My friends and family cross-country tour

As I said in my previous post it was my intention to write about my trip, but so much time has passed that I feel like it is almost ancient history now. I'm also now uninterested in sifting through all the photos I took to post any here. However, here goes.

I dislike flying however it seemed like the only thing I could do to make this trip happen, so I flew. Halifax to Vancouver (with brief stopover in the Edmonton airport), Vancouver to Castlegar, Kelowna to Grande Prairie (another stopover in the Edmonton airport), Grande Prairie to Toronto (stopping over in the Calgary airport this time), and Toronto to Halifax. There were also ferry trips (from Vancouver to Victoria to Hornby Island and back again, also to the Sunshine Coast), a train trip (Toronto to Barrie), and a couple of long distance bus rides (Nelson to Kelowna and Barrie to Toronto). Every single one of them uneventful and on time, which I consider a great stroke of good fortune.

An airport is an airport is an airport, but one of the most striking things for me was my second stopover in the Edmonton airport (en route to Grande Prairie). It was evening and the lights in this part of the airport were dimmed. In the centre of a large rotunda was a grand piano and a very talented pianist-singer. I don't know her name but she was amazing. It was welcome diversion from the typical waiting-in-an-airport. Kudos to Edmonton International Airport.

In Toronto and Vancouver the mass transit has evolved to a new level of sophistication and with the use of a card that one preloads with money for transit fares (Presto in Toronto and Compass in Vancouver) and Google Maps, you can travel effortlessly and without lengthy wait times at bus stops. I  bought a Compass card (refundable) in Vancouver and used it a lot; it would have been nice if I could have used it again in Toronto but instead one must buy another card for that city. I had some leftover subway tokens from when I lived there so I used them instead, and my stay in Toronto was only a few days so that was enough. Google Maps was amazing, not only does it tell you which bus or buses to take to get to your destination, it also tells you when to leave your home and whether the bus is running late and if so by how much time. So in theory one should never have to wait more than a few minutes at a bus stop.

In those cities everyone is on their cell phone. If they are not wearing earbuds, then their phones are in their hands and they are either busy texting or holding the phone handy in case they might need to text. Once I was trying to get from a bus stop to a museum and someone on the bus suggested I just ask anyone at the bus stop how to get to the museum because everyone knows and can tell me. But when I got to the bus stop and looked around for someone to ask directions from, all I could see were people wearing earbuds and I didn't like to interrupt whatever they were listening to. I finally found someone not wearing earbuds and he pulled his cellphone from his pocket to look up the location of the museum. Then I felt silly, I had my own cellphone and could easily have looked it up myself. I am just not in the habit of relying on my cellphone for direction.

The other places I visited were a little more "primitive", they either lacked cell phone coverage or internet signal or bus systems. The flight to Castlegar was to visit a friend in a small town an hour's drive away. Silverton is an old mining town now mainly home to summer residents only. It is on a lovely lake surrounded by mountains, the mining operations long since abandoned. The highway that runs through it is a favourite of motorcyclists who love its curvy new pavement through a narrow valley. My friend lives on the main street of the town and the traffic is predominantly motorcycles in the daytime and trucks by night. It is a broad street with homes on one side and store fronts on the other side, and walking down the middle of the road is easily done provided one keeps an ear out for motorcycles. My friend had two inflatable kayaks which were light enough that we could carry both of them at once the few blocks down to the lakeside. And the water was warm enough in early September to go swimming every day.

The impetus for the trip was the birth of a grandchild in Alberta; the secondary purpose was to visit friends and family across the country. Over the entire five weeks I stayed at either friends or family places so it was a huge social occasion for me. I enjoyed that very much. I think my timing was such that no one felt particularly burdened by my presence, or I hope so at any rate.

I had good conversations with all of my sons (and grandchildren) and very much enjoyed the company of old friends. I also got to see an aunt, uncle and cousin in Ontario that I rarely see. My uncle Bill has been in a nursing home for over 14 years after an unfortunate stroke when he was 70 that left him physically incapacitated. He had recently had one leg amputated and they were considering amputating the other due to pain. He was on morphine but clearly still in pain. However he was moved almost to tears when five of us, all family relations, arrived at his bedside. He is my Dad's "kid brother", the last of that generation of the family alive.

