good times, summer in the city

Less than two months 'til we hit the road to the Yukon...that's so close! Yeah!

We're going to Salt Spring Island for a weekend in a couple of weeks for another mini camping adventure. It is a pretty island in spite of the touristy-ness of the place, and the open-air market in the town of Ganges is fabulous.

Here's an old picture from a few years back when we went to Salt Spring Island with some friends. There's Mark on the right. Hi, Mark!!



The Big Trip is getting closer. We've recently started considering a slight alteration in our plans. I know I said I didn't want to go to Seniorland - I mean Florida - on the way back from Mexico, but we are now considering popping in for long enough to grab a retired Greyhound from one of the Florida tracks to bring back to Canada with us. One of my greyhound rescue contacts will give me the inside scoop on how to go about doing this and I think it's a fun idea. We want a Greyhound sometime anyway, and we can't get one before we leave or else we'd have to ask our families to watch TWO large dogs for us for three months, and that's a bit much to ask. If you didn't know that we were animal & animal rescue fanatics, you can visit our other blog and then you will understand.

Maiden Voyage: Gabriola Island

Mark and some of our friends spent lots of time last weekend fixing up the wiring in the Boler. The signal lights were all wonky, but in the end they got it 95% fixed so we took the Boler on our first trip and....

Dum-da-da-DUM!! It was a success!!

We decided to take a weekend trip to Gabriola Island, which is maybe 2 1/2 hours away. We went in that particular direction because it would take us over the Malahat Mountain, which would be a really really good test of how the little pick-up truck performs with the Boler bouncing along behind it. Oh, and also, we live on the very southern tip of a skinny, tall island and that was the only direction we could possibly have travelled for more than two hours without hitting water.

We slowed down a bit at some of the steep parts of the mountain, but it was nothing out of the ordinary and definitely nothing to panic about, so the test was a huge success and I don't think we'll be (deliberately) taking a steeper route than that at any point on the road trip to Mexico, so all is well.

Gabriola Island was really nice.


Here is the FIRST shot of our FIRST road trip with our beloved Boler!! This was in Nanaimo, waiting for the ferry to take us to Gabriola. I felt all cool, because we could just relax in the boler while waiting in line, lounging around the dinette table & having a snack, in perfect comfort.

We set up camp in Descanso Bay once we got to Gabriola Island. See that huge hangy-downy part of the awning? Total surprise to us. We'd never unravelled it before and we both assumed that it was a normal awning with maybe a little teensy bit of a flap hanging down, but this was the flap to end all flaps. It adds more privacy and is also probably a really good weatherbreak for when the Boler's door is open.

The campground was beautiful and right on top of some really nice beaches and bays. Other than the loud group of people who pulled in late Friday night and decided it was time to party with their car stereos blasting, it was fine. They actually provided us with entertainment more than annoyance. We couldn't hear them from the site we chose except for at first when they had the music extra-loud, but there were two sites really near the party site that each had families with kids in them, and I felt kinda bad for them. The park employees had a "talk" with the young guys the first night and they shut the hell up after that happened, but I could hear them from the out-house (which was close to where they were) Saturday night too. Poor families with kids.

Sunday morning, bright and early, I was making my way to the out-house when I heard "COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!!" It was an unexpected thing to hear in the middle of the woods on a Sunday morning, especially considering that it wasn't actually a rooster, but a child. It turns out that the kids had been yelling this over and over all morning at the top of their lungs. I think it was revenge on the loud, and by this time hung over, party group. For the rest of the morning whenever we ventured near that end of the park we could hear them yelling it - especially whenever there was any sort of noise from the party group. A car door slams? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! A hung over party guy woops or hollers? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! A person emerges from a tent at the party site? COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO!! And the magic part was, those stupid hung over people couldn't say a word to those little kids, or they'd have the deadly wrath of protective parents swooping down upon them.

I get a big kick out of watching human interaction, and this was a fine performance. You guys all know how much I love loud stupid parties (not at all, especially in the woods where it should be peaceful and pretty) so I was totally on the side of the families and found it funny that the little kids go the last word.

