Merry Christmas From PEI

It’s Christmas Eve, Irving Berlin’s White Christmas is on the TV, snow is gently falling outside (making our own white Christmas), the furnace is piled high with logs, and I am putting the finishing touches on our yearly Christmas greeting. Our Christmas greetings come to you this year from the North Atlantic Island of lobster, potatoes, and ADL. ADL? ADL is the maker of the BEST milk, chocolate milk, butter, and cheese you can possibly imagine. Drinking a glass of their chocolate milk is like drinking a little slice of heaven (I just finished a glass!). Well, our greeting comes to you, as you know, from 83 Lewis Road, Union R.R. 1, Alberton, West Prince, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

We left the U.S. in August, leaving the dog days of summer in Central Texas (the day we left was 107 degrees with 100% humidity), and headed across the U.S. moving up the east coast. So, here we were, Gil and I, accompanied by 2 dogs, 1 cat, and 1 Lucy Bird, pulling our horse trailer filled with things we thought we would need until our household goods arrived, headed for Canada. Gil and I had never driven through the states lining the east coast so we were really looking forward to seeing the land. An added bonus, especially when traveling through the southern states, being in the land of really really good grits! Yummmm. The only part of the trip that truly sucked was going through Atlanta with a horse trailer, and we didn’t even go through at a rush hour time. Thank God Alli and Jesse gave us the wonderful gift of a GPS before leaving or the suck factor of Atlanta would have been significantly worse!

We stayed for a few days with Alli and Jesse in Swanzey, New Hampshire and the rest was greatly welcomed by us and the animals. We had a wonderful time with Alli and Jesse and got to spend some time watching Aaron, their 7 m/o son, being Aaron. He is a truly happy and delightful child. Even though this is their first and they have little parenting experience (7 months to be exact!), I told them they HAVE to be doing it right or he wouldn’t be so happy and well adjusted to life. He is a joy to be around. We had such a wonderful time seeing Keene (Swanzey is just a couple of blocks from there) and Walpole (where their family business is located). We brought sausage from Green’s Sausage House in Zabzkville with us and Gil made a huge pot of his gumbo. We had our usual trio of gumbo, baguette, and wine, accompanied by lots of wonderful conversation.

We crossed into Canada at the border crossing located in Houlton, Maine. We were prepared with a file box full of papers which were required to get us, the animals, and the car across the border and fully expected to spend hours going through papers and getting it all sorted. We were shocked and pleased that it was so quick and painless. Gil got his work visa and I got my Canadian papers and we were across the border in less than an hour (none of the documents we worked so long and hard to get in the U.S were asked for!). As we drove through New Brunswick headed to PEI, we looked at the scenery passing us in a different way than we looked at Canada all the times we had visited. This was our HOME now, and it makes you look at your surroundings quite differently.

The horses made it here about a week after we got here. There was a bit of difficulty getting them across the border. The transporter called me in a panic at midnight saying they weren’t going to let them across. We finally got everything worked out so the border agents understood why we were bringing them here and finally in the wee hours of the morning they made it across into Canada. When they made it to me they had a bit of a deer in the headlights look, but that is to be expected. They were on a transport from Texas to Maine for 3 full days without stopping, stayed over in Maine for 2 days, and then were on another transport for another 12 hours here.

Cowboy and Olivia have settled in and done well. I have been riding Cowboy and although it took him a bit of time to settle in and get back to where we were in Texas, he has been just awesome. In the past, when he traveled, a show was at the end, so he was in full (and I mean full with bigness and glory!) saddle seat mode. We finally got the dressage brain engaged again and he has been spectacular. I have been lunging and long lining Olivia since arriving, but haven’t ridden her yet. She has continued to be sound as can be and I have looked long and hard to find a driving trainer that I could continue lessons with and perhaps start Olivia driving. We attempted it once before with my trainer, Tom O’Carroll, in Texas, but she didn’t stay sound for it. Since then, we have had her on Naproxen, and she has stayed sound. The bad news is I can’t find a trainer. Most people on the island harness race which is, of course, not the same at all. I have, however, made a couple of friends who drive (not competitively) – carriage in the summer and sleigh in winter. So, I am going to get a bit of sleigh experience this winter. I am really excited about getting to sleigh this winter. The two horse experiences topping my list for PEI were riding on the beach and sleighing.


