Looking at houses

Okay breakfast done and coffee drunk, we said goodbye to Graham and dropped him off at his truck so he could go bearing gifts of strawberries to the good people of Saskatoon.

Next it was a drive round to a house we were going to view, this was one of the origional houses from when Raymond was founded, the house was 104 years old and was full of character

Here it is if anyone is interested.

http://www.mls.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?PropertyID=6781031

We werent sure even before we saw it but we had not looked at any older houses and we had to look before we could discount the idea. We were surprised because it was so homely inside, frame was sound, re wired, replumbed and it was just so nice.......... and cheap.

It needed a lot of work doing, porch and side house needed replacing and the lean to garage needed ripping down and starting again. The lot size was huge and it definitely had potential. The furnace was older than me an it would take a lot of decorating.

Over here you can get the home inprovements written into the mortgage so this was a definite possibility, it was a real blank canvas and has loads of potential.

Trouble is with being away all the time, i wouldnt have the time or even the inclination to do all the work, a DIY nut could have a field day in there but as for me, i am moe DIW (do it whenever)

Its not been struck off the list just yet but i dont think we will be putting an offer in.

While we were looking round i had a call off Sean & Angela, i bumped into them first at Avon in New York, then at the Husky while i was busy shovelling down a platefull of poutine.

They had just got back in to Lethbridge and i had asked them if they would like to come down to Raymond for a visit and Angela could see what a Canadian house was like. Well they came down and we had a great chat and some ribs and wings, hello both and i really hope you both enjoyed the evening as much as we did, shame you couldnt have met Graham but he had to do his strawberry thing.

Well thats about it really, ive had a few days off, ate a mountain of wings, ribs, sunday dinner and a load of other stuff. The old batteries are recharged and im ready for my next little trip, i guess i had better phone in later and find out where i am going.

Oh yes, id better point out that i am back to single driving now, the team thing was just to rescue that load and get it into Pittston. I quite enjoyed it really, not sure if if i would do it all the time but i would consider it.

If there is anyone out there who is coming over and considering team then heres my views for what theyre worth.

It is hard but satisfying work, you cover some hellish distance in a short time, for example it took Sean and Angela (only Sean driving) 9 days to do the same job that we did in less than 5, even when you consider that the pay rate is a lot lower you can still make roughly the same money as a single in a week or month. Sleeping in a moving truck is difficult at first but after a few days you get used to it. Remember the truck wont stop except for fuel and opening the back doors so food, bathrooms and showers are done on the run.

Your choice of co driver is also important, you both need the same drive, stamina and work ethic or i can a lot of arguements especially when you are tired or when the pressure is on. Privacy is minimal and tidiness is paramount. When i drive, everything has a place and everything is in its place so if i need someting i can just grab without taking my eyes off the road.

John worked really well with this and he just mirrored everything i did, we even used the same size clipboards for daily logbooks and logbook archive, all that moved when we changed shifts was the position of the daily logs. Bearing in mind we were thrown together at the last minute and its the first time either of us had driven team, it worked really well.