My First Trip to Halifax....

Or, what are we doing in Dartmoth? Aren’t we are supposed to be in Halifax? Or, wait a minute, what is my philosophy for living and why did I move to Canada? Holy Cow!

-By Nancy Grimes

Realizing I would not be prepared for the winter riding season, I quickly came to the conclusion I needed to prepare for the colder months with a heavier riding coat, insulated paddock boots, and warm breeches. Our local tack store did not carry what I sought, so I thought “hey, perfect time for a trip to Halifax”. They have a couple of fairly large tack stores, and even more important, they have a Starbucks. It has been since we left the U.S. since I have had Starbucks and I have gone through serious withdrawals. How could I possibly go wrong, getting to see Nova Scotia for the first time, visiting two tack stores, and getting a Starbucks fix. It just doesn’t get a whole lot better than that.

Yesterday was the planned launch date, so in the Suburban, with a full tank of gas, and along with my friend Shelley McLellan, the adventure began. Speaking of full tank – I stopped at the gas station just down the street from where we live and the nice man who works there, whom I have chatted with on numerous occasions, was there yesterday morning when I fueled for the trip. I explained that it was an exciting day because I was making my first trip to Halifax. “Oh, Halifax” he said, “yes, easy to get to, straight forward, piece of cake.” I should have known at that point that the trip was jinxed. It was destined at that moment to NOT be easy to get to, NOT be straight forward, and NOT be a piece of cake.

Now, as most of you know, Gil and I just got a Chevy Aveo for the primary reason that it gets great gas mileage. I was going to take that since Halifax is about 4 hours from us, but Gil thought it would be better to take the Suburban, even with the lousy gas mileage, because we have On Star, so if I get lost, I can call On Star and get directions. Better than On Star, however, is our Garmin, which was a lovely and extremely useful gift from Alli and Jesse before we left from Texas to come to PEI. However, we discovered while stopping over in New Hampshire at Alli and Jesse’s that even though Alli got the disk and loaded the Canada info on the Garmin, it was in fact, not there. So, Gil spoke with the Garmin folks and finally figured out Alli had been given the wrong disk, and we needed another one. The disk had just made it to Katy G’s (Gil’s mom) in Midland, but alas it had not yet made it to PEI. So, the next best thing… On Star. Right.

In addition to the On Star backup, I had also Googled the address of the first tack store we were heading to and got a nice set of directions, or so I thought. We headed out, directions in hand, south to Nova Scotia. All went well for over ¾ of the trip as there weren’t many turns onto different roads and there is a whole lot of nothing after crossing the Confederation Bridge which is the link between PEI and New Brunswick. Once we were into Nova Scotia and we got to where civilization started, that is where our troubles began.

Now, let me digress for a second to give you a couple of pieces of information that should give you great insight (assuming you have that to begin with – if you don’t, sorry, I can’t help you there) into what was to follow. I have been here, what, for 2 months and Shelley has been here 7 months, having moved from British Columbia, and while at least she is from Canada, if you are unfamiliar with Canadian geography, she is from the other side of Canada. Neither of us had been to Nova Scotia. The second piece of information that is helpful to know that I am an INTJ and Shelley is an ENTP. Anyone at this point wondering why I am using random letters in the alphabet to describe Shelley and myself, might want to click on the link I will provide that talks about Myers Briggs Personality Types.

Okay, so we are going along rather well, headed into what was obviously a city, and we thought we were headed into Halifax. Wrong. It was so simple, we were supposed to be looking for 102 South and just a bit down 102 South, we were to take exit 4B. Not complicated. We came to a biforcation in the freeway which had a sign above each choice – 102. That’s it. Not 102, south, north, up, or down. Just 102. Crap. So we pretty much did the ennie minnie minney mo thing, and chose left. After being fully committed to the left fork in the road, we saw a sign way down on the road that was the right side of the biforcation – Halifax. Shit, shit, shit. Why did it say Halifax down there, we were looking at a big downtown area in front of us which had to be Halifax, but here were NO SIGNS to let us know where the hell we were. As we were driving, we were looking at the exit numbers… 7, 6, 5 … excellent, 4 should be next. Yeah, it went from 5 to 12, to 13, and back to 12. Oh my God, where is 4, and where are we?

Naturally, I said we should just take an exit, turn round, and get back to the part of the freeway that biforcated and go right instead of left. So, that is what we did. This is where our 2 hour nightmare began. I wish I could tell you everwhere we went. We ended up on strangly laid out and winding roads that didn’t lead back to where we thought and when we got back to a “freeway”, it was not the original one we were on. What the heck freeway is this? Well, at least it is a freeway, so that had to be good. We had no idea what freeway we were on and there wasn’t an over abundance of signs to inform you of your precise location, but the exit numbers looked promising, so we decicded to go with it. We still couldn’t find 4B and took more exits and got even more lost, if that is possible.

By this time, we had been like a rat in a maze, making wrong choices that led to places we obviously didn’t want to go, and had completed drastic and dangerous freeway manovers which included instantaneously cutting across 3 or 4 lanes of traffic in order to take a direction Shelley would point to and say “oh quick, I think we need to be over there, punch it and I think you can make it”, and in the process cutting off several Nova Scotians, but making it!! I figured they would see the Texas plates (if their eyes could follow that quickly) and figure if my plates said Texas and I was in Nova Scotia, I must be really lost.

