The Alberta Sports Weekend Extravaganza!

Greetings again, avid readers! I'm sure you are all extremely curious as to my crazy misadventures over the past couple of months because I've been rather neglectful in updating you all. But in my defense, I've been extremely busy trying to sell a house, pack up said house, move all my stuff to Alberta, find a potential job in Alberta, quit my job at the Campbell River Hospital, plan my sister's wedding shower and bachelorette, and do it all while my husband is working at a temporary job in Burnaby 3 hours away. So life's been a little crazy.

So my last day at the CR hospital was July 18th at 7:30 am. I drove myself, my clothes, and the two little furry creatures that live with me to Alberta starting on Monday the 20th, with a one night stopover in Burnaby to spend the night with the aforementioned husband. The second day I drove all the way from Burnaby to Spruce Grove in one shot. It was awful, and I will never do that again. I literally had edema in my feet for two days from keeping them in the same position for 12.5 hours. The following weekend promised to be busy, as I had signed up to run the 5 Peaks Trail Run at Chickakoo on Saturday morning, and then my future sister-in-law's bridal shower was that same afternoon. The next day I would be off to Morinville for the Tour de l'Alberta, a 100 km bike ride. Then it was back to Burnaby with my Dad's 15-passenger van and trailer to pick up Glen, then to Campbell River to get the rest of our stuff out of the house and then back to Alberta again to drop it all off. So away we go then...

The ride back to Alberta. It was relatively uneventful with the exception of the length of the drive. My feet were literally swollen for two days. And that's never happened before. Though after the past couple weeks I now know that 5 hours is about my driving limit before that happens. It's pretty uncomfortable. The cats were actually pretty good for the drive. They only made noise for about the first half-hour before they stopped and the rest of the time they just sat there and stared at me. Pickles did give me the stink-eye when I left her in the car on the ferry to go to the bathroom, but she got over that pretty quick when I came back. I've also learned that I have a horrible lead foot. Going over the Coquihalla I glanced down at the speedometer a couple times and had to take my foot completely off the gas I was going so fast. Miraculously, I somehow managed to not see a single police car for the entire trip. That's probably a good thing considering I would've gotten a fairly hefty ticket.

The 5 Peaks Trail Run. This was a 7.4 km trail run on the trails out a Chickakoo lake, which is a recreation area about 20 minutes west of my Mom's house. My Mom used to take us there as kids, and from what I remembered, I thought it would be a pretty easy run. Thought is the key word there. There were hills. Lots of hills. And really steep ones, at that. The hills were steep enough and long enough that I actually had to walk up some of them. And I've never walked in a single race to date. But after the first hill I gave up and walked. I decided it was better to finish the race than die in the process. In my defense, though, it was probably 32 degrees out by the time the race actually started. My sister's finacee, Jonathan, was also running. We stayed together for about 2 km, but I lost him on one of the uphills at that point and didn't see him after until the finish. At which point he came up to where we were waiting and said (and this is a direct quote): "I'm never running again!". The funny part is that he's signed himself up for the half-marathon in Iceland in a couple weeks while he and my sister are on their honeymoon. Oh, my time was 50:17, which was 10th of 25 in my age category (toot toot!). Jonathan finished in 1:01:13.

The Tour de l'Alberta. A bike ride starting in Morinville and touring around and through a bunch of the French communities in that area. There were a few different distances we could've ridden, but my friend Kristi had chosen the 100km, and I was good with that. It's farther than I've ever ridden on a bike, which was challenge enough for me at the time. I did, in fact, train for this ride in advance for about 2 months, and I'm glad I did. It would not have been pretty otherwise. Kristi and I were both on mountain bikes, which are not ideal for road riding, but at least we still went. That and we got to ride right by all the road bikers who had to stop to change their tires because of flats. Ya gotta love mountain bike tires. It wasn't a race, just a ride, so there were no times and no prizes, but it was still fun. There were a few rest stops along the way, so we could refill our water and gatorade bottles, and they also had snacks at all of them. There was also a lunch stop with sandwiches and other tasty treats. Kudos to the people of Legal for that one. I stopped at all the rest stops, but didn't really want to stay long. I'm pretty hard core in that respect, I'd rather keep going than stop and then have to regain my rhythm. You've probably read my marathon blogs by now and know all about that. So after the lunch stop I left Kristi and the others in my proverbial dust and went out on my own. I was riding quite a bit faster than they were and waiting for them at every rest stop would probably just irritate me. Not their fault, but a bad habit I find difficult to break. It was a fantastic day weather-wise, thus I managed to get quite a lovely sunburn on my back. I should've reapplied the sunscreen, but hindsight is 20/20, right? At the end there was a pretty good meal, but the highlight was the cake. I freakin' love cake. Especially after 100km on a bicycle. Overall, it was an excellent ride, very well organized, and if I have the chance I may do it again. Though next time it'll have to be the 180km ride with a road bike. If you're gonna go, go far, right?

A couple days after the ride it was back to the island for packing and all our stuff. Glen and I somehow managed to pick the hottest couple of days of the entire year to do our packing. It was somewhere around 35-39 degrees in Vancouver and CR. So I picked Glen up at his apartment in Burnaby and we set out for the ferry terminal. Except that we made it to Horseshoe Bay only to learn that all the ferries were full, but there's a "chance" we could get on the 9:45 sailing, the last one of the night. So we turned around and headed to Tsawassen. Only we somehow got lost in Horsehoe Bay itself for about 20 minutes. In my Dad's 15 passenger van with attached trailer. Not fun. Picture teeny little roads and big giant van.

When we finally got out of Horseshoe Bay, we headed for downtown, since that was the easiest way to get to the Tsawassen terminal. Ha! We got stuck in downtown Vancouver traffic for about 2 hours. We moved, literally, 15 blocks in 2 hours. It sucked. And it was 35 degrees and we'd run out of water. On one corner there was a woman selling hot dogs off a cart, so when we got there, I leaned out the window and bought 2 bottles of water off her. Through the window of the van. You know you're desperate when...

We finally got to Tsawassen and managed to get on the 8:15 sailing, which was much better than "maybe" getting on the 9:45 out of Horseshoe Bay. We made it back to CR at around midnite and crashed. We were up early the next morning and spent all day packing. Somewhere around 5 pm I decided there was no way all our stuff was going to fit in just the van and trailer. There was just way too much stuff. We needed a Uhaul. But it was 5 pm, and everything was closed. So the next morning we were at the rental place just as it opened. All the trucks had been reserved for in-town moves, but apparently Uhaul has this policy where if you're dropping the truck somewhere other than where you picked it up, they can rent you one and whoever had the reservation is out of luck. If I were the one with the reservation I'd be pissed, but that day that was the best news I'd heard in a long time. So we had our Uhaul.

We loaded up the Uhaul and got out of CR around noon. We caught a 4:15 ferry from Nanaimo, which we thought was rather miraculous, given that it was the Friday before a long weekend, but we weren't complaining. The rest of the trip was pretty unevetful. We spent the night at a campground in Hope and made it the rest of the way to Edmonton the next day.

So now Glen has taken a permanent position with Autopro in Burnaby, and we have to move everything back. But at least it's already in boxes. And at least Glen has a job. Oh, and on August 5, I went to an interview with Dynalife labs here in Edmonton. It apparently went well, because they called about 3 hours later and bascially offered me a job. Which I had to turn down because Glen had literally just signed his papers. And our house has sold, which we also found out on August 5. So all is reasonably well with us now.

And the cats seem to not mind living in my Mom's house for the time being. Though Pickles seems to have developed a strange fascination with my Mom's hair...