Start Trip Planning

So, this past weekend we started getting things in order for our planned East Coast trip. The first thing we had to do was get Denise a rain suit. We all know what happens at the coast, or any coast for that matter, it rains. And with the crappy weather we had over the summer so far, a good rain suit is a must. We bought her a Rhino suit from Zdenos. I've been using one for a while and it does a great job. I've had mine on in pouring rain, and you stay bone dry in it.

We also got a carry case for our mini laptop. It will be the first time we travel with a laptop, and getting a good bag/case to protect it was needed. We have wireless internet, our email, and Skype on it, so we will be totally connected. I hate to admit it, but we turned into typical North American consumers.

I thought of putting some music on the laptop, so we have something to listen to when we lay in our tent at night, but decided against it. This is the part I'm proud of. We are going old school when it comes to having tunes. We decided to get an old fashioned fm/am radio. This way we can listen to local channels wherever we are, and get the local news and weather.

So off we went to quickly to buy a small fm/am radio. We all had them when we grew up. This should be an easy task. NOT. Every radio out there, has an alarm clock, can play CDs, mp3s, can connect to any household appliance, have docking stations for 7 ipods. And get this, they don't have speakers. You have to buy separate headphones.

Enough of my ranting. We eventually found a great little radio, that uses solar power (yey, we are all going green now), has a dynamo crank on the side to charge the batteries, and takes two penlight batteries as backup. I love it. I feel like a kid when I listen to it and have to tune it every so often to stay on the station.

We also started to work out the budget for the trip. It did not take us long to figure out that this will be an experiment in low budget traveling. And when I say low budget, I mean very low budget. Canada is a very expensive country to travel in, and during the peak summer season, everything is double in price. The gas price did not go as high as it usually does in summer. I think it is due to the depressed economy. But still, we plan to do a 5,000km round trip, and we do it with 2 bikes. So there is already a large chunk of change. Add accommodation, food, ferries and some spending money, and it adds up quickly. I am not going to bore you with the details. I hope that I can adequately describe our travel in the blog, so that you can get an idea of what such a trip in Canada is like and what it costs.

So tomorrow we are off to the Kawasaki dealership to get my bike's starter button problem fixed. There are 3 recalls on that model, so I hope when they do the recall work (for free), it will also fix the starter button problem. Only time will tell how much this might cost.
Our nearest Kawasaki dealership is in Woodstock, about 80km from here. So Denise is going with me. As you might remember, I need somebody to help me push start the bike, and I'm not good on counting on the kindness of strangers to help me out.
The dealer estimates the work will take about 2 hours, so it will give us some time to explore Woodstock.

We still have lots of things to do before the trip, but I will write about it when we do it.