As most of you know, our Ophelia sustained a devastating injury on a back leg on Thanksgiving Day and the prognosis was extremely poor. It was felt by all that it would have caused her great suffering to attempt to fix it and in the end, we would have been putting off the inevitable. So, the decision was made and Gil was with her until the end. Of course, Ophelia was out of my mare, Olivia, and we were there at Dr. T’s when she was born. Alli took care of the farm while Gil and I spent every evening/night at Dr. T’s watching Olivia on the monitor, playing lots and lots of cards, until finally 3 weeks later, at 2 a.m., Ophelia was born. She would have been 3 years this January. This has been extremely difficult for both Gil and I, but especially Gil. He was bonded to her (and her to him); the way Olivia and I are bonded. It is so tragic and sad and we will miss her so much.

Gil started working on 01 September and is really enjoying small town medicine again. He sees patients at the clinic in O’Leary and also has some on-call time at the O’Leary Hospital. Of course, he has beat the “evidence-based medicine” drum since arriving and is now back to doing some teaching. He has just gotten a medical student who will be doing a one month rotation with him. Since he was a hospitalist at S&W the last 8 months or so before moving here, he wasn’t doing any teaching, so he is really enjoying having a student and teaching again.

There are lots of changes in medicine going on here though. For many reasons, they are consolidating services on the island and toward that end, they closed the ER and hospital (acute care beds) in Community Hospital O’Leary, where Gil works. Alberton’s hospital, which is 15 minutes from O’Leary (and closer to where we live), will serve as the local ER and in-patient hospital for acute care and when Gil is on call, he will work out of Alberton. All that sounds good, but we are not entirely convinced that Alberton’s ER/hospital will remain open either. It seems, what would make the most sense, is to have all ER and acute care in-patient in the 2 largest centers – Summerside and Charlottetown. Eventually the only services left in the small communities would be clinic/urgent care. These decisions and changes are very unpopular with the people of these communities, as all the individual communities want their own fully functional hospital/ER, so I imagine these changes are going to come piece-mill and slowly, but I think they are inevitable. So, this makes it difficult to know how to proceed with the horses.

Aside from helping a great deal with this kind of change, Gil is also doing here what he does everywhere he goes, seeing what needs to be changed to make patient care better and setting to work. Providence seems to have led him here for this reason, above all. There are many huge changes which are occurring here and change is something that is difficult for anyone, but it seems especially difficult for the good people of Prince County. The way they have done things in medicine for the past 50 years is being turned on its head and they are being catapulted into the 21st century of medical practice. In so many ways PEI is like the U.S. was in the 50’s and early 60’s and it is refreshing, but not in medicine. It will take probably a good 5 years to really implement these changes and have them running well. For all of you who really know Gil, that will be the time we will be ready to go on to our next adventure…

Willa and Isobel are very happy here. They love the snow, although it is s a little difficult to see Isobel dashing through it as it usually deeper than she is tall!! Lucy bird is great too. It is somewhat cold for her and we have to keep the house a bit warmer than we would otherwise and I keep an oil heater on next to her cage. She seems very happy there though. She is dangling off toys in her cage and talking smack constantly! We also brought Dory, one of our barn cats from the farm. She is now an inside cat, as she doesn’t care for the snow or the cold much!

Gil and I learned what it is to prepare for winter in a north Atlantic region. Everyone here utilizes two sources for heating – oil and wood. Oil is extremely expensive, so everyone uses it sparingly. So, we ordered our 7 cords of wood for the winter. Wood makes more of a warm/cozy heat than oil does as well. Our wood was dumped on the front lawn, 3.5 cords at a time, by the entrance to our basement and we had to get it down there and stack it. I won’t lie – it sucked. I am used to walking over to a thermostat and putting it to whatever temp I would like the house to be. Well, that really isn’t an option here. As our good fortune would have it, Alli and Jesse came for a visit for U.S. Thanksgiving and helped us with the second 3.5 cords. What a huge help that was. Gil had discovered on the first 3.5 cords that he isn’t 20 anymore!! After helping to get 7 cords down to the basement and stacked, I like the thermostat thing even more. Imagine this though – there are 70 and 80 year old men here who stack 7 cords by themselves every winter. Holy cow!

