Early Retirement…Ish

We have successfully made it to Squamish, with no plans to work for at least 6 months. How weird is that?!

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Turns out I am awfully sick, and yesterday I was devestated. I worked in a health food store up until two days ago, and we are exposed to a lot of sick people. I often find that I am more prone to catch a sickness when my defences are down – stressed, not sleeping well, or when I slow down a bit (like long weekends or vacations). Seems like all the anticipation, planning, and busy activity has caught up with me. As I mentioned, I was so upset about it yesterday – and it didn’t help that I was an achey, shivering, emotional mess. Our new van is NOT a nice place to be sick! We spent the day in and out of our storage unit, moving boxes, organizing our totes under the bed etc. I must have fallen asleep at least 10 times in the front seat while Dan shuffled things around. I folded that bed down every chance I could to catch a proper sleep, and I slept 11 hours last night.

Ok, enough self-pity…it’s a new day, the sun is shining, and I feel (mildly) better! The new day has brought me perspective. I’m not on a long weekend vacation where time is crucial and health is precious. I can be sick. That’s fine. I’m not losing wages, wasting vacation time, or even missing out on much. Our backcountry ski trip can be post-phoned by a day (but hopefully not longer!) because the mountains can wait. Today I rest. I write. I read.

Today Dan had to make another trip back to Victoria to pick up our final load of stuff. We miscalculated how much stuff we had…mostly because we already packaged our 12 resupply boxes for our GDT trip in July. We panicked on Friday when everything wouldn’t fit, and shoved what wouldn’t fit back into our storage unit in Victoria and headed for the last ferry to Vancouver. We figured we could pay a weeks rent on the unit, but turns out they only rent monthly and our landlord graciously gave us until Monday to get everything out at no charge. Yikes!

We dabbled with the idea of just renting it for another month. It’s not a lot of money, but then again, we are in frugal mode now since we are unemployed (man that’s weird!) and we are going to have to think differently.  Yes, we saved a lot of money for this trip – flash back to living in a van for 15 months…that makes more sense now doesn’t it…?

I’m no shape to lug my sick, out of shape body up into the mountains today, so Dan decided to make the trip to Victoria, while I recover over Starbucks tea. 9 hours is a long time to amuse oneself without a vehicle, or home-base, or health, but what a way to train myself to slow down. Enjoy the sunshine. Bask in the “task” of doing nothing. It’s a lost art really.

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Stay healthy and wild my friends.