The grandchild, Coen, was six weeks old when I arrived there. His seven year old older sister is---as one person put it---a real firecracker. Intelligent and sassy, used to being the centre of attention. Coen almost did not survive his birth so his parents are understandably attentive to his every cry or fidget. The family dynamic is somewhat tense due to lack of sleep and adjustments to a new family member.  But it was the first time I interacted with my granddaughter, she does not like to talk on the phone (or Skype) with people she doesn't know. I think we established a bit of a relationship, but four days is not really a long time to do so.

There was a lot more but I'm going to leave it at that. While visiting friends in BC I was nostalgic for the days when I lived there and was being encouraged to move back. I definitely considered it, and who knows it might happen in the future. However coming home to Nova Scotia was very good, despite the sewage emergency. I have to say that I am grateful that I live here. Moving away is the furthest thing from my mind right now. But ask me again in the spring, I may change my tune after a hard winter (some folks are forecasting such already).

Hapi's brother Hiro, in Victoria

A walk on the expensive side

Marina and I went for a walk around the Olympic Village on False Creek in Vancouver. The buildings are mostly empty, they are having some difficulty selling off the condos there.


We took a look at a couple of open houses and I guess I am not surprised. They seem tiny for the prices being charged (starting at half a million, and I am pretty sure the "two bedrooms plus flex" that we were looking at were well beyond that), and one was unbelievably dark in the middle of a sunny afternoon. You would never find your way around in there without the lights on. How depressing!

I guess the main selling feature of these condos is location. The views (from those condos with views) are of False Creek and peekaboo glimpses of mountains between highrises. You're right downtown, you have a community centre in the middle, and you're not far from the skytrain. But the condos themselves don't much appeal to me. Neither do peekaboo mountains.


I liked the giant sparrows near the community centre. They were cute.

Friends

I have visited with several friends in the Vancouver area over the last couple of weeks. In particular I saw Marina, Irene and Catherine.

I spent an afternoon and evening with my friend Marina. She and I each have three kids, hers are all girls mine are all boys. She has two grandchildren and up until recently so did I. Now I have three (Yay!). We enjoy comparing notes.

Marina and I first met when we were both attending the Shambhala Buddhist Centre in Vancouver in the late nineties. Neither of us go there any more, but Marina is still in contact with many people from the centre. We used to go out to a nearby coffee shop, the Java Hut, and Marina still hangs out there. She's taking courses at Emily Carr College of Art and Design and the Java Hut is a place for her to read and do homework, not to mention eat, drink coffee and meet friends.

Anyway, that's where I met Marina that day. We hung out there for a little while and then went down to Kits Beach to walk. We walked along the beach and then past the old planetarium and boat launch and marina to Granville Island, we kept walking along False Creek a ways past the island. The Bard on the Beach tents were still up but I believe that is over for the season.

We decided to go to the Heaven on Earth Curry House for dinner, another of our old haunts. The restaurant is owned by a Sikh woman who comes to our table to chat with us about our respective families. She has two grown children, a boy and a girl.

The daughter married into a Washington DC family, it was an arranged marriage. In their culture, once a girl is married she becomes part of her husband's family and her own parents have very little to do with her after that. She continued her university studies in Washington along with her husband, graduated, and eventually had a baby. Her mother has only seen that baby once and has no plans to visit again in the near future.

The son is attending university here. He wanted to go into accounting but his parents insisted that he study engineering as they needed someone with an engineering background in his father's business. The son was initially not happy about that decision, but his mother says that he likes it better now. They plan to find a wife for him from India.

It seems very strange to Marina and I, we spend a lot of time comparing notes on our various children and grandchildren and can't imagine living like our host's family does. It is a view into a whole other way of living.

The food there is heavenly. Can't eat there too often! I've never seen this restaurant full so I don't know how she keeps it going, but it has been there a very long time. Maybe her husband's business is so successful she doesn't have to worry about making a profit, but she seems more practical than that.

