The second 18 km

Yes, this morning I took Joka to the Petsmart and decided on the way back it's about time to pick up cycling again after 2(!!) years. At 8:50am I pedaled on the gravel road #234 towards Rollyview. I had no idea on my bike-fitness so not too far, something around 20 km will do. The first 2 km my legs hurt real bad, not that worse state of fitness I was thinking. After this I got into the groove and had no pains at all anymore, but realized there is a long way to go. It is a pretty rolling landscape here (hence Rollyview?), it goes up and down all the time, combine this with the relatively soft gravel roads and you understand that the 18 km compares to 30 km on tarmac, not a great distance but you have to start somewhere. Maybe I can trick Joka into a bike-ride tomorrow, same route as today about an hour and thru nice surroundings. Next time I will take pictures. Only thing you have to be really careful about are the cars and trucks that pass you, although they seem to be real cautious when passing. There is indeed not much room for error. As a cyclist you are considered a vehicle here in Alberta, when you are pedaling that is.

The first 2 km

Finally put my money where my mouth is. I cycled 2 km. Yes you read that correct, 2 km. On a gravel road, and that is not the easiest way to ride a bike. Fortunately I have 42 mm Schwalbe Marathon XR tires, otherwise I would probably have multiple punctures. After 2 years at last I made a start. My fitness was pretty good, bike-wise. It's gone, toast, out of the window. Have to start all over again, I think I have found a way, at least for the late spring-summer-early fall periods. Theoretically I leave at 6:45am by bike, Joke leaves at 7:10am by car and picks me up half way. That way I can at least start with a 45 min bike-ride a couple of times a week. We start doing that next week or so and see how it goes. At least it sounds like a plan.
I have to re-fit myself, I had a bit of a sore bum (yes-yes only 2 clicks, I know), my legs started to hurt (frontal wind :-) ) and I had to watch the gravel road real careful. Only the city has bike-roads, nothing like in Holland. Unfortunately. That's one thing I really miss out here, cycling. But the plan is there and I just have to make it work. The first, all important, step has been taken the rest will follow by itself. Right?

Origin of the vuvuzela

Actual 1999 BP Advertisement

Landed Immigrants

May 30th 2010 Today we drove to the US border in Carway, with our stamped passports, to leave Canada and re-enter it 5 minutes later, after the visa U-turn and so becoming Landed Immigrants. The US customs were very friendly in a nice new clean building. "I will not charge you the 6 dollar entry fee, as you are doing the visa U-turn" the mean looking but very friendly officer told us. We did the visa U-turn and onwards to the Canadian border and customs. What a grumpy bunch in a very old building. The female officer ripped out our work-visa, started to fill in the Confirmation for Permanent Residence (CPR) and ask me to sign mine. "That's a big one" she said. Huh? How does she know? Probably I looked sheepishly at her; "Your signature is pretty large and may not touch the green box at the bottom of the page" Ohhhhhh! OK, and yes I did touch the green box and screwed up my signature. Who cares! Joka and Emma also needed to sign their CPR and 10 minutes later we were done. Canadian Permanent Residence achieved. Unfortunately Joost could not join us, maybe he will come later. That's up to him.
It was doubtful whether we could make the trip, when we left there was 5 inches of snow and only 0 degrees and a very misty grey morning. We will try it and if need be we just turn and go home. It turned out to be a very nice day, after Red Deer the snow started to disappear and slowly the clouds broke with a comfortable sunshine. As we approached the US border, we drove thru a Blackfoot Indian Reservation. What a mess. Beautiful surroundings but deteriorating ill maintained houses and villages.
We left at 7:15AM to return at 8:15PM and drove 1100 km, it was well worth the trip. All uncertainty gone, no more black cloud for September 2011 and regained some freedom as I could go look for a job across Canada. Only time will tell where we end up.

Passports returned....

