The Callinan Adventure Trail Journeys and Adventures in Canada and Abroad

Hi everybody!
Well we survived our first day on the road in our new car without incident and yes even from here I can hear all your scoffing, not so hard you say BUT yesterday was an unusual day for our new home city of Vancouver.  It snowed all through the night and continued to snow throughout the day, this great day we had chosen to go see about a car or truck as they call it.  I had researched my little heart out on our new laptop ( I luv it ) – wrote a few ? emails (thanks Andy) and found this ’93 black Ford Explorer 4x4 for sale on the net for just short of $2000 which seemed like a bargain.  So we had to get all the way south to Surrey, which by bus, sky-train and cab took us no more than an hour. 

We looked at the truck, which was in good knick – we were too scared to drive it – so got the guy to drive it around for us (also not keen to drive it as it had no insurance) gosh the Canadian accent gets a lot thicker when you get out of town.  So we loved the truck!!  & bought it We found the Canadian accent mixed with Indian was hard for us to decipher but we think in the end we got it registered with insurance which took forever and a lot of $$$ and went back to the truck – you don’t have to bring the vehicle to be inspected to get registered,  no roadworthy… but it must have Aircare which is a strict emissions testing thing they have here.

So by the time we were driving home – we got the guy to back it out of the driveway – there had been a whole day of snow laid down on the roads and we were just hitting peak hour….  All in all a bad day to be driving a new car, on the wrong side of the road, in dangerous conditions with millions of other drivers.  It took us about four hours to get home, the first hour we fishtailed all over the road, slid out to the side every time we stopped and almost lost it a number of times before Aidan got a feel for the car.  Lucky for the new tyres and 4x4!!  We moved 600m in that hour and had to pass many vehicles stopped, turned around, and in accidents.  On one of the bridges into town there was a 29 car pile up and many other bridges were out due to semi-trailers losing traction on very icey  inclines. What a nightmare! its kinda scary to see cars all around losing it in the slush, sliding sideways towards you or worse backwards into you But we got home safely and are spending the day inside today to recouperate.  Gosh if only we weren’t so lazy the day before, we could have avoided all this.