I had dinner with Irene at a local pub. The food was unusually bad. I have eaten there before and don't remember the food being particularly bad, but this time it was. Irene complained and they gave us free appies in compensation, but the appies were only marginally better. What can I say.

Irene and I know each other from the strata we both lived in (in BC a condo corporation is called a strata). She sold her condo shortly before I did, and then I house sat for her after my condo sold and she went on vacation. That gave me a place to stay over the winter until I was ready to leave the province in the spring. For a while we were on the strata council together when our strata was going through a leaky condo envelop rehab. Stressful times.

Irene's parents are in a nursing home, her mother had dementia and her father is older and frailer. They share a room and are private patients so they pay over $8500 a month. Irene is not impressed with the level of care they get for their money, and is constantly on the nursing home's case to do better.

Irene doesn't let things go, she's a formidable "complainer". At one point this summer her father had an infection and both the nursing home and the doctor gave him up for dead. Irene insisted that they do better and as a result they gave him a second round of antibiotics that cleared up the infection. Irene also insisted on aftercare to get him back on his feet since his musculature had deteriorated from being sick in bed for so long.

The doctor complimented Irene for her dedication, but Irene felt that she shouldn't have had to do that, that if the doctor was doing his job then he would have seen that the first round of antibiotics had not cleared up the infection and would have prescribed a second round, instead of telling her that her father was dying. But Irene sees that the end is not far off and she should prepare for the worst.

Catherine and I went for lunch at a restaurant near where she works in downtown Vancouver. We met years ago when I was a manager and hired her as our senior technical writer. She and I had about the same level of experience as technical writers, but I moved on to become a manager and she remained a writer. That was a conscious decision on her part and I think she made the right choice. I think I would be less disillusioned about working if I had done the same, being a manager was not particularly fun. [Joke: What is the Middle Management Prayer? Sorry, middle management doesn't have a prayer!]

We exchanged a bit of gossip about what various people we both know are doing now, and caught up a bit on our lives thus far. Catherine has UK citizenship as does her husband, so she would like to move away from North America. Her dream home is near Toulouse, France. She's keeping her eye out for jobs there. More immediately though she's thinking about moving to Victoria; her boss at her current workplace says she could keep her job and work from home there. She's tired of Vancouver, it's too big for her she says. She has come to the conclusion that she's really a small town girl.

If she moves to Toulouse I will have to go visit her there! She says I can forget about her ever visiting me in Nova Scotia, she and her husband plan to avoid that end of the country indefinitely. I know that he grew up in Nova Scotia and does not have happy memories of the place.

Rain rain rain

This has been an historically wet month in Vancouver, so I've seen plenty of rain so far! I can probably count on one finger how many hours of unfiltered sunlight I've seen. OK, maybe two fingers.

Gretel drove me to the Toronto airport for 5.30am, kind of a hurry-up-and-wait deal, where you scramble to be at the airport in time and then sit around for two hours waiting for your flight to take off. But at that hour the airplane was not crowded, I had a row to myself. I had made lunch for myself but left it at home, Gretel made me a bagel for breakfast and that had to do for lunch as well.

Johanna picked me up at the airport in Vancouver, we drove downtown for breakfast (it was just past 10 in the morning by the time we left the airport) at a little place on the harbourfront. It rained solidly all day, we didn't go outdoors all day except to get into the car. Just as well, I was thoroughly jetlagged anyway.

Last year I stayed with my friends Dave and Johanna in New Westminster, but they moved to North Vancouver just over a month ago so now I am staying with them in North Van. Since they only just moved, and they both work full-time, they are not fully unpacked, but it looks pretty good. On my first full day here I went out to buy a few groceries, including english muffins for breakfast, only to discover that they have no toaster or toaster oven. They probably do have one, they certainly used to, but it is probably buried in the as-yet unopened boxes in the basement.

They have lots of trails for walking the dog, the sense of living in a rainforest is pretty unavoidable here. Lots of very big trees dripping wet most of the time.


