Island Hoppers

It was vacation time for me and my special ladyfriend, and the last week was certainly spent doing a lot. A week ago my mother came to visit my brother and his wife (and to see their new home!) and I tagged along on visits to downtown Vancouver and the UBC Museum of Anthropology. Monday we set off for Salt Spring Island, a magical former hippie paradise we’d never experienced. We spent two nights just outside of ‘downtown’ Ganges, where we visited the Tuesday morning farmer’s market - where I ate an organic sprouted-grain-and-nut wrap, probably the healthiest thing I’ve eaten all year - and enjoyed some other local eateries. The three days we spent on Salt Spring saw us drive up a mountain in the middle of the night (bats!); drive around the whole island at least three times trying to find a beach; stop to watch deer graze in various fields; buy local/organic goat cheeses; sit in a lavender farm and listen to the bees; sit on the rocks overlooking one of the ferry passages and catch some sun; eat gelato and Salt Spring Island Coffee; and eat some hippie-made bread and the strongest coffee I’ve tasted since trying some turkish last month.

From Salt Spring we went on to Victoria for a night in the Royal Scot, a hotel I’d stayed in countless times with my mother and brother in summers during my childhood. Part of the stay included a sizable discount on a whale-watching tour, another west-coast thing we’d never done. We saw four adult killer whales off the Juan de Fuca islands, zipping around in the front seat of a zodiac. On the return trip to the harbour, our tour guide took the zodiac through some extremely choppy water for some bucked-outta-your-seat fun. After that it was a walk around downtown Victoria, with a stop at a new soda and sundae shop that’s totally awesome.

So now there’s less than two days left in our vacation week and I’m not sure what’s next. We’d planned to go to Dinotown in Chilliwack - formerly known as Flintstone Park, if you’re old enough to remember - and we may still do that despite not having anyone want to join us. Today I spent half the day scrubbing mildew and dirt off our patio. Not vacationy, is it? Well, it needed to be done, and I always like the end result of major cleaning. It’s satisfying to have a clean section of home, and equally satisfying when I get to pitch stuff in the trash.

So that’s our summer vacation (this part, anyway … not sure when our next big break will be). Didn’t end up going to Montreal after all, but I’m not complaining. In fact now I’m not sure where I want to end up some day: Ucluelet/Tofino or the Gulf Islands.

A Whistlery Canada Day

Canada Day isn’t normally something the ladyfriend and I celebrate in any special way, but I was in need of a vacation, so I booked us a night in Whistler for July 1. We strolled around the village, bought some candy, people-watched, took photos of gold medallist and my pretend girlfriend Ashleigh Mcivor, walked through the forest to Lost Lake, ate fresh pasta for dinner, watched fireworks (and met briefly with a couple of friends), window shopped, and burned a fire log in our suite’s fireplace. In all it was a very nice getaway from the big city. Of course, any trip into the forest and mountains just makes me pine for a life among the trees and rivers, away from the hustle of city life. Someday. I bought some PNE Prize Home tickets, so when that comes through for us, maybe I’ll be able to transform into mountain man. You know, one of those house-dwelling mountain men.

TWIG Notes XXVII

Another week, another week without blogging. Here’s the rundown.

- Last Sunday was the first game (preseason) at Empire Field, the new and temporary home of the BC Lions. The weather was a cloudy and somewhat chilly seventeen degrees. The stadium’s certainly going to be fun for the summer months - provided summer actually arrives - and in a way it’s too bad that next year the Lions will be moving back into a cavernous dome. Empire Field holds just under 28,000, which is a perfect size for a CFL game. Our seats are literally about twelve feet from the field, which is a hell of a lot closer than at BC Place. The Lions lost, but whatever, it’s the preseason. For the record I predict a 10-8 record for the Leos this season.

- Also: photos from the Lions game are on Flickr. Includes shots of cheerleader bums. Fair warning.

- I’m in desperate need of a vacation, so I booked a night at Whistler for Canada Day for my ladyfriend and I. I only thought of this because some friends of ours took me to Whistler for an afternoon on Saturday, where we wandered around for a couple hours, ate some delicious fresh pasta, then headed home when the rain started to pour. Again, it sure would be nice if summer came soon, so our two days in Whistler aren’t spoiled by rain.

- After not winning a G.D. thing on Lotto Max tickets the last two weeks, I’ve given up on that lottery. Instead, I spent money on a different lottery! Tax for the stupid, my ass - I’m totally winning the PNE Prize Home this year!

- As soon as I finish writing this blog entry, I’m canceling my subscription to GQ. No more fashion advice, no more articles about the best pub food in America. Somehow I’ll be alright. I hope.

City vs. City: Compare and Contrast

No Music Video Monday today - I need to give it some more thought before I post anything, otherwise I’ll just end up posting MC Hammer videos.

Making plans for last week’s this trip to Seattle, I was excited but also thought, “Downtown Seattle’s going to be a lot like downtown Vancouver.” Is it? Time for some tale-of-the-tape comparisons!

