The Big Move

A family shifts northward by 1,141 miles / 1,848 kilometers / 10 degrees 11 minutes

Hello, Friends and Family. Welcome to a new voice (well, four new voices) crying out in the blogosphere: Dispatches from the Great White North. This is intended as a family journal for Erik, Kimm, Sheehan, and Kate, as we blog about life in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Most of you will know the backstory, already, but for anyone else who wanders by, I will summarize:

In December 2006 I accepted a position as the Director of the Electronic Text Centre at the University of New Brunswick. That's in Canada, by the way, and has nothing to do with New Brunswick, NJ, thank goodness! [Aside to my father and aunts: this is not to slander the state of your birth, but rather a certain part of that state. Woodbury it ain't!] So, in early January I came to Canada ahead of the family. My attendance was required at a meeting in Calgary (perhaps more on that trip in a later entry), after which I came to lovely Fredericton on Jan. 10 to establish a beachhead for the Moore invasion. Funny thing, it had been a very mild winter by their standards, and then, about the time I got here, it became bitterly cold...and hasn't let up since (above freezing for maybe an hour, one day, since that time). Even the lifelong natives are impressed with this cold snap. (Fear not, you will be hearing all about the weather--I'm sure we'll quickly make that a main category on this blog.)

On 18 Jan, in a rented Grand Caravan, I drove down to Cary, NC in two long days. The first leg, from Fredericton to Philly, was especially long: 750 mi/1200 km; on paper it should take around 12 hours. Ah, but paper cannot account for the Malevolence that is the Garden State Parking Lot Parkway, where I camped out for a wee spell (it took over two hours to go ~40 miles). Yet another reason to impugn Noith Joisey.

I took a day off in Cary to help load up the "must have" stuff (clothes, pots and pans, I suppose the cat qualifies), to finalize last minute things, and to be Happily Not Driving for a day, and then we all set off for the GWN together on Sunday, Jan. 21. The halfway point between Cary and Fredericton is very close to some of Kimm's relatives who live 45 mins. north of NYC. They had kindly agreed to put us up for two nights, and we took a day off to explore Manhattan. Unfortunately, Kimm was not feeling so well that day, so she opted out. But the kids and I had a fantastic time wandering around midtown, then Central Park, more midtown, and finally way down in Chinatown. I may write more about it, but I bet the kids would like to post about it, too.

We arrived in Fredericton late on Tuesday night (Jan. 23), and although that's only 15 days ago, it feels like seven weeks. I'll wrap up this post for now, but plenty more will be forthcoming as we settle in.

Oh, and folks, let me just tell you: bringing along a mentally stunted, highly strung kitty in a minivan on a 1,141 mile trip is "a whole nuther tale" altogether...

[P.S. The Moore fam would like to give enormous thanks to our friends and family in NY, PA, and NoVA who housed and nourished us on our trek. BobKimmyGregBetinaRodPris, you're wonderful!]