I connected with number 2 son Josh for dinner and a walk on the harbour seawall, last time I was here parts of it were blocked off due to construction but it is all open now. Walking the seawall after dark was quite lovely with all the lights and seaplanes. Out in the harbour there's a float with gigantic Olympic rings displayed, they light up after dark but the middle ring is for some reason not lit. The 2010 winter games will be here in February so they are still working on getting the city ready for that. I'm kind of glad to be missing that, it'll be a madhouse.


We are going to drive up to D'Arcy to see Sam on Wednesday, Josh has never been there. Sam plans to take some time off work to show us a good time in the boonies. He said to be sure to check weather and road conditions before setting out, most of mainland BC is under snow already and some roads in his area are already a bit tricky. After that I have a busy schedule of trips to the Sunshine Coast and Vancouver Island, back to D'Arcy for Christmas and Whistler for New Year's, then down to Seattle for a quick visit there before flying back to Toronto in the new year.

I got out to a movie at Tinseltown with an old friend, we saw Pirate Radio. Quite funny with a lot of good '60s rock and roll. Last time I was at Tinseltown it was like a ghost town. Huge downtown shopping centre with no shops except the movie theatre. They built it just in time for the housing and dot com crash in Vancouver around 2000, it sat empty for years. The cinema is on the top floor, you had to pass through several levels of deserted shops to get to it, very bizarre. But Tinseltown survived the lean years and now it's full of open shops.

Afterward we went for dinner at a favourite Indian restaurant down on 4th. It's a family business, usually empty, not sure how they survive, but they've been there a long time and we usually end up chatting with the owners in the course of the evening. They make the best chai ever.

It's a bit strange not to have my truck handy, I have to take buses everywhere. But so far it's working OK. I rode on the new skytrain for a couple of stops, the train cars are slightly bigger than the regular skytrain cars. Actually, the new line is not called the skytrain, because much of it is underground so it doesn't make sense to call it a skytrain. So what I rode on was really the Canada Line. It goes through a part of Vancouver that in my opinion badly needed a skytrain line, but there was a lot of opposition to putting it in. However the coming Olympics caused the government to ram it through in spite of public opposition. Quite frankly I am glad they did that. This new 'skytrain' goes through the relatively wealthy part of Vancouver, the opposition was largely from folks who didn't want mass transit in their nice neighbourhoods. In my not-so-humble opinion. It used to bug me that I could not skytrain to that part of the city, I pretty much had to drive because the bus system was so inadequate.

So that's my trip so far, I really should get outdoors for the surprise appearance of the sun this afternoon. And this blog post is coming to you from the keyboard of Dora! So far, so good!

Market morning

Johanna has today off so we spent the morning down at Granville Island Market. It was cool but a lovely sunny day. I got up early and had a coffee and toast, but Johanna got up late and wanted to have breakfast down at the market so we hustled into the car and drove fast to get there. Johanna does not do well before her morning coffee.

We both agreed on the restaurant we were going to have breakfast at, neither of us could remember the name but we knew the location. However, the restaurant has changed hands since the last time either of us was there and it was not as great as we were hoping it would be. Afterward we took Leia for a walk along the False Creek sea wall, and then strolled through the market and the Net Loft. It was most enjoyable to view all the fresh fruits and vegetables, and also the various crafts and arts on sale. Johanna picked out a silk scarf she liked and I bought it for her as a Thank You gift for having me in her home for so long.

Beneath the chaos, the beauty

I went to see my financial advisor again today. You know, John from the Shambhala Buddhist Centre.

We had a couple of things to talk about as a result of our last meeting, and I guess he had hoped that the stock market would have settled down by now so he could say something useful about that.

Not so. Or rather, it hadn't settled down but he did have something useful to say.

The first thing John did was show me the ikebana arrangement he had on display in the reception area.

John does ikebana as a kind of meditation exercise.

I don't know how much you know about ikebana, but I have had it explained to me in this way. Every floral arrangement follows certain rules, and is made up of three major elements: something representing heaven, something representing the earth, and something representing us, humankind.

John said this display was not one of his better ones, but he had it here because he wanted his clients to get something from it. What he wanted to convey was: beneath the chaos, the beauty. The financial world may be in turmoil, but still there is beauty in life and we should never lose sight of that.

