The Move

We decided to move to Ottawa in three parts, each separated by sleep: move out of our studio in Ames and go to Rake, drive halfway to Midland, Michigan, finish the trip.  We chose to move on the last weekend of September, as it gave Chad as much time possible on campus in Ames while still giving us a week to get settled before my school started.

Our cars - poised and ready for packing!

Step 1: Move out of Ames

Our small studio in Ames was great for us in the month and a half that we were there.  It was a little sad moving out, but we got it done in record time!  Throughout our stay there, we had been filtering our stuff into “Canada Stuff” and “Not Canada Stuff” to make the final packing easier.  The things that we didn’t take with us would stay at one of our parents’ houses or in our storage unit in Ames.  So, in our last few days there, all we had to do was make sure the Canada piles got into my car and the Not Canada piles got into Chad’s.

Stuffing things into the last of the trunk space

Packing the cars was a different, less smooth story.  We had over-estimated the amount of stuff we could fit in my car, so towards the end of packing, we were squeezing things in all the little nooks and crannies that were left, while still allowing the driver to see out of the back window. What a challenge!  Finally, we reached maximum capacity and put the rest of the Canada pile into Chad’s car for storage.

We drove to Rake, tucked Chad’s car into the garage, socialized with a few of my high school friends, and slept in my parents’ house.  They had just returned from a business trip, and I was really glad to see them before we left.

Step 2: Going Halfway

We were constantly making sure the bikes were still there

The plan for Day 2 (Saturday): Drive to Midland, Michigan (by way of Cedar Rapids) and spend the night with our friend Jake there.  Midland is a little more than half way from Rake to Ottawa, with about 40 minutes of out-of-the-way driving each way.  We were looking at about a 13 hour day in the car, so we left between 8 and 9am. 

The trip was exciting!  I drove the first chunk: from my parents’ house in Rake to Chad’s parents’ house in Cedar Rapids.  They had lunch waiting for us, and Chad dropped a few things off and picked a few things up from their house (example: his Wii and some games).  We said goodbye and Chad hopped into the driver’s seat and pointed us toward Michigan.

Jake's house in the Michigan woods

We drove through Illinois and Indiana, with the bikes strapped on the back of my car and huge blind spots. We stopped at a few gas stations and rest stops and fast food drive-throughs, but nothing too exciting: we knew that there was still a lot of driving to go. 

Following the GPS and listening to the Cyclones game on the radio, we made it to Midland and (after getting lost a few times in back roads that are under construction) we finally arrived at Jake’s cute little (ok – it’s huge) house in the woods.

It was so great to see Jake – it had been a while, and he was the best host ever!  We arrived after 10pm to his large wooden house at the end of a secluded driveway and surrounded by trees.  Our car got its own parking spot in front of a garage, and we were greeted at the door with Jake’s big smile and enthusiasm.  He had given up his bed (opting to sleep on the floor) so that one of us could use it and one of us could use the couch. On each, there was a stack of towels and blankets topped with a chocolate.  What a pro!

After chatting with the boys and going to sleep, I woke up to noises in the kitchen.  Jake was making us breakfast burritos so that we could start our last day of travel on a full stomach.  They were delicious, and Jake, again, won the “Best Host Ever” award while we sat around the table and caught up.

Making breakfast burritos before we hit the road in the morning

Step 3: Getting to Ottawa

Next stop: Canada!

Prepared for border-crossing!

Day 3 was to be about 10 hours on the road: totally manageable!  The fear for me was all of the city driving.  In Midland, we were pretty close to the Canadian border, and once we crossed we would have to go through Toronto and Ottawa.

Before leaving Ames, I had prepared a “Document Binder,” full of everything we might need while we’re here.  It has our lease, insurance information, travel documents; everything.  I had hoped that it would help us cross the border, especially since our car was packed to the brim with our stuff.

Just before the border, we tried to call our building manager for the third time.  You see, I had contacted him a few weeks earlier asking if moving in on a Sunday would be a problem, and he asked that I call when we are close.  Our calls had gone un-answered, and we were getting worried about not having a place to stay once we arrived in Ottawa that night. 

We stopped at a Wendy’s close to the border to get the key situation straightened out.  After quite a few calls, lunch, and some stressing, we got our answer: the keys would be on the counter in our unlocked apartment when we arrived, and we were given the door code to enter the building.