We really like it here though. The pace is MUCH slower here than in the U.S. I will say that has taken some getting used to. I tend to approach most everything with a snap, snap, snap, get it done now approach. You can forget that here. No one is in any hurry ever for anything. There is no such thing as running by someone’s house quickly to drop something off. If you go by, you have to come in for at least an hour for hot tea and conversation! Everyone here loves to talk. Even if you go into a store in search of something and have to ask for assistance, you will usually get at least 15 minutes of conversation before you get the answer. We went into a shop in Charlottetown which has woolen knitted clothing to look for a sweater for Gil – one sweater – we came out about 2 hours later! Even in the checkout line at the Farmer’s Co-op (grocery in O’Leary), a bit of conversation occurs within the check out timeframe (and if you don’t conclude it and move on, they will keep talking while folks just stand behind you and wait – and they will just stand there and wait patiently for however long and listen to your conversation!!) and it will almost always include comments about the weather. EVERYONE loves to make a comment on the weather conditions of the day. In fact, the other day I was sitting at the kitchen table working when I noticed the recycle garbage truck coming down our street and realized I hadn’t yet put out or recycle bags. So, I rushed to throw on warm clothing, grabbed the bags, and ran out to the street just in time. The garbage man, took my bags, threw them in the truck, and then proceeded to talk to me for the next 15 minutes about… the weather!!! He told me all about a horrible snow storm they got in the 1982 and how the snow was almost to the top of the telephone poles and how winters here have been really mild in comparison since… and on and on for 15 minutes. The garbage man even loves to talk! He was very pleasant and we had a very nice conversation.

I will have to say though that the folks we have become good friends with the quickest here are also people from “away”. That is was the locals call folks who move here and are not from the Island, even if you have moved from Nova Scotia. They say, oh you are from “away”! When folks say that to me, I say yep, we are from “way away”, 2400 miles, to be exact! Our good “from away” friends Pam and Jim, originally from Ontario, but have lived many, many places, are headed to Nunavut (above the 60th parallel) for the next year for Pam to work. It is only one year and they will be back, but we will miss them so much. We have had so many wonderful dinners with them and, in fact, that is where we will be on Christmas Day.

Being on PEI has been such a wonderful learning experience and we have only been here a short while. We know what it is like to stand in the midst of a blizzard, drive in one (the first snow of the season was pretty close to a blizzard and I had to drive home from the barn – 45 minutes away!), drive in a mixture of snow and then rain (slicker than poo you’d find in microbiology!) the smell of a woolen mill, the taste of exquisite ADL dairy products, the flavor of fresh (out of the ocean less than 2 hours, boiled in ocean water on the boat) lobster, and what it feels like to stack 7 cords of wood.

So, that about wraps up our year. It has been one of learning, joy, and sadness. We are still at the same e-mail addresses and you can always find what is new in our day-to-day lives by visiting Gil’s blog.

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!!

My God this is beautiful…..

So we have arrived in Keene, Hew Hampshire to spend some time with friends (Alli, Jesse, and Aaron Lewis), and I now understand why folks from the Northeast say Texas has no trees. This place is a forest and it is overwhelmingly green. The temperature s in the sweet spot as well with highs in the upper 70s to low 80s, and evening temperatures dropping into the 60s. If I were back in Texas I would say it feels like football weather but I am told this is simply the end of summer and not yet the fall.

New Hampshire also represents a stop in the action for us for the next several days. We have heard from our driver and he will not be to PEI to deliver our household goods until the 18th so we have some time to hang out and be cool. We will be leaving for the border on the 14th so we can cross without feeling rushed.

In other news, Nancy is adapting to being without the horses, she does not seem crazy, nor does she seem to be going through withdrawal, but it is still early. She did try to wear some high heeled sandals yesterday and that was a sight. She has not really had a need for such footwear for the last several years (horses and heels do not mix) and s she had to re-learn the art of walking in heels. This was complicated in part by the presence of many small rocks in the parking lot of the restaurant which caused her no end of trouble as she tripped and wobbled her way inside. By the end of the day she was doing a bit better and could walk with a minimum of stumbling.

