Day 0 South America

Well we are back to the adventure with phase 2 now under way. It has been 5 days since our last post with this time spent in Sarnia at our interim home, Julie's moms house. Time was well spent catching up with Julie's side of the family, Cassie and getting things in order for the South American adventure.

We did manage to keep the training going with a number of walks and Dawson did a couple of runs around the area. One run was around the Petrloia area which included a visit to the Petrolia Oil Discovery. The Oil Discovery is a working museum which provides a look at Canada's first oil producing fields. The museum was closed for the season but was still in operation with ~5 wells in production. Two of the wells are pumped using "jerker rod" system. Power is produced at a center stream engine and transmitted to the well via wooden rods. Quite an interesting system from an engineering perspective. My tour ended earlier as I was spotted by a worker and informed the site was closed to the public.

March 22 saw us back in Roma's basement packing, as we had done 25 years ago for the trip to Oz and more recently for the skibattical. Interesting enough the pack Dawson is using for this trip is the same one from the Oz trip. We managed to get everything into 2 day packs (thanks Kevin for lending us your pack), 1 large pack and a carry on with wheels.

March 23 had us back into our home (truck) for a drive to Guelph and then over to Diana's and Paul's in Port Credit. The stop in Guelph was to pick up Ross and Heather as we are leaving our home (truck) with Ross while we are away, Ross and Heather accompanied us to Port Credit where they dropped us off.

Diana and Paul are good friends, Diana was Julie Best Woman at our wedding. We did some finally shopping and nice "Urban" hike with Diana and Jessica (daughter). Paul elected to forgo the hike and have a nap as he will be running the 30km "Around the Bay Run". It was then back to Diana's and Paul house for dinner, stimulating conversation and off to bed.

5 o'clock found us up with Paul driving us over to Pearson for our 8:10 a.m. flight. Thanks Paul and Diana for your hospitality, we trust that one day we will be able to accommodate you guys in the same manner you have done for us.

We are now writing this on our iPad so please excuse the new look.

Cheers Dawson and Julie