I’m not a big city person. I mean, sure, I’ve only ever lived in highly populated urban areas, and sure I was cultivated right in East Vancouver… But I’m more at home among trees than buildings. More at peace among mountain streams than brand name stores. I remember last year when a Twitter friend went to Toronto I had said that I had, “absolutely no desire to ever go there.” And yet, in just a few days I’ll arrive in Ontario for the first time in my life.

Not only am I crossing the milestone of going to Canada’s Largest City, I’m also going to be further away from my rainforest home than I ever have been before. This is pretty incredible, albeit terrifying. I’ve never been one to go out on a limb in a traveling sort of way. I’ve viewed a lot of my friend’s pictures and seen their status updates as they go to exotic places, or even not so exotic places… And maybe it’s a bit bizarre, but I’ve been here, doing the young family thing and learning about myself in that way. I’ve never really lamented not traveling for very long, I guess because I figured I’d have time later. But then, this year, as my daughter gets older and I get older and I start to get to that age where I’m staring down the barrel at thirty (and all the older folks go…. OOOOOOH thirty), I’m starting to feel like it’s time to say yes to opportunity.

I recently acquired a job as a content contributor for an American content company, I know I haven’t mentioned it, but I landed it when we were away in San Diego. Since then I’ve been submitting content to this company on a regular basis and having a great time doing it. It’s not really exciting stuff to be writing about, but it’s certainly exciting to have a job that I can perform from home.

Now I don’t know why I managed to be in the right place at the right time to catch wind of this opportunity, and I really don’t know how long it’s going to last, but i do feel like there’s a reason that it happened just over a month before this conference in Toronto, and because I was able to magically afford to go, I grabbed life by the short ones and said, “Let’s Do This”.

My hotel budget was a bit lower than what the official hotel was going for, so my roommate and I opted for a bit of a distance away to save a bit of moolah. It’s up by Maple Leaf Gardens and it includes free wireless internet, which as you all know is a must. At the same time, I booked my flight, or I should say my momma booked my flight a ways back so that I could take advantage of the lowest price I had seen. turns out I must have booked in a sweet spot because as of today it’s going for over $400 more to fly round trip Vancouver to Toronto.

I debated for a long time whether or not I’d like to do the CN tower, but now that I’m closer to the trip I am leaning towards going to see it, just to say I’ve done it. Besides, where in BC would I be able to see such a flat 360 degree view? Nowhere!

I’ve done the same kind of research with Toronto as I did with San Diego. I’ve street viewed my way around and am hoping that will help me to keep my bearings. I’ll be printing off a few maps and that kind of thing for myself. I’m going to undertake Toronto in the same way as I did San Diego and just go for it. I’ll be brave and I’ll figure stuff out.

So I hope that you’ll be around this week when I’m blogging about Toronto, Ontario and my very first experience traveling alone, 3000 km further than I’ve ever been from home.