ANYWAY. We met lots of nice people during the weekend, but we also poked around in the woods and at the shore quite a bit. Gabriola has lots of neat sandstone formations, like this one that Mark is climbing around in. He bonked his head off it pretty good. He bent over right after he ricocheted off it and I thought for a second he was gonna fall over or something, but he was mostly okay.



I think this one looks like a mushroom.



Arlo didn't seem to mind being in the Boler. He has his own little single bed in there, but I was worried he wouldn't use it because it's got a table right on top of it. I thought he might be nervous to climb into the space between the bed and the table because he couldn't stand up straight in there, but he scooted in and was content enough to sleep there, which really shouldn't have surprised me. That dog doesn't spook at anything.

He had lots of adventures on the beach. He got very involved with digging up sand. He'd dig a hole, smoosh his nose right down into it, sniff, then snort because he'd sniffed in sand and/or salt water, and frantically dig some more.



Arlo found and tormented a starfish until we made him stop.




He found some crabs but he couldn't catch them. He caught a smaller one elsewhere on the beach and licked it right up, but I think it pinched him because he spit it out again.



Take a close look here: Arlo is putting his entire snout underwater in an attempt to find some treasure. That's saltwater, too. Yuck. He did this a few times, so he either didn't learn from his mistakes or didn't mind saltwater in his nose and mouth. Either that or the treasures were REALLY worth it.


I can't even think of what else we did, but our trip felt like it was waaaay longer than two days (in a good way). We had fun despite the rain we got on Saturday morning. We drove all around while it was raining and managed to get lost for a long time. Keep in mind we had a map and the entire island is only about 8 miles long. It was fun getting lost - our map was about four years old, but it seemed as though they had taken out some roads instead of, as one would expect, adding new ones since the map had been printed. We'd be trying to get to the end of one road because it connected with another that we needed to get on, and the paved road would turn into a nicely graded gravel road. The gravel road would suddenly get much narrower and then get all bumpy and unkempt, and then we'd suddenly be parked in someone's driveway or in the bushes or something, and the road would be behind us, but certainly not in front of us. This happened many times. We finally got away from the region of disappearing roads and went to the other side of the island, where everyone had politely left all the roads where they belonged.

On Sunday we finally drove back to the ferry terminal and wandered over to the bar for some coffee. While sitting outside, drinking our coffee like responsible adults, we noticed something fun. Do you see the rock wall behind the building? Do you see the bars that are attached to the rock wall?


I thought they might have been put there to climb on. I climbed on them.


They were pretty good bars.

Reconnecting to NS

So, in a year we will likely have just arrived back in Nova Scotia from Mexico. Already our calendar is filling up with social appointments to go to once we're back and some engagements that are dangerously close to our admittedly fuzzy E.T.A.

I feel so loved though! I've been away for seven years, and now that we're coming back there are going to suddenly be all these activities involving all our friends and family - it'll be like a homecoming overload! I'm starting to think that maybe we should have some sort of party too, to celebrate our return, but the logistics...just thinking about it makes me nervous:

1. We don't know where we'll be living in the province. One should know these things before inviting others over. Will we rent a place? Crash at someone's? Truro? Halifax? Bridgewater? The Valley? IDUNNO!

2. Like I said, we're not entirely certain just when we'll be back. How does one invite many people to a party to which some of them will have to travel significant distances, and not give a firm date for said party? IDUNNO!

3. We're planning on building such a great place once we buy property - I'm sure we'll want to have a party to celebrate our official "settling in" when our place is built. Should this be the homecoming party instead? IDUNNO!

4. I'm certain some of our old friends & family members are not sure how to treat us now due to our "dirty hippy" tendencies. It's been an easy problem since we've lived so far away, but you'd be surprised how often and in what sort of weird situations this catches people up. I remember a time when Mark's poor mother didn't know what the hell to feed me whenever I came to visit. There was a lot of mac 'n cheese and veggie soup from a can, and I think she struggled even with that. She seems to have gradually stopped being afraid of hosting vegetarians at meal time, which is cool cuz it's not too hard really, especially with (mostly) non-fussy and difficult-to-offend guests, but what are our friends and family going to do with our composting toilet? Will we have a party, but before it starts, take all these salt-of-the-earth folks down to the bathroom and give them a lesson on how to use it? Will it freak anyone out? IDUNNO.


