In the interest of trying to keep my vacation post short(ish), I’ve decided to split the post in two and do one for the trip down and the time we spent in Freddy Beach, and another for the week in PEI. That should keep things relatively short, even with my tendency to ramble… I was officially on vacation at around 2000 on Friday, July 17th. It would have been earlier, but I worked from home on Friday afternoon and due to disruptions from the kids, I didn’t actually get everything done and my out of office turned on until around then. Unfortunately for us, Amy actually had to work afternoons that weekend which meant we didn’t actually start the travelling part of our vacation until Monday afternoon. (Incidentally, do you spell travelling with one L or two?) Amy had assured me she had been quite successful with this schedule (leaving in the afternoon) last time she drove home with the kids, and since she needed to get some sleep on Monday morning, and we still had lots of packing to do anyways, I didn’t argue. We ended up leaving Ottawa around 1430 or so, which put us into Montreal just around 1630 – not a great time to be driving through MTL. Oh well, we made it through without too much delay. I’m getting a bit ahead of myself though since the first ‘incident’ of our trip occurred before even getting to Montreal. Since we were going to be away for a couple of weeks, naturally there was lots to pack and bring with us. For long trips like this, we always put the big ugly cargo box on top of the car. This thing is pretty much bottom of the line in terms of what you can get, but it has served us fairly well over the years – it even made a trip to Newfoundland with the Keans one year. Anyways, I put it onto the car and filled it up with luggage. Normally I make sure to wrap everything up in plastic bags (the thing isn’t water proof – remember I said it was bottom of the line?) but there was no sign of rain for this trip so I didn’t bother this time. We were probably about 50-60 km from home when I noticed a rather large truck that appeared to be attempting to pass me on the right every chance he got. I was moving along at a pretty good clip too so I wasn’t really sure what his hurry was. Anyways, at one point me did manage to get up beside us and he was yelling and pointing at our roof. Amy rolled down the window and the dude told us that our cargo bin was open! D’oh! I didn’t really like the idea of stopping on the side of the highway so I slowed down and planned to take the next exit. However, every car that passed us would wave and point up and it got way too annoying so I just pulled over on the side of the highway. For some reason, the two locks that are supposed to help hold the thing closed (and keep people from stealing things inside) had come unlatched. Thankfully, it didn’t look like we had actually lost any luggage. I re-locked them and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. I paid close attention to the reactions of drivers/passengers in other cars that passed us for the rest of the drive. :)
The rest of the trip was pretty uneventful, although at another stop (I forget where it was) I noticed that the damn cargo box had come unlatched again. I decided then that it couldn’t be trusted anymore and vowed to spend the money to get a quality one when we got home. I’ll likely go back to Auto Racks to get something since I was very happy with their service when I bought my bike rack there. I’m thinking something along these lines might be in order. Anyways, we rolled into Freddy somewhere around 0300 or so. I was pretty bagged by that point and just wanted to go to bed. Liam hadn’t really slept much during the drive so he was pretty wired. I think we finally managed to get to bed sometime after 0400. Needless to say, I was pretty grumpy Tuesday morning/early afternoon after getting very little sleep. I decided the best remedy for my grumpiness was to go for a ride, so I jumped on my bike and headed for my dad’s place. I had a short visit there before continuing on the bike. I decided to tackle some of the hills, or what I considered hills when I was a kid, just to see what they would be like. They aren’t nearly as bad as I remember them being when I was a kid, but Fredericton is nonetheless a pretty hilly place to cycle – unless you stick around downtown. Here is the short ride I did. As I had hoped, I was in a much better mood after getting out for some fresh air and exercise. There wasn’t a whole lot else going on the rest of the week in Fredericton. I got out for a ride with Trev on Thursday that ended up being the ride from hell for Trev – 5 flats in one ride! After the 2nd flat, we figured it had to be something with his rim, so we inspected it quickly. We thought we found the problem, stuck a piece of cardboard in to fix it and continued on our way. Flats kept coming, and more cardboard was used, but obviously we either never found the problem or there were multiple problems. Once the 5th flat happened, we had run out of spare tubes (Trev had 2 extra, as did I) so Trev sat down and waited while I continued on to get my car (with the bike rack) so I could come back and pick him up. Trev later took a closer look at this rim and figured out it was a bad rim tape job. I believe he’s since rectified that problem, but unsure if he’s ventured out for a ride yet. Here is the RunKeeper track of our ride – shorter than we had hoped it would be. The only other ride I did while I was in Fredericton was on Friday, when I got out for another short ride. The goal of that ride was to get up and down the major hills to see what they were like. Three rides in four days (even if they were all quite short) definitely proves that I was on vacation. :)
I had two (ok three if you include the ride with Trev) things I wanted to accomplish when I was home in Freddy: I wanted to eat some Pizza Pizza pizza, and I wanted to get down to the market on Saturday morning for a buffalo burger. I’m happy to report that I managed to accomplish both. I got the pizza the night Amy went out with some of her friends. I had to watch the kids so I decided I didn’t really want to cook. My only miscalculation was that I went to pick up the pizza when I had both kids with me. That meant I had to get them both out of their car seats, get them inside to pay for the pizza, carry them AND the pizza back out to the car, etc. Sometimes I even amaze myself. ;) After the market on Saturday, we wrapped up our time in Fredericton with a very short visit to the Highland Games. Amy’s dad John was involved with the games again this year and got us in the back way so that we could see the Massed Bands during the opening ceremony. Liam is a big fan of bag pipers (or at least seemed to be at the National Police Memorial last year) so this was a great opportunity for him to see and hear more of them in action. I think he enjoyed it. After that, we all piled back into the car and set out for Stanhope, PEI. Stay tuned for my “Good-Bye to Windermere Cottages” post… [...]