{"id":35704,"date":"2017-04-20T23:13:03","date_gmt":"2017-04-21T03:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=35704"},"modified":"2017-04-20T23:13:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-21T03:13:03","slug":"saskatchewan-stopover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/saskatchewan-stopover\/","title":{"rendered":"Saskatchewan Stopover"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Approaching Regina’s airport, I got my first glimpse of my beloved coulees.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019m home at Haven, \u201cliving off the land with Charles and Caroline\u201d (that\u2019s what they told me to tell you).<\/p>\n

The first part of April has been about racking up as many billable hours as possible. I haven\u2019t had much leisure time and haven\u2019t been in the mood to blog. I\u2019ll pick it up again as I head south and I do have a bunch of drafts in the pipeline, but there just haven\u2019t been enough brain cells left at the end of the day to string together two sentences.<\/p>\n

So my parents came back from their holiday on Friday (the 14th) and on Tuesday (the 18th) I headed to Haven. I had an absolutely uneventful and pleasant flights with\u00a0Westjet, with a short layover in Winnipeg. It was a week where Air Canada and United Airlines were in the news a lot for being despicable to their customers so I want to publicly thank Westjet for reliably being the airline that gets me around without any drama and with smiling personnel who seem to love their job.<\/p>\n

Charles and Caroline were waiting for me in Regina when I landed on time at 5:23PM. We were at our hamlet just past 8PM. I\u2019m staying with them since Haven has no water, power, or internet, plus it\u2019ll be easier to pack if I\u2019m not trying to live and cook in my space.<\/p>\n

Wednesday morning, Charles and I went to Haven to see if we could start my truck. He reconnected the battery and it took only two tries for my Moya to roar to life, no boost needed! Haven itself was in fine shape, just more mouse poop and spider webs than I expected. The only thing of note is that I now have a proper street address rather than just a land description!<\/p>\n

It wound up being a pretty lazy day. I spent a few hours at home figuring out a plan of attack for packing, including reaching the conclusion that I\u2019m better off using cardboard boxes rather than Rubbermaid totes. I plan to unpack quite a bit even while housesitting because I\u2019ll be staying in the guest casita for six month and so it\u2019s not like all my things will spend the summer in cardboard boxes getting mouldy. This way, I don\u2019t have to buy new storage containers for Haven and I won\u2019t have a bunch of useless Rubbermaid totes to store in Mexico.<\/p>\n

I also made a call to schedule some service for Moya since she needed two new tires, an oil change, and a minor repair. They couldn\u2019t fit me in till Monday, which didn\u2019t work for me since I wanted to go to Moose Jaw to stretch Moya\u2019s legs. Plus,\u00a0I had to drive a certain distance and then have the wheels retorqued (the fact that Moose Jaw has a great all you can eat sushi restaurant is purely coincidental). The garage managed to fit me in today, Thursday, for the new tires and we put the rest to Monday.<\/p>\n

It was an early morning since I had a largish job to do before heading out in the afternoon to run errands with Caroline in Assiniboia and get the tires put on Moya. I got it done in the nick of time, but, of course, Google is not compatible with the crap internet here. I remembered at the last minute that Bing works well here and was able to do the research I needed to do to get the job sent off. I then headed out with Caroline, dropping her off for her appointment before going to the SGI office (DMV).<\/p>\n

There, I picked up the registration I\u2019d paid for by phone on Wednesday. Moya will be duly registered and insured for the next 28 days. After that, she will have a valid plate, but not be street legal in the US and Canada since the Mexico insurance will take over. I also had a new driver\u2019s license done since my current one expires next spring and I don\u2019t want to have to fly back here to renew it! I want to keep it active so that I don\u2019t have a gap in my Canadian driving history even if I end up getting a Mexican license as well. Slight hiccup, the new license won\u2019t come for two weeks and I\u2019m hoping to leave on Tuesday. So added to the list is trying to figure out how to DHL my license to M\u00e9rida. There\u2019s always something!<\/p>\n

I tested my new real address and their system took it, so it\u2019s legit! It\u2019ll be great to have a proper address on my driver\u2019s license now. It also means that people who wouldn\u2019t ship to me for lack of a street address would now. Actual unexpected progress. Getting an address was going to be my next fight\u2026<\/p>\n

The SGI stuff was quick so I went to the bank to drain my USD account to cover my meals on the way down. It\u2019s not much, but whatever I don\u2019t have to convert from CAD will be appreciated.<\/p>\n

I then picked Caroline up and we went for a nice lunch at the Greek restaurant where my immediate neighbour works as a server. It was lovely to catch up with her. After, I\u00a0left Caroline at the library to do the updates on her new Mac. I headed to the gas station to fill up and went next door to the home store to get house numbers for my property. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

It was then time to drop off the truck and I kicked myself for forgetting the laptop so I could do a post, but they wound up being too fast for me to do that anyway! I was able to start the post on my phone and upload a photo, though, so that\u2019s why you get a picture. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The tires weren\u2019t cheap, but now Moya has shoes I can trust to get me to M\u00e9rida. She\u2019s had enough service there for the mechanic to say that my road warrior might not be pretty, but he\u2019d bet that she\u2019ll get me there without incident, which was good news! I found she handled a lot better after the tire service.<\/p>\n

I picked up Caroline, we ran a few more errands for her, and then we headed home. She made us a lovely dinner (coquilles St. Jacques!) while I was on standby to run to the basement to pick up pantry items as needed. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So tomorrow will be a Moose Jaw run for a 300KM run to work out any of Moya\u2019s kinks in case I need the garage to look for anything else on Monday. I\u2019m also going to Bulk Barn to pick up spices.<\/p>\n

Saturday, I\u2019ll do a thrift store run to drop some stuff off and start packing. Sunday will be another packing day. Monday will be an Assiniboia day and then I should be able to leave on Tuesday. We shall see if that comes to pass since I still have a bunch of paperwork to sort out, including my bilingual inventory. But I prefer to aim for Tuesday as that\u2019s going to light a fire under my butt.<\/p>\n

But let me tell you, I wish I could stay home for a spell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m home at Haven, \u201cliving off the land with Charles and Caroline\u201d (that\u2019s what they told me to tell you). The first part of April has been about racking up as many billable hours as possible. I haven\u2019t had much leisure time and haven\u2019t been in the mood to blog. I\u2019ll pick it up again […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1053,632,810,4,811,719,813,635,718,808,807,3,812],"tags":[642,45],"class_list":["post-35704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-assiniboia","category-canada","category-chambly","category-haven","category-manitoba","category-montreal","category-moose-jaw","category-north-america","category-quebec","category-regina","category-saskatchewan","category-travel","category-winnipeg","tag-airports","tag-moving-to-mexico"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35704"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35707,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35704\/revisions\/35707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}