Sugar Rush

My feet hurt. Two and a half hours of walking the streets with the kids scoring a huge mound of loot. Cam bailed after about an hour, he was the lucky/clever one.We made quite a haul, enough junk food to last until Christmas at least. Jazz dressed as a Midnight Fairy, Abs a Teen Witch, Cam as a Cheetah and I was the evil Foo Man Chew, nice!Not a long post tonight, I need a beer, but there are some photos of our evening on Flickr, thanks to my buddy Garry for most of them as I didn't have a still camera. Happy Halloween!

Andy, out.

Cap'n Cam, scourge of the Seven Seas

We are great parents, I don't think I'm overstating it, we rock. Sure Cam's birthday party was a little later than his actual birthday (31 days but whose counting?) but once again, as we did for the girls, we went all out. A pirate theme was settled on and Cam and I dressed for the part as seven of his mates rolled up for three hours of scurvy-free fun. The obsticle course in the basement, followed by a search for buried treasure worked out. Unfortunately the treasure was buried in a huge box filled with 3 cubic metres of bean-bag-balls (my bright idea) and of course the 5-yo's thought it was more fun to throw this than to actually find the loot.One incredible mess later and it was time for sinking some battle ships. The ships, made from foam with paper sails, were the targets for the 50 of so water balloons that we filled (that was fun I can tell you). The weather was a little on the cold side so we did battle in the garage which still contains some of the debris, safe to say that the kids didn't leave any foe on the battlefield, and it took a day to dry the garage out again [grin].Jo out-did herself on the cake front with a sandcastle creation made from cookies-and-cream icecream and crushed buscuits for the required 'sand' effect, Cap'n Jack Sparrow making an appearance on top for good measure. Keeping those kids amused for 3 hours was a real treat, especially after we had handed out foam swords for everyone. At one point I think every kid was trying to hit me as hard as possible at the same time, and they weren't pulling any punches, I tried hard not to cry.Jo and I are glad that our birthday season is now over having organised three fairly complex affairs this year. I'm thinking Macca's next year... Oh and just to make our Saturday complete we then dragged the whole family off to Toronto to help celebrate Rishahb's 1st birthday. Ram and Aruna put on a great night out at The Host, a fantastic Indian restaurant in trendy Yorkville. The kids loved the food and the SpongeBob pinyata, photos posted on Flickr.

Horror on the Streets

We really miss out in Australia, no houses decked in spider webs, no front lawns dug up like graveyards, no witches splattered on the front of 4WD's, no laughing groups of kids fancy dressed up to the nines... no halloween. Our second fright night is almost upon us and the kids are ready to go. The weather is going to be problematic, today is nice, crisp but sunny, but tomorrow is threatening late rain so the kids might be rugged up over their outfits. I'm planning on walking them around the neighbourhood this year and I have a suitable costume planned myself, hopefully I can freak some kids out while Jo mans our front door and keeps the seething hordes of candy monsters at bay. I carved our pumpkins a week ago and I stuffed them up. In trying to be really detailed I hollowed them both out too much, making the wall too thin, and although the level of detail was outstanding the pumpkin wall shriveled overnight and now you can't make out what the heck they are, bummer. So I have to carve two more tonight, it's a labourious process but pretty good fun. Here's a link to a pumpkin template website, some of these are really cool and I've used two of these myself. I don't know what they call the species of pumpkin that's used here, it's very different from the classic style we get at home, not much flesh inside to make soup (or pie) with and much rounder rather than our squat versions. Anyway let the horror begin! Trick or Treat!
Above is our creation, the PatchMaster...

Andy, out.

We're gunna be a part of it...

As usual currently stumped for music to use in the recent holiday video, but in searching I came across a cool remix of the Cult's She Sells Sanctuary and I just had to use it. So I recut the mix from 6 minutes down to just over 2 (the Rockhard Remix I call it [grin]) and used the video we took in New York last July. Hope you like it. YouTube below, if you're after better quality scroll down the page and download the larger MPEG4 version on the right.So back to music, I'm after a track that says 'RoadTrip' and is pretty rocky. If you have any suggestions leave a comment by clicking below, you don't need to register or login to do it.

Andy, out.