Now this is where the Myers Briggs personality types come in handy. What would you suppose was happening in the Suburban? Shelley was laughing saying it was a great adventure, I was not. My stress level was way way over the top, my blood pressure was close behind, and my brain was close to the melting point. I love adventure as well as the next, but CONTROLLED adventure, PLANNED adventure. The last 2 hours most definitely did not fall into either category.

So, we still didn’t have a frekin’ clue as to where we were, so finally I said we are pulling over and we are calling the tack shop. Shelley called the store, and when she described, as best as she could, where we were, they said “ooooooh, yeah, you guys are really lost, you are in Dartmoth”. Dartmoth??? Yes, as it turns out, we had been doing the rat in a maze thing in Dartmoth which is about 10 miles from Halifax. They gave us directions to the store and we headed out again. We managed to make it out of Dartmoth and then we got lost again.

So, we stopped again to call the tack store for further clarification and I thought I should probablycall Gil. I told him I would call when we made it to Halifax which should have been around 1:00 and it was now almost 3:00. When I reached Gil and explained (with hand gestures and explatives!) the situation of how lost we had been for the last 2 hours, he said, did you call On Star? Isn’t that the reason you took that vehicle? Oh… yeah… I completely forgot about On Star. Shah. So, I called On Star and got directions to the tack store and we made it there without further difficulties. Thank you Jesus, or maybe I should say thank you Gil.

We had a nice time shopping in the Greenhawk tack store and I found some of the winter things I needed, including a medium weight blanket for Ophelia. Now, by this point my brain was pretty much full, actually over full, when it came to anything new, different, complicated, or difficult. Not to mention my blood sugar was getting low, so my ability to focus and concentrate was quickly deminishing. They had to order the blanket for Ophelia, as they didn’t have her size in stock. The lady asked me if, when the blanket came in, I wanted them to put it on the bus? On what? Put the blanket on the what? The bus? I am pretty sure I was looking at her like I have been freshly pithed for at least a full 60 seconds. Finally, I managed to jump start my brain enough to ask – “what on earth are you talking about?” Apparently, it is common here to purchase things in Halifax and put them “on the bus” to be brought down to either Charlottetown or Summerside rather than mail them. Alright.

So, we actally made it from Greenhawk to the other tack store, but not without 3 stops to clarify directions, and then on to the Starbucks. Heavenly. Never was a Starbucks so welcome, so needed. I got the largest size of my ol’ standby – peppermint, java chip, frapachino and got 2 bags of breakfast blend ground for french press for Gil. We left the Starbucks, filled up the Suburban, and… before we pulled out of the parking lot... called On Star for directions home.

We made it back to Wildwind without a hitch and our adventure was over. I make buckets of moistened beet pulp/alfalfa cubes for the horses whenever I go out and so I had 3 buckets in the back of the Suburban to give them when we got back that evening. So, I gave them their treats, kissed noses and left for 83 Lewis Road.

I was thinking on the way home… yes, I was extremely tired, yes, the day definitely had its stressful moments… but secretly, I had a great time, a great adventure, and would I do it any different if I could? I think experiences like these where most everything is new and unfamiliar, even with how difficult they can be, are so good for us, and beneath it all – they are exciting. I think in some respects it is the way we experienced things as a child. When you are a child, you have had so few experiences, that most everything is a new experience, most everything is a stretch (to some degree), and it is faciniting and exciting. When you are an adult, you have gained lots of knowledge and had many experiences (hence the phrase “been there, done that, got the t-shirt”) so that fewer and fewer things are truly new, and by extension, they lack this type of new experience excitement.

Stepping completely out of what you know, is like stepping back in time and becoming that child again, and not only taking great joy and excitement from the newness of things, but in addition allowing our imaginations to venture freely into fantastic, exciting, and unknown relms creating even more worlds in which to delve experiencing all there is to experience. I love J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, and if I were a kid at this point, I guarantee I would have my Hermoine Granger wand in my pocket everwhere I went. But let’s face it, it just doesn’t look cool for a 46 year old woman to be going about the house with a Hermine Granger wand at the ready! I think many of us miss all these aspects of being a child and we just don’t realize it. So, as an adult, we have to go about it differently. I would like to say, though, that those of you with children are lucky because you can have the cool toys and play with them under the auspice of “playing with your kids”. Right.

As many differences as we have, I think that a major commonality that Gil and I share is the love of experiencing life like that, from the perspective of a child – where you are experiencing all aspects of living for the first time, fully and completely, not just glossing over the day taking in a quarter of what you experience because you’ve seen it so many times, your senses natually filter out a majority of what is there before you. I think that is ultimately why we made the move we did and I can say, without a doubt, we have not been disapointed. This is not to say, however, that you have to move away to be able to live life in this way. I think it is easier for obvious reasons, but there is no reason you can’t do it from where you are, it is just harder to reprogam your senses to stop glossing over and start paying attention and experiencing life fully and completely!

Having said all that, you must know that this experience was not easy for me. This was a “stretch skill”, as it were, for me. Gil will be the first to tell you, that I would have NEVER ventured out to Halifax without him even a year ago and yesterday I did it. Wow! As uncomfortable as it is, if you don’t stretch, you really miss out on the vast and rich rewards those experiences offer. Would I trade this Halifax experience for a nice serene day of safely sitting on my front porch back in Texas in a rocking chair where I know what there is to know and have things well within control? Or, would I go backward in time, say three rotations of the time turner, to relive the day so that I had precise directions and went directly there without a hitch?


Not on your Hermoine Granger wand!!