Well, at least the views were nice...

We're on the road folks. Right now, we're in a rainy Vancouver and loving the fact that the only snow around is on Mountain tops, the grass is still very green, and it's +8 instead of -8.

We left Edmonton around 5 pm on Wednesday and drove 9 torturously slow hours through the dark, windy, rainy, snowy mountains to get to Kamloops where we bedded down for the night. I drove us as far as Jasper, but halfway between Edson and Hinton, we ran into heavy winds, making for a super fun time of keeping our itty bitty Toyota Echo on the road. Then of course, there's the worry of animals on the road. I'm extra-paranoid about that one since the afternoon receptionist at work was recently in a deer/vehicle accident which totalled both the deer and her van, and that was only on the outskirts of Edmonton. There are far more critters in Jasper National Park to worry about. Believe me, if we had anything larger then a squirrel at 90 km/h in our Echo, the animal would WIN.

Rod took over in Jasper, and first had to carefully navigate that fun mountain pass. After that, we were forced to detour through the backwoods of BC for a while because of an accident on the highway, which was vaguely reminiscent of a bad 70's suspense horror flick..."Honey, if some psychopathic killer jumps out at us on this backwoods road and tears us to little bits, I'm never speaking to you again." Though I'm sure that from Rod's perspective, if he'd given it much more thought then "eh, detour", he would've been more likely to see it as akin to an opening scene for an X-files episode..."Scully, how else do you explain the complete disappearance of two healthy, well-adjusted adults? I'm telling you, the aliens forced the detour to abduct those people for some evil purpose!" /end scene.

Anyways, we bedded down in Kamloops at the Days Inn, and just 8 short hours later, we were up and on the road again. The wind kept up it's little cat-and-mouse game with our car, and brought it's friends Rain, Fog, and Snow to join in the fun. When I'm not driving, I'm not in control, which is bad, so I ended up yelling at Rod a lot about going too fast for the road conditions. I'm generally acknowledged to be the worst, most careless drive in our circle of friends, but even I wouldn't go flying down a wet, foggy, curvy, precariously placed mountain road filled with large trucks at 130 kph, thank you very much Mr. Chudyk. It has nothing to do with sounding like your mother, you jerk, and everything to do with actually wanting to live. Jerk.

Anyways, we got into Vancouver, and I went over to the SFU Harbour campus to enquire into the Master's Program I'm considering applying for. The news was not favourable. It's a fairly new program, so it's size is limited, and because of this, it's insane-O competitive to get into, so looks like my "Almost a B" grades ain't going to cut it. Then I asked about funding, and well, I might as well just sell a kidney to get the money. (Seriously, anyone need a good working kidney? I can let you have one of Rod's for $15,000. What? You didn't actually expect I'd sell one of mine, did you? C'mon! I mean, if I have to sell one of my own, I'll be too ill to start school on time! Think people, it's a planning issue! Besides, I'll hang on to my premium kidneys until it's time for us to buy a house or something.) There's not much in the way of bursaries, scholarships, etc. So this trip was super educational. I've learned that I'm too poor and lazy for Grad School, but I've got this nagging need to be something better then I am currently, supplemented by a nagging compulsion to always be right, so who better to bitchslap the world into implementing common sense International Health policies. so, what to do.

Well, today, Rememberance Day, we'll solemnly remember how fortunate we are that others in this world fought and died in terrible to preserve my right to bitch and complain; we'll go shopping; and we'll pig out on expensive gourmet room service breakfasts.

We leave tomorrow sometime, in anticipation of being back in Edmonton in the evening, though maybe this time we'll take the TransCanada to Lake Louise and go north from there instead. Wouldn't want to tempt fate again with another detour through BC's backroads..."Honey, that psychopathic alien wants to abduct us and tear us to shreds for your kidney, I'm sooooo mad at you now."