Blinded by the light

I am so tired.

I had the most insane weekend.

Thursday night my mum and I packed everything into the van, went back over to her house, and passed out. Well... she passed out I lay there, unable to sleep.

Friday morning we were up at 4:30 (!) AM (!!!!!!!!) and on the road by 5:30, Calgary bound. We made awesome time. No traffic, heavy use of cruise control, and a fantastic breakfast from a cafe in Hope to get us through until Golden. Golden was where we had a problem.

Early Friday morning there was a rock slide outside of Golden, which meant we weren't getting through, at least not that way. We had to detour through Radium, which put us about 120Km out of our way, but more importantly it took us 2.5 hours out of our way. The thing about the road from Golden to Banff via Radium is that it's a two lane highway. It's fine if the other route is open, but when it's not, there is a tonne of traffic and no way to pass. It's slow. Very slow. We were stuck behind some serious traffic until we made it into Kootenay National Park. We ended up being on the road for a total of 14 hours.

Saturday was a blur, but my stuff is now living in Calgary, I have a new apartment to live in (Oh my god it's so fantastic I can't believe it. It's almost as fantastic looking as the Perfect Apartment I just moved out of and it's in the most amazing location. And it's huge. And inexpensive. And fantastic. Oh my god.), camping gear shopping, dinner with a small portion of The Family Corps aka The Organization, awesome conversation, crappy sleep, a crazy but wonderful cat, weather that couldn't make up it's mind, a lot of good times and zero crying. I'm pretty proud of that last bit. I came close, but I didn't do it.

It was a good introduction to the city for my mum. She is feeling much better about my move now. She knows that I will be well taken care of, that there are people that will look out for me, and that she is more than welcome to visit at any time. She's currently planning on visiting for Christmas, and already members of The Organization are making plans. It did both our hearts a lot of good.

The trip home was long, but not as long as getting out to Calgary. The drive was nice but slow, way more traffic. On the way home was the first time I started to feel really car sick, but once I took over the driving duties and had some ginger ale I was feel better. The only other black mark on the trip was passing a massive accident (3 cars in the ditch, two flipped) just outside of Surrey just before the paramedics arrived.

It's good to be home, but I'm looking forward to when I start housesitting. I can't wait to sleep in a bed that is all mine, no sharing, save a cat or two. After all that driving I'm starting to wonder if I have it in me to do The Greatest Roadtrip Ever (2006 Edition) or not. To be fair though, this trip was all about the stress of moving, and the driving was longer than I intend to travel on any given day, by a good margin, but still, I will have to seriously give this a rethink.

I think it will take me a week or two to recover and process this weekend.

I think I'm going to love Calgary.