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Cross Country Treks: Hopefully a "Final Frontier"

Distance is intrinsic to Canadian and U.S. travel. When you meet anyone from Britain or most of Europe, they speak of traveling in terms of kilometers or miles. In North America, we speak of travel in terms of minutes, hours, and days.

I have moved across the country twice. The first time was in the early eighties to obtain a position with a school board in Alberta. The second time was to move my family back to the Toronto Area from Oregon where my wife had obtained a position working in a university library. Of the two, the second trip was the most dramatic. I made it alone. I made it in December. I went over the Continental Divide in a U-Haul truck pulling our second hand van behind it.

Although my wife had lived the vast majority of her life in Ontario, she had been born in New York State. This meant that we, as a family, could get green cards to live and work in the U.S. For us, this was an attempt to hold our failing family together. We were looking for a new start.

My oldest boy, who was about 7 at the time, drove from Edmonton Alberta to Salem Oregon, with me. This was a big mistake for, although I loved him dearly, a 7 year old found the vast amount of time in the rental truck tedious. The rental vehicle lost a tire on the way down and we had to spend a day waiting for the repair: more tedium for the little boy.

We arrived in Salem on July 4th and luckily the folks at the university were on the look out for us. To try and find accommodation on July 4 would have been difficult otherwise. They put us up. I began to search and found a place to live. I met the plane with my wife daughter and youngest boy. We began our life in the U.S.

After about three weeks, I had a phone call from my wife at work. She and her boss weren't working out. We were going to have to move. She came home and we had a long discussion. It was late July. I wanted to move immediately. "No" she said. She wanted to stay until December for the sake of her resume.

I decided to sell everything we could and to try and fly back. "No" said my wife. It would be too expensive to replace everything. The net result? - I would drive a U-Haul back with our belongings in it. I'd also drag the vehicle we had purchased behind it.

That December, courtesy of my mother, my wife and children flew to Toronto, Ontario and I started down the long highway home.

When I got to the top of the Rocky Mountains, you really couldn't see what part of the way was road - or

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