A Ship's smoke on the Horizon

That was brutal. Brutal but worthwhile. We left Baddeck in Nova Scotia yesterday at 5:30am and planned to travel to Marlyborough in Massachusetts, about 12 hours away. Well it got to around 3pm and I asked Jo if we should just keep going... and she, like me, was caught in the gravitational pull of getting home. So we cancelled our hotel and decided to just drive all the way back home in one hit.We arrived home last night at about 2:20am, 21 hours after leaving Nova Scotia, having driven over 2,000 klics through New Brunswick, Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York state. The kids were outstanding. The weather was not. After leaving Maine we ate dinner at a dodgy Chinese resturant (dodgy to look at, great food) and as we drove back onto the interstate the rain and wind hit really hard. I'd just taken over driving from Jo, who had dealt with some hairy traffic coming through southern Maine and New Hampshire, and had to overcome some seriously harsh conditions for the next couple of hours. The number of trucks hammering along at breakneck speed added to the excitement of not really being able to see and travelling at over 70mph. I guess after our trip to Ottawa in the ice storm last winter we can drive through anything, maybe we could drve home to Australia... need to wind the windows up. Anyway we survived and hit our own beds happy to be home after a fantastic turbo trip of the north eastern US and Atlantic Canada. We'll put the last photos up shortly and I'm downloading the video to you'll all have to suffer through another video clip really soon now :-).

So I need to relate the last few days of our trip. We crossed over the Confederation Bridge (at 13k's the longest in the world over frozen waters) onto Prince Edward Island and stayed two nights in Summerside. We needed the extended stay to recharge a little. Still popped out to Cavendish to see the house that inspired Anne of Green Gables and had a nice walk through the Haunted Wood nearby. I spent a few hours in the pub, had a couple of nice local beers and watched Texas thrash Baylor Uni (63-31)in an ultra high scoring game of college football. Next day we travelled 90 minutes along PEI to Wood Islands to catch the ferry over to Nova Scotia. We could have taken the bridge back ($40.50 is the toll!) but the ferry was a nice way to do it too. We rolled the car on and settled back for a lesuirely cruise over to Pictou in Nova Scotia. A few hours later and we were on Cape Breton Island in northern NS and settled into our loft for the evening. Next day we rose and left a little late but set off on our circuit of the Cabot Trail. It's a fairly rugged coastal route like the Great Ocean Road home in Victoria, the 300km road cuts through the cliffs of the Cape Breton National Park. We stopped and did a 2.5 hour walk along the Skyline hikiong trail and were lucky enough to see two moose, a bull (who only really showed us his huge antlers as he was sitting in long grass) and a cow who was browsing for food. Some hikers we had seen earlier had warned us about the moose who can be very agressive, especially the bulls as it is rutting season and they just want to pick fights like boguns at the Burvale. This freaked our two girls out a little and we had to really work hard to encourage them to continue the walk after our brief close encounter. As it turned out we didn't see any other moose, and appeared to be pretty lucky as everyone else we bumped into didn't see any at all. The view from the boardwalk at the end of the trail was pretty awesome, check out the 180 degree panoramic shot below, click to zoom.Speaking of which we've taken quite a few panoramas and I haven't uploaded them before, you can see them here if you're interested, some are pretty decent, be warned some are pretty big. We had hot dogs and fries on a beach and then wound our way back to the loft where an early night was on the cards, we cooked spagetti and watched a movie. And that was the trip, a total of 5240 k's in 11 days, 7 hotels, 4 billion calories in food, 8 very long walks, several chimpmunks, a witch trial, one very used iPod, 2 hours of video, 241 digital photos... 5 very tired Stiffies. Fall in north eastern america is a sight to see.

Andy, out.

Rocks and Mud

Just a quick post this time. We've arrived on Prince Edward Island (PEI), after a trip over the thirteen kilometer Confederation bridge that links it with mainland New Brunswick. Yesterday we visited the Hopewell Rocks, unusual formations carved by the extreme tides in the Bay of Fundy. Took heaps of photos, probably too many :-). The tides push a heap of mud around and Cam couldn't resist stomping around in it, we still have to finish cleaning his runners. Also met an Aussie couple and their kids who are on an extended holiday motorhoming it across Canada. It was nice to have a long chat as both our families took the long walk along the rocky beach. We're staying on PEI for two nights which is a nice change after heaps of single night stops and today might pop on over to the site that insprired Anne of Green Gables (the author was a PEI native). Tomorrow we take a ferry from Wood Islands down the coast and over to Nova Scotia.

