Going to Canada eh ?

Pete & Dave on the footplate

Side view Dave trying to get dirty

We went driving around out side the city and discovered a few things of interest (I knew I had to use that phrase eventually).

While looking for somewhere for Lin to indulge herself we found a Gliding Club at Netooks. We couldn’t find anything about them as it was closed and they don’t appear to have a web site. I can see another little job for us if Lin does join them.

We also found that the fuel gauge on the hire car goes from 1/4 to empty very quickly and for a while we were studying the horizon with heighten awareness looking for the next gas station. We got to one in time and found it was $56 to fill the tank (about £30).

An oddity about driving here is that at traffic lights even thought you may be facing a red light you can still turn left if it is safe to do so. This we discovered by the unusual method of the car behind hooting until we moved.

Another curiosity is the 4 way stop sign. Over here in stead of mini roundabouts all 4 lanes are faced with a stop sign. The idea is that each car goes in turn, this seems to work as it causes as much hesitation and confusion as mini roundabouts do in the UK.

Today’s excursion was to Stettler where they have a preserved steam railway. The engine was in steam and Dave and I were allowed to climb up on the footplate. The engine had been converted to run on old crank case oil (car sump oil) as this was cleaner than coal and the other “shook horror” was that all the staff were PAID, contrast that to the huge army of volunteers that run british preserved railways.

The motel occupies two sides of square, the third side being the road and the forth side is an odd assortment of shops. None of whom seem to do enough business to justify their exsistance. Indeed one that did Indian take aways and pizzas is now empty. The chinese restaurant does an all you can eat buffet for $10 a the weekend so Dave has decided he is going to get his moneys worth. He seems to have forgotten that he doesnt like most Chinese food.

A lot of the other guests seem to be workmen from out of town who go home at weekends and so the plaza, not busy athe the best of times is now decidedly empty. However the weather is 100% better than when we arrived here just a week ago.

The Martians have landed

No actually its just an odd

shaped water tower

We tried to apply for Provincial Health Insurance only to find that we had to prove we were residents of Alberta. To do that we had to have rent book or utility bill showing our address.

Lin has been looking to continue her lifestyle over here by trying to rent a Fat Boy. To do this we went to the Gasoline Alley Harley-Davidson dealership to see what was available. You can see I am not kidding about the name by looking at www.GasolineAlleyHarleyDavidson.com. Later in the day she also went to find a flying school at the Red Deer Regional Airport and is thinking of taking a lesson next week.

We also visited Sylvan Lake a near by tourist attraction, the main feature of which is a large lake wit plenty of room for water-skiing etc.

It seems that everywhere you look along 50 Ave there are a wide variety of diners take outs ie Tim Hortons, A&W, Wendys, Arbeys, SubWay,Tacco Time, Boston Pizza , Kelsys, KFC, McDonalds, Pizza Hut,Starbucks. By the time you get to the end of a row of this lot its time to start the sequence again with another Tim Hortons. We ate in an A&W yesterday and were horrified to see that the combos included Root Beer as the drink. Fortunately this was not compulsory. (For those who do not know Root beer is non alcoholic and smells /tastes of germoline but locals seem to love it)

On the serious side I tried a few local employment agencies and was seen on occasion by a “consultant” whose name was Lindsay Job. It took a lot of will power not to make any comment.

I had a go at driving yesterday. Just on some local roads to get the hang of being on the wrong side, its going to take a load more practice before I try one of the major roads.

It takes a minute or two to realise when you look at a car from the front that not only is the steering wheel on the wrong side, but also there is no number plate and no tax disk. In Alberta cars are only required to show a number plate at the back, BC however requires plates front and back.

We went to try and get the equivalent of national insurance numbers yesterday and despite having downloaded and completed the relevant forms we were turned away because the new system had crashed. (I thought it was only UK government software programmes that crashed on their first day).

On returning this morning the system was still down so they offered us paper forms to complete, identical to the ones we had already filled in and tried to submit the day before. We were eventually seen by an agent who processed the forms but could not understand why our pages were a different size to his until I explained we had printed them in the UK and so they were on A4 size and his were Letter size.

We went to see Red Deer provincial Airport and found it was a lot smaller that Shoreham airport with only one flying club.

Hit a few more poblems today.

We went to HSBC to pay in the Bank Draft from Nat West only to find out that it wasnt made out as HSBC would have liked and so cannot go through automated clearing. They suggested we talk to Royal Bank of Canada on whom the draft was drawn. RBC were very helpful but couldnt open a bank account for us with out a “sponsor” who is already a customer of RBC in Canada.

I think Tyson my get fed up with us before too long so I am very wary of asking him about this.

We dropped off the rent a wreck car and got a taxi to Avis to pick up another car. This one is much newer and nicer though due to a malfuntion of my pda/gps we did take the senic route home.

The problem with the PDA is that it is also a mobile phone but as the phone element is useless out here I turned it off. This made the pda think it was on an areoplane and so it shut down its Bluetooth connection. This where technology can be too clever.

We also met even more blank looks when we asked about internet cafes and Wi Fi hotspots.
Either they haven’t been invented here or society here has evolved with out them.

The solution found was that the first hotel employee I asked about broadband did not know that the hotel had WiFi and that my laptops modem was off despite windows asking it to turn on. Once a more knowledgeable staff member confirmed the Wi Fi network was working we knew there was an issue with the lap top and fixed it.

