Cleveland

Going to Cleveland Ohio today for a wedding, its only a 6 hour drive from where we live now and I've never been that way before so the scenery shouldnt be boring.

Thats the actual city of Vancouver (not a picture) under Andrea

Finally got a new phone this week, old one got broken and let me tell you about how the phone company's like to rip off their customers here in Canada. If you live in a province (state) you get a phone number.....fine.. if you leave the province, anywhere you make a phone call it will cost you long distance rates.... anywhere!!!! If you receive a call from someone it will cost you money, thats right receive a call from anyone on any network anytime it will cost you. Going to leave the province and move to a different province permanently? well.. you will have to change your phone number (because you dont want to pay long distance fees anymore do you?) so to change your number that will cost $40. So basically everything has a fee added to it if you own a phone here, want to check the time on your phone? its going to cost you!! well maybe not, but it sure feels that way. So i will only ever text message people if i can avoid calling, and i will hang up on people if they ring me and i dont need to talk to them e.g. banks, marketers, my boss.

We need to revolt!! who's coming with me? no one?

No!! you have an accent!!

When we stopped in Billings Montana on our road trip, we went to a subway for dinner. Well i have to say my order twice because lets face it "They dont get no folk who speak weird language like them there queen from England land!" and when we handed over our 'Subway gift card' we explained it was bought in Canada and hopefully it will work in the U.S. Well the cashiers response was... "They got Subway in Canada??" so immediately you just want to completely enlighten this geographically and worldly inexperienced human with a few facts. 2 come to mind...
1. You are only 4 hours drive away from the canadian border! youve never wanted to just go for a small trip one day?
2. You work for a company that is found WORLD WIDE! you dont know anything about your employer?
So this is the type of thing I encounter often, especially when in the states and especially because im Australian. I dont get upset about the fact they dont understand me the first time afterall Im the one in their country.
Its not usually an issue when im in a city, only when im in a country area when they dont hear a lot of diversity in language, it can be amussing.
I had one today on our way back from Barrie when we stopped to get a drink in this small town and I said "Do you still have coffee available?"
to which she replied "yes we have coke zero!"

Everyday is for mothers.

Im an 21 hour plane flight and a 2 hour car ride from being able to see my mother (give or take variables like layovers and security checks). The last time i saw my mum (mom) was exactly 1 year ago when she made the journey to Vancouver from Australia. I was thinking about her this morning (especially because it is mothers day) and what we did together when she was visiting a year ago. It is not very hard to see how this woman is so easy going and so generous to others.
The day she flew into Vancouver from Australia, we had the day already planned before we knew she was even comming to visit that we were going to move into our new apartment and out of the old one on the same day. So Andrea and I picked her up from the airport and drove to our old apartment to start moving stuff we had already packed in preperation. Well without questions or gesturing (not to my memory anyway) she rolled up her sleeves and started scrubbing clean our old apartment while Andrea and my friend Brian and I trucked everything back and forth. She was a trooper that day and Im sure after helping us unpack she didnt get to bed until around 10pm that night.
So last year i remember we went to Grouse mountain on the north
shore of Vancouver and via a cable car it over looks the entire city, out to sea and the mountains of Washington.

There was still snow in areas but it was a perfect sunny spring day and Im sure she enjoyed it. I could write for an hour here about what we did for the time she was here but it will probably only bore those who couldnt experience it with us.

Video of our Seattle trip-----> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK74F8g6ZjA

So mum i miss you and i hope your having a good day whatever your up too and I will talk to you very soon when my feet hit the ground.

I remember when.......

1. Walkmans, a cassette that held 16 songs in a machine that was the size of a small house brick. Used to make mixed tapes that would take hours because you had to record in real time. Now we can fit thousands of songs onto a player as thick as 4 slices of cheese.

2. Home telephones. Used to make plans way in advance and you were commited to them, there was no spontaneous text MSG to contact someone. Used to leave messages for people and wait for a return call, now anybody can be contacted anywhere anytime. Calling or sending a txt message to another country takes seconds and costs very little compared to when it seemed like $5 a second call rate. You can now use your mobile phone to take pictures and message and email and find directions, the list goes on and on.

3. Emails, photos, messages can be sent electronically to anywhere in the world in a matter of seconds. It used to be a out sending a hand written letter which could take weeks depending on where it was going. So what could take 2 weeks to tell someone what I'm doing now only takes as long as writing the letter itself.

