Igor video tour, and a great deal for our Canadian readers

We heard from Bjorn and Freya yesterday as they made their way with Igor to Niagara Falls, and from there into New York State.

They had a few issues with US border control, which was not unexpected. As Bjorn says "When you are a Belgian citizen coming in with a Canadian van, and going to Mexico, it sets off multiple alarms".

A bit of panic!

So yesterday morning, Bjorn and Freya were getting ready to leave with Igor when there was a bit of a panic.

"I can't find our passports" says Freya.

You can still buy bacon and eggs breakfast for $4.99!

Saturday afternoon, we drove to Montreal to pick up our Belgian friends Bjorn and Freya. They had arrived in Canada on Thursday and spent a night with a friend downtown.

Traffic was terrible, and there were several delays, with more along the route. Eventually, they offered to take public transit to the north part of the city, and we met them there.

Back to downtown Ottawa

Ruth's sister Lesley is in town with her friend Lynn, so yesterday morning Ruth took off downtown with the two of them to do a tour of the Parliament West Block, and then a wander around the central Ottawa area. 

Of course many of the sights they saw were similar to the ones we posted a couple of weeks ago, but the parliament tour was interesting.

Nice weekend ahead!

Looks like we're going to have an "Indian summer" weekend, with sunshine and highs around 21C (70F). Great weather to welcome our friends Bjorn and Freya who are flying to Montreal today.

Their plans in Montreal have changed, so we will be picking them up there on Saturday afternoon instead of Sunday. We have an airbnb rented just south of Ottawa for the four of us through until Monday, then they will probably take off across the border heading south through the U.S. with Igor on Monday morning.

For the first time in years, I have an actual useable phone number!

Cellular data access is always a problem for us when we return to Canada because it's just so expensive compared to other countries. 

During the last three months, we've been using an eSIM package that costs $30 CAD ($22 USD) tax included for 15GB of data. And that's data only... no voice calls or texting. And I'll tell you, 15 GB doesn't last very long anymore!

We have heat!

It was quite a few hours of work, but Igor's gasoline heater installation is finally finished! 

Drilling holes through the van floor, running the wires for the thermostat inside wall panels, tapping into the fuel line and running the line to the new fuel pump, and hooking it up to the heater, then running the cables directly to the battery was all more time consuming than I thought it would have been.

Out with the old, and in with the new!

Yesterday, I took a break from the furnace installation to do the fridge installation.

Igor's 31 year old Dometic propane/120VAC fridge was still working, but it wouldn't keep a stable temperature. Especially on propane, which we would have been using most of the time. Given that we are setting Igor up for an extended trip to Mexico and south of Mexico, we wanted something that didn't use propane, and something that we were more confident in.

Progress report...

I'm not surprised that Igor's new gasoline furnace installation is taking a while. The system itself is fairly simple... but locating the unit in a suitable location, then drilling the holes and getting it fitted properly, then running the fuel line and fuel pump, then running the wires for the thermostat and power cables is very time consuming!

And, Ottawa and area is having a bit of a cold spell which makes it not as enjoyable to be working outside.

Yet another change of plans

Regular readers will remember that we were supposed to be doing a month long house sit in Manotick during the month of October. It was cancelled last minute due to a medical problem that the host is having. 

However, the host was looking for options outside of Canada to get this medical problem resolved.

We've been busy!

Hence why the three day hiatus from writing blog posts!

Tuesday and Wednesday were Amazon Prime Big Deal Days, so we had a lot of work to do with our facebook group telling them about all the deals. And in between the deals, I was busy trying to install Igor's new furnace!

Weird clouds in the sky!

We stayed in the campground until mid afternoon. I did a couple of minor projects on Igor, while Ruth was labeling some photos. 

It was pretty chilly overnight! We tried out the old electric heater, but while it does work, it's not putting out nearly the amount of heat that a 1500 watt heater should. 

One thing we can say about the Airstream B190... there is lots of interior cupboard space!

We've got a list of minor things we want to get done to Igor this week, as well as the two major items... the new furnace, and the new refrigerator.

Most of the minor things aren't super important and we would normally just putter away at them while on our way south. However friends Bjorn and Freya arrive in Canada on the 18th, and it is them who are taking Igor south. So we would like to get as many of them done as possible before they get here.

Our most expensive campground ever!

We didn't want to overstay our welcome in the overflow parking lot at my mother's building here in Ottawa. And although it wasn't ideal, it was okay for a couple of nights.

So, what were our options? 

In for a penny, in for a pound

This is a phrase used to express someone's intention to see an undertaking through, however much time, effort, or money this entails

And that's the way we're starting to feel about Igor!

We made the decision yesterday to order yet another fancy expensive item to make our lives better.