Maine-ly fine

Once again here I am, connected to wireless internet, this time at the Holiday Inn in the city of Saint John in the Canadian province of New Brunswick. Sitting by the pool actually as the kids needed a swim after yet another day of driving and then an hour or so of school work. We popped over the border back into Canada this afternoon from northern Maine. Sadly the weather has turned and it rained this morning as we left Ellsworth, the forecast isn't much better for the next few days as we continue to head north. Maine was great, the fall colours and little New England towns were all we could have hoped for, heaps of white weather-board houses and little white churches with those distinctive steeples. During our stay at the B&B the kids all developed a taste for chess, playing on the main sitting area for a few hours.We parted our Naples B&B on Tuesday morning and headed for the coast. We drove to Brunswick and then followed the coast north on Highway 1. After a winding drive down a peninsula we came across the remains of Fort Popham, built from granite during the Civil War, and smelt something we haven't smelled for a long time... sea air. Ontario is not completely land locked but unless you drive a long way north of Toronto to Hudson Bay you wont see the ocean, the great lakes are of course fresh water (and pollution). So it was nice to see the Atlantic Ocean.We continued north to the Acadia National Park and stopped at Echo Lake where we took a pretty hairy walk up a rocky trail. We stopped short of the summit on reaching a steel ladder, the trail was getting too dangerous for the kids. Luckily the walk through a steep rock fall was thrill enough for them (and us) and we managed a good long walk to shake off the long drive.We stopped in Bar Harbour for dinner and I wished that I'd planned for us to stay there the night, it's like South Yarra at Philip Island, really nice place. Dinner was more clam chowder and lobster bisque, I had some buffalo shrimp too, awesome, the kids were over seafood and stuck to the pasta for a change. A short drive back to Ellsworth, further inland, and we stopped at the Comfort Inn for the night. we were supposed to have ajoining rooms but they couldn't find the key to the door so we left the kids in their own room and gave them our room phone number in case of emergency, Jo and I enjoyed a rare night of relative peace. Woke to driving rain this morning and got moving after a far more successful continental breakfast than the last one. Luckily the rain stopped when we did at Schoodic Point and we jumped out of the car and into a hard wind to watch the Atlantic waves smash against the rocky shoreline. Our search for a cute costal village, complete with fish and chips and quaint antique shops failed pretty badly. We mostly found badly run down coastly villages that had seen better days and the antique shops were mostly of the junk variety. We didn't stick around long and decided that the best idea was to get to the border quickly, have a late lunch and then push on to Saint John, our stop for tonight. Lunch was at Calais on the US side of the border and we quickly jumped back into Canada where Jo and I immediately stopped at Timmies for a coffee. Shortly after entering Canada the fog and mist rolled in and we drove the 100 of so K's to Saint John with about 100m visibility. Tomorrow we plan to head up the Bay of Fundy to Hopewell Rocks where the highest tides in the world are, the difference between high and low tide is usually 12 metres and can be as much as 16m. Low tide is at 11:40 in the morning so hopefully we can walk out to and around the rocks which are uniquely carved by the massive tides. Plenty of new photos on the site.

Andy, out.

Which Witch is Which?

