I had to travel down to Edmonton and Calgary during the week and flew back into Fort McMurray as the sun was headed towards the other side of the world and I happened to glance out the window the plane.
It was a spectacular sight as the leaves have begun to turn and so instead of the varying hues of green that are usually visible out of the window, it was a much prettier view with the sun catching and reflecting off the golds and yellows and oranges of the birch leaves.
It was truly a reminder that fall is here again. That and the fact that once again, we’re seeing single digit high temperatures and in the mornings, temperatures that struggle to get positive.
Sep 27, 2008
Sep 17, 2008
Broken Rule
I went to work yesterday ready to prepare for a workshop that I was running in the afternoon. About 10am things started to deteriorate when it seemed like my digestive system was about to rebel and object to the food that I’d put in there for breakfast.
I soldieredon, swallowed a couple of tylenol and things seemed to improve somewhat through the rest of the day, though not quite to the point that I would have liked. My phone was happily vibrating away throughout the day as people tried to call me. The third time that it came up as ‘home’ I decided that I really should answer it and find out what was going on.
It was of course Caroline. She had rung me to let me know that she wasn’t feeling well and so would I be able cook dinner for the kids. By this time it was about 4pm and my health was taking a decided turn for the worse and so I knew that things weren’t going to be pretty by the time that I made it home.
Indeed, by the time that I did get home, I was aching, nauseous and less than happy. The difference between Caroline and I at that point was that Caroline had managed to make it to bed. I found at least 3 visiting children in the house so I quickly sent them off packing and then cooked dinner for the kids (if you can call pulling out some pre-cooked chicken out and boiling some 2 minute noodles cooking).
Then I clambered into bed.
I set the alarm so that I’d remember to put the kids to bed and when it went off, basically arranged for Michael to play Daddy and get everyone into bed.
Fortunately it worked. I can’t help but think though that one of the golden rules has been broken ... we’re not both supposed to be sick at the same time! Its supposed to be that one parent gets sick, the other works their arse off keeping everything afloat, then they get sick and the first one has the pleasure of picking up all that slack whilst they’re still trying to improve.
Both sick at once ... complete bloody rip off.
I soldieredon, swallowed a couple of tylenol and things seemed to improve somewhat through the rest of the day, though not quite to the point that I would have liked. My phone was happily vibrating away throughout the day as people tried to call me. The third time that it came up as ‘home’ I decided that I really should answer it and find out what was going on.
It was of course Caroline. She had rung me to let me know that she wasn’t feeling well and so would I be able cook dinner for the kids. By this time it was about 4pm and my health was taking a decided turn for the worse and so I knew that things weren’t going to be pretty by the time that I made it home.
Indeed, by the time that I did get home, I was aching, nauseous and less than happy. The difference between Caroline and I at that point was that Caroline had managed to make it to bed. I found at least 3 visiting children in the house so I quickly sent them off packing and then cooked dinner for the kids (if you can call pulling out some pre-cooked chicken out and boiling some 2 minute noodles cooking).
Then I clambered into bed.
I set the alarm so that I’d remember to put the kids to bed and when it went off, basically arranged for Michael to play Daddy and get everyone into bed.
Fortunately it worked. I can’t help but think though that one of the golden rules has been broken ... we’re not both supposed to be sick at the same time! Its supposed to be that one parent gets sick, the other works their arse off keeping everything afloat, then they get sick and the first one has the pleasure of picking up all that slack whilst they’re still trying to improve.
Both sick at once ... complete bloody rip off.
Sep 4, 2008
Nick of Time
The other night as I went upstairs to go to sleep, I was surprised to find that Thomas had decided to sleep outside of his room on the landing. I was just in the process of starting to move him when Emily came stumbling, sleep-eyed out of her own bedroom. I assumed that she was just going to go to the toilet, but she got as far as Thomas and then turned, headed back into her room. Just as she started to turn away though, I noticed a touch of ‘spittle’ between her lips as her cheeks puffed out just a little.
With no time to really think about it, I grabbed her arm and steered her into the nearest bathroom and managed to get her close enough to the toilet that at the point of expulsion, the vomit that I’d forseen predominantly went straight into the bowl. Talk about intervening in the nick of time! The Thought of what we’d have been dealing with had she managed to eject the contents of her stomach over her carpet and toys in her room really is just too much to think about.
