The Journey Has Begun

Wednesday, February 3, 2010.

Our adventure began late Sunday night when we rolled out of Dartmouth at 11:45pm. I offered to take the first turn driving and decided to take a dose of caffeine to keep myself awake. After a few more minutes behind the wheel, I still felt fatigued from the weekend's activities. I found myself cuddling into the backseat no more than 20 minutes after our departure, trying to settle in for some shut eye. However, the caffeine I put into my body had other plans. I ended up staying awake with Dennis and Taylor, while Leanne managed to get some sleep.

A couple hours later we pulled into our Grandparents house in Moncton, New Brunswick. Now, 2am may seem like an unconventional time of day to pay a visit to your relatives, but Memere and Pepere Stever are always prepared for the unexpected. After a quick bite to eat we hit the road again, this time with Taylor in the driver's seat.

Taylor and I managed to stay awake until 6am, though we realized we were getting further and further behind schedule as we were only driving 90-100kmph through the night. The headlights on the Sable weren't as powerful as your typical highway traveling vehicle and for this reason the ground seemed to be flying past. Even with the high-beams on, visbility was still subpar**.

The trip continued on as most of the driving was shared between Dennis, Taylor, and I.

We arrived at the Meunier residence in Cap-Rouge, QC., 10:30am, Monday morning, to pay a visit to our good friend Antoine and his family. We were greeted by his hilarious and awesome father, Jean-Francios (JF), and his girlfriend, Chloe. Antoine was at the gym, but was expected to be home within the hour so we sat and enjoyed the company. During the conversation, JF realized we didn't have a power source in our car. We pulled the Sable into his garage and set him free on it. After removing the radio and cutting some wires, we then had a make-shift power supply! This was necessary for our trip because the GPS can only hold a charge for so long and we needed to have it on all the time for speedometer sake.

Soon after, Antoine arrived home and we conversed for a while before hitting the road again.

The Sable preformed well during the day and we managed to average a speed around 110-120kmph through Quebec. The heat has trouble circulating inside the vehicle and according to Dennis, 'the wind whistles through the vehicle like a piece of swiss cheese!' Besides having to bundle up the ride has been fairly smooth thus far- knock on wood!!

Before arriving in Ottawa, we paid a quick visit to our friend Michael in Montreal. The stop was short but sweet as I put another dent into my Subway gift card to fill my belly. We left Montreal during 5pm rush hour traffic, which we should've known better than to do. After spending some time in the jam, we eventually made our way back onto the open road.

We finally arrived in Ottawa at 7:30pm local time... Now, if you've made the drive from Halifax-Ottawa before, you'd know that there is no way it should take 20 hours to complete. All we can say is, 'slow and steady wins the race' or in our case 'slow and steady makes it to our final destination in one piece!'


**We later learned, while paying a visit to the Barton residence, that our visibility issue was due to the amount of road salt build up on our headlights! Wow, we aren't very intelligent.