On the Road again

July 22nd ish to July 23rd ish

Dad and I had a great time driving back to B.C. with just the two of us and my dogs (Dante and Emint). We left Saskatoon at 6pm after I had worked a full eight hour day. We stopped for supper in Kinderlsey for some grade A McDonalds. Side note: All McDonalds have now stopped serving Orange pop - my childhood favorite. At some point we crossed the Sask/Alb border without much notice. Somewhere in Alberta, sometime in the middle of the night (yeah, that's how similar everything is) Dad was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat just chatting away. All of a sudden a small mouse runs across the road a few feet in front of us then there is a flash of white and BANG! An owl had swooped down hunting the mouse, it was so low and fast that we didn't see it at all. When the owl realized the truck was right there it must have tried to use the air from the truck to turn up and out of the way - to no avail. We took the belly of the own across the drive side headlight/hood. The impact scared us but it happened so fast Dad did not even have time to tap the breaks. We continued to drive - the only damage we noted was that the headlight now pointed in a slightly different direction. A while later (yes, that's how accurately we were bothering to measure time) we stopped for food/fuel/fluids break and to check out the front of the truck. At first glance nothing appeared to wrong, until dad touched the headlight! It moved slightly and it sounded like several small fragments of what used to be the headlight mount tinkled down onto the ground... oops. The owl broke the whole mounting system for the headlight without damaging the headlight cover of bulb! It also dented the hood; we didn't realize till later (in the daylight) that it was not only a dent in the hood but the impact actually bent the whole corner of the hood and broke the some of the front grill. In the end Dad is claiming the damage (he tried to argue that the owl hit US and therefore we should not be responsible for the deductible; ICBC's response: "We can't collect the deductible out of the bird, so you pay"). Dad figures it is around $2,000-$3,000 damage to the truck. Oh well, he wanted a new hood anyhow. After the exciting owl incident the rest of the drive was pretty boring. I drove, dad slept; dad drove, I slept.

July 25th

I won't get into much of the details about the Nazareth concert - things like that are best left unsaid. I would like to say that we all enjoyed ourselves (Dad a little more so than the rest of us). People born in the 50's - 60's should NOT try to dress like they did 20's and no drugs are not cool at that age anymore. Nazareth is older than dirt but still sounds great (he might have had a heartattack on stage... or may he was just dancing).

July 26th

What a crummy way to wake up from a hangover. Dan and a friend had an "unsupervised" night while I was in B.C. Sunday morning they woke up late and were on the way out to breakfast when Dan realized that my bike was sitting out in the back and the gate was propped open. He walked around to the garage door in time to see someone run out of the garage and hop the fence. A guy/teen broke into the garage (no damage, just jimmied the window) and was in the process of steeling my bike, some clothing, and a ton of food. He took off when he saw Dan. The cops came with the K9 unit but after three blocks the dog's lost the trail in the rain. Of ours nothing was stolen that we can tell - he may have stolen one of my sweaters but I can't tell which one. Some of the food he was trying to take got damaged so we had to throw it away (which is sad because if it was food he was after we would have let him have it). He broke a shelf while trying to get my bike down - but it was from JYSK so not a big loss. We still have to go through the garage and clean up and do a good look through to make sure nothing important is missing.

It's just upsetting when someone comes into your personal space and starts taking your stuff - it also hurts knowing that the guy who did it may have just really badly needed food and clothing.

July 27th

I'm back in Saskatoon now. Dad will be coming back later tonight. He has decided to fly back for the week to help get things underway. After the long weekend he will fly back to B.C to fulfill his obligations there. He will then be driving back out here with my sink and more cedar siding for my house (Thank you Halicia for your endless hours of staining). Hopefully by that time his truck will be out of the body shop and he won't hit anything on the way home.

We had some bad news from the guy who is doing our foundation. He is unable to get an excavator in here until Friday! Dad said no! So we'll see how that works out. We can't afford to lose another entire week to just sitting around.

All in all the progress on the house is so slow it feels like it is going backwards.