Travel & Lifestyle :: 2/20/2010

A Greyhound.ca bus down to Vancouver to watch Norway take on Switzerland in a suite with tickets courtesy of Andrew. After clarity journaling taking up two thirds of the fairly silent ride, we arrive in Horseshoe Bay – the BC Ferries landing spot. The bus parallels the ferry, pulling in, transporting people to places wild and urban, coming from a week enjoying Whistler or Blackcomb or maybe both or maybe just something else entirely.

The goal is to enjoy the hockey game and then take in more of the City. To buy a bunch of herba mate and a gourd & straw. To see about fragrances. Call Pasha. Make it back to Whistler as cheaply as possible. Check out W2 Media House perhaps. Look for Minnesotans at the game or in the city. Ask them questions. Interact with Norwegians a bit.

Maybe get a Norwegian momento.

Frieght ships are docked out in the bay; it brings me back to coming down Thompson Hill or Lakewood Road and seeing five or six of them out there in a good year and prosperous times of energetic people, matched with a strong desire to meet a woman today.

It is a day that I have missed, and thus, must capture. Morning, clear skies, seeing the City, no clouds, take pictures, daylight, feeling good. The sun shines straight through the big front windows of the coach and onto my hand and pen. The shrubs are still green. Snow at the tops of peaks, very tops, but no place else.

Mental note to check what time biathlon begins.

We’re passing all sorts of vehicles.
Man next to me is on his Blackberry (Tour). Actually, both men on both side are on Blackberries. Both are naturally Blackberrying away. “Oh how I loved mine and hated it all the same,” I think. It is “everything is busy” – a lot of writing already. Sochi 2014.

Where am I trying to go to get to this hockey game?
The man introduces himself finally via asking where I am from.
Foreignness begat helpfulness.

“Go to Wreck Beach. Smoke a blunt as you visit the core of the Eastside, a four block radius that used to be lawless. Go see Commercial drive and Broadway…the dykes live there. Davies Street: The gay men’s community. ”

…Ok.

He’s telling me this as we get off the bus – dropping all travelers at the VIA/Pacific Station Terminal. Wow. How odd to be doing this one month later; to see that train again docked and ready to take me east or maybe not so far east or maybe not at all.

It is only 11:00 am. The game begins in an hour or so.

I cannot filter this experience; you’ll read it as I wrote it. Madness in the city set in motion by the words I write on the bus. Like the old writing then but this time it actually all really happens.