Friday, September 29, 2006

Itinerary & Wheels

I watched Oprah travel 3,400 miles from LA to New York the other day... Yeah yeah laugh all you want but you try being unemployed and not stop to watch what Oprah s going on about once. Anyway, I thought her road trip looked like a whole lot of fun. Then again, Oprah was driving in a brand new Chevy Impala SS with a 6 camera-crew and they are taking 11 days to do it with all expenses paid. Highlights of Oprah and Gayle's Big Adventure can be seen on Tuesdays.

Unlike Oprah, our road will be heading west and, Road Hammer and I will stay on Canadian soil. We finally decided that our final destination was going to be in Vancouver, British Columbia. Afterwards debated for about a week which route we would take and where we would stop. We initially considered going through the states since was theoretically quicker and we would have the opportunity on sightseeing a little bit as we drove by national attractions (Mt. Rushmore, Old Faithful). We quickly realized that crossing the border could potentially slow us down quite significantly if the watchman decided to search the car for all of its contents. Another downside of traveling the in states was that our Cross-Canadian trip would not even comprise of Canadian landscape.

After a full afternoon of search on mapquest, we have set our itinerary seen below:

Departure: Sunday, Oct. 1st
Stop #1: Ottawa, Ontario - Visit some relatives
Stop #2: Hearst, Ontario - Visit some relatives, again
Stop #3: Thunder Bay, Ontario - Allowing us a "short" 6-hour day on the road
Stop #4: Winnipeg, Manitoba
Stop #5: Banff, Alberta - Visiting our buddy Andy
3,350 miles (5,4000 km) later...
Stop #6: Vancouver, BC!!!
Arrival: Friday, Oct 6th or Saturday, Oct 7th*
We might spend an extra day in Banff to tour around and admire the landscape

To take us to the west coast, I present you Road Hammer's Red Hawk:

This Red 2000 Volkswagen Golf packs up a punch and is economical on the wallet for gas "burnage". Now I don't know where the "Hawk" idea came from but I think Road Hammer is delusional of the idea that's he going to fly right by me!

Well check this out, I'm ridin' in Desert Storm:


This 1991 Honda Accord EX-R has seen it all with 330,000 km (207,000miles) on the odometer and counting! Don't be fooled by the mileage on the car because this rock-solid machine has been well maintained and can keep up with the best of 'em. The car also has a secret weapon called "Sport" mode and I can assure you that I won't think twice about using my arsenal to make Hawks "Eat my Dust!" Get it? Desert Storm... dust... Woooo!!!

I kid! I kid! We'll drive safe I promise!

Posted by Brian at 6:12 PM | | Comments

Monday, September 25, 2006

You Might Be a Redneck...

Ahh the catch phrase Jeff Foxworthy made famous. Mr. Foxworthy made shows, cassettes, DVDs revolving around being a Redneck. Well Jeff, here's a new one for ya: When you take your friend to a stock car race for his bachelor party... you might be a redneck!

Before people judge us, we did not initially plan to take out our soon-to-be-married friend Eric to a stock car race for his bachelor party. Do to unforseen events, our trip to Montreal to watch the Habs and the Leafs duke it out in a pre-season match was cancelled at the last minute.

So plan B started out with Franky and I hitting up the liquor store and buying for $180 of booze at 11 in the morning: the clerk didn't really know what was going on. By 1 o'clock we made it to (Speedy) Dundee to watch beat up cars going around in circle hitting everything in their way. Rock and Remi and a few others joined us shortly after to cheer on another friend of ours, Mathieu, who was racing his Ford Probe in the 4 and the 8 cylinder class (he's that good). Here's a few pictures for everyone to enjoy and perhaps understand a little better why we sometime consider ourselves rednecks.

From left to right: Franky, myself, Eric, Remi & Rock

Start your engines!

Never a dull moment at the track

Mathieu leading the pack in his 007 Ford Probe

The joy of being men!

By 5 o'clock, half the beer was gone and we all headed back to Franky's house for some pizza and you guessed it... more beer! A bunch of people came over later on and we spent the rest of the evening hanging out in Franky's garage telling all sorts of stories and laughing our butts off. Our bender ended at the bar and I managed to get back home around 4 in the morning. The night was a success and everybody had a great time. Thanks for the memories... well what's left of them!

Posted by Brian at 4:41 PM | | Comments

Monday, September 11, 2006

Introduction

Hello everyone and welcome to The Wondrous Life of Brian. First and foremost I would like to introduce who are the key players in this gig and what this blog really is about.

The Idea

This blog will cover the exciting adventures of Team... eerrr... we don't have a team name... as we travel across Canada to humm... an undenfined location in western Canada. Note: our final destination is still unknown to us as I am writing this because we intended to move to Calgary but recent job offers have us pondering the idea of moving to the Vancouver area instead.

This blog will cover anything and everything of our everyday life as we try to find fame and fortune in a new part of the country. I'm not really sure exactly what the blog will become as time goes by but for now it will primarily cover our 5,000km road trip due west (I've said that already didn't I?)

The Cast and Crew

So how will we achieve this life experience and exactly who's "we"?

Brian

Well my name is Brian "Gunner" Lavallee and I am a UNB graduate of 2006 in Mechanical Engineering. I grew up in a small community in northern New Brunswick. I have been living with my parents this past summer working a summer job while trying to find full time work in the area to get relevant working experience. I never really planned to stick around New Brunswick from the day I begun university but I figured if I could get a few months of work experience and save a few bucks living at home, why not. Regardless to say, my job search did not go as well as I was hoping for so the idea of moving out west seemed more and more profitable.



Outside of work and writing about myself, I am an outdoors kind of guy that enjoy a variety of sports and activities. I have made it a personal mission to not ease up on physical activity during the winter since for the first time in 5 years I don't have school to eat up all my free time. I will be known as... 6Pac Shakur haha! There's no need to continue babbling on about myself because most of the readers already know me and to those that don't, my future posts should reflect on who I really am.



Rob

My partner for this trip is Robert "Road Hammer" Elliott. Rob and I became friends during my first year of university. He is a Civil Engineering graduate. He's originally from Scotland but his family moved to St. Stephen, NB, and the government never bothered to kicked them out... yet. Rob hates his job and wants to see the world so we decided to move out together. The rest of life is a mystery to most of us because he speaks a language no one really understands. if you should be interested of hearing his side of the story of most of our adventures, you can check out his blog.




Close friends of ours are probably wondering where the nicknames Gunner and Road Hammer are coming from. Well... we made them up! Our handles were inpired by the legendary movie Smokey and the Bandit. We figured since we were to drive such a long distance, we might as well have "cool" nicknames and blast some Jerry Reed along the way. Brutal humour... Very brutal humour...

So I hope that I will see you all again on a regular basis and feel free to provide feedback, comments... any sign of life will be appreciated. And remember when Gunner and Road Hammer are in town; prepare yourself for a long sitting at the local pub.

Gunner and Road Hammer"How does the song go again? 67 bottles of beer on the wall! Drink one down..."

Posted by Brian at 5:34 PM | | Comments