She spent the rest of the night asleep on the floor of our ensuite bathroom, which she wasn’t overly happy with, but it also proved to be a prudent move later in the evening when she wasn’t quite aware of where the bucket was. Fortunately by that time we weren’t talking large volumes of vomit.
And of course, the real tragedy was that the following day was to be her first ever night of Gymnastics, which she was oh so excited about, to the point that about the first thing that she said to me as I cleaned up the bathroom was, “Daddy, do I still get to go to Gymnastics?”
I’m sure she’ll make up for that disappointment when she get’s there this week.
With no time to really think about it, I grabbed her arm and steered her into the nearest bathroom and managed to get her close enough to the toilet that at the point of expulsion, the vomit that I’d forseen predominantly went straight into the bowl. Talk about intervening in the nick of time! The Thought of what we’d have been dealing with had she managed to eject the contents of her stomach over her carpet and toys in her room really is just too much to think about.
She spent the rest of the night asleep on the floor of our ensuite bathroom, which she wasn’t overly happy with, but it also proved to be a prudent move later in the evening when she wasn’t quite aware of where the bucket was. Fortunately by that time we weren’t talking large volumes of vomit.
And of course, the real tragedy was that the following day was to be her first ever night of Gymnastics, which she was oh so excited about, to the point that about the first thing that she said to me as I cleaned up the bathroom was, “Daddy, do I still get to go to Gymnastics?”
I’m sure she’ll make up for that disappointment when she get’s there this week.
Sep 2, 2008
Sproing
The weekend just passed was a long weekend (Labour Day) and so we decided that whilst the weather was still somewhat passable, we’d take the opportunity to snap the camper on the back of the car and take off for a couple of nights.
We opted for Jasper because although it’s a long drive (let’s face it, everything worthwhile is from here) it’s in the Rockies and worth visiting every now and then. Friday night, I rushed home from work ready to put the camper down and get underway. In the process of putting the camper down, I thought to myself, “don’t forget the little safety lock that you put on to show Dad when he was here.”
Of course, I promptly forgot. That wasn’t a big drama, it just involved winding it back up to undo it. That’s where things didn’t quite go according to plan. You see the place where this lock was is on the opposite side of the camper and so as I wound it up, I was unable to see that part of the safety lock managed to hook one of the pulleys for the lifting mechanism. It wasn’t until I went back around there to release it that I found this out of course. And by that time, it had not only caught, but bent the lifting arm. It didn’t look good, but I did manage to get the camper back down again.
Then we took off on holidays, and found the rain. We had planned to stop the night in Athabasca, but when we got there, there was sufficient rain that the prospect of standing in it and trying to get the camper up without all the bedding becoming sodden was a little more than we cared for. So we drove on, hoping to find the other side of the storm, watching as lightning lit the sky all around us.
The rain stopped and it seemed that things were taking a turn for the better when we found a lovely little camp site to stop at. We detached the camper from the car, put all the jacks down so that it was close to level and then started to wind the camper up.
Somewhere in this process was where I heard it, “Sproing” and at that point noted that not all of the camper was winding up. At that point, just a little despair set in as I figured that I had managed to snap one of the lifting mechanism’s cables. At 11pm on the Friday night of a long weekend, several hundred kilometers from anywhere likely to be able to help us.
I swore a bit. Caroline was a trooper. I swore some more.
We hitched the camper back on and started driving on towards Edmonton where we were likely to be able to get help.
As we drove through Morrinson, we saw a sign – RV CITY – BODY SHOP. We checked the door. It appeared that they’d be open in the morning. One could only hope that they’d be able to help with the cable.
We drove on to St Albert and found some room in a motel before driving back to Morrison in the morning. At the first mention of ‘Tent Trailer’ and ‘Cable’ I believe the response was, “oh, that’s gonna be ugly.” Fantastic, what a perfect start to a conversation.
The first impression I got was that we were about to run into some ‘typical’ Albertan customer service when the woman basically responded that there was no way that they’d be able to help (though I think she was really referring to their ability to fix it on that day). Being somewhat desperate though, we hung around and suggested that maybe we should be heading further into Edmonton to their competition. About that point we started to talk to one of their technicians who turned out to be about as helpful as someone could be under the circumstances.
