Leaving

As seems to happen more often than not lately, its been some time since I made the time to sit down and write. There’s been plenty going on and that has been at least half the issue. Its been way to busy to take the time to sit down and write about it.

As I sit here and type this theres a small, compressed army working their way through our house with boxes, paper and enough tape to subdue a small herd of buffalo. That’s a good thing, because after four more sleeps i’ll be heading off to the airport to fly out of Fort McMurray for the last foreseeable time.

It’s been a frantic couple of months since the job decided to open up back in Adelaide. Between negotiating exit time frames betwixt the Canadian business (that really didn’t want me to leave until October at best) and the Australian business (who would have ideally liked to have had me in July) and then going through all the ‘oh crap this is really happening’ moments.

I didn’t write too much about the job because for some time it wasn’t even there and then it happened very suddenly. The federal government is spending some money on rail over the next couple of years and I am going back to do some project management on parts of my old stomping ground (and some new parts as well). It will be good to get back into rail for a while and I am looking forward to seeing some of the people that I now haven’t worked with for the last 3 years or so. Just have to finish packing at this end and of course, go through the whole extraction from the boxes process that happens at the other end.

Caroline and the kids have managed to do the smart thing and are currently traipsing around Switzerland, whilst I finish off work and see the packing finalised. Of course, when one considers the outward journey, there’s probably some justice in that approach because although I didn’t get an overseas holiday, I essentially missed the entire packing effort.

The only two real stress points for me at this stage are the fact that we haven’t managed to sell the caravan or the car. I have someone coming to look at the caravan tonight and hopefully they’re impressed by a) the fact that its a great caravan and b) by the fact that I am in sheer desperation and will be prepared to take a significant hit on it to see it safely off my hands before I head out of here.

Maybe by the time that I actually post this (internet is down just now) I’ll have better news on that front.

And so I am sitting here as the house turns into a series of boxes, waiting for the next step, wishing the next four nights had passed and that I was about to board a plane to go meet up with Caroline and the kids in Switzerland. But I do like to think that we shouldn’t wish our lives away and so I’ll grin and bear it, knowing that each day brings us closer again (at least until the day that I leave them all behind and continue on to Adelaide.

Between now and then appears to be a series of random goodbyes as I run into people and realise that in all likelihood, I am not likely to run into them again, often in strange locations at unexpected times.

One of the hardest things about leaving anywhere is always the special friends that you meet in your time there generally don’t come with you (not matter how much you might beg them to) and so the time until you get to see them again becomes a big unknown. We’ve made plenty of friends from around Australia, so I am sure that that is likely to become a consistent point of holidays into the future, but we’ve also met a lot of wonderful people from Canada. Enough that we’ll be looking to come back on a holiday visit at some point, even if it’s not all the way back to Fort McMurray.

And so as with all departures, there is an air of excitement about, ever so slightly tainted with the disappointment that we won’t be seeing some wonderful people quite as soon as we’d like.