This is pretty nice. I'm sitting on an antique sofa in the main sitting room of our B&B, Inn on the Lake in Naples, Maine. This is the most expensive nights accomodation on the whole trip and you can see where the money goes. It's an amazing house, four stories tall, years old and beautifully restored and decorated. Jo and I have a huge four poster bed, the little guy is in the ajoined sitting room on the couch and the girls have their own room with two single beds. Anyway we left Boston around 9am on Monday morning and set off on the short 30k journey to Salem. I'm sure you know the story, 1692, a hard winter and young girls driven perhaps by boredom or jealously or maybe even fermented wheat flour induced LSD halicinations.Despite the tribute to Samantha Stephens/Elizabeth Montgomery, of Bewitched (above), most of the witchery in Salem is a serious business. The Salem witch trials lasted 13 months and left 14 women and 5 men hanged for witchcraft. Today Salem is still a fairly small town only a short drive north of Boston and naturally it relies on it's colourful past to support it's fairly mundane present. The number of witch museums, shows, displays, t-shirts etc, is staggering. Sadly most of these are variations of 'piss-weak world' and really not worth the hard-earned. We went into the Witch Dungeon thinking it was a different show (one we had heard was good) and were pretty disapointed, it was pretty crappy. Luckily later in the day we found the show we were after, where we took part in a pre-trial hearing and could actually question the actors who would impro the answers.The cast was excellent and Abbie asked a few questions, in the end we acquited the accused, an outcome that surprisingly only happens in about half the performances even in these modern, and apparently enlightened, times. I think the highlight for the kids was 'Samanthas' shop, stacked to the rafters with awesome Halloween costumes, masks, toys and heaps of spooky stuff. We bought the girls new costumes, Jazz is to be a Night Fairy, Abs a witch crossed with Clueless, sort of a junior high wica. I even got something for myself, you'll have to wait for the Halloween pictures to find out what. In all it was a long day and we hit our motel around 6 pretty zonked. Chinese take out was the go and it was pretty good, the rooms were pretty average and the AC didn't work which was not great given that the day was a warm 26 or so and the evening no much cooler. After a fairly rough nights sleep, Jo's sore throat not improving, we packed up the Dodge and shleped across the road to the resturant that provided the continental breakfast included in our room rate (the motel had no food at all). The breakfast ended up being coffee, juice and some donuts and danishes, no toast or cereal for the kids and I was pretty annoyed that this was advertised as a continental breakfast, the motel will get a nasty phone call from me shortly (and perhaps a bad write up on TripAdvisor). Whatever, Salem didn't leave me with good vibes, glad we visited but happier that we were leaving.

From Salem we headed north this morning through a sliver of New Hampshire (not much coastline for NH) and quickly into Maine. 200k's later we were in Naples, our destination for the night, but before that I had a driving tour planned. Stocked up with sandwiches and cherry pies we headed off into the mountains of south western Maine. The fall colours are at their peak and honestly it's an amazing sight. There's nothing like it in Australia, perhaps you get a tiny taste of it in Kallista or Sassafras where there's a few introduced trees but here it's just forests of them as far as the eye can see, all blazing in yellow, orange and fiery reds.I'd hoped to get us a decent view from atop a ski resort chair lift but they weren't operating them despite us hearing that they were open, maybe only on the weekends... So we drove down the road a little and trespassed onto a lake shore property. There were three weekender-style lake shore houses at the end of a driveway, a nice sandy beach and fantastic long, large lake. I could just imagine how much fun the skating would be in winter, assuming you could move the likely 5 feet of snow of course. We headed north to Grafton Notch State Park and the kids had some fun at a few waterfalls, jumping over the rocks and generally glad to be out of the car. On the way back though the whole family had started to fade, Jo feeling pretty crappy with a possible cold on the way and so the amazing scenery through White Mountain was a little lost on my crew and we didn't stop. I got a bit of video of the road through White Mountain and I hope it comes out okay, of course it wont do it justice, frankly it's one of the most picturesque roads I've ever driven. Dinner was in the local Naples pub, they brew their own beer there and the dark Porter was sensational. Tomorrow it's on to Ellsworth and a more coastal journey as we plan to head further north through Maine before punching back into Canada into New Brunwich and Prince Edward Island by the end of the week.

Andy, out.

