Archives for the month of: January, 2008

The Waiting Game

January 20, 08 //

Once we arrived on Prince Edward Island, we looked at a number of properties that were for sale. We continued living in our car for a few more days, but living in your car in a small town is not quite the same as driving across country and putting hundreds of kilometres behind you every day. People start to look at you funny and wonder why you keep asking to use the washroom at Robin’s Donuts. “Weren’t you here yesterday?” They’d ask.

Plus, it was still early January, and it was bitingly cold. Our heater set-up worked amazingly well while we were driving a lot, but if we didn’t drive for long-distances our car batteries would get drained overnight and they wouldn’t get recharged unless we drove for long distances the next day.

I wrote this next post after having seen the house of our dreams. And then buying the house of our dreams here on Prince Edward Island.

So, here we are in our motel in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island–waiting.

We’ve fallen in love with an Island, a town, and a climate. We’ve fallen in love with an acreage and a farm-house that are about to be ours once the paperwork is complete. Yes, that very acreage that drew us here in the first place…

This large swath of land I speak of is comprised of 63 glorious acres of field, woods, and stream, and includes a 100-year-old house. I have taken to describing the house as an abandoned museum, which is a stretch but paints an appropriate picture. The house has no insulation (yet) and is heated only by wood-stove; there is a cook-stove in the kitchen and a good, old-fashioned pantry under the staircase. No updating has been done since the 1950s. And, really, the whole house makes me weak in the knees just to think about it; I sit here with my chin on my hand and a glazey-eyed grin.

The house is located five minutes outside of the town of Montague, which itself is an ideal town. Montague is quaint, but boasts just about every amenity one could hope for: a pool and fitness center, a curling rink, the “Down East Mall”, and all the services one could need–including a hardware store and an Atlantic Superstore.

As far as employment, we are looking forward to earning medium sums of money creatively, rather than earning large sums of money at the expense of our free time and energy. Please know that we fully enjoyed our careers, but found that our busy lives left little to no room for anything else: wake, transport, work, transport, eat, sit on the couch, sleep. Yes, our jobs were enjoyable enough, but we just couldn’t leave the rest of our whims unheeded.

Our plan hinges on reducing our monthly costs drastically. When one has very little money going out the door, one needs very little money coming in. The details have yet to be inked out, but we plan on plunging our fingers into numerous proverbial pies that will be enough to replenish our coffers.

Ahh, the sweet sound of idealism and/or naivety… I recognize them in my words, too. However, we believe that our dream is worth giving a chance, and we are going to give it our all.

And so, here in our dank motel (the cheapest kitchenette in all of Charlottetown), we wait for our possession date and the next stage of our journey!

To read the next post, just hit “next post” below.

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 4)

January 11, 08 //

Read part 1, 2, and 3 first, if you like!

I hate to gloss over Quebec because I loved it so, but our camera’s batteries kept dying at inopportune moments, and I wouldn’t have done the province justice anyway. It’s very culture-rich, the French are friendly, and they throw amazing free winter carnivals!

But by this time we’d been living in the car for a few weeks, and we were excited to get to our destination: Prince Edward Island.

Um, ditto with New Brunswick. I’ll just say that Moncton had the best pool of all–and we swam at a lot of pools, let me tell you!

Once we were getting close to Prince Edward Island, the excitement started to build.

We didn’t have any ties binding us to PEI, but back in British Columbia we’d found a small PEI property and house for sale on the internet, and it spoke to us. In fact, it’s what pulled us across this great country.

We didn’t want to buy the house sight-unseen. Come to think of it, we basically sold everything we owned and drove across the entire country just to take a look at this house and property. We weren’t really sure what was going to happen once we arrived, but that was part of the excitement.

So, to Prince Edward Island we went.

And thus began the next leg of our adventures–settling on this great Island!

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 3)

January 5, 08 //

Read part one. Then read part two. You’re now reading part three!

We didn’t spend as much time in Manitoba as we could have, although we did take in some classic Winnipeg sights.

Manitoba quickly led to Ontario. And by this time we’d settled into a pleasant road-trip rhythm.

We’d wake up in a parking lot and locate a washroom in which to freshen up.

We purchased groceries along the way, so we always had a varied selection of goodies in ye olde food box.

I’ve never eaten so much fruit and so many baked goods and deli items in my entire life. It was fun to eat prepared foods for the first week, but after that we both started to miss the pleasures of a bowl of cereal or simple home cooked meals, like pasta.

Occasionally, we dined out, but that was a rarity. Here we are at the Trapper’s Lodge restaurant in Parry Sound, Ontario. It was New Year’s Eve!

In general, though, we’d spend a few hours exploring that day’s town, and we’d usually hit the road again by early afternoon.

We’d drive for approximately four hours, and then find our next spot to spend the night.

In terms of showers, we opted for the swimming pool route. We swam every day or two (or sometimes three) in cities all across the country, which was wonderful. We should write a Swimmer’s Guide to Canada. We even swam in a Francophone pool in Quebec!

For the most part, the weather was surprisingly tame when it came to driving conditions. On occasion we’d find ourselves in a slight snow-storm, but we’d usually just stay put wherever we were until the weather cleared. That was the beauty of our trip; we set our own schedule.

