Magic Jewball

I think my rule of thumb for any vacation is that it must take 3-5 times as long to plan as the actual time away. I may have even topped myself this time, especially since the trip goes for nearly two whole weeks. But like most of my vacations, I have planned in excruciating detail where I’m going (West, young man), how I am getting places (see the post title), and where I will be staying (hint: cheap) but not much about what to do when I get to any of these sites. Mostly because I like to experience just two things when I travel: scenery and life somewhere else. So few if any of the places I am going are known for a particular attraction but should be different enough from where I live so that I can sit back, sip coffee, and realize I’m not at home. Also, different scenery and weather (and really, no one wants the weather here in the summer).

So here are the places I’ll be going:
Calgary
Regina
Saskatoon
Prince Albert
Vancouver
Portland

And because only the trip to Calgary and from Portland will via aeroplane, I will be seeing lots and lots of places in between, including the Canadian Rockies, the bus route where that dude got beheaded (my personal favorite… yikes), and western Washington and Oregon. I am tempted to join Foursquare just so I can have some exciting updates like “Becca is now the mayor of the Swift Current Greyhound Station,” but maybe not. Instead, I’ll just be updating from here and Twitter and Facebook. I remember fondly how exciting it was to sit in a cafe in Greece four years ago and type posts on teeny Blackberry keys. Now I’ll have my iPad, which should make things slightly easier, although possibly add some fun and unintentional autocorrect fails.

In case you’d like a sneak peak while also answering the age old question, “how anal is Becca really when it comes to using Excel for daily planning,” we can get both with one graphic!

Right! As for what I’ll be doing, I’ve left that mostly unplanned, although I do know that I’ll be staying with some crazy dear friends along the way who will be hiding their pets showing me the town. So all in all, I think it’ll be a fabulous time as long as I can keep my head.

That was a terrible, terrible joke. I meant to say, I think the trip will be a riot. No wait…..

Just for that, I’ll be reducing my consumption of Tim Horton’s donuts over the course of the trip from a dozen to ten. All bets on Coffee Crisps are off, though.

In case you want to follow my “Oh, the places you’ll go, eh?” tour (which starts next week), I have a delightful new sidebar area over there on the right, with big buttons (I like big buttons and I cannot lie) representing various ways you can subscribe to JBall updates. In order from left to right, they are:

Like my page on Facebook (then it will show up in your feed when there is a new post)
Follow me on Twitter (ditto, plus all my useless one line statements)
Add me to your RSS feed reader (like Google Reader or Netvibes, etc.)
Subscribe via email (full posts mailed to you at 1am ET the night after they’re up)

So just click on any of those and it’ll take you to the right option. Now there’s no excuse not to know what donut I’m eating!

I think this is the song I use for all my posts referencing Canada. What are you going to do aboot it, hoser?
Bob & Doug McKenzie – Take Off