OLD STUFF
Seattle: countless buildings that date back to the early 1900s, still in excellent shape and home to shops and pubs. An entire section of the city (Pioneer Square) consists of brick buildings with neon signage. Some roach motels and social housing. Space Needle and Science Center date back to the World Fair in 1962 and are kept in near-new condition.
Vancouver: numerous old buildings condemned, falling apart. Pretty even split between pubs, sandwich joints, and slums. One street in Gastown is in moderately good condition; anything around it has been left to rot. Notable historic landmarks from the old days: a steam clock and a statue of some guy whose first name is Gassy. I’m gassy and I don’t get a statue, what up with that?
Winner: Seattle

VAGRANTS
Seattle: Crazy people who may yell at storefront windows without warning then ask you in a polite manner for spare change. Poor people who wander aimlessly. Downtown city streets do not smell like urine.
Vancouver: Crazy people with drug addictions that smoke crack or shoot up in doorways. Generally passive panhandlers. Poor people who wander into traffic. Smell of urine at least once every two blocks downtown.
Winner: Seattle

FOOD
Seattle: good selection of restaurants, but the city seems divided into ‘districts’, where there may be a lot of eateries or only a few. No cheap sushi joints downtown. Coffee shops pretty much everywhere. Pike Place full of variety, but it closes early, and aside from raw vegetables, I’m not sure any of it is actually good for you.
Vancouver: pretty much any type of food available downtown, and a lot of it inexpensive and authentic, and some of it less than authentic (Koreans running a Mexican restaurant, Indian food served by Honkeys, etc.). Coffee shops and sushi joints are everywhere you look. Strangely, no one’s opened an upscale coffee and sushi eatery.
Winner: Vancouver

GETTING AROUND
Seattle: free city buses within the downtown core. Streets are laid out on a grid but high number of one-way streets is frustrating. You may find yourself on an on-ramp to a highway without even trying. Interstate highway seems to operate alright despite always being busy. Right-lane traffic drives exactly the speed limit.
Vancouver: buses aren’t free, but Skytrain operates on the honour system! Grid street layout would be easier to navigate if you could identify landmarks rather than cookie-cutter condos. No highway into downtown, instead everything’s funneled through bridges built fifty years ago. If you don’t drive 10km/h above the posted limit, you’ll face road rage.
Winner: neither!

PEOPLE
Seattle: the city didn’t seem terribly busy (maybe it was the time of year). After dinnertime, you can wander the streets and it will just be you and the vagrants and the police cruisers. Good luck making eye contact with anyone you walk past. Yoga pants craze does not seem to be successful here. Everyone looks pretty plain. You will see black people here. If you smell marijuana you’re probably going to jail.
Vancouver: city is full of people, and a lot of ‘em are fairly attractive. Yoga pants industry still firm pert supple strong. Daytime brings out a lot of foreign-language students. Nighttime brings out drunk douchebags from the suburbs as the main street shuts down to accommodate pubs, bars, stabbings, fights, and drugs. You will smell marijuana numerous times before you see a black person here.
Winner: Vancouver

I’ve Been Space Needled!

Our vacation to Seattle was a success: we did the full-on tourist thing, visiting the Space Needle, Seattle Art Museum, Pike Place Market, Experience Music Project, Sci-Fi Hall of Fame, and many other venues and shops. The weather was also better than expected, with no rain after the night we arrived and temperatures nudging close to twelve degrees.

The four-day excursion also brought us to a place called the Can Can, which featured performers/dancers. It wasn’t Can-Can dancing, and it wasn’t Burlesque; I can’t really describe it as anything other than entertaining. My ladyfriend swooned over one of the dancers, whom I’ll admit was a handsome man thing. I swooned over a coffee barista at the Space Needle, so she and I are even in that regard. We certainly had our fill of dining out for a while - with no grocery store and no hotel-room fridge, we were going out for meals every night (and I think we’d had enough of that after night two).

We hit up the shopping on the way back, with a visit to a Target store and the Premium Outlet Mall. Evaluation: bedding and housewares are cheaper. Clothes, at the outlet mall, are a great deal. Everything else is pretty much the same price, once you work in the exchange rate and the fuel used to get there. But we did come home with some new bedding, I bought some $25 pants from Banana Republic and $50 Nike shoes, and my ladyfriend came home with some a couple new shirts.

There was still a weird sense when visiting the US, even though it’s no more or less safe than Vancouver, and the people are pretty much the same, that we’re still not quite fitting in. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s probably not helped by the growing anti-US sentiment that Canadians seem to have. Or maybe it’s just the fact that we’re tourists, and we’re not supposed to feel at home. But it is odd, that driving just two and a half hours south, something still seems completely different.

I’m glad we decided on Seattle rather than Vegas, which was the original idea. Weather in Vegas for the time we were in Seattle: rain and highs of 13. Ha! Take that, sin city!

Weekend Update/Hiatus Notice

Last night my cousin and I took in a special midnight viewing of The Big Lebowski, one of my all-time favourite movies. It was the first time I’d seen it on the big screen since its initial run (12 years ago!), and it still amazes me how with each viewing there’s verbal and visual cues that are introduced then tied in throughout the movie. It’s probably a reason why it’s such a good movie - the subtle parts are what put it beyond just a curiosity. Plus, it’s the best role John Goodman has ever played. Jeff Bridges is pretty much perfect as The Dude, too.

Friday morning I also got results from my Holter Monitor testing. The diagnosis is that I have a heart condition called a bigeminy, also knowns as Premature Ventricular Contraction. Long story short, my heart will from time to time not beat like clockwork as it should, and it’s something not terribly unusual nor is it life-threatening (unless I develop heart disease). There’s no suggested treatment, other than keeping up my magnesium, calcium, and potassium levels. It is something I ‘need to get used to’, which isn’t the easiest thing, since it is basically a pounding in my chest at random times. Well, what can you do - keep on truckin’ I suppose.

Finally, the ladyfriend and I are headed south to Seattle for a few days, to be tourists and see things like the Space Needle and the Experience Music Project, and to drink designer coffee and watch people throw fish around. Hopefully the weather there will be just like it is here (unusually warm and generally less rainy than usual). Even if it isn’t I’m sure we’ll enjoy it. Obviously this means the blog will enter another week of dormancy, followed by an explosion of new Flickr photos.