This is a personal story with a little lesson at the end about what I learned with moving my daughter from Montreal to Calgary, first a bit of context:
We spent 82 hours on the road (from Tuesday morning at 6am to Friday afternoon at 4pm), 50 of which we were in the car. Thus my daughter aptly named this ‘hell week’.
To be clear, it was well worth it to get my girl home to Alberta safely. Along with Hannah came her fella JC, , his Dad, a dog, a puppy & her cat. We split up the drive with the four of us to make it safer and more doable.
The boys hauled a U-Haul trailer & we followed. We quietly cursed their lack of use of cruise control, while they silently cursed our bossiness. We were always calling ahead to ask them questions such as ‘where they were going?’… I finally started to trust them to use the GPS as we pulled into AB.
We had many laughs (such as the aforementioned regarding directions) & lots of good conversations along the way. There’s nothing like being trapped for what seems like an eternity to help you get curious with each other.
Remarkably we had no major delays & we enjoyed the trip as much as we could given it’s nature. We saw a moose and her calf, a fox and her kit, and many beautiful landscapes and sky lines.
The consensus was that Ontario seemed to go on forever, Manitoba (sorry) wasn’t our flavor favorite other than straight driving, Saskatchewan was surprisingly pretty and Alberta was a sight for sore eyes (and bums!).
And here’s the lesson: If there’s any question about mobility, it’s that MOTION IS LOTION and constant sitting is exhausting and makes for a lot of stiffness!
So whether you’re traveling or just feel stiff and sore, you need to find ways to move to ease some of the soreness. For me, we stopped every few hours to walk around and I did some mobility (stretching) at the hotel each night.
Of course if you need some direction with safe ways to get started, work around injury or need a workout plan, I got you.
It’s good to be home & to get moving for real again.
Welcome home Hannah, JC, Fuji, Red & Louis!
PS. This wasn’t really my summer vacation, but it’s likely the farthest I’ll get from home this summer because we like to enjoy ‘staycations’ in Alberta given the beauty of the mountains in our backyard.