Sunday August 30th 2020

So if I have learnt anything over the years it’s that you don’t know what you don’t know. Now I have always thought that I have been keeping up with technology, at least to have a pretty good idea of how things work … well that came into question today.

As with every lesson there is normally a price, and today was no exception. So as usual Sunday at one o’clock is pump out time, not my favourite job but a task that is a twice a week reality, so imagine my surprise to be pulled from the task at hand to be grilled by the OPP (Ontario Province Police). Apparently on one of the recent updates on our apple phones, it had turned the side button into a SOS button. So if held down it calls 911 which of course initiates a visit from the local police force … well my phone was in my pocket and I guess when I was seated on the tractor it obviously dialed 911, because of the noise from the tractor and the pump, I didn’t hear the phone and because of my cargo shorts I never noticed the vibration when the OPP tried to called back.

What made it touchy was that the officer had been told that there was a woman’s voice asking for help … so Miss Laurie was questioned to see if she was calling for help on my phone … long story short as much as I annoy her at times she didn’t want to see me locked up yet. So add a couple of cruisers and a little quality time with the local constabulary it was agreed that the only crime I was guilty of was pocket dialing 911, and this has been happening enough and become enough of an issue that the officer was able to show me how to shut the SOS side button feature off to prevent it happening again.

So what else have I learnt this week … well I learnt how backwards the US banking system is. Like for a country that acts like they are leading edge … they are leap years behind the Canadian banking system. And it always amazes me how the border can make things fall apart. Here in Canada we have something called an “e transfer”, all of our financial institutions use this, so for $1.50 I can send a couple of thousand dollars to anyone’s email address or cellphone and they can open the email and pick the financial institution of their choice and deposit it right into their bank account with nothing more than a password of both parties choice. Start to finish probably less that one hour and it’s done.

But here is how antiquated the American system is, we have an account in the US, I needed to send a few hundred dollars to reserve our spot on our Mexican caravan so I contacted my US bank to send the money, but because I’m still here in Canada this could not be accomplished. The only way I could take US dollars and send to anyone in the US would be to go to the bank, and of course the American system doesn’t have nation wide banking like Canada, and with the whole US Covid mess we can’t cross the border so I had to fall back onto our Canadian banking system to get the job done.

So by simply logging into my Canadian bank account I was able to send US dollars directly to the American bank account of Adventure Nation Caravans in the States, with a couple of key strokes and it’s a done deal. If there is one thing that has become very apparent that our southern neighbour is a number of years behind our banking system.

This is what I have learnt this weekend, I can only imagine what this week will bring on. So remember you don’t know what you don’t know, until you do … just saying.

Monday August 24th 2020

It’s been an exciting weekend for “The Buchanan’s” we were able to get one of the spots on the caravan to the Mexican Baja with “The Motorhome Experiment” and we are pretty excited.

So let me do a little explaining … about five years ago when we were first exploring the idea of living full time in a RV, we watched many YouTube channels to try to learn from other people’s experiences. Well one of the channels we watched was Paul and Lorena of The Motorhome Experiment, Paul is a Canadian boy from the Dorchester area in Ontario and Lorena is a Mexican girl from Juarez City area in Mexico, and over time we learnt how they were selling their home in Las Vegas and going to try to live full time on the road for one year … hence the experiment part. But this is a very long entwined story of our friendship with these people and will make for an interesting blog all on its own.

But the short version is that they are entering their fourth year on the road and have now sold their business in Las Vegas and are hoping to run caravans to help support their lifestyle. So this will be their maiden adventure with hopes of doing more caravans in the future.

So what have we signed up for? Well a 59 day adventure that will take us through the Mexican Baja, with a variety of experiences from boondocking on beaches, to swimming with whale sharks, we will travel approximately 2200 miles (3500 kilometres) in Mexico, over a two month period, with multiple side excursions that should make it a trip of a lifetime. There will be only 20 RVs in the caravan, so a small group as compared to some operations, so to prepare us for the trip, they will be doing a number of webinars, where they will explain what all we will need to do to prepare ourselves and our coach.

I have been looking forward and hoping for this for some time, and have been trying to prepare by learning Spanish on the app “Duolingo”, and while I’m learning a lot, I have a very long way to go, but a lot of the basics are becoming easier now. And now that we are confirmed I will be working harder at it, because this could become a regular winter destination for us as time goes on.

And yes I remember there is the little issue with the border being closed still because of a pandemic and the Americans inability to control it, but we still believe that the border will open in the next couple of months. Because the stupid part of the closure is that it’s just the land border, we can fly to the States, we just can’t drive there yet. And I know there are a lot of risks going to the States, but we are very careful and in most cases avoid large crowds or groups. And besides I remember someone said it would just go away … or not, but life must go on, maybe different than before but the “new normal” with or without us is going on, and my timer is still ticking so rather than hibernate for a Canadian winter we are still going to keep on living life our way.