So, in spite of lots of bad news we had a few laughs and once again a most interesting conversation.

Our meeting was in the Board Room on the 16th floor, with a view of downtown Vancouver.


Mostly the roofs of other office buildings, and a peekaboo view of the harbour.

Afterward I went for a bit of a walk around Canada Place, a building that juts out into the harbour and offers great views of the city, Stanley Park, the North Shore and of course the harbour. The roof of the building is made up of huge canvas sails.


Then I took the skytrain back to New Westminster.

Once in a blue moon

Isaac stopped briefly in Vancouver today, on his way home from Hong Kong to Toronto. He was here for a few hours so Josh and I had time to go out to the airport, pick him up and take him to The Elephant and Castle on the little branch of the Fraser River between Lulu and Sea Islands.

It was good to see him even if under rather sad circumstances. And of course I had to snap a few pics of Josh and Isaac together, since this is once-in-a-blue-moon kind of stuff; Josh and Isaac in the same town at the same time.

The social whirl, part II

On Thursday, Johanna and I met Zorica for dinner at Felico's, another Greek restaurant in Richmond. It's not that I have a thing for Greek restaurants, that's just the way it worked out!

Zorica and I started working at a company called Techware on the same day, back in 1995. We learned our respective jobs there together. Eventually Techware became Brooks Automation, and Johanna started working there shortly before I left the company, in 2001. I had not seen Zorica since I left Brooks, so it was very good to see her and reminisce about our times at that company, and catch up on what various other folks who used to work there were doing now. Zorica has been very good at keeping in touch with all those people.

Friday I stayed home.

Saturday I met with Sam in the afternoon to pick up a few things I forgot at his place in D'Arcy the week before; we had something to eat at Boston Pizza and did a bit of "hanging out" at Metrotown and out around Burnaby in his truck. Later in the day I went to Josh and Kim's condo in Sapperton for dinner. They've been living there for half a year but to me it is new, I hadn't seen it since the year before when it was still under construction. They showed off their condo (and little pup, a Shih Tsu!), I showed off my kayak. I brought my camera but forgot to take any photos!

Josh and Kim were just back from two weeks in Europe so they showed me some of their photos from their trip. They travelled mostly in France and Italy. They had some great pictures of Rome, especially the Coliseum, and of the chateaux along the Loire. Many many years ago I got to go on a tour of the chateaux on the Loire, some of the ones Josh and Kim visited looked familiar, but it was so long ago for me (forty years!) that I don't know if they are familiar because they're famous and I've seen them in pictures, or because I was actually there.

Today the sun came out. It has been raining and dull for over a week, so having the sun come out is a major event here. I didn't know what to do with myself! Kayak? Sit in the sun? Bicycle? Oh yes, I got my bike fixed, finally, and it was no big deal. I took it to another bike shop (The Bike Doctor) and they had no problem fixing it for me. They said it was a good bike, nowhere near ready for the trash! Glad I got a second opinion. In the evening Dave, Johanna and I went to a local pub, The Thirsty Duck, for steak and beer. Cheap. Not exactly gourmet quality, but cheap.

I tell people that I am stocking up on socializing now. I didn't get to visit with friends in Nova Scotia near as much as I would have liked, and I don't know a lot of people in Toronto, so I am expecting a fairly solitary winter there. So I am visiting with old friends (and family) while I can!

The social whirl, part I

This past week has been a busy social whirl for me. I went out for dinner with friends and family four times!



On Monday Lea-Anne and Tamara and I went to the Greka Taverna in New Westminster, a favourite haunt of ours. We have been meeting for dinner on a fairly regular basis for about ten years now, ever since we all joined the STC West Coast Chapter Programs Committee together. Actually, Tamara was the first to join, she was a newbie technical writer in with a group of presumably more experienced technical writers, but hardly had she joined the committee than they all jumped ship, leaving her holding the bag.

Somebody in the chapter did a bit of scrambling and managed to dig up Lea-Anne and myself to flesh out the committee, and I think we made quite a success of it. None of us knew what we were doing but we learned pretty quick and had fun doing it I think. Eventually we all moved on to other things, but we had such a good time working together on that committee that we continued to meet regularly for dinner, and long may it last!

