HOME???

Some say home is where the heart is.  Others say home is where you hang your hat.  I say, if home is where you hang your hat than my home is me and wherever I am is home.

 I have officially hit the end of the road for this great adventure...for now anyway.  I have had some of the greatest experiences of my life and I would do it all over again in a second with nothing changed.  The difficult times have taught me patients, compassion and the ability to listen and understand.  The good times have reminded me that things are never as bad as they could be and there really is a light at the end of ever tunnel and a silver lining to every dark cloud.  I have learnt a lot about myself and more about those around me.  Family, friends and strangers alike.  I will miss the open road and have been thrust back into the reality of living in the "GREAT WHITE NORTH" :-) cold, snow and icy roads.  Three of my least favourite things.  I am now in Dreadmonton Alberta as I like to call it.  Edmonton Alberta as it is marked on the map lol  Pepper has Kennel cough and is now on the road to recovery (I hope) thanks to the greatest Veterinarian in the entire world...Joanna :-)  Not sure where he picked it up, and I am still not a fan of the lack of "poop pick up" from other dog owners throughout my travels.

Thank you to all of you who took the time to read about my adventure.  I have a friend who may be starting the next chapter in this saga with the "Kindness Tour South America"  Georgia...I hope you do it!!! I will be the first to sign up for your blog :-)

I do have some video snippets I will filter through and I hope to get started on the DVD I promised to do following the completion of this trip. 

Unfortunately, the trip was ended sooner than I had hoped and the amount of video I was able to shoot was less than I was planning on shooting.  However, with all that said I am confident that this was just the spark in what is soon to be a wildfire.  I have way to many stories to just stop here. The feedback I received along the way was incredible and I know in my heart that this will somehow grow into something that people can look back on and say...."yes, that is where it started."

This is not the end...

T- Minus 264.55km

After approximately 6800km driven, nine weeks of constant adventure, just over two months of no real solid sac time and a different accent every other day...I am almost home.  Well, maybe not home but back to the city I once lived :-)  The last part of the trip went rather quickly because of weather and no other reason.  Unfortunately I had to ride with it and if I didn't get my butt out of  Vancouver yesterday I would probably be overstaying my welcome by several months.  I do have a few more video's to post and I guess one final farewell blog, to all those who made this endeavour better than I ever thought it could be. You comments kept me going and I am not sure where I would have been right now without all the support and encouragement I  received through friends, family and of course the "anonymous" ...well except for anonymous Janis lol Part of me wishes the anonymous emails I received could have been posted on my blog as they were all so kind and insightful.  I hope one day to meet all of you either by name or by face :-)  I actually think it's pretty cool to have someone I have never met from some other part of the world sharing their thoughts and feelings and letting me know a little personal information about who they are and why they are so excited about what I am doing.  Thank you

I hope to have some videos posted for you by tomorrow :-)

Thanks again
see some of you soon
Margo

December 3rd ...Judgment Day ;-)

With my cash flow at a minimum (to say the least) :-)  and the decision made to leave the United States; I once again have a loooooong drive ahead of me.  Weather permitting I can make the Canadian border in just under ten hours.   Now that the idea is in my head I can't seem to make it from A to B fast enough.  The weather yesterday was atrocious and I am sure my mother would have killed me if she knew what I was in fact driving through for a greater part of the day.  Crazy how one minute you can be in the heat of the midday sun on a flat desert road and the next at the summit of a mountain peak trapped in the heart of a blizzard.  Call me anything you will, but is it not the "steeper the downgrade" the slipperier the slope?  I don't know who constructed Interstate Five through the Shasta mountains.....but come on people!!!! that was ridiculous.  LOL  don't worry I got it all on film :-)

So I am off today from the quiet little town of Grants Pass Oregon.  I am heading out on I5 and hope the roads are at least drivable.

If this is in fact my last post from inside the borders of the United States, I would like to say thank you to all the great people I have met here and I can honestly say I will be back this way again to pick your brains on the new subjects of the times.

I am not disappointed or angry that I am leaving.  I have had a blast and I am sort of ready to stop living out of my bag (for a little while anyway) I have grown as a person on this venture and I know when it is all said and done I will have made a difference in some small way.  Even if it is just within me.  I have more than enough information to go on and I am really looking forward to sitting down and making that original directors cut video that I have been asked to do....don't worry I was gonna make (ya'll) watch it anyway so there is no need to ask me to make one lol  

I shall see everyone soon and I am excited to get to Vancouver and spend some time with some new and some old (not in age guys) friends!!!

Enjoy your day

Margo 

Kindness out of the woodwork

Following my announcement yesterday of having to leave this venture early.  I have had a flood of messages about places to stay and people to see and things to do lol  I really had no idea we were already in December.  Happy December everyone.  I have approximately twenty-three hours of drive time to reach the Canadian border and approximately seventy -Two hours to do it in.  Alas, my stopping and meeting the awesome people of the west coast will have to wait.  I will be back...I promise!!

As for December.  Christmas for some of us.  I for one have never been a huge fan of Christmas.  OK, when I was a kid I liked it but that was strictly materialistic reasons.  I looooved the presents.  Once I realized that Christmas had become a government sponsored commercial for (BUY BUY BUY) I developed quite a deep hatred for the holiday season.  I despise the question on December 26th "what did you get?"  Don't get me wrong, I love the trees and the lights and the warm feeling I get when I am with friends around a fire with a big ol tree in the middle of the room.  It's just the overall materialistic mutation we have turned this holiday into that gets to me. 

One of my favourite people on this trip was a lady by the name of Joan Gilfoy.  I still miss sitting around after dinner and just chatting about whatever and whomever.  All good of course :-)  We got on the topic of Christmas one night and how it had so quickly become commercial.  She told me about her gift request of her children the year before.  Instead of buying gifts or making them, she specifically asked her children to go out and do a good deed.  She then asked them to report back to her on what they did and how it made them feel and whatever else they got out of the situation.  Brilliant!!!!  I wish everyone thought this way.  I was so amazed at the stories she told me on what her kids actually did.  Believe it or not I started to tear up a bit at how humbling the stories were.  One always likes to think they do good deeds and help others but these stories were amazing and I wish that is what Christmas could become.  What it is supposed to be in the first place.  Helping each other through this rat race we call life.  How different this world would be if we all spent one holiday season like the Gilfoy's!

Thank you so much Joan for sharing that story with me and I hope through your experience and wisdom and sheer brilliance; someone else will read this and want to try it and thus start the ball rolling in the direction it should be going in the first place.

 From the blue sky of San Bernardino California Happy December 1st

Cheers
Margo