We've arrived!

Well, we actually arrived Friday night. But that's not the point. Not to mention that a four day drive turned into a seven day one.

Why did it take twice a long to get across the country, you ask? Well, first of all, it is one heck of a big country!! Driving across Ontario took freakin' forever. Second of all, cars were involved in this process. Cars break down. We (read: Dylan's dad) figured that the ball joints in the front end of the Honda needed replacing, so we took it into a mechanic in Weyburn. He told us that they did in fact need replacing, that they were quite worn and that we shouldn't drive with them because they could break if we went over too big of a pothole and that that would result in the tire falling off. But that Weyburn didn't have what we needed. So we drive three hours further to Brandon. But got it fixed there no prob. and that mechanic told us that the Honda was in great shape. Then Ontario was quite cruel to the truck. It sprung a fairly serious fuel leak that took Dylan's dad about three or so hours to fix, and then later on him and Dylan had to replace the fan belt. Add to that the fact that we spent longer than we'd planned visiting with family friends in Calgary, Dylan's grandma in Weyburn, and Dylan's brother in Shilo (just outside of Brandon). Not a bad thing, we just like to pretend that these things don't take time when in the planning stage.

Now that we are here, however, things are pretty cool. Montreal is OLD. Lots of cool buildings and whatnot. I think our apartment building was built before electricity was readily available. Definitely before elevators... Have I mentioned that we live on the fourth floor? It would be even cooler if we would have had time to do or look at anything. We spent all of Saturday dealing with U-Haul storage and trailer returns and hauling stuff up four flights of stairs. And Dylan talked to customer service people and filed a formal complaint. We are hoping to get another free month storage and a day truck rental for our troubles. Yesterday, we were trying to get some errands done for Dylan's parents so that the two of them could actually get some time to see Montreal, but we ended up getting horribly lost for almost an hour. They are really not keen on you turning left on this here island. But last night we did go out for poutine; it made us feel like true Montreal-ers and it was pretty darn tasty. Today was even more thrilling - we went and tried to figure out how to stop getting 50$ (aren't I so french?) parking tickets, since most of our street is residential parking and we arrived here Friday night, too late to try and get that dealt with, even if we could. It is kinda hard to prove you are a resident when your car has B.C. plates and you have no proof that you do, in fact, live in the city you say you do. No rent agreement, no bills, no nothing. We failed at that endeavor, but a block away there is a bit of non-restricted parking.

Today is also Dylan's parents last day with us here. Sadness. They are leaving tonight, pretty much as soon as they get packed up. It will be weird not sharing a two bedroom apartment with four other people and a parrot anymore. Not that that is terribly important in the short term, since Dylan, Clair and I are leaving for Bonaroo tomorrow!! It should be amazingly awesome, I do deClair!