Day 1: The adventure begins!

So we’re off! This post is probably going to be a bit longer than usual since it is our first one post departure so bear with me, I won’t gush this much often (I think). We have arrived in Vancouver and we made the ferry trip to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island to see Carly’s sister Katina. The scenery is drop dead gorgeous. There are mountains all around and the weather is perfect. In the 60’s and sunny, I guess we take the good stuff with us because it was rainy and gross in Michigan when we left…
I skipped a couple things on the way though. It was a crazy 48 hours leading up to departure. Packing was quite an adventure, it was a process that took a few days to finalize. You never think of how maddening it can be to find a place for everything and how much space it all takes up until you’re cramming it in any little hole you can find and have completely given up on organization.
For example: contact lenses. I have contacts and I just got my prescription refilled for a year. I had everything packed, or so I thought until I found a bag full of contacts that were coming with us. They’ve never been a problem packing before because I only had to take the pair I was wearing and maybe one more set just to be safe, but a year supply can eat up some serious real estate in your suitcase. Whoever designed the packaging of the contacts I have definitely wasn’t thinking about the long term travelers out there. We ended up shoving them in Carly’s suitcase and rearranging some things she had into other bags.
Then there’s the weight limit problem, either of us could easily have put over 50 pounds in our suitcases but then you have to pay stupid baggage fees. I ended up with 50.0 pounds in my suitcase according to the airport scale and Car had 49.5, she packed light. This was some precision packing I am quite proud of. Each of the suitcases received numerous weighings at home before we left.
On top of the rolling suitcase each of us has a hiking backpack, mine holds 85 liters, Carly’s is 65 so she brought a 22 liter day pack to make up the room. Also accompanying us are our laptops and those bags are stuffed too. I’d say all in all we’ve probably got about 100-120 pounds of luggage each. I’ll take a picture of all our junk so you can get an idea of what’s going to sustain us for a year. I don’t think we left much at home at this point.
So we left at 7:30 this morning to go to the airport. Ken and Julia drove us and my sister Keri somehow conned my Mom into getting out of school to come see us off. We flew out of the new terminal at Detroit, it was a pretty nice change of pace from the Northwest terminal, WAY less crowded in there. Two women missed the flight before us. The attendant was paging them from before the time we reached our gate until they had no choice but to leave them, not the savviest travelers I’ve seen.
Our first leg was to Toronto. The plane we rode brings a new meaning to puddle jumper. I heard the attendant announce that there were 13 people coming off of the plane when we landed. We actually had to go down the ramp onto the ground and climb up stairs to get onto the plane, never had to do that before in Detroit. The prop was right outside our window. It was a little unsettling when it first started to spin and it looked close enough to touch. We had to go through customs in Toronto which was nice since we had a couple hours to kill and it saved us from having to do it in Vancouver. Our flight to Vancouver was much more comfortable, we each had a screen on the back of our chair to watch movies and there was an electrical outlet on the back of the seat, definitely a nice touch and something I wish they had on all flights. One note to anybody who brings their own water bottle on the flight: make sure if it has a straw in it that you open the whole lid before you pull up the straw to equalize the pressure in the bottle or you might get a pretty fountain of water in your lap like I did. Carly couldn’t stop laughing at me sitting there with a puddle of water in my lap 10 minutes into the flight. It went by pretty quickly though and we each watched a couple movies. I watched Defiance (very good), I was dry by the end of it, and Yes Man (meh). Carly watched Marly & Me (she cried) and most of Australia but it was so long she couldn’t finish before we landed. So then got our luggage and took a car to the ferry where I’m sitting now, looking out the window at Vancouver Island thinking how crazy it is that we won’t be back home for a year from now.
I hope I didn’t bore you, stay tuned for our adventures in Nanaimo, we’ll be staying at the Free Spirit Spheres on Monday and maybe bungee jumping in between. (I’ve heard rumors that if you jump naked its free, I told Carly I’m doing it if that’s true)