I was back in Calgary after two days of decompress at a campground. It was time to finally sort out my moving mess into garbage, take, and store. The garbage was mostly taken care of, but I needed to work on what I was going to take with me for the next six months.
I had quickly thrown a bunch of stuff into the garage that I did not need for a quick camping trip. Things like extra food, camp chairs and tools had to be sorted out. I was not on a schedule this time. It was going to be work on the organization until I was done. I had some remaining business to finish before I left too. Shopping and voting, to be done.
The voting was done the day I got back; early voting for our municipal election. I happened to be near an early voting station, so I decided to walk over and vote. I was walking through what was my old hood growing up. Thirty years have changed things. The area is now home to a lot of first generation immigrants from the east. Businesses have changed to cater to that. Houses are a lot more run down than they used to be. It doesn’t feel like I’ve come home anymore. Now I’m visiting something that is not what I remember growing up. But things change, for the good and bad. There is a lot more choice of ethnic cuisine, small groceries have exotic foods to try, and phone cards can be had for cheap. The ethnic flavor adds spice, just not what the taste the old timers in the area are used to.
Now I have shopping and sorting to do. I’m renting my house out, and part of that is to get some materials purchased for renos. In these COVID times, ordering building materials can be a challenge and this turns out to not be an exception. Paint is not an issue but vinyl flooring stock is out at my local Home Depot. I helpfully get a list showing me the stock levels at all other stores. Not one store has enough flooring to cover my little thousand square foot house. This is not the norm – flooring is running low too these days. But I was leaning towards only getting half the flooring anyways, hopefully there will still be some left somewhere when we are ready for the other half.
The store with the half house stock gets a call with me wanting to order, pay and have flooring delivered. 25 boxes is more than I want to haul in the RV, not to mention load and unload. But there is a snag. I can’t order more than six boxes online due to supply shortages. I call the store. Oh, they can do the order, I just have to come in with my credit card in hand. What kind of stone age bullshit is this? “Security” is the answer I get, but then how about letting me order online? It seems Home Depot is actually interested in making it hard for me to spend my money.
Since I’m going to have to go to the store anyways, I might as well take the RV and pick up the vinyl myself – save 75 bucks delivery; enough to pay for the gas and then some. Then I can drop it off at the house and be done with that chore rather than having to verify delivery later. It is a pretty hefty load for an RV that is already close to its load limit. I empty out as much weight as I can quickly unload. The journey is mostly uneventful, other than being blocked in the delivery area from getting out by an asshole who decided one shopping bag of supplies was justification enough to park in the loading bay.
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| The fishing storage area |
Most of my storage was all chaos, but I had managed to get my fishing stuff all in one corner at least, a few weeks ago. I had moved this stuff over mostly on the suspicion I might be getting out of my house. So that part was easy – any fishing stuff not going with me would go over there. As for the rest, there was a lot of box opening and repacking to sort stuff out. Pretty much everything in the RV was gone over again to evaluate if I really needed to take it with me. The later packed boxes outside were all re-inspected for a few items needing to come with me I had missed in my quick pack on the last day.
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| Packed up and covered for the winter |
I get it all figured out eventually over several days and a few chores to break up the sorting monotony. I get to spend some time with my step-mom, who will be keeping a close watch over things while I’m gone. Just no dusting, leave the dust alone. My work eventually gets to the point of being 90% good. I’m not going to get it all right the first time out, so I call it done and let my step mom know tomorrow I will be gone. I spend my remaining day taking some DVDs out of cases and putting them into a binder to save some more weight and space, plus some bonus chores around the place to finish.
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| Last look at the packed garage |
The time comes to leave. I pull out of the garage for the last time this year, at least I don’t expect to be back this year! Surveying the scene in front of me, I know there is something in here I’ll want at some point but getting 90% of the way organized is the best I’m going to do at this point. There will be things I miss taking with me, and things I should have left behind. It will all work out good enough for this first winter of travel.
I’m off to Lethbridge to start – time to visit some old friends I have not been out to near enough for only being two hours away. I intend to camp a few days in their driveway and catch up on old times. Then off to BC, and the real camping starts!