Beat in Beantown

Wow, how the heck did we survive the last 36 hours? An 820k drive from Toronto to Boston, then a harsh nights sleep (Jo with a sore throat and Cam with a nasty cough) and now here we are after walking back and forth through downtown Boston three times. The drive was actually pretty good, we left as planned just after 5am and made good time across New York state. Following the Interstate and then the Massechusetts Turnpike we hardly saw a single town, both sides of the freeway where mostly bordered in trees turning on their fall glory.We arrived in Boston after 2pm and after settling into our hotel the kids hit the pool for a dipo before dinner. My mate Ram had recommended Legal Seafoods for awesome New England cuisine and it was good stuff. Better yet it was across the road from the hotel so the walking distance was spot on for our pooped troop. We all had some clam chowder, and even Abs enjoyed it after initial fear. Jasmine had a 1 pound lobster to herself and finished the sucker before playing with the shell like some gruesome puppet :-). Cam has demanded popcorn shrimp at every meal since. Jo's crab cakes where decent, though perhaps not as good as the ones I had in Montreal. My stuffed shrimp was a disapointment, I should have had the lobster. Oh well we're headed for Maine so there's a lot more opportunities for seafood over the next two weeks.Boston is a great town, not a big city but there's a heap of history here. The American Revolution started in these streets and they celebrate it proudly. This is the town where the declaration of US independence was born, home to Paul Revere, Sam and John Adams, Benjamin Franklyn (yeah the guy with the kite, he had a hand in writting the Constitution). The war of independence, made inevidible by the Boston Tea Party, started with the battle at Bunkers Hill overlooking Boston harbour. It's a great town today, centered around the 42 acre Boston Common where we walked in the awesome sunshine today. A day that started off pretty cold actually and we shivered a little as we ate breakfast outside at Thornton's, none of us could stand to wait in line for a seat inside. Breakfast Burito, banana pancakes and Amareto-Vanilla French Toast later we were fueled up and ready to see all that Beantown had to offer. We walked down through Boston Common and took up a guided tour on the far side of the park. Cost about $40 for us all and worth every penny as the tour guide, dressed in full 1770's garb, gave his all in delivering the history of Boston as we walked the 'Freedom Trail'.The trail is a red brick or painted red line that wanders 2.5 miles through Boston and passes all the major historic sites along the way. Our tour lasted about 2 hours and covered about the first mile or so of the trail. One of the burial grounds had over 12,000 bodies planted in it and it was only about 1/2 an acre in size, they used to stack em in the old days... Ending the tour near Quincy Market the kids somehow found themselves hungry, after the size of breakfast I have no idea how but... So as they chowed down on a hot dog, or Boston Barker to be more precise, we were entertained by a street performer. Cam ended up volunteering to help and was a star of the show.Now it was time to head back across town to near where we had breakfast, we had tickets for the 3:30pm tour on the Boston Duck. The Duck's are WW2 amphibious vehicles converted into tourist buses. We enjoyed a guided tour of the city, a lot of the places we had already seen on foot, and for added excitement the DUWK (that's the real name of these beasties) hit the Charles River and we cruised through the water and got a unique view of Boston. As an extra treat all three kids had a turn driving the Duck for a few minutes.Sadly we didn't visit the memorial at Bunkers Hill, it was too far from downtown on a day where we asked the kids to walk a fair bit. And more walking was in store as we walked back across town again to the market and Durgins Park resturant for some genuine New England cooking.Wow! We all enjoyed our meal here, Cam had more clam chowder (pictured above), Jo a Shrimp Caesar and I had the Yankee Pot Roast (melt in the mouth beef). The place is a really genuine down-home eatery, no frills here just great New England comfort food and friendly service. The Boston Creme Pie lasted about 15 seconds. Anyway we're back in our room, kids bathed and ready for bed hopefully. We don't have to start really early tomorrow as the drive to Salem is less than an hour, but we only have tomorrow there and have to leave Tuesday morning for Maine so if we want to make the most of Salem we have to try to get away in good time, maybe by 9am. Mmmmm, must sleep. Heaps of photos on the site.

Andy, out.

Canadian Pie

I've been whinging about how summer's over and how it's getting cold, all the while secretly looking forward to a winter of skating and skiing fun. Today was an exception to some recent drab, overcast and cold days, a perfect autumn day with pure blue skies, golden sunshine and hardy a breathe of wind. It might be less than 10 degrees but when you're in the sun it's T-shirt weather.Jo and the kids had been invited to go apple picking at Chudleigh's Orchard in Milton by Aleks, one of her tennis buddies, and I tagged along for the ride. The kids had a ball riding around on the back of a tractor which stopped every so often to drop people at various points around a huge orchard, each stop offering a different apple variety. We picked some apples, but let's face it there more excitement in a haystack maze, petting zoo and huge playground that there is in simple manual labour.Safe to say that the kids had some fun and hopefully enough autumn air to tire them out a little, they have a long sit in the car tomorrow on the way to Boston. The kids should be pulling bits of hay out of their clothes, hair, ears etc for the next few days. We ended up quite a crowd with Aleks' friend Kim also along for the ride and Victoria and Brenden topping us off at a team of 12.It's about 900k's to Boston, similar to a Melbourne-Sydney trip, and we hope to leave around 5am to avoid a hold up at the border as we need to renew our US visas. I was a little worried a few weeks ago that autumn was coming quickly and that by the time we set off on our holiday all the leaves would be gone. But I think we'll be fine and with the weather looking like it's going to stay good into next week, at least until we leave the witches in Salem, we're looking forward to seeing Maine in all it's Fall glory. With luck we might post a few entries while we're on the road over the next two weeks so continue to stay tuned guys, cheers.