4. Digital cameras, you take a photo and instantly you can see the picture on a 3 inch screen, then you can decide whether to keep it or take another. You can fit hundreds of pictures and video on one camera which can be viewed by anyone in the world once they're put on a computer. It used to be that you had to buy a roll of film which held 24 - 30 pictures and cost around $8. You had to wind it to take the next picture and you wouldn't know if it was. Good picture until it was developed. The film would be dropped off to be developed and the cheapest way was to wait a week for your prints to be picked up and it cost about $20. If you wanted someone to see your pictures you would have to make another set and post it to them, the whole process could take 2-3 weeks, now it takes 2-3 minutes.

5. Computers, it would take 5 minutes to load a simple adding game (2x3) from a disk that resembled a 5"x5" piece of cardboard. The screen used to be the size of a miniature microwave oven (and probably had just as much radiation). The computer console itself was the size of a carry on luggage suitcase. Now there's almost nothing a computer can't do in seconds with 20" flat screens and some consoles being the size of 5 slices of bread.

6. Game playing consoles for your tv, while not much has changed with the size, their capability has. The games used to consist of a black screen and each player (max of 2) would have a little line that could only move up and down and they would hit a square "ball" back and forth to each other. Now the images on the screen are very close to real life with unlimited amount of different games and the ability to play with peoples from all over the world.

7. Saturday morning cartoons, they used to be like watching a comic book come to life with good guys defeating bad guys and being superheros. The images were very rough and they tend to repeat backgrounds constantly but they always kept you captivated. Kids could appreciate the deadpan humour and simple jokes. Now the images are close to being 3D and story lines have to hold alot of content and contain a lot of subtle jokes that I'm surprised kids actually understand.

8. Money, if you wanted money on the weekend you had to use an ATM and get enough to get you by. You had to use cash or credit card to purchase anything anywhere. Bankers hours were between 9am and 4pm Monday to Friday. Now almost anyone will accept a debit card from taxi drivers to pizza delivery's. Banks are open till late and some open on Saturdays. The Internet provides the ability to do all your banking from anywhere anytime.

10 states, 2 country's, 5 days

May

Its from a hotel in Milwaukee that I'm writing this and we still have one more day of travelling before getting to Ontario Canada. So whats happened since leaving Vancouver until now? well..
After having final drinks after work on Friday and then again at a friends place (where we stayed for the night because we didn't have a home to go to, thank you Sav and Allana) it was a tough Saturday morning to get up too.
We packed the car and started driving at least 2 hours later than we had planned, which we thought wasn't too bad....until...
We arrived at the USA border to a 2 hour wait, which didn't include the other hour we spent inside the office standing in line to fill out a piece of paper that took 2 minutes.
At the point when we finally got on our way we were then around 4 hours behind schedule, and yes i had a schedule although it wasn't a big deal considering we had time on our hands.

Washington was our first state to conquer, with a high mountain highway around snow caps and the feeling of driving through the clouds. Finally made it to Spokane (Originally a mining town in the foot of mountains) around 7:30pm and ready for bed. An early start the next day, after continental breakfast of course got us going across the beautiful area of north Idaho. It was a very easy mountain drive to enjoy including the very pretty town of Wallace (an old gold mine town) which is wedged in the middle of pine tree covered and snow capped mountains.

Kept the drive going all the way to Billings in Montana where we decided to pull into our favourite hotel chain Best Western. Billings Best Western was very nice, a clean fresh place clad with the look of an old fashioned mountain cabin. Monday became a full day of driving and sightseeing across 3 states all starting at 8am (after continental breakfast of course). The first pit stop was at 'Little bighorn' or 'Custer's last stand', a historical site located exactly where war broke out between the American 7th battalion and Native Indians in 1876. A monument stands for the fallen on both sides and grave stone scatter the hill side wherever a soldier or warrior fell. There is artifacts in a museum style building and a whole garden dedicated to the fallen American soldiers of the past. Want to know more?.....google it!

On the road again with South Dakota in our sights and Montana and Wyoming soon to be a horizon in our rear vision mirror.
The South Dakota state environment with its forests and hills and grass high plains (some with snow still) reminds me of a classic old cowboy movie i cant put my finger on. It came to me later when i realized 'Dances with Wolves' was made in the South Dakota region. I'm going to have to sit through 3 hours of that story now so that i can reminisce about our drive.

30 Minutes off the highway from Rapid city we came to the quiet little tourist town of Keystone which sits at the base of Mount Rushmore (that place where the former presidents are carved into the side of a mountain). We had a tight schedule so the $10 entry fee didn't interest us considering we could view the monument and take a picture clearly from the car park.



We strayed away from our favourite accommodation choice that night due to the fact that the only requirement we had was to find a place with a water slide. Days inn provided our necessity with a 150ft tube of watery fun, which was well deserved after 13 hours on the pavement.