Of course, like any road trip, our journey had its share of tribulations.

One tribulation happened early on in our trip. As British Columbians accustomed to above-freezing temperatures, we didn’t give much thought to our windshield-washer fluid.

But as we traveled inland, our windshield-washer fluid–bought on the West coast for their mild, mild winters–began to freeze, and eventually the washer fluid turned into a solid rock.

We had to detach the windshield-washer reservoir and heat it up with our super-duper Webasto heater to melt the fluid, which had frozen to a solid mass.

Another low-point occurred in Dryden, Ontario. Our heater got kind of frozen and refused to work for a night. I believe it was around -16 degrees celcius (not including the wind-chill), and that, my friends, was not a very good night. But we bared the cold and slept in the car anyway.

But we sure did see some sights and learned a lot during our 28-day winter adventure.

Here is Cameron at the beautiful Niagara Falls…but did you know that across the street from these falls are blinking lights, casinos, Ripley’s Believe it or Nots, and lots of strip joints? I know, I was shocked, too. Or maybe you knew that already, but I certainly didn’t! I was expecting to bounce up a rural road to get to the Falls–but instead there’s a mini-Las Vegas that has sprung up around them. (As weird as it sounds, it made me cry, actually. The falls were just such an inspiring sight, and to juxtapose them with so much…flashy glitz….just seemed really, um, wrong.)

Oh…imagine the number of fun things that can be done on a 28-day road trip! I can’t even begin to do them all justice. Just know that we watched coins get made at the Royal Canadian Mint.

And we visited the Parliament buildings…and, oh, so very many other wonderful sights!

And soon enough we were leaving Ontario behind, too. Onwards to Quebec, New Brunswick, and our beloved Prince Edward Island.

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 2)

January 1, 08 //

We recently shared part one of our cross-Canada winter adventure. You’re now reading part two!

Once our bags were packed and we’d said goodbye to our families, our journey really began.

We set off on the first leg of our journey: crossing British Columbia in our 1982 Toyota Station wagon.

Oh, those heady first days of a road trip… When the car is clean and some semblance of order remains inside the car. When every map and pair of mittens has its place and the car remains clean.

I distinctly remember our first phone call home, when my jacket was still clean and I was paranoid about germs. Look, here I am–sweet pathetic road-trip newbie–wiping the phone down with a wet nap. Aah, how quickly these concerns fall by the wayside when you’re living in your car for a month.

Our first few nights found us whizzing through British Columbia and sleeping in a variety of parking lots.

For the first few nights of the trip, temperatures were mild. We’d turn the Webasto heater on for an hour to heat up the car, and then turn it off before we went to sleep because we didn’t really need the extra heat.

However, we experienced our first cold night in Vavenby, BC. We spent the night here, on the side of the highway.

Here in Vavenby, we discovered a fundamental flaw in our heating system: it was too good.

We fell asleep feeling toasty warm inside our sleeping bags with the heater on full-blast. The next thing I remember was waking up a few hours later with a parched throat, drenched in sweat.

“Cam, wake up, wake up…” I croaked in a dried out voice. “It’s too hot. Way too hot!!!”

We both struggled out of our many layers, sprawled out and on top of our sleeping bags, and switched off the heater. And back to sleep we went in a hot fugue.

Well, it turned out that completely turning off the heater in the middle of the night was not a good idea either. We awoke early the next morning, teeth chattering. We had gone from stripping down to almost nothing in the middle of the night due to the heat…to waking up to a completely frozen car.

Upon waking, the temperature inside the car was a cool minus thirteen degrees celcius.

We knew that this hot/cold effect was going to become a serious problem, so Cam immediately gave the heater an over-haul. (Yes, that means doing repairs to the car’s electronics on the side of the road, with toolbox sprawled out on the snow and lots and lots of layers to keep warm.)

In a nutshell, the heater was equipped with a sensor that detected the ambient temperature so that it would know when the area it was heating was warm. This sensor was installed under the hood, where it was always freezing, so the sensor never told the heater to turn off.

Once Cam moved this temperature sensor from under the hood into the car, the sensor worked like a charm and the heater kicked in and out all night, keeping us at a pleasant temperature.

And so it was through the next leg of our journey: the Rocky Mountains and Alberta, where we stopped to see family along the way!

Then came Saskatchewan, arguably one of the most beautiful provinces on the planet.

Saskatchewan was notable for us for so many reasons.

Cameron had been intrigued by the Grasslands National Park, and we very much wanted to see it for ourselves. We visited this phenomenal park on Christmas Eve day, and had the entire park to ourselves.

I loved Saskatchewan so much that we considered ending our trip there and settling down! But…we didn’t. Maybe someday!

Christmas Eve night was spent parked outside of a Canada Post outlet in the tiny village of Wood Mountain, Saskatchewan. (Edit: I got to tell the story of our Christmas eve night sleeping on the side of the road on CBC Radio’s national program, Definitely Not the Opera, but I’m skipping ahead now!)

Aah Saskatchewan, I could sing your praises all day. But eventually we continued on our Eastward journey…to Manitoba!

The Waiting Game

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 4)

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 3)

Driving Across Canada: How to Sleep in Your Car In the Depths of Winter (Part 2)

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