The last few days have been rough. Actually the last week has been rough. Moving is hard. All of the last weekend was spent packing. The Monday too. Then on Tuesday the hammer dropped.
I got up early and then ran clear across town to pick up a U-Haul truck. I had hoped to pick it up from a place a few blocks away in downtown Vancouver, but the day before they informed me that I would need to instead go as far south as I can, while still being in Vancouver. I had hoped my last run in Vancouver would be somewhat more epic, but instead it was a run to pick up a truck.
I drove it home, horked down a breakfast, and took a shower. I only had half an hour before movers showed up to start taking my apartment apart and reassembling in the truck.
I’m not sure I got good movers though. I had hired two, but three showed up. I later found out that one was a supervisor who had a hernia. So we got the feeling the other two were new to being movers and just letting the supervisor tell them how to Tetris. They were also slow, and only seemed to speed up after we told them we only had the elevator for two hours. Still, it worked out for them; I had to pay for an extra hour of them to get everything into the truck. I also suspect that they did not treat the one item that we marked with fragile with due care. I believe we will discover that my three dimensional map of Mont-Blanc will be crushed when we take it out at our destination.
There were a couple of extra chores we had to do before we could leave town, let cleaners in, walkthrough of apartment, returning internet modem and picking up some honey from the Granville Market. Then the drive began. The U-Haul was sucking back a lot of gas and wasn’t completely filled, so we stopped for gas fairly early on. That was somewhat good, because before the stop I was getting very sleepy. The break perked me up.
We arrived in Kamloops fairly late, and cranky. Catalina had a bad headache, believed due to stress and lack of caffeine. I tried to make her as comfortable as possible and then went out for some food. Then we fell asleep.
The next day, I tried to get up at a reasonable hour to go for my run. I had not run in Kamloops before so I had a route where I thought I would get a good view. And I did, but it involved a 350 metre elevation gain. The neighborhood of Rose Hill is high on the hill, and every street begins with the word “High”. I then took a trail to another neighborhood to get back down to the hotel. The entire time there were beautiful views of Kamloops. It is a very pretty place with all the sandy hills that have eroded into ravines. I enjoy looking at it every time I pass through and it was nice to get a higher perspective.
The drive on Wednesday was better because we weren’t as stressed. But we didn’t get off that early (the morning run didn’t help) and there was also a time zone change. What really hurt our timing was that east of Golden, the Trans Canada Highway was closed. I believe due to construction. So we had to detour south to Radium Hot Springs. That added time, but it was a nice drive through an area I had never been to before.
We got into my parent’s place at around 9:40. The rest of the family was fast asleep. They even slept through the dog barking her head off. Dallas was still happy to see us once we let her out. We, effectively, snuck in and then went to bed.
Today, we did a lot of repacking. I had previously left household items here because they wouldn’t fit in Vancouver. Now they are in the back of the truck, ready to go with us to Houston. Although my mother is trying to convince us to take more; she is taking the opportunity to purge her stuff.

I sold my car today. I’ve had it since April 14, 1999. It was old enough to vote. Old enough to drink in most U.S. states. Although I would not recommend having a car that is also an alcoholic. When I was first looking to buy a car, my boss kept recommending a Honda Civic because of their reliability. And, my car certainly did have that. It would have kept going until it rusted out from under me, but I can’t bring it with me to Texas.
The buyer was an 80 year old man from Vancouver Island. For him it was an upgrade over this 1994 Honda hatchback. He also really knew what he was doing. He had a lot of research, and he was mechanically inclined.
He came over on the ferry with his friend and I met him in Horseshoe Bay. There he went over the car thoroughly. He was not too happy with the rust on the hood, but that was the only place he found significant rust. The fluid levels were also low, or looked like they had never been replaced. I was upfront and honest to him; I had never done anything to the car except take it for servicing on a regular basis. I am somewhat concerned that they never changed the fluids.
After we took it for a test drive, he made an offer that we accepted. Then we drove to the nearest insurance broker where we made the insurance transfer.
So after about 197,000km together, my car belonged to someone else. I think he will give it a good home. He knows how to take care of it better than I could.
I did negotiate one other thing; he gave Catalina a ride back to the ferry dock. There she could catch the express bus back to downtown Vancouver. That let me run home by myself; I was in an area I had never been so I wanted to take advantage of the opportunity to run new streets. I did feel self-conscious that I was carrying a lot of cash on me while I was doing the 17km run home.
West Vancouver is a very pretty place, built on the side of a mountain. But it is also indicative of the problem of living in the lower mainland; it was just mansions. There was very low density, showing that NIMBY behaviour is preventing lower housing prices. But I digress.
After going through the winding hilly part, I got to be against the sea. I’ve done the Seawall on the north shore only once before, but it was nice to do it in the evening when the sun is setting. A bit of a different perspective. Although, the Lionsgate bridge reminds me of the Edmonton High Level bridge; both can be seen from a far-off distance and never seem to get closer as you run to them.
I do wish I had left ten minutes earlier, because I think I would have gotten slightly better pictures from on top of the bridge with the setting sun. It was disappearing over the horizon while I was crossing.