Well, we finally pulled out of the drive way on Friday Dec 16th in the grips of the latest round of the Polar Vortex. After several days of final preparations both inside the house and outside the RV (brings back fond memories of my early days working up poles for Bell with no gloves on in winter storms). Sam did a great job of timing the food in the house to be used up just in time for our departure.

One of my last tasks to was to mount our bike rack on the trailer's hitch platform. It was an invention of mine utilizing a 4 section fold up ladder and an old bike rack we had from the car. While I designed and built the components earlier in the fall, it wasn't until Wednesday during 30-40 km/h winds in minus 10 weather when I installed it on the trailer (apparently with a few of our friends on the street watching from the comfort of their homes) At any rate, you can see the bikes, complete with their custom bike cover ( OK, it's a BBQ cover but you can't read the logo on it cuz I put it at the back). We have read a lot fo blog posts of people that mounted bikes on racks on their RV's rear bumper only to find them gone once they reached their destination. So, I wanted mine where I could see them and not present a hazard for anyone driving behind us.

I was concerned about driving with the RV in slippery and icy conditions and it only took until Port Hope to find out when a very talented drive decided to slam their brakes on in front of me for no apparent reason! I headed for the shoulder but the brake controller cut in and dragged everything to a halt before we got too close. So, huge space cushions were the order of the day from that point forward.

As for the truck and RV, the attached photo says it all. It took about half an hour to get the thick coating of salt on everything from the sloppy road conditions on our trip out to London to see Scott and Liz. Luckily, we arrived just before the snow started again for London's nightly dumping. Day 1 complete.