twohumans' blog

We made it to temporary home. We made it the old school way – in the cold (it snowed again today), in the rain and in the wind. Again a real test. After driving all around North America, we have to say that Quebec has some of the less disciplined and less polite drivers we have seen on our trip. For the first time in several months we really felt threaten by the attitude demonstrated on the road by certain drivers. It is unfortunate that people are like that here. Well.

For the first day in a long time we did not have to drive today, we did not have to check out, we did not have to find restaurants, …

Already we have started the next phase of our lives.

Roadtrip-a-Lypse is almost completed (it will be completed on September 26 after Sutton-a-Lypse) and we are already seeing some memory fade, we are and always have been forward looking people we would guest. We are very happy to have shared this slice of our lives with you – whoever you are. We really hope we have inspired some of you to try a little what we have done, travel, meet people, discover and prepare to be amazed.

With that we are going to turn this blog over to the Sutton-a-Lypse blog in a few days.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss our road trip please contact us.

If someone read this, we wish you a happy and full life.

Over and Out

We are less the two and a half hours from Manon’s parent place where tomorrow we will surprise them (we hope) and then we will go surprise Claude’s parents. They all think we are only supposed to be back next week.

We’re in Ottawa because (in theory) we should meet with the first model for Sutton-a-Lypse. We want to meet with every model individually to prepare them – that will be a lot of meetings; we already have more then 40 models registered...

Amongst other things, we will start to work on next week is a web site for Sutton-a-Lypse.

So this is our last night on the road – we are happy to come back to our friends and families, but at the same time we are sad that the trip is almost over – or is it?

We’ll write to you soon.

PS Have we told you it is supposed to snow back home on Sunday?

We have been flying across the states (Alberta, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota) in the last few days. Before Lethbridge in Alberta we stopped for a few hours in Calgary to meet Megan and the crew of iStock. Ian created a few great images of our stop there, some that we will post here later. You will be able to see then that Megan covered us with iStock gifts that are very useful for this part of the journey. Since Fernie, when we got stuck in a snowstorm, we have run in cold weather up to here. We have to say that we are envious of the Montrealers that are getting temperature of more then 70 this week. We have been having temperatures in the 40 ourselves.

Brandon and the gang ion Calgary

In a few days now we will be back in Quebec and we will start on our new projects, one of them being the Sutton-a-Lypse. Soon we will redirect the attention of this blog to Sutton-a-Lypse and we may from time to time talk a little about our construction too.

In the meantime we will write to you about our arrival. 

This is not at test*…

…although sometime it feels like it.

So last time we left you with our grand plan. Since we have been in Tacoma, where we have met Mark, in Seattle we got a training day with Lara. Lara opened our eyes really – if your are reading this Lara – you really did. Thank you.

From there we started a race against the snow yet again. Yet again! And we broke the heat lever in Brandon – we so much wanted heat. We are trying to make it to Calgary to meet our friends at iStock before the snowstorm. We made it to a fireplace in Fernie – but not before freezing our butts in Brrrrandon yet again. Someone is really testing us. So depending on the weather we might be in Calgary tomorrow – or not.

*This is Not a Test from She and Him

Written by Zooey Deschanel (ZO Music/ASCAP)

For those of you who tried but didn’t make it

Settle down it’s never what you think

The summit doesn’t differ from the deep dark valley 

And the valley doesn’t differ from the kitchen sink 

For those of you who thought you’d be forgotten

The friends you’ve made will try their best to make it so

Think of all the beauty that you’ve left behind you

You can take it if you want it and then let it go. 

And this is not a test

No this is not a test

Taking numbers never made sense anyways

No this is not a test 

No this is not a test

‘cause you can have it if you want it anyways 

For those of us who try to keep remembering

We try to do our better than our best

We think of all the children in the drifts of snow

Winners never quit but winters never rest 

And this is not a test

No this is not a test

Taking numbers never made sense anyways

No this is not a test 

No this is not a test

‘cause you can have it if you want it anyways

And a one and a two.

