Le Grill? What the hell is 'le grill?!?'

Finally had the first long distance haul with the new car. Suffice to say it worked pretty well! I drove from Oakville, ON to Brockville, ON to pick up my sister, and then she drove the car from there to Quebec City. For me total time on the road (Including breaks) was about 11 hours, although with the exception of the last stretch between Montreal and Quebec City it didn't feel like it took all that long.

It was the tail end of Easter Weekend so there wasn't that much traffic on the road, so that was awesome. Unfortunately for anyone who has ever had the misfortune to drive in Quebec, it doesn't matter how few drivers there are on the road they still find a way to cut you off or tailgate you. Montreal was especially bad. Fortunately, unlike when we come up here with our Dad, the people we have encountered have been very friendly, and more importantly, bilingual!

The only real highlight of the drive (Other than highlighting how much driving there actually will be when the road trip starts) was the horror of driving through Montreal. Not only does Quebec seem to have some sort of crazy twilight zone gas pricing system, the highway going through Montreal has to be the most convoluted design of city planning since Picasso was temporarily named Director of the Spanish Metro System. It wants to beguile you into thinking that it will be a straight forward drive and then as you're lulled into a false sense of security they throw in 10 metre merge spaces and onramps that seem like their straight out of the thunderdome. To showcase how horrifying this was I wasn't even driving it was that terrible to simply be the passenger in this situation. I unfortunately wasn't able to take any pictures through this ordeal, but I did get a picture of a neat hill that was on the other side of Montreal.

Not pictured: Terror

For anyone who feels that I may be holding out some amazing story that happened today I really am not holding out on anything. Other than the fact that gas was $1.28 at the Quebec/Ontario border and then magically increased to $1.36 by the time I got to Montreal (clearly because I had to buy some more then!). That and the fact that I used Priceline to get an awesome deal on a hotel in Quebec City, not much happened.

This is what you missed, jealous much?

There may not be a post tomorrow, just because there isn't much between Quebec City and Saint John, NB that is worth posting about. The first official post should be expected May 1st!

Fueled up, ready to go!

Well everyone I made it to Ontario safe and sound, and after a few setbacks I finally got my licence and insurance and car. I haven't quite settled in to the flow of the unemployed, or should I say the lack of one, but that'll soon be taking a backseat to this amazing trip. 

Just a note to anyone planning to move to Ontario from any other province, for the love of goodness get a department of motor vehicles approved record of when you were first licenced. The problem I had was that my Nova Scotia licence only had the date that I had my NB licence converted over, which was March 2010. No problem right? A full licence is a licence isn't it? Unfortunately in Ontario it isn't. If you have a licence from another province (even a full licence, for provinces with graduated licence systems) for less than 2 years you actually get issued  a G2 licence, which has a whole slew of restrictions on it. So I had to prove I was licenced for more than 2 years to get the full G Ontario licence. This involved lots of legwork and driving back and forth from home and the licencing centre, but that is all done now.

The trip still isn't close to being officially started, but I just wanted to show off the car that I am currently in possession of. Basically it's a short term lease from a friend of my Uncle who owns a car dealership. I get to keep it for the summer, and return it in September when I go back to school. At that point it's likely easier to take public transit to school.

It doesn't have a name yet, and I don't know if I want to name it, but for now it is only known by it's technical name: a 2002 Pontiac Sunfire 4 door SLX!

Looks pretty good for 9 years old! Only 76k!

Lacks todays high tech interface, but still gets the job done

Trunk space should come in handy