Out Of The Gates And On Our Way

Day: 1
Start: Ottawa
Finish: Pembroke
Time: 2 hours
Distance: 145 km
Remaining:3,386 km


What a whirlwind these last few days have been. We've been up late every night getting ready for the move, and our days have been packed with errands, preparations, and a lot of saying goodbye. Today we said our last goodbyes and rolled out of Ottawa, Calgary-bound. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, which means that I'll still have a kettle full of packing stories for anyone who shows interest later on.


Scott was not always helpful during the packing stage. When he wasn't asleep, he was often happy to watch the preparations from the comfort of his bouncy chair. With no furniture around he had lots of space to spread out.



All our preparations paid off in the end. When our crew of eight people came by Saturday morning at 10am, it only took us 40 minutes to load all of our furniture and boxes into the truck. I think it ranks up there as one of the best moves in history.


For example, look at the how neatly everything was stacking in there. We ended up filling the remaining space with our suitcases, our bikes and a few other loose items. Putting those other loose items took me several more hours, because the moving crew had already eaten their brownies and left.


After the bulk of the boxes and furniture had been stowed in the truck, we headed down to the church BBQ with a western theme.


They had a lot of games at the BBQ, and I did particularly well at the sack races -- where I managed to jump from 3rd to 2nd by diving across the finish line. Shaving the balloon was not my forte.


When we packed up, we held few things back so that we could cook a few last meals, clean up the house and other last-minute activities. Our breakfast of French Toast turned out quite nicely, except that we hadn't saved any forks. We ended up eating the food with a plastic knife and spoon.


Now we've gone about 2 hours in the truck, and it seems like things are going well. Scott behaved himself fairly well, so we're optimisticI'd write more, but I've drifted to sleep something like 15 times. Th

[NOTE FROM FOLLOWING DAY: I'm going to leave some of the mistakes in here, since it helps to demonstrate how tired I was. When I start drifting to sleep at the keyboard, I usually keep typing as I begin to dream. You should have seen some of the strange material I was coming up with.]