Flecks of… Gray?

Back on April 4th, 2005, I watched a movie called Gerry and scored it a measly 4 out of 10, today I would probably give it the same marks as the pace of the movie was dreadfully slow but it did have some memorable dialogue in the few sentences of dialogue that it had. Mostly memorable because of the interesting words that they dug out of nowhere and used as if everybody knew them already.

Here are some of my favorites:

I crow’s-nested up here to scout-about the ravine

’cause I thought maybe you gerried the rendezvous.

I almost did succumb, but then I turbaned up.

But I am rock-marooned. I can’t climb down.

Why don’t you make me a dirt mattress?

–Shirt basket?
–Shirt basket.

Upon further inspection, I suspect some of these of being military terms which explains why I’ve never heard of them before. Still funny.

We were at our friends place in Seattle and they had some Guitar Hero’s so Heidi and I dove in and had some fun jamming. Turns out it’s a bit videogame-y because I was a bit better than Heidi at the game which is the opposite of real life guitaring.

So, I recently learned how to make Sweet Tea and it’s one of my very favorite things. I especially enjoyed going to ‘The South‘ so that I could indulge in this fine drink of theirs, now I can have it at home and almost anywhere else, it seems.

This adds to my repertoire of things that I’m able to ‘make’ including, and limited to: Mac and Cheese, Toast (variety of toppings), ice cubes, Ice Cream, popcorn, Beer and frozen grapes. Other than these things, I try to stay far away from cooking.

I wish that I knew how to make Thai iced tea though. I may never need to leave my house again if I could make that.

The first thing that people notice about the route that I traveled to get from Montreal to Vancouver is that it seems like the long way around; it seems that way because it is – but there’s a reason for this.

I decided to rent a moving truck from the States after finding out that the only company in Canada that does one way rentals is U-Haul and that they also had earned themselves a terrible reputation. In the States, I decided to go with Penske because they had good reviews on similar websites.

I picked up the truck and trailer in Burlington, VT without any trouble crossing into the States but upon returning to Canada, those customs people were having a big problems with me; I was certain that they were going to turn me around and not allow me to enter Canada. Their problem was two fold, the smaller offense in their mind was that I did not have my Class 3 license to drive this truck I had rented (a necessity in only no other provinces or States than Quebec). That one they were going to let me go on and I would have to hash it out with the police if I got caught.

The larger offense in their mind was that I was committing Cabotage (no other French person I know if familiar with this word). Cabotage is the word that they use for the activity of transporting Canadian goods across Canada with a US vehicle – not allowed. To me, this was (and is) ridiculous but the only way that they would allow me in to Canada was if I agreed to come back into the States to do my driving. This meant that I had to fill out an exportation form for US customs (a 6 page handwritten document) and stress over what those guys were going to do to me.

After intense deliberation about whether or not I should do what CDN customs told me to, I decided to obey their (stupid) rule and travel through the States. The border crossing into NY state took a total of about 10 minutes and included a full truck X-ray in a special building but all-in-all, not too painful.

For the majority of the truck ride, it was me and my brother doing the driving while Heidi and Saffron took a nice flight and were in BC very quickly. On the drive, we did stop the first night to get about 6 hours of sleep but by the following night we were a little bit behind schedule so we decided to switch off driving duties and go through the night. The sleep that we had wasn’t too stellar but we were able to make it through the night and the morning light was a welcome sight.

On our drive, we decided to try going back up to Canada to drop my brother off at his home in Saskatoon and see if the customs people had the same Cabotage restrictions or not. Turns out the Manitoba guards didn’t care at all what I was doing, just as long as I was transporting personal goods (I was) so they let me through after a 1 minute conversation – awesome!

We were now in Winnipeg and it felt to us like we were basically home already (we had 9 driving hours to go). Once we arrived in Saskatoon, I loaded up Heidi’s piano from her parents house, had a solid sleep and was ready to go again the next morning; this time, with my parents as my co-pilots.

The drive with my parents took 2 days with a stop over just west of Jasper for our night stay (which was another solid nap) and we had arrived in Chilliwack by 2pm in the afternoon; enough time to unload almost all of our stuff from the truck before we needed to go to bed. It was so nice to sleep in our own beds!

Some notes of mention from the trip were:
- our average speed was about 55 mph (~ 95 kph) even though one highway in North Dakota had a maximum of 75 mph (~ 120 kph)
- the truck measured instantaneous MPG and our highest recorded value was 188.2 mpg, going down a hill
- we passed about 15 vehicles in the entire journey
- I saw a semi towing three trailers
- diesel costs for the truck were about $2000
- it was May 4th and snowing in Winnipeg.
- I crossed the border 6 times
- as does everyone driving through Jasper park, we saw many deer, elk and a moose.
- We got one flat tire on the car trailer outside of Chicago that was completely fixed and ready to go again in about 1 hour (that’s fast!)
- Although we did save money, I’m still undecided whether the whole adventure was worth the hassle of doing it ourselves instead of with movers.

That’s the majorty of the story, thanks for reading!

I look out of my window at the wonderful Vedder Mountain and wanted to get an idea of how high it is as a comparison to other mountains. I decided to reference it against Whistler, Tremblant and Everest. So, it’s pretty clear that Everest is the tallest at 8800m and Whistler is the next tallest at 2600m, I think that the surprise here is that Vedder Mountain and Tremblant are nearly equal in height at 800m.

Take a look at the Google maps for the various mountains: Vedder, Whistler, Tremblant, Everest.

So, I recently moved from Montreal to Vancouver area and drove the whole deal in a rental truck with some help from family. The first thing that a guy like me has got to do is figure out the MPG that I got with the 22′ diesel truck towing our Subaru; and the final number is 10 MPG or 25 L/100k. I was really happy with that production.

The total trip from Montreal to Vancouver with some time spent in the States looked a lot like this and was a total of 5935 kms.

I’ll post some more about the trip in a few days but just wanted to get this info up for those who were interested.