Hey It's Good To Be Back Home Again

I'm home again, here in my apartment in Calgary. I am surprised at myself, at the way I was so anxious to get here, at the way I feel "at home" here, at the way these surroundings seem comfortable to me, safe and secure, tucked away from the things in the wide world that challenge me. Here I sit, watching the dry snowflakes whirl past my window, hearing the tip-tap from Kate's keyboard as she responds to emails and checks in for her flight tomorrow, the soft noise of traffic whirring by, the clock on the wall behind me with its soft ticking. All of this reminds me of how much I have come to be settled here, something that surprises me once again.

The drive home yesterday and this morning was fairly simple. Yesterday we stopped in Merritt for lunch with a friend, then in Westbank for coffee with family. After that we headed east, Kate and I, driving on into the evening. It was only 5:00 PM when we got to Sicamous so we decided to push on through to Revelstoke where we discovered there were no rooms to be had. We headed eastward once more, on the Golden, where we stopped for the night. The time zone change meant our 9:00 PM arrival was suddenly 10:00 PM; we went straight to bed, tired from a long day on the road.

The roads were relatively kind to us. We ran into the expected snows on the Coquihalla, their damp drop disappearing once we crested the summit, rolling down into the Nicola Valley where warm air had settled and cleared all semblances of winter snow from the highway. Over the top to Westbank the roads were equally dry and clear, leaving us only the persistent fog that rises off of Lake Okanagan into the lower reaches of the interior plateau. The fog passed as we came down the mountainside.

On leaving Westbank, heading up the Okanagan Valley towards Sicamous, the snow and fog both made appearances yet the temperature was warm and the road merely wet. This was to change once we headed east on Highway 1. Then the bad part; the road through the Monashee Mountains was lumpy with snow and icy beneath. This stretch is always bad. Once past it the road was good all the way to Golden.

The same was true this morning, with clear dry road almost all the way. Winter road crews have done a great job with the highway and we made excellent time, leaving Golden at 10:00 AM and arriving home at 1:00 PM. Now I get to use my bathroom, have a shower, and make some dinner. It's good to be home.