Month: July 2009

Oh man it’s good to be back home.

Sure, I travel a lot. But on average I only go away two weekends a month, which really only adds up to 6 or 7 days a month away from home. Contrast that with my last few weeks… I was gone from July 4th until late last night (July 19th).

Whew! It’s good to be home in Sacramento. I really like it here.

People always ask, “If you could live anywhere…”

Funny… when my wife and I were tooling around Maine, we really liked it, and even pondered the idea of, “What if we moved here some day?” (We always look around- wondering about the answer to the question, “If you could live anywhere, where would you live?”) We even loved New Brunswick CANADA and saw some cute houses near the small town of Quispamsis that were really nice. Near the ocean, peaceful… not bad. And New England was cute- from the small tourist trap of Freeport Maine to the more urban streets around Harvard in Boston (no, I didn’t kiss the statue’s foot!). Fun.

But bottom line… I love Sacramento.

My ten second pitch: 90 minutes from San Francisco, 90 minutes from Lake Tahoe, Far enough away from Los Angelos (6 hoursish, depending on your definition of LA), but close enough to visit. Nice and hot during the summer, but not humid! No natural disasters (no hurricanes, Tornados, etc. Earthquakes are a good 90 minutes away, fires 45 to 60 minutes away. Flooding happens, but not often, and not near my house).

So if you could live anywhere… where would you live?

I’ve finally got a moment to breathe here in Canada. Although I’m not sure whether this moment is measured in miles… or kilometers! I’m so confused! 

Let me back up.

We flew into Boston on Sunday. Lori and I (yes, just me and the wife on this trip- very cool!) ate a deliciious taste of Legal Seafood in the United Terminal at Boston’s Logan airport. If you’ve never had Legal Seafood, it’s a great chain with a very tasty chowder.

An hour later we were exiting Mass. and into New Hampshire. Everyone pull out your U.S. maps. The N.H. shoreline is only like 14 miles. We were by the shore, so our NH experience was about 15 minutes, then onto Maine.

Maine: allow me to quote my wife. “This place is adorable!”

My wife loves Maine. Please, no one in Maine should offer me a pastoring job, because my wife would make me take it!  🙂 We stopped in Freeport, Maine… a cute little town with outlet malls and (again quoting my wife) “adorable little houses.”

I really did like it. We’re gonna try to stop there on the way back on Saturday. The town’s McDonalds was even this old colonial house, but with a little McDonald’s sign out front. Hilarious. Very cool little town.

Monday morning as we winded our way through Maine we saw some very pretty terrain. My favorite little street: Cow Patty Lane. I kid you not!

Heading NorthEast, we finally hit the Canadian border. The border crossing was simple, we showed our passports, answered a few questions, “no, we don’t have any drugs, plants, pets or children tied up in the trunk,” and were merrily on our way. This was my wife’s first time in Canada.

I stopped at the first Tim Horton’s (Canada’s version of Starbucks mixed with Dunkin Donuts) and we got some Canadian coins for the tolls approaching. Within an hour we entered St. John (by the Bay of Fundy in New Bruns.)… beautiful little seacoast city. I had to speak that night, so we didn’t stop, but proceeded about 15 minutes further to Quispamsis, a small town on the outskirts of St. John. I spoke to about 400 kids at the Tidal Impact event (I already told you about that event here) then we ate dinner with all the event’s leaders. Great group of people. We really enjoyed them.

This morning we SLEPT in for the first time in a LONG TIME. I decided to go on a run, so I did my normal routine of measuring my route with the car before I ran it. This was funny. Lori came with me and we noticed that the miles seemed to be flying by. But I measured the route, parked, then I embarked on my 5.5 mile run.

At 2 miles and couldn’t figure out what was happening. Something was wrong. Either this Canada air had given me a speed boost, or we measured wrong. At 2.5 miles it hit me. “Freaking Kilometers!!!” So as I continued my run, I started adding how much more I had to run to get even 5 miles. By the time I ran up a hill that lasted a kilometer and felt a little of the NB humidity, I ended up only running about 6 kilometers which I think is about 4 miles. Bah!!!!

Tomorrow I’ll have to reset the car back to miles and take a reading of my course again.

Lori and I ran to Tim Horton’s again this morning so she could get her morning coffee. We were there at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday… and that place was PACKED! What the heck were all these Canadians doing in this place! Don’t they have jobs! i mean…this place was full of adults, kids… you name it. It was kinda cool. It looked like a British Pub on Friday night.

I asked Lori how she liked her “Timmy’s” (that’s what the locals call a Tim Horton’s coffee) Lori said she liked it better than Starbucks. Not bad.

I like Canada.