Finally we had had our first casualty of the trip, the loss of the martini glasses. Alli had wanted us to bring the martini set so she and Nancy could have a few drinks while we were here, and we packed the glasses in with the other stuff we were bringing to Alli’s house (stuff to make Gumbo). Anyway, at some point during a hard stop to avoid cell phone chatting situationally unaware drivers from colliding with us, some heavy things fell over on the box and crushed the glasses. Thank god the shaker is made of stainless steel or everyone would have been sad. So it is off to the store today to find a couple more glasses which we will leave with the Lewis family for our return visits.

Link to the interview with the CBC.

Arriving before Sunset is so cool.....

Today we arrived in Harrisburg Pennsylvania and did so prior to the setting of the sun. It was wonderful to be able to drive in and see everything as we did, and to get here early. We had a good drive today and saw a great part of the United States, the Blue Ridge parkway.

So, we got out this morning from Charlotte North Carolina and in very short order we were in Virginia. We headed north until we hit interstate 81 and headed north until we got to Pennsylvania. We crossed through West Virginia and Maryland to get here, but really not enough of either of these two states to take much notice. The drive through the hills of the Appalachian mountains was very beautiful and the weather obliged us with just enough cloud cover to make it pretty, but not so much as to make is dark.

This is a part of the United States that Nancy and I have never seen and so alternated roles as driver and scenery observer frequently throughout the day. It was a slice of Americana, the typical and classical farm houses, the silos, the dairy cows. It was wonderful and we are very glad to have seen all of it.

In Harrisburg, we are staying again with the La Quinta chain and since we arrived early enough we were able to head across the street to have some very yummy calzones from Salvatore’s pizzeria. They were very good and we were exceptionally hungry having eaten light today because we were focused on making good time to our destination.

Being Interviewed…….

So, to follow up on yesterday, let me go back in time to Wednesday, the 6th of August. While we were in deep east Texas the phone rang and it was Brendon Elliot form the Canadian Broadcasting System wanting to speak with me about an interview. I am still not clear how he heard about me coming to the Island (Nancy says it just indicates how size of the island), but they had contacted Herb (the doctor that I will be working with on the island) and he gave him my phone number. So we set up a time on Thursday to speak when I would have access to a land line so he could get a good recording of the interview. The gist of the interview revolved around why a doctor would move from Texas to PEI. Nancy listened to half the interview (my answers) and she said it made good sense to her and that I did a pretty good job answering his questions about how we came to choose the island and the reasons behind the move (which are outlined in my prior posts). I will be curious to see what it ends up sounding like, and when I get to the island I will ask for a copy or a link so I can post it for anyone who might be interested (or exceptionally bored).
I will say that all the education that I had in Texas through the Texas Academy of Family Physicians really paid off during the interview. I felt comfortable and I remembered to allow for small silences instead of providing the very nervous “Uhm” that I am prone to use to fill in the gaps. We shall see what it sounds like after the editing. (Listen here)

Tomorrow we are off to New Hampshire ( a short drive through mountains) and then a few days with Alli.

Atlanta's highways make me crazy.

We have arrived in Charlotte NC after crossing through Mississippi, Georgia, and South Carolina. We headed out much earlier today than yesterday, that is at 11 AM and so we arrived in North Carolina around midnight. The day started nicely with breakfast which represented the first time that Nancy has ever had grits. She likes cheese grits, much less like grits than like a casserole, but never has she taken the opportunity to have grits. Since we are traveling across the US we are taking the opportunity to eat the various local favorites, and so in Mississippi that meant sweet tea and grits. She actually enjoyed them.

With breakfast on board, we fueled up the vehicle and headed east to Georgia. We did encounter a bit of rain and storms today but for the most part, we were able to dodge the big storms all day. We really enjoyed the drive through Mississippi, it was much lusher than we expected as we drove through the national forests that lined our route. We rolled into Georgia listening to the Dixie Chicks singing about old Earl and it was outside Birmingham that we hit the rain.
We were lucky and we hit Atlanta at 7 pm so we completely missed rush hour and man am I relieved. I cannot imagine hitting the middle of Atlanta and the interchange of I-20 with I-85 that threw us for a loop. Literally, we missed getting into the correct lane and had to exit, take two of the sharpest hairpin turns I have made to date on a freeway system and then we were off on 85 to Carolina.