May 27th 2010 Our passports have been returned from the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, again using FedEx. Had not expected them yet, all of a sudden Paule phones me up saying our passports had arrived, COOL. So the planning comes together rather nicely. All are stamped with the visa attached to it. For the now I still control the game I am playing, being the stupid and ignorant Dutch idiot. But I am soooooo far ahead. We go to the border on Sunday the 29th of May, to make the U-turn and finalize the immigration process for the 3 of us. Unfortunately Joost cannot join us as he is in Holland waiting for his passport to be returned, which I will do tomorrow using FedEx, again. Another step in the immigration process. Two more to go; U-turn at the border and waiting for the PR cards who will legalize our stay here. After the U-turn we can call ourselves landed Immigrants. And btw the "Decision Made"-post is part of my little game, a sort of smokescreen if you will; because the Migrationbureau knows my Blogger address. They still can forward the April 8th letter, but will they........

Passports in Berlin

May 17th 2010 Our passports have been delivered at the Canadian Embassy in Berlin, Fedex did a good job despite the Icelandic ash-cloud and the apparent overreaction by some aviation authorities. Still we are way ahead in this game, if it turns out to be a game, that is. I still know they don't know I know, and I like that. But they could check and been told the appointment of representative has been canceled as of the beginning of May, but does the embassy relay this information.
The embassy claims to need 10 working-days for processing, does this include the day of delivery? We will find out in due time. Going to the border on the 29th is still feasible (feasable is also correct according to Google Translate).
Waiting and having patience is not one of my best virtues but NOW WE WAIT, no other options, eh. 10,9........

Language used

May 15th 2010 I do apologize for the language I've used in the last two posts and the ones that will be related to the MB in the near future. But I have to show the anger and frustration I currently have to deal with, still I feel it is not that bad. I am fully aware of the language I use and it needs to be this way. So please don't be offended and you can always choose not to read. All posts related to this subject will be dated and will be published with 15 minutes intervals on June 9th of 2010. 
Currently our passports are at the Fedex location in Frankfurt, Germany, awaiting transportation to Berlin for arrival on the 17th. Then the countdown starts. Usually it takes 10 days to process, I'm hoping it will take less in our case due to our problems. I'm planning to do the U-turn at the US-border in Carway on highway 2 at the 29th of May. Tight but feasible if things go our way, if so it is done and dusted before June 8th. Now that would be great, right!

Game on

May 14th 2010 What do do about the MB? I had the urge to send them an email and give them a piece of my mind, it would have been a very rude and very gory email. I decided not to, partly because there is still time and, more importantly, I need to know what their game-plan is. Are the really going to withhold this letter from us? Or are they sending it to us in the latest possible timewindow? Claiming it was lost and it surfaced just in time. Are they that unprofessional? We are talking here THE LETTER, one piece of paper that defines our future. Not sending this letter would have caused a lot of damage; relocating-selling our place-loss of income to name a few. Is that really the MB game-plan? We will know in a couple of weeks.
So the wait is on and for me it's game on. I know they don't know I know, but it is difficult because I am so pissed off. But I learned over the years that even I can be patient if need be. I killed several evenings preparing complaints. One with the CSIC, Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants, of which MB employees are a member; a second one with the British Columbia Law Society where the bitch who officially represents us on our application is a member of; a third one will go to the head of the Berlin Immigration Section explaining the (un) professional level of the MB; maybe he can pull some strings.
Somehow I will go for a refund. Any which way you look at it: it is a breach of contract. It is clearly stated in the "CSIC-Rules of Professional Conduct": "4.2 When advising a Client, an Immigration Consultant must exercise due care and must never knowingly assist in or encourage any dishonesty, provision of misleading information, omission of any required relevant information, fraud, crime or illegal conduct, or instruct the Client on how to violate the law and avoid punishment."
I am really anxious to know how this will end. I'm hoping the result will be a cancellation of permits, a reprimand by the law society, a refund and maybe even some publicity.
All the dated posts will be published on June 8th, the day our initial 60 days are used up. In the meantime we received a letter from the embassy with a new date, it arrived with Canada Post after only 5 days, hence the heat for sending the passports is off and on April 12th the MB must have known, as the UK is closer to Germany as is Canada.To see the MB's attention to detail click on the picture and read the red highlighted text: it is about the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants in short CSIC, look at the second line. Correct, it's abbreviated as CCIC. Oops, very professional on a public website indeed.
In the mean time I just play stupid and sit it out. Like I said before, I'm having fun out here. To be continued.......