It took about 4 blokes to assist in lifting the roof to a point where it could be propped up sufficiently so that we could get in and retrieve our stuff and also at that point to see the damage that had actually been done. Turns out that there was no snapped cable .. just a pulley wheel that had come off where it was supposed to be and some significant damage to the lifting arm. Nothing that I was happy to see.
The end result of our inspection was that we needed to leave the camper behind so that they could repair it for us. That meant that we had to cram everything that we’d taken with us in the camper had to be crammed into the car and go with us (and we didn’t even have the luggage pod on top of the car). Not so squeezy? Considering that one of the greatest joys I’d had from our first trip was finally having somewhere to put all of our stuff and being able to remove the pod from the roof of the car, this was just a little disappointing.
So packed to the rafters, squashed back into something a travel mode that though accustomed to, we thought we’d left behind, we were left to travel on and attempt to find some accommodation in Jasper. On that last, good weather long weekend of the year. It turns out that we were unable to find any for the Saturday night and so stopped just outside of the national park in Hinton. We had been hoping to catch up with the McColls around the campfire Saturday night, but with those plans dashed were pleased that we managed to get a room in the same hotel for the Sunday night.
Turns out that the hotel that I’d booked over the phone for Saturday in Hinton had a swimming pool … and a waterslide. That meant for happy happy kids and an enjoyable stay. We went for a drive to some hotsprings (can’t remember the name just now) and although we didn’t partake in the overcrowded bathing, we went for a walk to the source of the springs where Caroline and the kids dipped their feet. I predicted that with kids crossing the creek someone was bound to get wet and was almost proven wrong. Almost, because both Sam and Thomas managed to get one foot dunked in the water on their way back.!
The following day we took off for Maligne Lake and Canyon and met up with Jim, Annie and their kids Emily and Angus for lunch at the Lake. We did the Maligne lake boat tour to the ‘famous’ spirit Island which was fabulous. The weather wasn’t quite postcard perfect, having snowed on us as we got out of the car in the carpark. Yes, that’s right, it snowed on us … in August! But the place was so beautiful that even without the sun’s warming touch, it was a magnificent sight.
Following our visit to the lake and a walk down to the canyon (well worth seeing) we headed back to the hotel where we dined with the McColl and then set about working out how we could manage to have a drink with our kids in separate rooms some 20 metres apart and around a corner.
We settled for sitting in the corridor whilst we had a couple of quick drinks but ran into something of a problem when we exhausted the limited supply that we’d brought with us. A trip to the bar downstairs addressed the immediate shortage and enlightened us to something that we simply wouldn’t have suspected. Hotel deliveries. A quick phone call to one of the local bottle shops and a little later … alcohol delivered to us sitting in the hall. Not a bad night at all in the end.
Monday was just a simply 9 hour drive back to Fort Mac. Oh and we’re still waiting to hear about the bloody camper repairs … one feels that it could be staying South for the winter. I might have to call it The Goose from now on.
We opted for Jasper because although it’s a long drive (let’s face it, everything worthwhile is from here) it’s in the Rockies and worth visiting every now and then. Friday night, I rushed home from work ready to put the camper down and get underway. In the process of putting the camper down, I thought to myself, “don’t forget the little safety lock that you put on to show Dad when he was here.”
Of course, I promptly forgot. That wasn’t a big drama, it just involved winding it back up to undo it. That’s where things didn’t quite go according to plan. You see the place where this lock was is on the opposite side of the camper and so as I wound it up, I was unable to see that part of the safety lock managed to hook one of the pulleys for the lifting mechanism. It wasn’t until I went back around there to release it that I found this out of course. And by that time, it had not only caught, but bent the lifting arm. It didn’t look good, but I did manage to get the camper back down again.
Then we took off on holidays, and found the rain. We had planned to stop the night in Athabasca, but when we got there, there was sufficient rain that the prospect of standing in it and trying to get the camper up without all the bedding becoming sodden was a little more than we cared for. So we drove on, hoping to find the other side of the storm, watching as lightning lit the sky all around us.
The rain stopped and it seemed that things were taking a turn for the better when we found a lovely little camp site to stop at. We detached the camper from the car, put all the jacks down so that it was close to level and then started to wind the camper up.
