Travel by Map #1: Canada
Orbiting Ottawa / Southern Ontario Sojourn
August 1 to September 16, 2014.
Here is our itinerary of our travels in Ontario and Quebec: approximately 2,600 km by car and train.
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The going after the leaving
On y va!
As Isaac just said,
"Istanbul, here I come!"
Southern (Ontario) Sojourn
Click to take a closer look....
August 27 - September 16, 2014
Before leaving Canada, we visited with both of our extended families in Southern Ontario. This included cruising on a sailboat and in a 1917 Model T Ford truck; making butter tarts with Grandma; learning the ropes of home-schooling with Tricia's sister and kids; and visiting the Royal Ontario Museum with Tricia's dad.
We also had a chance to visit with many of our aunt's and uncles, and to enjoy some great home-cooked meals at my parents. Thanks to everyone who hosted us!
Go Play on the Road!
These first two legs of our trip have involved a lot of driving: over 2,000 km so far as we Orbited Ottawa for about four weeks, and now as we sojourn in Southern Ontario. This has given us plenty of time to take in the scenery, play Minecraft and catch up on our Vinyl Cafe stories.
But when that gets a bit repetitive and/or the battery tanks, we usually resort to car games like:
- 20 Questions: Hint, if it is Isaac's turn, always ask, "Is it a soccer player?"
- I'm Thinking of an Animal -- an inversion of 20 questions in which you trickle out clues about the identity of secret animal and the players have to guess each round (e.g. has four legs, is a mammal, is not a soccer player....)
- I Spy With My Little Eye...something that is or sounds like....
- Name 5 Soccer Players: in which we each take turns naming five soccer players until Isaac wins.
Recently, one of our favourite ways to pass the miles is to play a no-holds-barred, smack-down game of "Cows, Flags and Graveyards". The objective of the game is to tally up a total of 100 points by being the first one to spot and call out either:
- Cows, either solo or in herds, for 2 points;
- Flags of any type -- national, provincial, municipal, used car lot -- for 1 point;
- Graveyards, which means that you add everyone else's points to your score.
Sometimes we play in teams, but it is usually best to break up Zoe and Trish because they are both extremely competitive and they cream the rest of us.
As we've played this game on different roadtrips, we've developed our own expansion set by adding in:
- Horses -- 3 points per individual or group;
- Train tracks: we add up everyone's points and share them equally;
- Renewable energy sources -- either windmills or solar panels for 5 points each;
- Regional variations that reflect what might be more common in that area (e.g. a casse croute stand in Quebec, espresso stands in Washington State, gunshops in New York...) for 2 points.
- Something unusual: you have to call out something that would be widely considered "unusual" in that location, (e.g. a giant fish statue, a parrot looking out of the back of a pick up truck); however, everyone in the car needs to agree that this is in fact "unusual", which often precipitates an impassioned argument and a vote on whether we grant the proponent an additional 5 points.
Our most recent mod, however, has literally been a game changer: if you spot and call out a convertible automobile, everyone in the car has to flip the two digits of their score around. So for example, if you have 19, your score changes to 91; or if you had 72, you'd then have 27.
This innovation has added a surprisingly fun element of cunning and skulduggery, guaranteeing that we'll probably never run out of miles before we get to 100. We are also looking forward to how we will adapt this game in the various countries we'll be visiting soon.
What are your favourite road trip games? Please tell us the rules below. We'd love to play them.
An Update from Zoë
Zoë has written her first post on her travel blog.
Note, you will need a password to view her posts. Please contact us using the short form below and we'll send it to you via email.
Orbiting Ottawa
Click to enlarge.
August 1 - 27, 2014
"Haven't you gone yet?" a good friend teased us the other day. "How can we miss you if you won't go away?!"
Well, yes, since vacating our house on August 1, we've spent the first weeks of our sabbatical year off orbiting within 2 hours of Ottawa. So far we've made it:
- as far East as Montreal, where Trish and I pretended we were Plateau hipsters for a few days while the kids went to sleepover camp;
- as far West as the Barron River Canyon in Algonquin Park for a short canoe trip; and
- a bit further North visiting friends' cottages up in the Gatineau Hills.
While hovering close to home has sometimes made this feel like a long goodbye, it has been a great chance to recover from the big push to move out of the house, and to reconnect with a few more friends...
We also taking some time to get use to being happily homeless, and to pare our travel gear back to "all that we can't leave behind". We have really appreciated the hospitality of friends who have put us up (and/or put up with us), and we are getting excited about heading off for Turkey in mid-September.
Having reached escape velocity from the gravitational pull of the nation's capital, we are now on the VIA train en route to Toronto, from where we'll next visit some of our family in Southern Ontario. See you soon!
A Blessing of Friends
As keen as we are to go #thataway for the next year, we know that we will miss our friends and neighbours while we frappez la rue. So it seemed fitting that we throw a party ere we depart.
Trish and I have been married now for something like 19 years, which I suppose is long enough to call some of our odder habits "traditions".
