Calgary Roadtrip

After college, and my internship, I was free. There were a few choices of what to do, and to a great many people's surprise I decided to follow John to Calgary. He and I had known for a few months that he was going to be promoted and sent out to Calgary to start up a new office. He was a tech rep for Centimark Roofing in Toronto, and now a Sales Rep in Calgary. With every plus, there is usually a negative, and this was no exception. He was going to be leaving all of his friends and close family.

Luckily, a few people he knew were already out in Calgary; two of his friends from Milton, Katherine and Don Rumford, and three hours to the north, his Aunt Elsie and Uncle Derek.

Just like John, I was going to be leaving all of my friends and family. Before the roadtrip home, to Kansas, I said good bye to my friends. I even did a little roadtrip with a few of them to the Adirondacks. Mom flew to Jersey so I'd have company while driving my car (and ton of junk I'd had at school) back home. We met my brother, for dinner the day before that trip, and I got to say good bye to my hiking, brownie, and tv buddy.

-Fast forward- Mom and I had a fun time speeding cross country, and made it safely.

John and I made plans for him to fly down to Kansas, and we would drive up to Calgary together. That almost didn't happen (for a little while, mom and I thought we'd be doing another trip together) but in the end we picked John up at KCI on July 3rd.

Now this might sound a tad bit unpatriotic, but we set out on the fourth of July. With our hostage in the back seat (my feline friend, Cee Cee), we drove North. It was getting late by the time we hit South Dakota,John was less than thrilled when I asked if we could go see Mt. Rushmore. Being the wonderful guy he is, I was allowed to drag him a little southward to go see this symbol of our nation's pride. I have to say, we were probably the least patriotic people there (a Canadian, and a chick who was fleeing the country to follow love). We watched the video on the presidents, took a few pictures, and then ran like hell to escape before the mob. You can't blame us, it was a one lane road! Being stuck in that would have made it hard to stay on schedule, and we had to be in High River on the 6th so we could meet the movers.

John drove through the night, chugging Rock Star energy drinks to stay awake. I suffered in the passenger seat, forcing myself awake out of stubbornness.

-Energy drinks cannot be good for you; anyone else with me on this?

We eventually stopped at a Super 8, and John was sweet enough to get a room we could have the cat in. We hauled the kitty paraphernalia (litter box, food, water, ...cat) into the room, and she was set. Early in the morning we were reminded why Super 8's kinda suck, and I got to spend a little having a bad reaction to cigarette smoke. After scaring John a bit, I got better, and we got on the road. That was to be our roughest day.

After being sick in the morning, I was hoping to be fine for the rest of the day, but after a long drive on a winding road, I got carsick. The cat, who hadn't faired too well the day before (foaming at the mouth, and regurgitating in my back seat) seemed like she'd become a traveling cat overnight/ That didn't last long, and soon poor John was stuck with two nauseous females.

He handled it extremely well (fed me and let me drive). We were driving diagonally across Montana that day, and there was NOTHING on those roads, so that day lasted forever. As we were getting closer to the boarder, John started quizzing me on what to tell the boarder officers. I went from calm to terrified as we sat in the extremely long line, waiting for our turn. "Did I bring too much stuff? Should I have left the cat? What are we going to do if they turn us away?!?" I knew I wouldn't survive the drive back to Kansas. Then it was our turn. The American officers asked us more questions than the Canadian ones (not much of a surprise there). We were questioned, checked out, and released into Canada! We pulled over, and got a picture of the three of us near the Welcome to Alberta! sign.

And so it begins! The American and the Canadian cohabitation experiment!