We made our mid on how to finish this road trip. After Doing most of Route 1 (and 101), and after Seattle we are going to go to Spokane via the 90 (to help Brandon cross a mountain chain) and then take the Route 2 al the way back to Ontario via Saut Ste-Marie and then on back to Quebec, passing by Ottawa on the way. The only detour we will make will be to go to Calgary In the next few days. So in order these are the states and province that we should cross in the next weeks:

• Washington
• Idaho
• Montana
• Alberta
• North Dakota
• Minnesota
• Wisconsin
• Michigan
• Ontario
• Quebec: We should be back home around the May 15.

So this is it for your lesson in geography.

Oregon

We have covered some ground since we have last wrote you. Either it is that we are getting tired or a little homesick or it is all the other stuff that we are taking care of (the French blog, the preparation for Sutton-a-lypse and its thread on iStock, the Roadtrip-a-lypse thread on iStock + the construction of the new house, all the people that wants to Skype us and the work that we have to do for our clients back home) anyway we feel it is more difficult to find the time and energy to write you all.

So we have left San Francisco and California – with some regrets and the hope to come back. We have to say that in general California is the state we most enjoyed visiting. And there are so many things that we would like to visit that we did not have the time in this trip – yet again. Once again we did not have the time to go to Death Valley for one thing. We did not have the time to visit all the vineyards that we wanted. We stepped only for a few moments on one beach – we never even really went in the water. We could not take the time to stop and really enjoy California. So we will be back.

We are for about a week in Oregon. We are supposed to meet with Donald but unfortunately the planets were not aligned. We should still meet Dawn and David later on this week. Then we are off to Seattle, hoping that the weather will cooperate a little more: this week if damp, windy and cold. In Seattle we should meet more iStock members and we have a little training day.

Yep we are still in SF it is such a great town that we could not leave that fast. Plus we have to be in Seattle on the 26^th. So we stayed a little longer then what we expected. On Monday we met with Marisa (risamay) and Stephan (StephanHoerold) and is family. We got Brandon fixed (again) too. Now we are preparing to go North a little more, going to visit a few more vineyards and a few more iStock members.

We’re a little tired we have to say, maybe it is the visit of Manon sister, maybe it is the construction project, or maybe it is the preparation of our Sutton-a-lypse (still 5 more tickets to sell) or maybe it is all the traveling or a mix of it all. It is going so fast that we forgot to go see a few iStock members along the way. And at the same time it is going so slow, we are so far from home.

We are starting to feel a little home sick – that is if we had a home.

Anyhow we are leaving San Francisco tomorrow but we will be back.

Or how to burn a clutch in less the 10 feet.

So we left you a few days ago without news. The thing is that we had a guess, and from the moment our guess arrived we started touring intensively. This left little energy to take care of the rest.

Snoopy & Manon

So our tour started at LAX and finished at SFO. We went as north as Sonoma to visit wineries and the Snoopy's Home at the Charles M Schulz Museum and Research Center in Santa-Rosa before coming back to SFO. We saw Hearst Castle, giant redwoods at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, beautiful beaches along Route 1, the lovely Carmel-by-the-sea where Clint Eastwood was once mayor, the Lone Cypress Tree and the Pebble Beach Golf Course on the 17-Miles Drive, we ate chocolate at Ghirardelli and we walk and walk and walk.

We slept at a funny hotel in Japantown the Best Western Hotel Tomo with Manga everywhere but to get there we had to go up the very steep Pine Street where we got stuck in a fire emergency with nervous people surrounding us and try to get somewhere anywhere fast. Trying ourselves to get out of there we burned our clutch. Lucky we had an appointment on Monday with Dieter who will take care of the clutch and other little things that needed attention

From now we are on the last leg of our road trip. We are starting our way back home, but not before meeting more iStock members and going to visit iStock HQ for a second time in as many years.

You might have noted that we are taking a little break from the blog. We will be back next week after we meet a few iStock member for around here.