One of these traditions is to open up our house for big parties. This started back when we were grad students with the De-Alienation From Your Labour Day Salsa Making Collective Party, and it continued with Monster Potlucks of 70+ people when we lived at The Blob, a two-year experience of living in intentional community.
More recently, our fetes have included the Biannual Waffle Extravaganza on New-Year's Day, and a super-secret-surprise party for Trish's 40th party in which we demonstrated our great love for her through skullduggery, deception and covert acts of catering.
Through these exxperiments and double-blind, randomized control trials, we've discovered that the formula for a great party is really quite simple: good lighting, a great playlist, an electic mix of amazing friends of all ages, some simple but yummy food, a wee bit of something to drink, and a Grandiose Title -- preferably with a #hashtag :-)
This time for our #thataway bash, we invited singer-songwriter, Craig Cardiff to play. Craig tours all across Canada, peforming at bars, concert halls, churches and festivals, but in between he loves to play smaller private functions like this. I first heard him play at our neighbour's house concert and his songs have been on high-repeat on my shower-serenading set-list ever since.
Craig's poignant songs, solid guitar work, sing-along-choruses and father-daughter dance smack down competitions, together with technical, logistical and moral support from some friends, turned our back yard into a Mid-Summer-Night's Dream. It was lovely to see so many folks together and to say goodbye; we will miss you.
Ahh, yes, to misquoteth the Bard, Partying is such sweet sorrow.
Here are a few pictures from the bash.
Operation Mother Hubbard
As we prepare to go #thataway for the year, we've been busy fixing up our house for our tenant, decluttering all the extra "stuff" that accumulates in closets, shelves and basements after 10 years in a house. It has been an interesting exercise in deciding, detachment, and ditching.
We've also needing to decide what to do with the remaining food in our pantry and freezer. This includes:
a surplus of Italian tomato sauce that we've canned over the years;
a surfeit of tomato soup stock -- a by-product of the aforementioned tomato sauce production process --- that we canned or froze, but somehow never got around to using;
several kilograms of various dried beans and sundry lentils at the back of our pantry -- carbon-dating test-results revealed that they may have migrated here from our last apartment, circa 2003...
umpteen bottles of exotic Chinese, Thai or Mexican sauces that we probably aren't going to finish before we head off on August 1;
still more lentils, pulses, peas and beans -- what we're we thinking?;
remnants of baking ingredients: flour, chocolate chips, shredded coconut, some unidentified seeds that probably boost your something or other;
20 kg of Thai rice that we had cached in the basement in anticipation of either Y2K Part 2 or the Harper-Zombie Apocalypse, I forget which...
spices, spices and more spices!
So as not to waste these still-useful foodstuffs, we've undertaken Operation Mother Hubbard -- a multi-sectoral, all-of-household approach to cooking, using or other-wise disposing of these treasures from our cupboards. This operation began initially with a festival of pasta and minestrone, until the kids asked us to stop.
It continued with Trish dutifully inventorying all the items in our pantry on a "DO NOT under any circumstances buy more of these items" list. Whenever we finish any item, we gleefully cross it off our list.
But of course, as this list gets shorter, the menu combinations get weirder: What, pray tell, can we make tonight using oyster sauce, bread crumbs, split peas and dijon mustard?
Other items have been "re-gifted" to appreciative (or otherwise) neighbours, and the remainder has been consigned to that great-big-compost-pile-in-the-sky -- well, actually just at the back of the garden. With this rich legacy of lentils, we currently are buying only fresh food items -- milk, cheese, yogurt, fruit and vegetables, etc.
So if you happen to be passing by and would like a bottle of Sriracha sauce, do let us know.....
Tourists in Our Own Town
We are lucky to live in Ottawa. It is a both a nice place to visit and you really want to live here!
As the capital of Canada, it boasts the usual buildings-of-national-significance like the Parliament, and the Supreme Court, many tasteful national monuments to dead white guys -- and one to dead white women -- and an array of world-class museums. In fact, when we hit the road in 24 days -- zoiks!!!!! -- it may come as a shock to our kids that not every city has a "Museum of..."
- Agriculture & Food at the Central Experimental Farm
- Science & Technology
- Aviation & Space
- Canadian History -- formerly the "Museum of Civilization", before the Conservatives made "Civilization" "History"
- Nature (something else that I fear they are trying to make "history")
- War (something that we all hope will stay in history....)
- a National Gallery featuring paintings, sculpture, photographs and some inexplicable, but artfully-arranged modern artifacts from someone's basement; &
- the National Arts Centre that showcases live music, dance and drama performances.
(BTW, in lieu of summer camps for July and to kick-start our "road-scholars" project for the kids, I picked up a Canada's Capital Museum Passport that let's us visit up to 8 of the above museums in 7 days. It's a great deal, even if you don't manage to see them all).
Connecting all of these sites is either the Rideau Canal -- a UNESCO World Heritage Site that we can skate on during the winter -- or a network of green-space and bike paths run by the National Capital Commission. It is a great city to experience on a bike.
