European visitor and friend, Harald got to experience a little bit of the 'other side' of 'our world' on May 28th, 2012, when he decided to go into town with us for a shopping trip. I say 'a little bit' because he decided to go as far as Quesnel -- while we went on to Prince George for restaurant supplies. He was a little bit 'aghast' when we told him to be ready to leave by 5:30am. I think he thought we were 'pulling his leg' because he checked the time with us three times before heading off to his cabin shaking his head.... but when one must travel over 130 miles to stock up... one must start EARLY!! In a nutshell, here is how our day went.
5:00am, up and at em, and out of the house by 5:30am. Harald peeked out his door 'just in case'... and found us ready to go. Too early to eat, the belly rebels, so we plan to pick something up on the road. We arrived in Quesnel at 7am, dumped Harald off at Robins Donuts, grabbed an A&W 'Sausage n' Egger' and headed for Prince George. We arrived in P.G. by 8:30 just in time to shop, shop, shop! Whirlwind trips to Home Depot, Canadian Tire, COSTCO and Shoppers Wholesale. Somewhere in there we grabbed a quick bowl of soup for lunch. This pretty near took care of all of the restaurant supplies, and we turn the wheels south by 1:00pm.
We had arranged to meet Harald at Tim Hortons around 2pm... we were running late... but the dogs can't stand it anymore, so we took 20 mins. to let them run around at a roadside rest stop. We arrived back in Q around 2:30pm... one/half hour late, pretty good by our standards! Harald is waiting patiently in the parking lot... no doubt completely coffee'd out! We hit the bank, then head off to shop for some stock to fill up the empty store shelves.... but we are bagging out, Harald is looking awfully worried (he peeked at my Quesnel list and just about had a heart attack), and Jenny phoned to report troubles with her car.... an unplanned, but common occurance. Seems we never manage to leave Quesnel without having to look after some kind of 'new' calamity. So I cut my list down to the bare neccessities, Dick spent about an hour on Jen's car.... and we all go out for dinner.
It is 7:00 pm before we are finally homeward bound, at 8:30pm we pull up to the house. This is actually quite early, hey, it was still daylight out! Harald grabbed his meager belongings and watched in awe as we unloaded the back of the truck... which is bursting at the seams. It is another hour and a half before everything is unloaded; parishables are safely stored in the fridges and freezers; canned and dry goods are piled high in the middle of the floor waiting for morning; and we call it a day.
Yes, everyday, we may get to watch the beauty of a crystalline lake from our windows; listen to blackbirds and loons from our porch; watch the deer and bears play from our doorway; hike into the bush at the drop of a hat.... but living in paradise does have it's downfalls.... Harald got to live one of them for himself... the dreaded SHOPPING DAY.... welcome to our world!
