| The first major break of the whole road trip was getting Duravan. We were planning on getting a Volkswagon Westfalia but didn't because we couldn't find one in our price range. Had Duravan not shown up in the newspaper, who knows what we'd be doing right now! Duravan | >>>>>>>>>>>>> |
| The second thing that happened worth mentioning is the transmission in the van. We were having trouble with the van since we left home and it was thought to be the transmission. The first time we had it looked at was in Edmonton at a nation wide transmission company...Aamoco I think. They took the cover off and had a look while we went shopping and when I called they said they'd have to take it totally apart to find the problem...was going to be $500. We held off and picked it up still broken, we stopped at McDonalds for supper and when we came back out the entire transmission had drained out onto the parking lot. Upon closer inspection, it was found that the morons didn't put the cover on tight. We drove down to Calgary and planned to have the tranni repaired while we stayed with Mitch's relatives. We got the same response as in Edmonton and still we decided not to have it fixed. With the van on what we thought were her last legs, we headed to Vancouver. Not until halfway through the winter did we have it checked out again. It was at a small garage in Whistler and it turns out that the only problem was $20 transmission mount!! Good thing we didn't drop a new transmission in it. | >>>>>>>>> |
| Before we left home we got the number of a contact for a possible job in Vancouver. We went to see him but he didn't have have any work for us. His friend's wife was the manager of the Royal Vancouver Yacht Club so he hooked us up with the inside track on jobs there. We both started working and had the same hours and everything. Prior to getting the job though, we landed an apartment and it turned out that it was only 8 blocks from the yacht club and the beach! How sweet is that? Wanna see the ugliest house in the world? | >>>>>>>>>> |
| While working at the yacht club, Mitch helped one of the members put an engine in his boat. As per usual they got talking about
stuff and Mitch told him the story about our trip and how we were looking for engineering jobs. Turns out he owned a small
engineering firm and guess where we're working right now...you got'er! DSA INTERNATIONAL |
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| Deciding not to work at Whistler for the winter but still wanting to live there posed a little bit of a challenge. Housing in Whistler is limited at best so Geoff ended up on the phone for about 2 days trying to get at least one lead on a house. Finally he got one and the next day at 5:00am we headed up to have a look. It seemed pretty good and close to the lifts but for whatever reason we decided to hold off. After calling a million other places we called back and it was still available so we snaked our way in....harder than you might think when the owner's only looking for one person and they get two! Check out the shanty | >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |
| After moving into Whistler we were walking around the village one day and we wanted to check out the situation on passes. We went in and the lady told us that the "early bird" rate ended to day at 5:00pm...it was 3:30! We saved as much as an entire pass costs at Crabb Mountain! | >>>>>>>>>>>>> |
