Road Trip

I think there are probably not very many countries where you can drive for two days and not get halfway across. Canada is very, very big.

I love road trips though. I love sitting in the car for hours with nothing for entertainment but conversation and singing. I brought a book and my Nintendo DS, but I find it hard to concentrate in a moving vehicle so they stayed in my purse for the most part. In retrospect, I wish I had brought something to knit or crochet. John was a trooper. He drove tirelessly for hours and hours without complaint.

On the 29th, we drove from 8 in the morning to 6:30 at night. We stopped for coffee, bagels and snacks in Stewiacke N.S., lunch at the Big Stop in Woodstock, N.B., maps in Degelis, QC and dinner and sleeps at the Comfort Inn in Levis, QC.

By the 30th I had lost track of all time. I think we were on the road around 8:30. First up was Quebec City. No problem. Next was Montreal. I was really nervous about getting lost but we flew right through it with no problems. John's strategy was to locate a semi truck with Ontario plates, tuck in behind it and hope it was planning to just drive straight through like we were. It worked! We were in and out in no time.

If I thought that was bad, Toronto highways were ten times as scary. From Oshawa to Toronto there were more lanes than I could count. There had to be at least 12 and traffic was back to back. I'm amazed that people can drive through it. Luckily it doesn't phase John at all. He's the brave one.

We actually didn't see too many interesting things on our drive, but we sure saw a lot of trees. Two days of nothing but trees. And a pig truck. It had two floors of pigs, probably close to 70 of them, all sticking their snouts and ears out of little holes on the side of the truck. It was adorable. So I occupied myself by endlessly flipping through radio stations (no cd or mp3 player in the Uhaul) which I'm sure annoyed John to no end although he didn't say anything. And at one point, in the thick of the traffic on the 401, we came upon what looked like a couch cushion in the middle of the highway. It had fallen out of a pick-up truck which the driver had pulled into the shoulder, left his vehicle and was actually running through the 6 lanes of traffic to go retrieve it. I had to look away.

I think John maybe has a GPS built into his brain because we drove straight from Halifax to Toronto without being lost for a single moment and when we arrived in this massive city he just drove straight to our apartment building without thinking twice. I'm not sure how this was possible exactly. It was my first time driving through Toronto (I've always flown in before) and I was overwhelmed by how big it is. It's just so big!

We got to the apartment building, signed our lease and went up to check out the apartment. It's perfect. A little bigger than our old place, hardwood floors instead of carpet, well lit, feels safe. But we didn't have the elevator booked until the next afternoon (it was booked solid) so we couldn't move in that night.

The scariest part of the whole road trip was figuring out what to do with the truck at night. It had all of our worldly possessions guarded only by a simple padlock. Over the course of the move we ended up leaving it overnight on Brunswick Street, Tobin Street, Levis Comfort Inn parking lot and a block away from the corner of Yonge and Eglinton. Nobody touched it. Canadians are trustworthy all over, our stuff was safe.