On Tuesday I had an appointment to see my financial advisor, John, in downtown Vancouver. I drove to the old Planetarium (it's now the Vancouver Museum and Space Centre), parked there, and walked to John's office across the Burrard Street Bridge. Just about the only place left with free parking is at the Planetarium and I used to take advantage of that and walk from there to many different places (Kitsilano, Kits Beach, Granville Island Market, False Creek parks and trails, across the bridge into the downtown and West End areas). It is still free. It only took about a half hour to walk to John's office tower near Canada Place and the Vancouver Harbour.

John and I met at the Vancouver Shambhala Buddhist Centre many years ago, we've done a few retreats together and I am very happy with him as my financial advisor. He takes the time to understand how I want to live and gives me financial advice accordingly. John was quite reassuring about the latest market turmoil, I am not sure whether to believe him entirely but he sounded like he knew what he was talking about and I have every confidence he wouldn't lie to me.

A long time ago I used to live next door to a stock broker and she told me that it was entirely reasonable for me to not only know little about stocks and markets and such, but to not want to know. She said we don't have to know everything about everything, and should hire people to know about the things we don't know about and don't particularly want to know about. So on that basis, I am glad I know John. And it helps that he's a Buddhist, or at least subscribes to Buddhist ways of thinking about life and such.

My appointment with John lasted three hours, and with him, that's normal! I was a bit impatient about it when I first started going to him, but now I am used to it and plan for it.

Later that day, I went to Catherine and Asoka's place for dinner, Catherine and I used to work together (and so did Lea-Anne for a while) at a company called Brooks Automation. We also spent one summer doing research for a book that Catherine wanted to write. We were both unemployed at the time, Catherine had a brainstorm for a book that she thought would be worth millions (or something) and I tagged along just for something to do. It was interesting research, basically involved visiting potential venues for reception events, and then Catherine got a job and the idea got shelved. Catherine's pretty happy with her job now and she and her husband have recently bought a house that they will soon commence to renovate.

Wednesday I took a break, Johanna and I watched the TV show Heroes.

They don't call it the wet coast for nothing

Today is the first grey drizzly day since I arrived on the wet coast over ten days ago. Ah Vancouver, I remember you well. All that sunshine was just too good to be true...

So, I am sitting in Coming Home Cafe, my old haunt, drinking Kick Ass coffee and watching the traffic. At some point I will get up and go do something, but for now I am content to just watch.

My truck is all better, at the grand cost of $8.96. Note the decimal point after the eight. Turns out I should be checking the oil a little more often now, it was down two litres and apparently that was what was causing the nasty clicking. And to think I actually had a spare litre of oil in the truck, I just never thought to check if it needed it.

My bike on the other hand might be a write-off. There's this "Dirt Cheap" bike repair shop just up the street from the garage where I took the truck, I took the bike in there for what I thought were minor repairs: new pedal, replace the fender on the front wheel, and tighten up a wobble in the handlebar stem.

That last item turns out to be the kicker, the guy at the bike shop says it is jammed in there and he can't fix it if he can't get it out. He told me that I would have to trash the bike if he can't get it out. He asked for another day to try to force it out. Hmph. Well, whatever. It's an old bike and I do like it but it won't be the end of the world to leave it behind.

Isaac and Gretel, if you are reading this, don't sell my electric bike just yet...

This past summer I got into the routine of writing a blog entry for each day, following the kayak building process. Now I am going to ease myself out of that habit. It is too preoccupying, I end up spending way too much time either writing or thinking about writing. Like to have time for other stuff.

The high school kids are trooping in now, must be lunchtime.

A little bit of sadness here. My dear friend Sheila in Baxter's Harbour has lost her younger brother to cancer, after a long struggle. I know how much he meant to her and what a loss it is for her, and I feel sad about that. And reading Gretel's blog I see that my son Isaac's dear friend and work partner is now mortally ill, another sadness. I feel sad for him too.

Oh the losses! Sometimes life sucks. The black background to brilliant specks of light.