Ode to Old Smokey. (part 1)

A few years back I was working, and living, in Iqaluit, Nunavut, a locality of some 6500 or so, located on the southern end of Baffin Island at the back of Frobisher Bay. While looking out the window of our office that overlooked the town and out onto the bay, I was taking a break from my workday reality and began to consider what I could do on my next "trip out" which was coming up in a few months.

I more or less instinctively knew that my holiday would probably entail some type of road trip because as opposed to what seemed to me to be the majority of my friends and co-workers, I am not really the "go somewhere with a beach and sand" resort type of person. I travel to discover, not so much to lay back and get drunk by the pool. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with laying back and getting drunk by the pool, just not my thing.

The first hurdle to my road trip plan was the fact that I had no wheels down south. Remember, I was living in Iqaluit, which is in the Arctic. Only way in or out is pretty much by flying. And the only wheels I needed in Iqaluit were supplied by Her Majesty and I owned a snowmobile that I would put about 6000 to 8000 miles per year. You could drive everywhere around town on your ski-doo. I loved it. Anyway, back to my not having wheels down south.

The first thing I did was to start looking around on autotrader.com in the Ottawa area. I my search parameters were; something fun to drive, something different, something in good shape and something not too expensive because it was essentially going to be one road trip and then, maybe hang on to it or maybe sell it.

I looked at Volvos and I looked at Beemers but didn't find anything that quite felt right. Then I looked at some Porsches. I hadn't really considered them because I guess that I thought that they were just too expensive so I hadn't bothered checking them out. Well I was right about them being expensive. The 911s sure were. But organized my search results from least expensive to most expensive according to my price ceiling and found quite a few beaters but two interesting prospects.