A week has passed already!

Wow it’s Sunday already … where did the week go.

Monday and Tuesday were in Air Canada’s company …. Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Heathrow. Then the longest tube ride ever. Family friends Joan and Eric Bloomfield, invited us to stay with them for the two nights in Monken Hadley at the end of the Picadilly line in Cockfosters. The last time I was in London was sailing and my friend Brett who everytime saw or heard the word (or encountered something funny, one of us tripped or messed up) he’d say Cockfosters! So, of course that stuck and anything that screwed up that day I was heard to say Cockfosters!

The tube maintenance workers were on slowdown so the ride that was supposed to take and hour took nearly three. Once at the end of the line in Cockfosters we called, and Eric arrived to pick us up in a BMW Estate car (station wagon for those of us from Canada). Unbelievably, all of our luggage fit! Also visiting at the time was Bill Phillips – fellow West Vancouverite who had a brief beer and was on his way to a cruise of the Adriatic on a 5 masted sailing ship. After a brief walk and a nap, we were treated to dinner, great conversation and (thankfully) bed.

The next day Joan dropped us off at the tube station for the Northern Line and we went downtown London. We did our best to see the sights in a day – Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, the Globe Theatre, Tower Bridge, the Tower of London. After about 10km of walking on a bright hot day we returned to Monken Hadley to another great meal, the end of the England Slovenia match, where England made it through to the final 16, great conversation, and again bed.

Up early the next day we crammed our stuff into two cars this time. Joan had hired a man Geoffrey to take us to the airport and once seeing all our bags decided that Eric would follow with the bags in his BMW. After an hour or so in London traffic using the most convoluted route we arrived at the airport, checked in, had breakfast and made our way to the plane.

A few hours in the air, through Customs (and a harrowing plane change where they held the flight to Split for 40 minutes for us) we arrived in Split, rented the car and headed off to Kremik where the boat is (hopefully) kept.

To our relief / amazement / happiness …. We arrived at Kremik pulled into the parking lot and our boat was in the first slip, with the keys in it, cleaned and ready to go. The kids and Marina went around, in, up and down the boat …. Ross continually saying “this is great .. are you sure it’s the right one”. Everyone was excited and happy that it was all together and in fine shape. We unloaded the hundreds of pounds of luggage onboard, went for dinner and spent our first night aboard the boat.

We're On Our Way

June 21, 2010


Departure day is finally here. What an ordeal getting the house organized, the cars put to bed and all the stuff we needed to get done prior to leaving. I ended up being a midnight carpenter, eventually not getting to bed at all. Ross and Marina hung in ‘till 2:30am, then they went to bed. Ross is a very sound sleeper, while he was sawing logs, I was installing baseboards in his room using a brad-nailer. He didn’t even grunt or roll over.

The house is now ready to go, huge thanks to Christine on the weekend, and this morning special thanks to Mike, Sarah and Megan Fedak/Ostler and Angela Read. Without their help this morning there is no way we could have made it to the airport… and we left Angie cleaning up the rest of the house. What would life be without great friends …. We’re so fortunate to have such giving people on our side looking out for us.

Sarah drove us to the airport. All our bags weighed within 2 pounds of the maximum … thankfully we didn’t have our carry-on bags weighed too. I think my rolling suitcase weighed another 50 pounds … and my laptop bag (with 2 laptops and lots of other stuff in it) weighed in over 30. After a quick flight to Toronto and a couple hour layover where we tried to get some sleep we boarded the Boeing 777 in row 52 and settled in for a flight over the Atlantic. I asked Marina the over-under on me falling asleep on the plane. I was asleep before takeoff and was sawing logs until Jessie woke me up because there was a growing puddle of drool on my chest (yuck!). It was a quiet and smooth flight and I got a few hours of sleep. I think Marina and the kids did too, but it is hard to tell through closed eyelids.

Once we hit Heathrow we queued in the line for immigration, picked up our luggage and made our way to the tube. We caught the Piccadilly line to Cockfosters – one end of the line to the other – and there was a work slowdown by maintenance workers and it took nearly three hours. Anyway, we arrived and called our hosts Joan and Eric. Eric picked us up in his BMW 5 estate car and we managed to get all our luggage and the four of us into the car (somewhat miraculously I’d suggest).

We rested up and adjusted for most of the day, watched a football game, went for a walk, had dinner and went to bed. After nearly 48 hours without lying down, a bed felt pretty good!

Attention Followers!

Well...we leave on Monday and there are moments when it feels we've got it all together, and many more moments when we feel "holy cow...there is so much to do!!". Once we're on the flight, we won't care about what we didn't get to because all the important items are covered. This post is meant to be a test to see if "followers" get a notification. Let me know if you did!

13 Days To Go

Most of the big items are taken care if...very happy that the cats found a nice home in North Van. Just need to sell the Dirty Dog truck and hoping that will happen today. 13 Days and counting...