Rowkin Rovings Blog

Not a good start to the morning at all.

We got up with the alarm going off at the god forsaken time of 4.30am. We both did manage about four hours sleep which was better than nothing.

We closed up the apartment and turned the power off and locked the door with all of our luggage in the hallway outside the elevator ready to go, including the bike box. All going well so far………or was it!!!!!

The elevator was locked out and on the third level!!!!! We went down to investigate thinking maybe the door was slightly ajar, but that was not the reason. Maybe the building locks it out during the night – who knows. What we did know was that we had to lug all our bags (thankfully there were just two carry on’s plus our small back packs) and the 32kg awkwardly shaped bike box. Fraser ended up very hot and sweaty before our day even began.

Our special sized taxi arrived that we spent a lot of time organising because of the box and Murphy’s Law, the taxi driver didn’t seem to know how to drop the back seats of the van down. The van was big enough but he couldn’t get the whole row of back seats to lie flat which they obviously did. He got the small side seat halfway down and then pushed the box very hard along the roof line which we were sure was going to tear the material of the van roof. Somehow he got it in. Fras is thinking this bike is cursed.

Off to Charles de Gaulle airport to then tackle booking the bike on our flight. Now this was weird. We had bought the cheapest tickets and therefore only had carryon which saved us paying an extra $100 each for a bag. We had also registered the bike box via phone which we were told would cost us €100. Lo and behold, they checked the whole three items on for the grand total of €ZERO. Go figure. We actually had a win against Air Canada. The last time we had a win against them we had to take them to the Canadian Aviation Authority. That is another story.

So, we bid our bike farewell to hopefully be seen back in Calgary, in one piece. Now just a three hour wait until our flight leaves for Montreal.

We deliberately organised it that we would have a 10 hour lay over in Montreal as we wanted to catch up with our good friends Joannie and Simone as we are unsure as to when we will see them again. They helped us co-parent Toque and Maples between 2017 to 2022 so that we could do a lot of international travel. Without them, it would never have been possible. They became very attached to the girls, so we know this catch up will be very hard for us all.

Our first flight was only 6.5 hours and we lucked out getting emergency exit seats with all the leg room you could ever want. As per usual, the plane was chockers!! We had 450 people on board and fingers crossed, our bike. Airlines have amazing algorithms that manage to fill up every available seat.

Joannie and Simon picked us up from Pierre Trudeau airport in Montreal and we headed down to old Montreal city for a delicious lunch.

We then went for a lovely walk around the old city of Montreal and then we drove up to Mont Royal for a walk around the beautiful park. It was wonderful to spend this special time with the guys. We are sure we will be seeing them in Oz.

BUT…… not quite the end.

The bike made it in one piece to Calgary and is now proudly hanging up in the bike shed in our condo complex……for the moment. It has one big final trip and that is to Australia in the next four to five months.

Thank you all for following our blog and we hope we provided you with some laughter, appreciated sarcasm, historical facts (courtesy wiki) and a zest to get out there and enjoy yourselves……we certainly did and will continue to do so.

Steps –  18,123