One oddity in the motel is the cooking appliance. In one unit we have a fridge electric cooker and sink. The socket for the kettle is un switched and un shutered on the front of the cooker within easy reach of the taps. Would this conform to UK safety standards please discuss ?

Another was that the power to one of the wall sockets was controlled by the same switch that turned on and off the main room light. Was this place wired by a Wieland AP ?

The motel is on 50 Avenue and like many American cities(and Milton Keynes) all the Avenues run parallel in one direction and the streets run at right angles. At each junction is a set of traffic lights. The area of land bounded by two streets and two avenues is a city block.

50 Avenue has 3 lanes of traffic in each direction plus there are two lane service roads on either side so here crossing the road involves 10 lanes of traffic. It almost makes you want to drive everywhere.

With all the problems at Gatwick we forgot to post David’s thank you letter to the school so on Sunday we set off to find a Post Office. The one at Sobey’s Mall is within a supermarket and open on a Sunday. Yes a Post Office open on a Sunday not only that we found the Public Library open as well ! Here again the staff were helpful opening 5 minutes early for the these odd people from England and hailing and introducing a passing shopper as the local Realator ( Estate Agent).

It was after this that Canada played a couple of Gotcha’s in quick succession. The motel does not have Wi Fi or Broadband internet connections and the Local yellow pages has not heard of the term internet cafe. Which is how we ended up at the library looking for a way to check our emails.

The second gotcha was when trying to buy a disposable cell phone ( = pay as you go ) you have to give an address. We had already established that buying just a Sim to go in our UK mobiles was a no no but the need for a residential address is going to be a problem. We definitely need to talk to Tyson to see if we can “borrow” his address……………and maybe his internet connection…………and………

The journey to get here was a mini adventure in itself (but with out the car).

The taxi arrived in plenty of time but its boot was not big enough to take all the luggage so we travelled to the airport with one case balanced between Lin and Dave on the back seat and one piece of hand luggage in the front passange footwell.

This should have given us a hint about what was to come because at check in one bag was too big and too heavy to be allowed on so with frantic re packing at the desk we got all the bags the same weight. It was so embarassing I was expecting Baldrick and a camera crew to appear at any moment for smart assed commentary.

It is all very well to say “you should be more careful about what you pack” but when you are moving not just from one house to another but one country to another it is difficult to decide on what to leave behind.

Anyway after all the fuss with the hold luggage they didn’t weigh or check the sizes of the hand luggage. This was a bit of a relief as I was worried that laptop might push the weight over the top.

We had upgraded our tickets to cabin class and got priority boarding and complimentary drinks before we had even taken off.

We only just remembered to give Dave his travel sick pill and didnt think it would work however he dropped of very quickly, so much so that we had to check for a pulse to make sure he was still alive.

On each seat was complimentary pack of ear plugs, eye, shades, tooth brush etc very reminiscent of the survival kits we were given after our luggage was lost on a previous trip. This led me to suggest that the airline was admiting in advance that our luggage would not be on the same plane.

As we tried to watch the films we quickly found that the airline supplied head phones only worked on the right hand earpiece. Dave worked out that his MP3 earpieces not only worked better but were more comfortable as well.

Take off had been delayed by a mal-functioning seat in cabin class and two displaced passengers had stood around looking awkward as 3 aircraft “engineers” poked and proded the offending seat into submission. Despite being half an hour late taking off we were only a few minutes behind schedule when we landed some 9 hours later.

Once on the ground and having cleared the first customs check we stood in line for the nerve racking wait to be interviewed by an immigration officer. Despite standing a respectful distance “behind the line” we could hear snippets of what the officers were saying to the interviewees and as if written for television the two main characters developed in to good cop/ bad cop just by the way they dealt with their candidates.

Fortunately our prayers were answered and we got good cop. His main area of concern was why Andrew had not come with us and why we had not dragged him kicking and screaming into the country. Curiously he did not ask for evidence of settlement funds and did not seem at all worried that we had nominated Vancouver as our point of entry/settlement but had turned up in Alberta.

Having signed all the forms in the correct spaces we went went to find our luggage. It was now over an hour since the plane had landed we expected it to have been dumped un ceremoniously off the carousel to make way for the next flight as had happened last time at Gatwick. Here again we were pleasantly surprised when as we walked into baggage reclaim there were our cases guarded by two ladies from the Airport staff. (BAA please note this is customer service).

Our next stop was a more detailed customs interview. Here all the staff were very friendly letting Dave run around and look at the xray machine while we had our paper work stapled bar-coded and stapled. Then we were free to find a taxi to take us to rent a wreck ( yes that is the name of a car rental firm).

We heard yesterday that our prospective buyer is unable to get funding so it looks like we are back on the market again. This is what I feared would happen and now we have to look for a tennant PDQ.

Most of the “white ” goods have been taken away today and the house clearance firm comes tomorrow for the rest of the things.

Penny has also gone today and Andrew left at the week end so that house is getting very quiet and empty.

Soon it will be all on its own.

Lets hope next week will bring us better news

Last day at work. Several nice comments from suppliers and colleagues. Goldwing sent a card and a gift very thought full of them.

Wieland gave a wallet, some currency samples, and a lottery ticket in the hope that it may solve the housing problem.

I managed a farewell speech with out getting a lump in my throat but the individual goodbyes were another story.

Got rid of loads of furniture tonight so we can not sit down in the front room. Andrew moves out on Sunday and we gradually give everything else away during the rest of the week.