight back to Edmonchuck so I though that would blog something about my week like all good stories the best place to start is at the beginning.
Sunday
Jewish weddings are the shiznit. They really know how to party it up
Monday
Today is the day that we are to know when the Uhaul is ready. There stupid system is that they will call us and let us know when is the best time to get it. Today the best time was 11am. We go on down to the place and fill out the paper work etc and then we get to bring the gargantuan beast home and take up the entire front loading zone with its hugeness. The truck is a 5 ton with a 24 foot box on the back making it a grand total of at least 35 to 40 feet long. Once it is parked I just load away but with the power of a moving dolly I was able to get all in the truck in no time. Shouts out to rob who helped me up the ramp with the deep freeze. I was going to get on the road right after loading the last of our stuff from Laura & Chris’s, but by the time that was finished I was truly beat from moving and from the wedding the day before. So in stead we had diner, and went home to sleep.
Tuesday
At 4:30 in the morning guess who is awake and showering to get ready to beginning the trek west. Yup it was me :) by 5:00 am I am in the truck and away I am going out of town. I stopped to “top up†the tank at the petrocan on the way out of town to a scary surprise. The little under half a tank that I pumped in to the thing cost me 137 dollars. Yup you heard right . It was at this point that I got really scared. I did the pay at the pump gig with the visa and well I was at just over half a tank and the visa auto authenticates but it didn’t let me enter the amount. It turns out that the amount is actually 100 dollars cause I actually went over that & I had to authenticate twice. On the road I go and man of all the drives that I have done to Vancouver over the years (and they are starting to add up I tell ya) this was the most full of photo ops. Not 20 min out of Edmonton that misty fog in the low lying valleys was starting to form and then the Sun Started to come up in full force and the shit looked phenomenal. There was a ton of predatory Birds near Airdre. In fact there wasn’t a mile that is didn’t see at least one of them for a while. They were just sitting on the fence posts and random trees. And then the mountains looked there usual beauty complete with big white fluffy clouds that were bobbing over the tops like a river over rocks.
I could go on and on for ever about all the fantastic photo ops that I saw on the way. Now those that frequent my blog know that I am a man of few words most of the time and I usually just post photos to explain things. Now some of you may be noticing that I there are more words here & less photos. Well the answer to this and other burning questions can be found in a rented 24 foot truck that is a mere 3 feet narrower then the average lane. The thing was gargantuan, there was no way in hell that I could pull this thing safely over to the shoulder of most of the highways that I was on, In fact fitting in the lanes was iffy on some of them. And like all trips to Van the need to get there as soon as possible was looming over every thing. I think the next time I drive to Vancouver in October I will take a week at to do it. There is so much to see and so many photo ops that I may need a week to do it.
Its one thing to Drive to Van stopping only for gas but it is quite another to take ones time and see stuff along the way. I arrived in Burnaby around 9ish and retrieved the keys for our new digs and then drove to our new & very interesting neighborhood. I arrived and parked the truck illegally because that is really the only way that one can park a 30 odd foot monstrosity. The new digs are quite cool Photos to come! But that is a blog post of its own.
Wednesday
I wake up early and unload all the stuff and discover that we really need to install an air conditioner. Who knew that when you have 16ft of windows and then you take those windows and face them south you end up with a really hot place. It didn’t take me to long to move in surprisingly enough the whole adventure wasn’t that bad. After I was done I grabbed a beer with Darren at this wood fired pizza place down the street. We made the mistake of sitting on the patio on the corner. We were accosted by hobos left right and center. They are going to take a little getting used to. I mean I get asked for change all the time in Edmonton as well but they ask politely and I politely say that I don’t have any and that is that. We both politely continue along our ways. But in Van they aren’t content with that, they counter offer you. For example while we were out on the patio this one particular hobo came up and ask if we had any change. We said that we didn’t to which he replied, well give me some of your beer. We replied with a much less polite NO, to which he counter offered again, Well are you going to eat that, pointing to Darren’s food. We eventually had to tell him in a far from polite manner to bugger off. Now I am all for helping the needy but if you are asking for beer before you ask for food I am afraid that I have very little compassion. After the Grub we wondered about to see what we could see. We wandered to this park near our new house that Miranda & I have been eying up on Google Earth as a potential place to launch a kayak. Well we were there for a while dodging hobos and what not when a guy asked us for the time, which Darren gave and he says oh good I still have an hour till the fireworks. Fireworks??? Oh ya there is fire works tonight Darren says. It is the Festival of Fire or wheat ever it called. So after a quick stop at the loft to grab a tripod we buggered off to English bay for the fire works.
Thursday
Got up early and took the kayak over to D’s place because there is no way in hell that it was getting anywhere near fitting up to our house. So it is there for him to use as he desires After I dropped him off at work in the Monstrosity that is the Uhaul. I took it to the Uhaul place so I could be rid of it, all in all it cost about 650ish bux for fuel for that thing. came home and napped for I was so beat.
The View from our building
Caught a plane that eve and Bam I am then here in Edmonchuck. and well I am going to leave it at that cause I am tired and this needs to get up on line.