Somewhere in this process was where I heard it, “Sproing” and at that point noted that not all of the camper was winding up. At that point, just a little despair set in as I figured that I had managed to snap one of the lifting mechanism’s cables. At 11pm on the Friday night of a long weekend, several hundred kilometers from anywhere likely to be able to help us.
I swore a bit. Caroline was a trooper. I swore some more.
We hitched the camper back on and started driving on towards Edmonton where we were likely to be able to get help.
As we drove through Morrinson, we saw a sign – RV CITY – BODY SHOP. We checked the door. It appeared that they’d be open in the morning. One could only hope that they’d be able to help with the cable.
We drove on to St Albert and found some room in a motel before driving back to Morrison in the morning. At the first mention of ‘Tent Trailer’ and ‘Cable’ I believe the response was, “oh, that’s gonna be ugly.” Fantastic, what a perfect start to a conversation.
The first impression I got was that we were about to run into some ‘typical’ Albertan customer service when the woman basically responded that there was no way that they’d be able to help (though I think she was really referring to their ability to fix it on that day). Being somewhat desperate though, we hung around and suggested that maybe we should be heading further into Edmonton to their competition. About that point we started to talk to one of their technicians who turned out to be about as helpful as someone could be under the circumstances.
It took about 4 blokes to assist in lifting the roof to a point where it could be propped up sufficiently so that we could get in and retrieve our stuff and also at that point to see the damage that had actually been done. Turns out that there was no snapped cable .. just a pulley wheel that had come off where it was supposed to be and some significant damage to the lifting arm. Nothing that I was happy to see.
The end result of our inspection was that we needed to leave the camper behind so that they could repair it for us. That meant that we had to cram everything that we’d taken with us in the camper had to be crammed into the car and go with us (and we didn’t even have the luggage pod on top of the car). Not so squeezy? Considering that one of the greatest joys I’d had from our first trip was finally having somewhere to put all of our stuff and being able to remove the pod from the roof of the car, this was just a little disappointing.
So packed to the rafters, squashed back into something a travel mode that though accustomed to, we thought we’d left behind, we were left to travel on and attempt to find some accommodation in Jasper. On that last, good weather long weekend of the year. It turns out that we were unable to find any for the Saturday night and so stopped just outside of the national park in Hinton. We had been hoping to catch up with the McColls around the campfire Saturday night, but with those plans dashed were pleased that we managed to get a room in the same hotel for the Sunday night.
Turns out that the hotel that I’d booked over the phone for Saturday in Hinton had a swimming pool … and a waterslide. That meant for happy happy kids and an enjoyable stay. We went for a drive to some hotsprings (can’t remember the name just now) and although we didn’t partake in the overcrowded bathing, we went for a walk to the source of the springs where Caroline and the kids dipped their feet. I predicted that with kids crossing the creek someone was bound to get wet and was almost proven wrong. Almost, because both Sam and Thomas managed to get one foot dunked in the water on their way back.!
The following day we took off for Maligne Lake and Canyon and met up with Jim, Annie and their kids Emily and Angus for lunch at the Lake. We did the Maligne lake boat tour to the ‘famous’ spirit Island which was fabulous. The weather wasn’t quite postcard perfect, having snowed on us as we got out of the car in the carpark. Yes, that’s right, it snowed on us … in August! But the place was so beautiful that even without the sun’s warming touch, it was a magnificent sight.
Following our visit to the lake and a walk down to the canyon (well worth seeing) we headed back to the hotel where we dined with the McColl and then set about working out how we could manage to have a drink with our kids in separate rooms some 20 metres apart and around a corner.
We settled for sitting in the corridor whilst we had a couple of quick drinks but ran into something of a problem when we exhausted the limited supply that we’d brought with us. A trip to the bar downstairs addressed the immediate shortage and enlightened us to something that we simply wouldn’t have suspected. Hotel deliveries. A quick phone call to one of the local bottle shops and a little later … alcohol delivered to us sitting in the hall. Not a bad night at all in the end.
Monday was just a simply 9 hour drive back to Fort Mac. Oh and we’re still waiting to hear about the bloody camper repairs … one feels that it could be staying South for the winter. I might have to call it The Goose from now on.
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