Andy, out.

Go Speed Racer

Holiday weekend beckons, it's ThanksGiving here. The girls had a school sports day today and both of them competed in cross-country for the school at a regional track meet. Jazz had a great result finishing 112th out of over 200 kids and Ab's blitzed the field finishing 10th over all and 1st for River Oaks Elementary. Fair to say that we're pretty happy with our girls after a short preparation.Tomorrow the kids have a day off and the plan is to go apple picking, Jo has the skinny on a place with a corn maze so hopefully that'll be a bit of fun before the road trip begins.We picked up our Dodge Caravan today, basically a Tarago, and we're packing for our trip east. Weather is looking good so far, around 20 in Boston for Sunday and so far no rain into next week, hope it stays that way.

Andy, out.

Autumn or Fall?

Fall is with us and seemingly pretty early this year. We arrived just over a year ago and we remember it being warmer and the leaves less colourful 12 months ago. The view from my window at work is pretty awesome as we look out over a ravine full of trees towards Toronto Airport. The word on the street is that we're in for another mild winter, although that doesn't mean no snow as snow mostly falls when the temp is 0 to -5 anyway. We wont be too disappointed if the temp doesn't hit -30 as long as the ponds freeze and it snows a lot. Public skating, which closes over the summer, has re-started so we'll dust off the skates soon and try to re-find our skills.This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving and Halloween is at the end of the month, the kids are planning their costumes and pumpkin carving tools are on sale at all the stores. It's a pity that we don't do Halloween back home, everyone really gets into the spirit over here and has a great time, we'll make sure we get some good photos of peoples houses, front yards and cars this year. I know the kids would love to bring the tradition back home with them but it's hard to do unless everyone in your neighbourhood gets into the spirit, maybe they can do a reverse Halloween and hand out the candy rather than collect it (did I say candy?). Oh and Jazz was on crossing duty at the school this week, a task only given to Grade 5 kids, our chick on guard below.Back on the winter sporting front we've been thinking about putting the kids into skiing lessons in the new year and just need to work at the total cost before we plunge in. We might be running out of time to decide as the classes fill up pretty quickly. There's a Friday evening class that goes for eight weeks and includes a lift ticket for the evening, the whole hill is fully lit so you can ski under lights every night. Then Jo and I can buy a weekday lift pass for the season and we can all ski together after the lesson (of course Jo and I will need some lessons too, we don't ski :-)). Cost is the main factor of course, as the lessons etc don't include equipment hire, but whatever the cost it's heaps cheaper than skiing in Australia so most likely we'll get with the program.

We have been sweating over getting our Canadian work and study permits renewed. When we originally applied in Australia we were granted 2 year permits but on arrival Canadian immigration, for reasons best known to themselves, only gave us 12 months so we've had to re-apply. The normal waiting period is 30 days but currently they are 60 days behind. With our existing permits expired in August we had been advised not to leave the country as there was no guarantee that we'd be allowed back in... a major hurdle for our up-coming holiday into the US for Boston, Maine and all points north-east. Luckily we received the new permits in the mail yesterday so we're good to go and plan to leave around 5am this Saturday and head south over the border on a 9 hour drive to Boston.

I watched the AFL Grand Final last Sunday and enjoyed every minute of it. It was great to hear the crowd roar and see the new Northern Stand, the G looks awesome. I can't wait to get back home and go to a game, hopefully the Bombers will get their act together next year. NHL Hockey is starting this weekend after a low key pre-season and the NFL is in full swing. Sadly I'm not watching as much football as I'd like but I am playing a fair bit of golf so I have to think about spending more time with Jo to compensate.

Has it really been just over a year? Time flys...

Andy, out.