With a place to stay, we set out to cross the border.

Nervously awaiting Tom's call about our keys

Crossing the border wasn’t something I was really worried about, since we had the Document Binder, but there is always something nerve-wracking about speaking to a custom’s officer.  We pulled up to a window and the lady asked us a few simple questions: the reason for our visit, to see our passports, and if we had any weapons in the car.  “I have a hammer, does that count as a weapon?” Chad says.  “I think a screwdriver might make a better weapon for me,” I also say TO THE CUSTOM’S OFFICER.  I’m not sure what we were thinking, but she just laughed and clarified that she was only asking about guns and sent us to the office to speak to someone higher-up. 

We weren’t sure why we were sent inside, but we were a little nervous.  There really wasn’t a reason to be, but again: crossing any border causes automatic nerves.  We waited inside to speak to another officer, and it turns out that it was her job to get us our visas.  With a broken printer, she could simply write our visa numbers in the back of our passports, but she also extended Chad’s visitor’s visa to the length of my studies, and gave us a document to show anyone who asked why we don’t have Canadian license places on the car.

Still no questions about declarations, so I feel like we got out of there pretty quickly!

Getting a kick out of (and getting used to) the metric system

With customs behind us, we were off to Ottawa!  For the first hour or so, we got a good laugh out of the road signs, metric system, and switched my car to kilometers/hour and liters/100 kilometers.

We quickly discovered how expensive gas is in Canada compared to the US (something we expected), and grabbed Tim Horton’s coffee on the road.  It rained for a little while, but we were fine.

Finally, after days of driving, we arrived in Ottawa (with Chad driving, since I was scared of driving in the city in the rain).

It was surreal to see our building, something I had seen so many photos of online and spoken to so many people about.  I knew the street names and intersections, and I felt like I was driving on the Google street view that I had visited so many times.

It was just like Tom (our building manager) had said:  the door code opened the building, and the keys were on our counter.  Our apartment was dark and dim, even with the lights on, and we were exhausted.  Nevertheless, we made a dozen trips to the car in the rain to carry all of our things to the third floor.  (Fun fact: in Ottawa, you can get a ticket for having valuable things visible in the car.  Because of this, we had to empty the car before we turned in for the night.)

Finally, finally we had everything upstairs.  The apartment was piled with our things, and we left the car on the street (legally).  We tried to sleep on the hardwood floor, and wake up to a new day.

Discovering our Apartment

On Monday, we saw our apartment in the daylight.  Having never seen a floor plan, the layout of our place was a nice surprise. We had a nook in the back for Chad’s office, and our fridge was in the kitchen, not in a front closet like we were told.

Our oven when we moved in - free pan?

The condition of the apartment, however, was terrifying.  In Canada, apartment deposits work differently.  Legally, a land lord can only take a deposit to apply to the last month’s rent; they are not allowed to hold a month’s rent-worth of money hostage in the event of a dirty or damaged apartment after move-out.  This system, then, leaves no incentive for a Canadian moving out of a rented apartment to clean or repair it.  This was probably the case for our unit.

The windows and shades were filthy, the front door didn’t stay closed without being locked, the oven was filled with chunks of burned food and splattered grease, the stovetop was splattered with food.  The bathroom door didn’t close, as it was too big for the frame, the shower was speckled with black pieces of…something, and the toiled had dried streams of pee down the front.  The floor was dusty with what appeared to be sawdust, and the kitchen cupboards and closet shelves were full of mystery dust.

The front of the toilet

We were disappointed, especially since this unit sat empty for almost a month and a half before we moved in.  We checked our lease, and it said that the land lord was only obligated to have the unit in a condition in line with their standards of cleanliness, but it didn’t outline what those standards are.

We decided to speak with Tom about the unit when we went to his office in the lobby to ask about our parking pass.  When we arrived, though, he beat us to the punch, saying that he was sending some professional cleaners to our unit that day, along with the “door guy,” who was to fix our bathroom door. 

Relieved, we found our parking lot about two blocks away, visited our property manager’s office, and returned home to figure out what furniture we would buy from IKEA later that day.  More on the apartment in another post!

Moral of the story: The trip was great and we made it to our apartment in Ottawa safely.