Springboard Dive onto The Rock

After leaving the lovely denizens of the BNR Collective House - and managing to remove most of our possessions to a non-moldy site of storage - we hugged, we hauled and we left.

With a hop to Ottawa, a skip to Halifax and a jump to St. John's we transported ourselves to Newfoundland. It was a bit of a shock - 35 degrees or something in Toronto, to a chilly 7 degrees in Newfoundland - I dug out that new sweater from the bottom of my backpack. And wished I'd brought a parka. Except that I wouldn't want to carry a parka. I don't want to carry anything. At the airport, we found that my pack weighed about 15 kg, and Mac's about 18 - and that didn't include the four carry on/computer bags/lego/snack sacks we seemed to have accumulated. I swear, Newfoundland is going to receive some presents from us - presents like crayons, novels, and heavy underwear because I simply won't be able to carry this much stuff. Of course one of the main problems is my 350 page book manuscript - that I've edited about half of. Once I finish those edits and send them off to my editing saviour, I can heave that baby into the Atlantic.

After a flight where Sidney was fascinated by the clouds - (btw- he's in a delightful mood - enthusiastic and carrying his own bag)  - we rocketed over Newfoundland. I was amazed by the look of the rock. One could really easily imagine the glaciers dragging themselves and the rocks over the landscape. Pitted with lakes and bogs. Fjords. Seriously - I really didn't know there were fjords here. I think we're going to see some. And puffins. I like puffins. Not just because they're called puffins. But I like that too.

As we arrived in St. John's a young couple leaned over from the seats behind us and told us they were hitching into town and wondered if we had a ride. While we couldn't help them with that, we did have the details on public transit - a hot commodity in these situations. And it turns out that they too, are entering the Cross Canada Amazing thingy we're doing. But they're hitching while we're Greyhounding it to Vancouver where they're planning on living for a while - writing, doing film work, photography. We took a 'launch' photo together, which I'll post tomorrow, and took the bus downtown. We've exchanged blog titles, and will stay in touch - I expect we'll see each other in Halifax, Wawa or something like that. They did say something like, they'd want to be like us when they're older. Which made me feel about a million years old. But I shook it off with the recognition that there's a reason I can tell hitching stories from the mid 1990s. We are old, we are cranky, and we can afford a family room at the hostel. Speaking of that, we found our hostel, and wandered the wrong streets for a while trying to find other humans. Its kind of quiet here. Eventually stumbled upon a lovely restaurant which blew our budget - http://gourmetpi.com/ and after watching some of BBC's Planet Earth (have you SEEN those lions take down an elephant!), we're crashing. It may be only 9:30 pm at home, but I'm exhausted. Its taken a hell of a long time to get here. But we're on our way.

BTW - one of the things I want to do is ask people the same question about the state of Canadian politics and economics as I cross the country. Something like "where do you see the next four years of a Harper majortity going?" Unfortunately so far, I've met someone from Edmonton, two kids from London Ontario, and one fellow from Egypt. I'll try harder tomorrow.

Over and out. Lesley