Hasn't hit me yet

Well that was quite the first night. Corey and I took over at the Soo and the 9:30pm to 5:30am drive. It was a tiring experience to say the least - after staying up most of the previous night studying for our Accounting midterm. The night was uneventful as our tripmates snored "soundly" in the back seats, Corey and I spent our night looking for moose, drinking Tim's, telling late night gas attendants of our adventure, trying to pronounce all of the places we came across, discussing the meaning of Lost, and counting every Manitoulin Transport truck we passed (8 total the first night). The moose issue was a huge concern but we went the whole way without seeing a single one - apparently they are Olympic fans. It is amazing how desolate the area between the Sault and Thunder Bay is. We would get excited at the sign of any life - a passing truck or a simple quarry on the side of the road was a great sight.

One-hundred km before T-Bay is the "Terry-Fox Highway of Courage" ending in Thunder Bay - close to where he lost his battle to cancer. As I mentioned before I don't want to be too deep in this blog but it really makes you stop and think - as I'm sure many others have that have taken this route. That when you drive along and think that 30 years ago he was right there, you realize what he did was such an amazing triumph and how much courage he did really have. We complain about driving a few hours in the middle of the night because we are tired; yet Terry Fox ran almost half of the Country on one leg while cancer was slowly killing him; he would have given anything to finish the journey. Truly a Canadian hero.

Trying to immerse ourselves in as much "Canadianess" as possible (for good luck as much as to embrace this experience) - before we left I downloaded the top 50 Canadian Songs of all time. We spent a solid 2 1/2 hours singing along to bands ranging from Rush and the Barenaked Ladies to Janis Joplin, the Hip, Blue Rodeo, and Gordon Lightfoot - plus some very obscure others - see Martha and The Muffins.

By the end of our shift, Corey and I were taking 45 minute driving intervals so we could stay focused and get some fresh air switching spots. Its amazing what the cold northern air does to you when you are tired (currently -32c).

We pulled into a Thunder Bay Tim's at around 5:25 and with some reluctance woke Jarrod and Shannon, and passed the wheel over so we could finally sleep. We set the GPS for Winnipeg and as I write this entry we are just passing 1200km on the odometer - well over the 1/4 mark. Should be in Winnipeg by noon, Sask sometime tonight and Calgary by morning. Will arrive in Vancouver sometime early Saturday morning probably. Still can't believe were doing this...I guess it hasn't hit me yet.