Anyway. In some ways this will be like straddling two worlds. I don't want any of our friends and family to feel uncomfortable around us and I hope that doesn't happen, but all we can be is ourselves.

My my, this is turning into an introspective post!!

So the social appointments we have to look forward to so far:


- Mel's getting married in June in the Valley!! Yay!!




- Tanya's getting married in May, presumably in Halifax! (this is the one that's borderline in terms of timing.)




- Our friends from Vancouver Island, Kristina and Jeff, are planning on flying out to visit us and see a bit of Nova Scotia that summer too!



There are some odd changes to look forward to. Mark's mother now lives about four blocks away from the house that he's lived in since like grade 3. My parents just moved out of Lower Sackville (finally! I hated that non-town!!) about three days ago, and bought a house in a rural neighbourhood outside of Truro. Hey mom & dad, if you're reading this, where do you live now? What's your phone number? I've been trying to reach you, but guess what: You moved away AGAIN without giving me any forwarding info. Are you trying to tell me something?? Wait, don't answer that.

I must quote Stan Rogers again, and the song that our blog is named after. From "A Northwest Passage":

How then am I so different from the first men through this way?
Like them, I left a settled life; I threw it all away
To seek a Northwest Passage at the call of many men
To find there but the road back home again.

Spring is here

Savings goal: SAVED!! We celebrated by ordering in some Chinese food for supper.

Now we are saving for :

1. Living expenses here until February,
2. Trip to Mexico & back expenses.

We haven't made any sort of budget for these things. I guess we'll just keep working until one of us says "hey, why are we still working?" Whatever. It's casual.

I am happy to report that the Boler has weathered out the crap-tacular fiasco known as "winter" here on this island with no visible damage of any sort. I swear, the weathermen are not needed here for six months out of the year. Sometime in early November they should just say "...today we're expecting sunshine, and on Tuesday it'll be sun and clouds in the morning followed by about six months of overcast drizzle" and then they should go on vacation in Hawaii.

What was I talking about? Right, the Boler. When we first got him we put a tarp over him and put some stuff inside that sucks moisture out of the air, and he weathered the storms perfectly. We're gonna leave the tarp on for the time being and Mark has promised to make a play-date with our friend Jeff to fix the wiring for the tail-lights, and then we'll have to start thinking about the trip to the Yukon.

K that's all for now.

$$ Goal - sooo close now!

First of all, here's a pic of Mark and Arlo that a photographer took:



:)

We did a little survey of our finances the other day, and we are only a teensy smidgeon away from having 100% of our "buying land and living in NS" funds! We're so close - we're practically there now. Yay!! In fact, if we hadn't already bought our travel trailer, we'd have that base savings in the bank!

It's basically academic at this point though. Once we have those funds intact it'll be a nice feeling, but after that we still need to save up enough for our trip, and enough to live off of while we're still in Victoria. We're leaving in February 2008, which is now only 10 months away!

Speaking of travel trailers, we're still bouncing between two very good name ideas. One is "Southbound Pachyderm", which I thought up and is the name of a song we like, and the other is "Good Hope" which is less funny but much more noble and my dad suggested. Which do you like? Leave a comment and tell me. Southbound Pachyderm will become a misnomer once we leave Mexico, since it'll be southbound no more. Am I allowed to name it that just for this trip, and then do a name change? Is that allowed? Is it lame?

Anyway I have four more weeks of working at the accounting firm and then I'm free! I'm more than ready for it too. Still no word on when Mark will leave his job. He's asked for time off for our Yukon trip, so at least work won't interfere with that stuff. We have our dates for that trip: we'll be going from August 25th 'til September 16th. Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, you guys can't come visit us then, K?

unable to stay jobless

Well I'm not even done working at the place that I'm quitting from, and already, out of the blue, I have a new job. This is cool though: it's at the SPCA!!