Ottawa is also home to a staggering number of festivals for just about any topic that you can think of: music of all types, animation, films, buskers, poutine, children, winter, tulips! Although perhaps not as edgy as Toronto or as hip as Montréal, Ottawa is far from being the "city that fun forgot", and there is a burgeoning independent, hipster scene.
So even though our year-off adventures don't officially start until August, we don't have to go far to be tourists in our own town. Come on up and visit Ottawa soon. Here are a few recents snaps to hold you over until then....
The leaving before the going
Before we get to go #thataway, we first have to get #outtahere.
In our case, that means
- fixing up our house to rent it out (check!);
- getting rid of anything that we don't want to carry or store (in process);
- finishing up work projects (getting there); &
- making arrangements for property management, bills, memberships, etc. (later)
This has turned out to be a part-time job for us, and these days, it feels like we're always cleaning, painting and pitching.
It is really surprising what you can accumulate after 10 years in the same house, and having to get rid a lot of it really does make you think twice about why we buy anything that can't be re-used, recycled or composted.
Reminds me of that classic monologue by George Carlin about "stuff" (Warning: his language is a bit profane, but his insight is profound and prophetic).
But we're getting there...slowly. And as they used to say in Tanzania, pole pole ndiyo mwendo or even slow is a speed.
Anybody want a juicer?
With Aeroplan, "It's NOT that easy"
A key reason that we can afford to travel during our year-off is that we've been collecting Aeroplan points for the past five years.
Tricia travels internationally for her work and thus has collected quite a few frequent flier miles. We've also found ways to collect points via credit card loyalty programs and other tricks -- although we've not gone as far as that George Clooney character in "Up in the Air" (e.g. ordering extra meals in a restaurant just to earn more frequent flier points).
Our plan all along was to book what's called a "mini-RTW" or "mini-Round-the-World" trip in which you fly say from Toronto West over the Pacific to Singapore on a return ticket; however, instead of flying back the way you came (i.e. East), you keep going west until you get back home. This actually requires the same number of Aeroplan points as a simple return ticket, and you can have a stop-over on the way there (e.g. Hawaii) and one on the way home (e.g. Berlin) at no extra charge.
It's NOT that easy
When it finally came time to cash in these points last Fall, however, we realized that unlike what Aeroplan's slogan claims, it's actually not that easy. Tricia must have called 10 times, spending up to 2 hours on the phone each time, trying to find a way to fly to New Zealand on points. Getting there was straight-forward, but there always seemed to be a reason that they couldn't route the ticket out of New Zealand via Europe. This was probably due to some Byzantine rule about the maximum variation of mini-RTW distance vs. a simple return ticket, or perhaps they just didn't want us to squeeze out every last penny of value from our points.
After call number 10, we realized that a mini-RTW including New Zealand just wasn't going to happen, so we dropped a visit to Middle Earth from our list of "pillars". But once we scaled our plans back, booking our actual ticket was fairly straight-forward. After two more calls, we managed to secure the following itinerary (see the Prezi below), and we're thrilled to be able to do this for a fraction of the cost of paying regular fare.
Why take a sabbatical year?
Our inspiration to take a year off from work came partly from the following 2009 TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister, in which he argues in favour of splicing a few of your future "retirement years" into your work career to renew your creativity.
Given that I am mid-way through my working life, and since I may never fully retire anyhow, I figured that this is as good as any time to take a year off. And while I don't presume that I'll come home to produce award-winning album covers or uncomfortable, modernist furniture, I do hope that a change of pace will renew some of my creative juices!
Why Travel for a Year?
In our work, as a couple, and more recently with our kids, we've had the privilege of visiting some really cool parts of the world. For example, when we worked in Tanzania from 1998 - 2002, we had the chance to visit many communities in East and Southern Africa, including taking a 3-month trip through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia, South Africa, Swaziland and Namibia with our eldest daughter, Zoë, in utero (she claims to remember this! who am I to argue?). The kids have grown up with stories of our time in Tanzania, and are keen to hit the road and see some new places.
We were also inspired by our friends, Shawn and Alison who a few years back sold almost everything they had -- apart from two suitcases and some carry-on bags -- and spent a year with their two kids as "location independent," digital nomads. (You can read about some of their adventures on their blog, www.manylives.ca).
They, in turn, put us onto a host of online resources for travelling internationally with children, including a great travel-planning website called "Bootsn' All" that published a 30-day series of blog post on extended travel as a family. Some of this stuff we knew from having travelled before, but the blog posts provided a lot of great tools for planning our trip, including a multiple-country flight flier designed for extended journeys. It's a great resource for anyone looking to hit the road.
A year to wander and wonder...
A few years ago, Tricia realized that there was a clause on page 75 of her contract that allowed her to take a self-funded leave. By holding back part of each pay cheque, we've been slowly saving enough to take a year off, and head out with the kids to see the world.....
We've been quietly scheming and dreaming as we've counted down the past four years, and it's hard to imagine that we're now counting in months, not years. Gulp!
This blog tells the story of our wandering and wondering.....please check back often for the latest postcard from #thataway....