Saturday, September 23, 2006
My first "real" post.PRELUDE:
During the early months of summer 2006 the idea of moving out west to work was bandied about between myself and Mr. Lavallee. Plan A: Send out a whole bunch of resumes to different engineering companies within the Edmonton and Calgary area in hope of scoring a job. This did not work, companies wanted to meet us first. Plan B: move out to either Calgary or Edmonton to then get a job...
NOW:
While we were planning for the move to Alberta I recieved a call from a 'guy' who worked for a company in a location that was 'not' Alberta. This location was British Columbia - Vancouver. Last Sunday I was flown out to BC, wined and dined and then spent a 12 hour day on the job site.
The company is Kiewit (http://www.kiewit.com/) and they are working on the 'sea-to-sky' highway project. This project consists of converting a two lane highway from Vancouver to Whistler into a 4 lanes highway. This is to be completed for the Olympics and Olympic Village. They are a big construction firm all over North America who build big stuff.
The image to the left is looking at the road profile. To the left is a mountin face, then the road and to the right another mountain face. In the distance you can see that there is quite a view...compared to staring at a computer screen for the whole day I think its a step up.
Embarking upon this great cross Canada trek is 3 individuals...myself, Brian Lavallee (aka the Road Hammer and Gunner, as I am lazy, refer to http://voiceofbrian.blogspot.com/ for information regarding these names) and most importantly G the Gnome. However the "Gunner" felt it unecessary to mention our small friend thus without further delay here he is (along with me and Brian).
Travelocity Traveling Gnome...watch out for him in the pics that we take while on this venture.
Note: These images are not to scale, this Gnome is in fact only 8 inches tall. I know many of you were thinking that he looks huge...a giant even, but he isnt.
Destination BC (call name for the great venture west) will hopefully unfold as follows - myself and Brian will load up our vehicles with as much gear as we can fit in and then we hit the open road, driving until we get there. I will be driving a VW Golf, since we are creating names for just about everything I shall refer to the golf as the Red Hawk. The red hawk has a listed cargo volume of 1.18 cubic meters (1180 liters OR ). With some strategic Tetris style packing and with the acquisition of those monstrous ziploc bags that you can then suck out the air to leave a compacted set of clothes I hope to increase this volume.
This route west has been changed a couple of times, the latest change went thru the states. It is supposedly quicker AND we would get to eat at a White Castle. However the thought of being hauled over at the crossing and getting all the gear taken out, searched then thrown back in did not appeal to us. The route now is to stay on Canadian soil for the entire length of the trip. We shall be departing New Brunswick bright and early on Sunday morning (October 1st) and then tearing across the country making numerous stops:
TRIP ITTINERARY
Stop 1: Ottawa (12hr journey)
Stop 2: Hearst (12hr journey)
Stop 3: Thunder Bay (6 hr journey)
Stop 4: Winnipeg (9hr journey)
Stop 5: Calgary/Banff (bastard 15hr journey...however it is here we plan to visit the much anticipated Family Fun Center with Andy)
Stop 6: Our destination...Vancouver (10hr journey)
I pretty much copied Brian with the creation of a blog, but I figured that should he start typing in french I would provide an english version for those who arn't billingual.
As Destination BC is implemented stay tuned for updates once we reach each stop (providing we have access to cyberspace). Since I responsible for taking pictures I shall post them as our journey progresses. Should anyone be in Vancouver for any reason feel free to stop in...all take care and we shall be in touch soon enough.