What's not so very cool is that I'm supposed to work at the accounting firm until the end of tax season (beginning of May), which is going to be VERY busy and a lot of overtime. Now, on top of that, I'll likely be at the SPCA every Saturday and who knows when else, because I told them I'd work anytime I wasn't doing my regular job if they needed me to. It's gonna be a lot of work. There's an end in sight though. If I can survive the next eight weeks it'll all be good, and hopefully I'll pick up enough shifts at the SPCA so that I won't have to ever go temping. It's supposed to be a casual position, but the shelter has been recently renovated and is a lot bigger, and thus holds a lot more animals, so they are absolutely swamped with work and hurting for extra employees A LOT. So I think chances are fairly decent that I'll get a lot of hours there. I know this is going to be a stressful job sometimes, but it's something I completely believe in so I'm really happy about it.

AND, being a casual position, I'll still have the flexibility to do all the things we have planned this summer and fall.

Spanish lessons were over last weekend. Mark couldn't make it to the last class - he was busy falling into Fairy Lake in the rain and catching a cold. I'm not sure if we can do the level 3 Spanish class - it looks like not enough students are going to sign up for it, and now I'll be working on Saturdays. It's a shame too, because I think we're on the edge of a Spanish breakthrough. Ah well.

Julie gives notice

Well that was more anti-climactic than I thought it would be. I told my bosses I was quitting as soon as tax season is over and they said "oh, okay". And then nothing. They didn't ask why; they didn't say ANYTHING. So there was an uncomfortable pause, and I said it was a personal decision due to the direction my life was taking and didn't reflect on the company, and again they were like "oh, okay". Another uncomfortable pause. I gave them my little letter I had typed out, and they didn't even look at it. In fact, neither of them would actually take it - I had to put it on the desk in front of them after I held it out and nobody moved to take it from my hand.

Anyway that's done. Here's where I work:













K, here's another cool quote from Megan Lyles' Travelogue. This is from an intense hiking/camping journey she went on to Machu Picchu, where she was REALLY COLD at night in her tent at a high elevation, after a day of difficult hiking:

"I tried my usual test of whether something is really bad or not. I asked myself, "Would you rather be here or at work?" Usually the answer is "here" and I feel better. Today the answer was "work, work, I'd rather be in a nice, warm, stationary cubicle!" so that was not so good."

I like that test. I think I'll have to use it when I become a jobless bum.

Are you wondering why I quit so early? We've got lots of plans for the summer and I would require too much time off to accomplish everything. My work is very restrictive about vacation days. We're having lots of company in from out of town, and there are two courses we want to take over the summer. One is a cob building course from cobworks.com, and the other is a carpentry course at a local college. We are also planning on taking a trip to the Yukon, and that will be at least two to three weeks; probably more like a month.

I plan on temping when all that is not happening, and I'd LOVE to get some actual writing done. I find that working at a job I don't like directly affects my ability to be creative, even when I'm not at work. Yuk!

As for Mark, he can post his own employment plans for your reading pleasure. Nah, that'll never happen - he never posts. He's not sure when he's going to quit yet. Seeing as how he has unlimited vacation days and he actually doesn't mind his job 90% of the time, it's not as pressing an issue for him as it has been for me. Also, it takes him 20 minutes to WALK to work, and it takes me about an hour to commute on the bus. In the cold rain. With my stupid work clothes on that always manage to get full of mud. Uphill both ways.

Boo hoo.

;)

Pics o' the Boler

As promised.


The bench seats (there's another one on the other side of that yellow table) turn into the bed when the table is lowered.

What do you think of those blue dots on the wall? I tried ripping one off but it took a bit of the wall coating off with it, so we'll have to leave them up for now. Do you see the writing on the fridge that says "1975"? The fridge is a chalk board. I know that's a stupid little thing to get excited about, but I like it! Mucho gusto!!

Our tiny camper underneath the bow of our landlord's gigantic looming boat. It's not there any more - we're stashing it in a friend's back yard for now.

So it's tradition to name these little guys. I don't have any good ideas yet. If you can think of anything good, leave a suggestion in the comments please!

I haven't been talking about it much, but our Spanish lessons are also coming along well. We're into level 2 now and it's so great - there are only four people in our class so there's lots of individual attention.

I have to tell my work very, very soon that I'll be quitting. I don't want to tell them once the chaos of tax season hits because it'll add stress to an already stressful time if they get that kind of news right in the thick of things. I'll let you know how that goes.

Mexico, here we come! :)