By the numbers

86 days away from home
25 stays in motels, baches, holiday homes, etc
7 airline flights
9079 kilometers driven (4705 in 4 NZ rental cars, 4374 in our friends' Jaguar)
146 pieces of mail waiting for us at home

We’ve been away for 86 days now. When we first arrived in NZ we stayed for 12 restful days in our friends’ bach. Then we moved for three days to a holiday flat, then two nights in a city hotel, then three nights in a small cottage, etc. We didn’t expect to be moving quite so often. It works out to an average of just over three days in each place!

Packing and unpacking stuff from the car turned out to be complicated. We had tried to pack lightly but we were going for three months and needed business wear as well as casual wear. We had our luggage, one medium size wheeled bag each plus a small duffle bag for the overflow. We had a wheeled carryon and two laptops, each in a backpack. We bought an extra bag (in lime green!) just so we wouldn’t have to pack the bags so tightly every time we moved out of a motel. We had two inexpensive cooler bags from the supermarket for our groceries (we couldn’t eat three meals a day in restaurants). We had another reusable supermarket bag for dry foods (cereal, bread, laundry detergent, etc). We usually had a bag for laundry, and another one for books to read.

After our experience with the car being broken into, we took everything into the motels every night. We started to look for motel units on the ground floor so we wouldn’t have to carry everything up stairs (elevators are rare).

Originally we had thought that we would be staying several weeks in each place. I was worried about being bored while Barry was working each day. I packed supplies for a craft project and a new scrapbook project, and my laptop. Well, the scrapbook project is untouched, the craft project is just started, but my laptop has been worth its weight in gold. I could keep in touch with family on MSN, keep up with the banking, upload my photos daily, and keep up the blog. It was invaluable when deciding on our next weekend getaway, as I could search internet sites like bookabach.co.nz or holidayhomes.co.nz while Barry was working.

All in all, we had a wonderful time and would do it again in a heartbeat.

(Note: When I was looking at my blog recently I found this story had never actually been posted so did that in January 2009.)

Let it snow

We arrived in Toronto to our son's house to below freezing temperatures and the aftermath of an ice storm. There was still ice on the ground and snow was lightly falling to cover it up, pretty but a recipe for car accidents and broken bones. The snow scraper broke in Barry’s hand as he was clearing off the car.

It's such a climate change from NZ. We got used to long spring days and sunny skies, and green everywhere. We went for long walks every day. In Canada, the trees are bare, the sky is grey, it's very cold and it gets dark by 5pm. Of course, we didn't remember to bring our winter coats to Toronto for the long drive home. Sigh!!