Welcome back

Dear diary, been back in Canada four days now and just beginning to shake off the effects of the dreaded "jet lag". It manifests itself by lulling one into a parallel world, a kind of time warp.

 We arrived in Vancouver on Sunday last at 11.30am local time, sunny day so lets get a taxi to some posh hotel, have a cup of tea then start the process of recovering the truck (hereinafter known as Kevin) from storage nearby. Cup of tea went well. 

Mr. Google gave us a local insurance agent in a mall nearby so we could register and insure the truck prior to collection having completed the mountain of paperwork before we left the country in July. Armed with 11 separate completed forms ranging from deeds of ownership (log book), safety check certificate (mot), bill of sale, tax paid certificate (Ontario), to emission compliance certificate, proof of no claims history, drivers licence, passport, 25 yards breast stroke certificate etc.....then presented said docs to Mr Patel at the government run Autoplan counter, I smiled, he smiled back. I felt confident........ for a second. Sifting through the sheets of paper maybe 4 or 5 times he very slowly began that slow head shake from side to side. Then his hand covered his mouth as the head shake became more and more prolonged.

This is where the jet lag has its best effect. Mr Patel is talking at me and I see his lips moving, although he avoids any eye contact, I have no idea what he says other than it ain't anything like what I want to hear.

Not for a second am I questioning the mans capabilities or his intelligence, I assume he has a Phd in "Lets see if we can find the smallest problem here just to f**k your day a bit more".

Back to the effect of jet lag. Local time by now is 3pm but my bodyclock screams 1am minus 24 hrs lost during the flight, so my brain assumes as Im still going I must be pissed somewhere, all I can do is float and smile at anyone. Mr Patel assumes that all he tells me is agreeable because Im smiling. On the other hand Mrs Thomas is grinding her teeth as some horns appear to sprout from her forehead, which affects Mr Patel in a strange way.

He abandons his path of "This insurance application is impossible" to "I can issue temporary cover for 3 days if you take your wife away from my face". 

He issues a very expensive cover note, calls us a taxi, calls the storage company who were just closing because its a bank holiday weekend to say we are on our way to collect Kevin the truck, and we leave.

The taxi arrives 45 minutes late! The storage people refused to speak to us other than hand me the keys but hey, we got the truck back.

Another effect of jetlag is that you wake up at 4am, no matter what, slumber has left the building so a 5am swim passes time until 7am breakfast time.

Monday morning means a new plan. We can drive toward Vernon, some 250 km, in order to start the insurance process all over again!

We stop at a town called Hope, a gold prospecting town from the last century. We look for a decent motel, some hope! Instead we settle for a dump from the film set of Deliverance, bed bugs were free, and grateful for the slowly diminishing effects of jetlag to be able to leave in the dark hours of the next morning.

We finally arrive in Vernon for an early morning big boys breakfast at some diner, oh and it tasted good, followed by another two and a half hour epic battle with Sheila at Capri Insurance Services who very kindly allowed us to present our application for insurance cover and the issue of British Columbian licence plates. This done, we collected the trailer and plonked ourselves at a lakeside RV park and went to sleep.