We didn’t wake until 8:00am when Denise’s alarm went off. I didn’t think it would be necessary but it was. After a nice casual breakfast Denise & I headed back to the airport to collect the hire car (van with baby seat). We got off the shuttle bus at the wrong terminal and had to catch the train to terminal 1 to find the hire car place 🤷‍♂️. Straight back to the hotel to load the car and we were off to Westport. The Expressway was busy through Toronto but traffic soon thinned out after leaving the city. It was a good tip from Mat to leave late in the morning 👏. We had one brief stop for Hendrix as he was getting upset and a main stop at Trenton ONroute for a coffee before arriving at Mike’s cottage on Wolfe Lake about 4:15pm. No dramas with the drive apart from passing a truck just before it lost a wheel. It was wobbling like crazy as we passed it and the wheel was gone when the truck passed us when we were stopped. It was a calm and balmy 26 degrees when we arrived at the cottage. Very nice. A quick trip into Westport for groceries then a nice bbq tea at The Lazy Loon, our lakeside accommodation for the next week

A long day but it went smoothly. We were up early for just a short walk over the road to Sydney’s international terminal in plenty of time to get through checkin and security and have some breakfast before our 8:45am boarding and 9:30am departure. It was a smooth flight. Those Dreamliners are nice. Everyone travelled well, even little Hendrix. Denise had booked bulkhead and exit aisle seats and we had plenty of room. Arrived Vancouver 15 hours later and had a quick and smooth transit to the domestic lounge before our 4 & 1/2 hour flight to Toronto. On arrival we had van with baby seat booked but that wasn’t there waiting so after a couple of calls we got an SUV + car to the nearby airport hotel. There we were nicely surprised by Mat, Michelle, Heath & Carol who we didn’t expect to see until tomorrow in Westport. We were also surprised that our hotel was overbooked and we’d been moved to the nearby Crowne Plaza hotel so it was onto a shuttle bus and over the the Crowne Plaza. We threw the bags in the rooms and went to dinner at a nearby Boston Pizza restaurant (1/2 hour wait to get into Jack Astors🤷‍♂️) and had a good catchup before hitting the sack (about 28 hours from waking this morning). It’s back to the airport in the morning to pick up the hire car.

Countdown is on. Only 11 days until liftoff. It’s been 28 months since last time on a plane – thanks Covid