This evening three years ago was my last evening in Ottawa before heading cross-country. Surreal!
I have a post prepared to commemorate this anniversary, but I’m waiting for a few more pieces to fall into place before I publish it. Look for it later this week.
As to what I’m doing to celebrate, well, I’m working on the transcription file from hell. 🙂
Except for one practise I thought was frowned upon in developed nations (all I’m saying on that matter!), Alberta is going to be the cheapest province for driving costs.
When I hit the road in ’08, I was registered in Quebec. Yearly costs there:
-registration for Miranda: $650
-insurance for Miranda: $750
-registration for the toad: $250
-insurance for the toad: $1,500
-driver’s license: $50
Total: $3,200
I then moved to Yukon and my yearly costs there were:
-registration for Miranda: about $125
-insurance for Miranda: $750
-registration for the toad: about $70
-insurance for the toad: $1,500
-driver’s license: $5
Total: $2,450
Now, I haven’t crossed all the T’s for Alberta, but I’ve been promised that the insurance estimates are pretty firm:
-registration for Miranda: about $75
-insurance for Miranda: $750
-registration for the toad: about $75
-insurance for the toad: $630 (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
-driver’s license: $17
Total: $1,547
Notice the one constant, the cost for Miranda’s insurance! The Alberta broker I’m going with thinks the amount is outrageous. I still can’t believe it’s that cheap.
As a reminder, Miranda is insured by Aviva Elite, the only entity in this country to have a product specifically tailored to full-timers. Brokers might scratch their heads when you say you live full-time in an RV, but just send them off to Aviva who will cheerfully come up with a quote that will cover your rig (and then some), your contents, and give you a good amount of liability coverage.
Toad insurance is tough (they don’t like it when you take the car out of the province…), but you can travel freely with your rig. I’m not sure I’d have the strength to push on with the other challenges if I didn’t have these understanding folks at my back. When the worst happens and you have to claim a total loss of home and possessions, or you get sued by someone who trips on your stairs, lies and half-truths just won’t cut it. Aviva allows me to be fully open in disclosing my lifestyle so that I can get the right policy. I am very grateful to them.
(Psst, Aviva, do you need a spokesperson?!)
Whew, my brutal week came to an end at 3AM today! I wasn’t as diligent in keeping note of my working hours this week as I normally am, but the low estimate is that I put in 80 billable hours between all my various projects. It’s no wonder I’m wiped!
I have to say that the fliers have been a welcome break since my mother came since she loaded one of my external hard drives with audio books. She’s a big fan of them but I’d never tried them out before. I put one on my iPod and have been listening to a half dozen chapters or so in the three hours it takes to do one day’s worth of fliers. The time, well, flies by!
So the fliers have become a true escape from the daily grind and a treat rather than just one more thing I need to slog through after an exhausting day. Being outside and getting exercise just hasn’t been enough anymore to get me through them. I am absolutely in love with audio books, if not Parisian French, and even ordered myself an iPod case for strapping it to my arm for walking and running.
I’m now off to have a sushi breakfast, then catch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part Two. I was starting to despair that I was never going to get a chance to see it!
Then it’s off to Donna and Ken’s for some much needed socializing. This will be my first time traveling to Mossleigh on my own. I look forward to the nice long drive through the southern Alberta landscapes. This is quite possibly the most beautiful place I have ever lived.
Rarely in my life have I been as tired as I am tonight. It’s a bone deep kind of exhaustion brought on by an excess of work and worry. I’m presently getting exactly as much work as one person can possibly handle, but it’s too late to eliminate worries for June financial deadlines. I have a bill looming in exactly a week and I still have no idea how I’m going to tackle it. Monday is my deadline for transferring PayPal fees and their landing in my bank account in time for Friday, so hopefully a huge miracle will happen this weekend… I think I’ve done my share of hard work in the last two and a half months and have earned a miracle.
I’m therefore wondering how the heck I am managing to be so happily creative and productive these days.
I just landed a new transcription client whom I hope will help me solidify the base for my business. I’m putting a lot of energy into transcription, which I think I will do better with than translation, so I completely rewrote my professional website this week.
I’ve also renewed my interest, and hope, in affiliate marketing by trying out lens making at Squidoo. It’s fun, creative, and has introduced me to a whole new audience.
And somewhere in all of that, in stolen moments of time, I’ve somehow managed to learn how to read all 46 of the basic hiragana kana.
I transcribed from 4PM to midnight yesterday, barely slept a wink, transcribed from 8AM to 5PM today, and then went to deliver fliers for three hours. So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go collapse now. 🙂
I’m in this general area of Oregon because Thursday morning I am having a 150 watt solar panel installed by the RV solar experts AM Solar. Even before I had a rig, I knew that I wanted my solar system to be installed by them. I didn’t want to say too much about this because of the number of kerfuffles since I left Abbotsford five weeks ago, but now I really do believe this project is a go!
Once I have the solar panel, I won’t need to plug in every few nights. Even in this soggy climate, I’m confident that with proper electrical management this solar panel will mean a great deal of freedom for me. It’s a lot of money at one time, but it will pay for itself quickly.
As to why I am in Eugene specifically, it’s that I have friends who were able to put me up with a 15A connection and access to a spigot to top off my fresh water tank. I am so grateful to them!
Climate notwithstanding, I am really enjoying Eugene. It reminds a lot of Ottawa, actually, and the neighbourhood where I’m staying is not unlike the grittier half of Sandy Hill and the Byward Market where I lived and worked during my university days in the late ’90’s. I can walk to all the services I need and the variety of restaurants is staggering.
Here are a few pictures that I’ve taken during my walks about the neighbourhood:
coloured houses
close up of the coloured houses
palm tree!
crocuses
daffodil
mallards
Mr. and Mrs. Mallard out for a walk
I like how they have an observation platform jutting out over the Willamette
Willamette River
Willamette River
cinema across the river
the murky Willamette
various fowl on the Willamette River
My appointment with AM Solar, located in nearby Springfield, is on Thursday, first thing, and not wanting to overstay my welcome, I will be heading out of town after. I’d like to do five to seven days on the Oregon coast, then start to work my way back to Canada. I’d have two weeks to get there, so there would be no rush.
Now that I’ve experienced life in the States, I cannot view my RVing life in the same manner as before. Everything has changed. I’ve crunched the numbers and I can do six months here for the cost of four months in Canada, and that includes health and vehicle insurance and an internet set up.
So, what does this mean? Well, I need to start earning more money in Canada and spending as little of it there as I can!
And I’ve decided not to return to Yukon this summer.
Instead, I’m going to go into Alberta, even if it means facing the brutal dregs of winter. I simply cannot afford to set up residence in BC. I want to get over the border and find work as close to the Montana border as possible.
Up until a few months ago, I just didn’t see myself being able to work for someone else again, but now I would welcome a steady stream of income. I could get that in Yukon, of course, but it’ll cost $1,500 to get up there, money I’d rather spend exploring this part of the US that is new to me.
I’ve been growing increasingly bitter about Canadian rules that dictate how I can live and now I have something else to focus on: enthusiasm for learning what I can do to conform to US laws so as to be allowed the continued privilege of vacationing here.