Going to war

May 13th 2010 What's this all about, you probably ask yourself. It is about The Migration Bureau (MB) and very very unprofessional conduct. On April 28th and 29th I inquired on the status of our application, we are getting nervous; over 3 months now since our medical was send in. On May 3rd, only after chasing them, the reply came: no need to get alarmed; the CIC had not requested additional documents (they usually don't after the medical) and there is a back log. Huh? What you also need to know is the fact the MB sends dozens of emails to me not related to our application. August last year I received an email saying: "Please confirm by return e-mail that you accept the above quote for additional work on your file. We are unable to complete any further work until we have your confirmation in writing". I refer to this one as the Blackmail letter.
This pissed me off big time as we already spend thousands of $$; do we now quit on a couple of hundred $$? Last March 2010 another one came in, how to emigrate to Canada and the possibilities we have in doing so. What the fuck, we are almost there; that one closed the door and I let them know I had enough and would file a complaint against them, and this is probably at the root of it all; please continue reading.
On Tuesday evening May 5th@9:30PM I decided to contact the embassy directly, explain them the situation as I was suspecting the MB is withholding information and ask them on our application status, this also thanks to the advice of Jutta. Wednesday morning May 6th@6:59AM the reply was there, and remember it is May 6th: "Please note that on April 8 we sent your consultant/lawyer a letter requesting all passports for visa issuance. I assume that this letter was not passed on to you." WHAT?? APRIL 8TH?? The MB inbreed fuckers are withholding information, inbreed bastards. On the one hand I was very happy, we are "granted the right to live and work in Canada" as it says officially. On the other hand I started to explode. Fortunately for me there was no MB inbreed fucker present when I read the above message. "In any case. The best way to proceed would be for you to fill out the cancellation of appointment form below and fax a signed version. We will then send you the relevant documents directly to your by regular mail or e-mail." The cancellation was faxed an hour later and I started to calm down a bit, actually still not grasping what just had happened.
How am I going to organize this? You only have 60 days to send in your passports and 30 of them were already used. After a confirmation email to the embassy, to which they replied within the hour, I received the necessary forms. I phoned up Joost to Fedex/DHL his passport to Edmonton, that took about 4 days. On May 13th Fedex picked up all our passports to be sent to the Embassy of Canada in Berlin. We are still ahead of the game and I will go to war to fight them. You cannot very easily get me really really pissed off but when it happens it usually goes with a bang. Considering this I kept my calm, surprisingly, and did not even wreck something, also peculiar. I will channel this energy otherwise this time, hopefully even more devastating psychologically. And I will enjoy every step of it. To be continued.......

Some Delayed posts are to be posted.

Due to the fact the Migrationbureau has withheld information from us, they should have relayed to us on or about April12th of 2010, the next few hours a series posts will emerge telling the story of our successful immigration into Canada, becoming Permanent Residents. This also happened thanks to Jutta who was so kind to give us a lot of advice prior to contacting the Canadian Embassy in Berlin. Actually she advised us back in March to do so, I still trusted the Migrationbureau. How wrong.

Oilsands Expertise

Edmonton Journal

Malcolm Mayes Cartoon

Freedom Ford: Tires for life

50000 km mainly on gravel roads had ruined the right rear tire, Goodyear Wrangler, of my F150. When I bought this car Anna offered me "Tires for life" only if serviced by Freedom Ford. Pretty good deal, it saved me 1100 bucks today as I had it serviced. So now I drive BF Goodrich All Terrain Mud+Snow, load-range E, 275/65/R18 rugged tires. Truck looks way better and more importantly, it drives better; improved grip and sound. Also Clarence and I talked on a 2" front side lift and a muffler for the, by me so desired, sound improvement. He walked over to his F150 and started it up to let me hear the sound with a Dynaflow muffler of only 60 bucks, pretty noisy but I like it. So for a couple of 100 $$ I get what I want. Looks and sound. Cool.