Not much to report as we blasted through the Carolinas and we are bedded in for the night. For those that are interested, the dogs, cat, and the parrot are all traveling very well. We shall see what happens as day three starts.

Finally, the strangest event of the entire day was a telephone interview I conducted with the Canadian Broadcast System Radio Division on why a Texan would choose to move to PEI. It went really well (according to Nancy) and I must say that it was by far the last thing I ever expected to happen.

Why wait till the last minute?

The adventure has moved into the travel phase, but not without those popular last minutes action items.

Monday August 4th
So we have been packing our stuff in two general batches, stuff for the moving company transports and stuff for us to transport. Things seemed to be going pretty well until Monday night when we looked hard what we were planning to transport ourselves (using the horse free horse trailer). In order to get a better understanding of the size of the load, we put everything in the master bedroom closet that we planned on carrying ourselves. The closet was really full and we realized that a lot of this was going to have to go with the moving truck. This realization also meant that some things in the outbuilding were going to have to be repackaged for the movers. Several hours later we had everything re-arranged and we went to bed.

Tuesday August 5th
We knew that Tuesday was going to be a busy day for many reasons, not the least of them because we were taking the horses to the vet on Tuesday. We had originally planned on taking them on Monday but the weather has been so hot, they would be in paddocks with limited shade, so we thought it better to wait one more day. We expected cooler temperatures since Tropical Storm Eduoard was bearng down on the Texas coast with the promise of cloud cover and rain. The second item on the for the day included taking the dogs to the groomers for a little clean up. We had decided that we could not travel 2400 miles with stinky dogs, so they had to go for a bath. Finally, we had to pack the trailer before the end of the day so that we could get up and get out of the house with maximum efficiency Wednesday.

Well, the packing of a trailer always takes longer than the unpacking of a trailer, so we spent many hours in the evening loading the trailer. It seemed that as we packed, more stuff was magically appearing around us and none of us could figure out where it came from, but it kept growing. It reminded me of Tribbles from the old Star Trek series, multiplication was definitely occurring, matter was appearing de novo from pure energy. Despite this, we got everything into the trailer and we were ready for the start of the new day, our last day in Texas.

Wednesday August 6th
The day should be easy enough, get up feed the horse (Bronte is the only one left on the property) and then head to the Fountain of Beauty so Nancy could get her hair done prior to our travel (just a wash and blow dry to look nice for the trip). It all began with an especially good last breakfast of kolaches from the Kolache kitchen, and then we headed off to get the hair done. We got our call form the moving company with the final cost, whoa, a bit more than expected, but still reasonable for moving a household that far. Off to the bank to get money, a check for the movers, and then back to the house to get on the road.

We go the last minute items loaded onto the trailer and put the trailer onto the hitch. The Suburban sank low, then lower, then too low for comfort. It appeared that we had way to much weight on the tongue of the trailer. It also appeared that the right rear tire on the Suburban was a little low, so several things had to happen, we had to unload the trailer, reorganize things, and leave a bunch of heavy stuff at the house (old paper files for taxes), then move a lot of the weight back so that it would ride over the trailer axels and not so far forward. Just in time for the unload/reload, here comes a light rain to increase the humidity for us (as if the temperature was not enough). Ghaaa, Texas is getting in her last licks, and we were both dripping sweat by the time everything was reloaded, so much for that fancy hairdo. Thankfully it turns out that the tire was not losing air, it just needed a little more and so after much gnashing of teeth our early start got us out of the door at 3 pm. We rolled out the door with the GPS system on and the Bulgarian good luck charm sitting on the dashboard.

The drive across Texas was wonderful as the GPS routed us across many smaller roads until we got to US 79 and that took us right to Shreveport. The ride from Shreveport West to Shreveport East was lousy, and for the next 20 miles the interstate highway seemed to have been neglected by the state of Louisiana (not something all that new to anyone who has traveled that road for the last 25 years). Thankfully some of the casino money did go to repaving some of the road and so most of the trip was one good blacktop.

Thankfully we made very good time and by 1 am we had arrived at the La Quinta in Jacksonville Mississippi and everyone was bedded down for the night. I will say that the night desk clerk gave us quiet the look when she saw us walk through with two dogs, a cat and the bird.