Status Update

How are we doing? It is a question we have been asking ourselves many times since our lives and our retirement plans were dramatically turned upside down with the pandemic.

The anxiety of not knowing where we would be able to park our coach — or if we would even be able to continue living in our coach — brought me very close to selling the bus and getting back into a house. Even with the absolutely insane price of housing in this part of the world.

When we returned to Canada from Florida back in March, we had no place to stay. The dealership where we purchased our coach graciously offered us a spot on their property to sit out our quarantine. The lockdowns at the time included the park where we had a seasonal site. Our site was closed down. We literally had no idea where we would be staying over the summer months.

After some lobbying at the provincial level, exemptions were made for snowbirds to return to their seasonal sites.

Suddenly we had a place to stay for a few months.

But would the border to the United States reopen to allow us to travel to our site in Florida for the winter?

That was constantly on the back of my mind. What would we do if that border remain closed? Where would we live?

The border, much to my surprise, has remained closed since March. It will likely remain closed for quite some time to come.

We got lucky though.

We found a beautiful house by the lake for the winter. Expensive mind you. Thankfully we have the financial resources to absorb the cost.

And we now have some stability. We are here until the third week of May. We will then move back into our coach. We will also rebook our lakeside house for the fall of 2021.

Why?

Because I have no idea when the border will reopen.

Canadians learned yesterday that our government officials negotiated vaccine contracts on a “back-of-the-line” basis.

Canadians will get COVID-19 vaccines later than people in other countries because of a lack of domestic vaccine manufacturing capacity, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Tuesday.

As a country, we outsourced most of our manufacturing to places like China. And that included outsourcing pharmaceutical production. We will have to wait for other countries to vaccinate their citizens before we can begin to vaccinate our own citizens. I strongly suspect that the border will remain closed until widespread vaccination has taken place. Either that or the border will require proof of vaccination to cross. As far as I can tell, we still have at least another year of public health restrictions.

We may see yet a second winter in Canada in 2021.

Needless to say we are thinking about our options. The RV lifestyle is wonderful and we have thoroughly enjoyed it however being locked down in Canada makes the lifestyle untenable in the winter.

I need to be patient I suppose. Perhaps next year things will be different and life gets back to normal. We may be able to rejoin our family and friends down in Florida for the winter. And hopefully we can resume travelling about the country in our motorcoach.

To our friends, we are safe and we are healthy. We love the house and the property and we are very content to be here. In a way, it is like being on a luxury vacation. Mind you, with a lot of snow, ice and freezing temperatures.

Our youngest son has opted to spend the winter with us. His college classes are all virtual and he can easily maintain his studies from the house. So happy to have him home.

I am knee deep in audio engineering, mixing and production. I am doing more playing and recording now than I ever have. All because of the pandemic. Everything that used to be done live is now being pre-recorded. I love the craft and I love being this engaged with music. But it sure is keeping me busy.

Lorraine is far more balanced and positive about all of this drama in our lives. Except for the pandemic restrictions. She is not too happy about those.

All in all, we are blessed and thankful.

I’ll continue to post here about the RV industry and the RV lifestyle in general as I normally do. And I will chime in from time to time about how we are doing in the Great White North.