You were the light of my life and your love still shines bright – Unknown.
I called Adam and said, “Guess What”, son. He said, “Don’t tell me, dad, you bought another house”. I said, no, this time we bought a condo in Sidney by the Sea. It is only 21 kilometers from Victoria and a few blocks from the ocean.
Adam said did you realize that you now have three houses – one in Ottawa, one in Vegas, and one in Sidney. I remember saying the house in Ottawa belongs to you and we are not sure at this stage how we are going to deal with the house in Vegas, but your mother is totally determined to live in Sidney and I completely support her exactly the way she supported my idea of living in Vegas. Furthermore, this could be a positive move if we get the contract that we are hoping for.
Adam said I wouldn’t bet on that; dad as big companies like IBM are after the contract. I said it doesn’t matter. Life is too short to worry about everything, son. Adam asked what the closing date was. I said we got 90 days to organize everything. Adam asked to talk to his mom and he chatted with his mom for a little while before we went to bed.
The next day we decided to drive to Sidney first thing in the morning to have breakfast and walk around. As soon as we popped in to see Mike, Lynda asked Mike if it was possible to go back to the condo one more time to take some measurements for the drapes which we will get in Vegas. Mike took us there and brought a measuring tape for Lynda. Mike helped Lynda to do the measurements and it took a little while but when she was finished, she looked happy with what she had accomplished this morning. Lynda mentioned to Mike that when we come back, we may need some help to unload our household. Mike said he will arrange a couple of folks to help us out.
The next day we checked out the first thing in the morning and started driving to Vegas. When we got back to Vegas, we had no clue how we were going to tell our friends in Vegas that we would be leaving them in 90 days. It was late, the time we got home and we decided to go to bed right away, knowing the fact the next day was Sunday, which also meant that everybody would be there at the clubhouse for breakfast.
I didn’t think Lynda would be able to go to the clubhouse and help cook breakfast, but I was wrong. At the time I got to the clubhouse, almost everybody was there. They all welcomed me back and started asking all kinds of questions about Victoria. Finally, I mentioned to them that we ended up buying a condo in a small town not too far from Victoria and we will be relocating to Sidney in 90 days. They all stopped laughing and shouting and got serious. I think it was Bob who said if your son needed your help in getting things organized in Victoria, there is nothing you can do.
There must have been almost 50 folks in the clubhouse, and it seemed as if they all stopped talking and laughing. Lynda came out of the kitchen and realized that I had already broken the news. She said we haven’t decided yet whether we will keep our house here, but we need some time to figure it out. We were surprised about the reaction to our announcement, but we had been a part of the community for five years and made some friends for sure. In any case, having friends is nice but I thought we must move on with what we like to do in our lives.
We had bought a brand-new KIA SUV for Lynda in Canada before we came back to Vegas and I used to drive a Jaguars which we had bought in Vegas in 1999, and we were wondering if we need both cars in Sidney. After discussing for a while we decided that we would take both cars with us to Sidney. The next question was who was going to drive Lynda’s car to Sidney?
Across from our house in Vegas, Jane and Ben used to have their house and they both were Canadians. When they heard about our problem, Jane came to talk to us and suggested that if we like she can get her son who lives in Victoria, British Columbia, to come to Vegas and spend a couple of days with them and then drive your car back to Sidney with you folks. We were delighted to hear that and we said to Jane that we would book and pay for his flight to Vegas and will take care of any other expenses.
We also realized that we can’t possibly afford to hire movers to move our furniture to Sidney. We were faced with the following question:
- Can we afford to leave our house as it is in Vegas and come back to spending winter months here every year?
The other question was:
- Can we afford to buy everything in Sidney for our new condo?
Went around for days and weeks discussing pros and cons and finally we decided:
- We should rent a moving truck and load only major items like beds, tv, and only a few pieces of the furniture; and
- Load all miscellaneous things that were important to Lynda in Lynda’s car and leave everything else for the friends and their families.
Lynda made two lists, one for what we need to take with us and the other for what will be available for our friends to help themselves. She made that list available to our friends, and they started identifying what they can take to help us out.
We also decided to put our house on sale.
The other thing that we still had to decide was would we ever going to come back to living here in Vegas? Once we made our thinking known to our friends, we had more than one offers to come back for summer and spend three months with them. Libby was very insistent simply because she had a huge house and she loved us just like her own. We told Libby that it doesn’t make any sense for us to plan to come back here this winter, but perhaps we will come back to spend time with you in 2003. Libby was very happy with that decision.
We were organizing everything else for our move to Sidney and Adam called to let us know that we didn’t win the contract with DND. It didn’t bother us at all as we were totally focused on living in Sidney, and we continued to make progress every day.
The house in Vegas was on sale, and we had a couple of people interested, but nothing was serious at the moment.
A week before our move, Tom, Jane’s son arrived from Vancouver, and we decided to take him out to a nice restaurant to explain our plan. He was very amicable and willing to help us out. He also thanked us for paying his expenses, which provided him with an opportunity to spend some time with his mom.
We rented a moving truck and a pad attached to the moving truck to load my Jaguar. I had never driven a moving truck in my life and found it somewhat strange, but I had no choice. It took almost all morning to load the truck, and Jaguar. Our friends were there to pick up the leftover pieces of furniture and other bits and pieces that we decided to leave for them.
I also had bought a couple of communication devices to keep in touch with Tom who was driving Lynda’s car. It was almost lunch time, but we thought to stop somewhere on our way for lunch and decided to get going for now. We had also bought a cover for Jaguar to protect from dust or rain but as soon as we left Vegas, the wind was so strong that the cover was blown off in the air. We didn’t bother chasing it and kept on driving.
I had given Tom the route map, indicating where we would be stopping but, in the meanwhile, we had our communication devices to get in touch with each other.
I had a terrible time the first time I attempted to park the truck because I had no clue how to park it. Lynda got out and tried to direct me how to park, and it took a little while for me to park the truck and go to the restaurant for lunch.
On our way to Sidney, we only stayed in the hotels where I could park the moving truck by driving in instead of backing in. It took almost four days for us to get to Sidney. When we got there, we had a reservation in the local motel because we needed to get things sorted out before we moved in.
The next morning, I went to the local bank and got the cheque for Mike to do the closing and got the keys for the condo. As promised, Mike had arranged for somebody to help us unload our furniture and all the other things that we had brought with us. Lynda was busy arranging and re-arranging things in the condo, and it took a couple of days for us to check out from the hotel and move into our condo.
The next thing we did was to go to the grocery store and buy anything and everything to stock our fridge. Still, I didn’t want Lynda to start cooking yet as she was tired and we decided to try a local restaurant for a couple of meals, but we slept well in our bed in our condo.
The real estate folks had arranged with the condominium committee in the building for us to park our cars in the parking lot. Lynda had already made arrangements with the local companies to switch electricity, water, and gas in our name. She had also made arrangements for insurance. Lynda had lined up to meet with her sorority sisters in town.
We were still excited with the idea of living this close to the ocean and kept going back to do our walking and looking at the ocean.
