The story of my journey from the capital of England to the capital of the Yukon
Mixed feelings ran over me as I passed through security at Edinburgh Airport. On the one hand, I was excited to start a new chapter and adventure of my life, as well as being reunited with my partner for the foreseeable future. On the other hand, I was leaving my home country, my house that I shared with my two best friends and our two cats, my job security, my friends and my family. I was especially going to miss my five-month-old twin nieces.
While feeling a little overwhelmed from various emotions and being alone in an airport I hadn’t flown from before, a text from my partner, saying they were on their way to meet me and excited to be together again, helped me regulate myself—and the mixed emotions melted away to just excitement.
The flight was comfortable and went fairly quickly. I flew with West Jet, an airline I hadn’t heard of before then. It was on a 787 Dreamliner. I watched Renfield and The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, had a decent in-flight meal and a nap. Before I knew it, I was in Calgary sorting out my clown-car folder of paperwork with the border officer, for my work visa. The U.K. is seven hours ahead of Alberta, so flying there felt like time travelling. I spent around eight hours in the air, but the time was only an hour or so later when I stepped off the plane.
Once I was done, I headed out of the airport to look for my partner. We both had our locations on and and were getting excited as we got closer, but still somehow managed to almost miss each other as the GPS wasn’t as accurate as we thought. We headed to the shuttle for our hotel room and I almost left my newly-acquired paperwork at the roadside as we boarded the bus!
We were staying at the Sandman Signature Airport Hotel. It was a good price and had a nice restaurant, which we tried after going over our travel itinerary and having a nap. After our meal, we met up with the gentleman selling my partner a car. There were a few small issues we noticed but didn’t think much of (we were still riding the high of being together in a new place, with a new vehicle). We made some payments, shook hands and agreed on a time to pick the car up and do the paperwork in the morning.
That evening we went through our things to figure out what else we needed to buy. I had bought sleeping bags that could be zipped together. We were excited to try that out. I had to be careful while going through my belongings: it was my partner’s birthday coming up and I had a bunch of her gifts in the bag. I condensed them down to one bag and told her she wasn’t allowed to open it for the duration of the trip. She was turning 30 in a little over a month and I wanted to give her 30 gifts—some bought, some made by hand and some free, as she loves to be thrifty. I was only about one-third of the way with her gifts and was planning on sneakily getting more during our trip. We headed to bed, happy to be spending our first night of many finally living in the same country and eager for our cross-country road trip to begin.
