WANDERING AROUND B.C.

POST # 24 Well I've earned the title of wanderer again this week for sure, and maybe I should re-title the blog "The Crutching Wanderer" but that would only be suitable for the short term as I hope to be off these things at the first opportunity. But for now the crutching will continue. One week ago I woke up early back at Luanne's farm in order to drive to Creston to meet the 7am Greyhound departure bound for Vancouver, a 14 plus hour journey. Thankfully, a young lad who had been sitting in the very last row, agreed to give up the space for the stranger with the broken leg. This last row is a mixed blessing. It offers a little more space in order to stretch out, which in my current condition makes my life a little bit more comfortable. In addition to that, it is right next to the on-board washroom (toilet, dunny, restroom, bog, bano,etc.) which makes it easy to get to and from. The disadvantage is the smell which permeates the surrounding seating area. I can't really say that it is a bad smell, but it's always present, and after a few hours it does become rather obnoxious. The odour is created by the blue liquid which sloshes around in the bottom of the toilet. Also in the bottom of this toilet I happened to notice an empty Budweiser beer can floating there. Perhaps the person who deposited it, had had enough of the smell, and decided that maybe drinking a beer might help deaden his/her senses. In any event, I chose this seat for the advantages it offered my leg, so this small inconvenience of odour was something I could tolerate for the journey. Thankfully the day dawned a sunny one, and soon after leaving Creston the bus climbed up the Kootenay Pass (elevation 1775m, 5823ft) one of the highest mountain passes in Canada. This pass gets it's fair share of snow which can result in its closure, however on the day we went over, it was clear sailing all the way to Salmo, our first stop. From Salmo we passed through Nelson, then Castlegar and later in the morning Grand Forks, where this whole broken leg affair began. It felt both strange yet familiar to be back in Grand Forks, and with the limited time I had, I wanted to make two phone calls, one to Dorothy and the other to Bev and Brian, to say one final thank you to all of them. Alas the phone wouldn't accept my quarters for whatever reason and with only a ten minute stop it was soon time to re-board and continue the journey. We rolled through Greenwood, Midway, Rock Creek and arrived at 2:20pm in Kelowna for our longest stopover of the trip, 40 minutes. An old friend Brian Stainsby lives there, and so I called and as a result we had a short visit prior to my departure. When he arrived at the depot, I yelled out,"Did you bring me a Vegemite sandwich?" which I knew would get his attention, due to our Aussie connection from the past. It was great to see him and I was so glad that I made the effort to call and that Brian had made the bigger effort to come by. Kelowna and West Kelowna at least along the highway has become one long strip mall as far as I could tell, and it went on and on and on. I do wonder how well all of these car-centric cities that we have created in North America are going to cope in our rapidly approaching energy starved future, and I am becoming more and more convinced that the smaller communities will fare much better than the larger towns and cities. But at the moment though, at least on the surface, it all looks so normal and functional and I imagine most people don't even give this a passing thought during their busy work week. Onward we road through the dry interior countryside arriving at our next stop of Merritt. I only mention this stop because of what happened to me upon re-boarding the bus. The steps on a Greyhound bus are rather high, but by this point I thought that I had a pretty good system for hoisting myself up them. This time, when I was perched on the second step and beginning my move up, I caught my toe on the edge of the higher step, lost my balance and for a moment my right leg almost stepped down in an effort to recover from losing my balance. Fortunately for me I managed to prevent this from happening by having a very solid grip on the handrails by my side. I can only imagine what pain and damage might have come about if I had landed on my right leg. This time I was lucky and I got to learn another lesson. With each step, one has to concentrate on what one is doing. Not to do so, will surely end in grief. The Coquihalla Pass was next on the journey, and I was amazed at the amount of fresh avalanches that had tumbled down the mountain sides, turning hundreds of trees into so many match sticks. We humans think that we are so smart and powerful, and then all it takes is to view the power of nature, and we are humbled back into place. Arriving next at Chilliwack I got off the bus for a stretch and right away I noticed the different smell to the air. Even this far out in the valley, a hint of ocean air wafted in the breeze. Next stop, Langley, and then on to Coquitlam. As we passed through the soul destroying sprawl of industrial parks and suburbia we came to the Port Mann bridge and up until this point we had moved along at a relatively decent pace. This all changed once we approached the bridge. The current twinning of the bridge, part of the government's "Gateway" project caused such a traffic jam, that the Gateway project should be called the parking lot project, as we crawled along at a snail's pace. I am sure that at times I could have got out and moved along faster on my crutches than the bus was going. Expanding roads is what we seem to do in North America when the current roads become clogged. And the current roads were an expansion of older roads which had become clogged many years ago. So it's not too difficult to work out where this is going. Maybe in the years ahead some politician is going to be blabbing on about the fact that "the old Gateway project is outdated, and we need more road expansion", but what I think is more likely is that these expanded roads and bridges will become big white elephants. Time will tell. Eventually we made it to Coquitlam terminal, for a brief stop en route to our final destination of Vancouver. As we rolled along first avenue in East Vancouver, my mind thought back to last summer when I was housesitting the dogs Einstein and Snoop. It already seemed like a lifetime ago. But the memories of that housesit are still very sweet. Considering the traffic jam that we had to endure we only arrived about 20 minutes behind schedule getting into Vancouver at close to 9:30 pm. My niece Nicole and her boyfriend Dan were there to meet me and take me back to their condo in downtown Vancouver. It was somewhat of a roll reversal for Nicole and I as I think that the last time we were both at the bus depot, was to put her on a bus. Now the former jet setting uncle had switched to the bus, while Nicole had just arrived back to Vancouver from S.E.Asia. My week in Vancouver was filled up with visits with friends and relatives, and in addition to that I even ventured out on my longest crutch journey to date, going from downtown Vancouver over to the Aquabus dock at Yaletown in order to catch up with Congo Bob and the rest of the Aquabus crew just to say hi and enjoy their company. Yesterday, I departed Vancouver in order to head over to Victoria where I now sit writing this blog at my latest housesit gig. I arrived late yesterday afternoon, and the only difficult part of the bus/skytrain/ferry journey, was my struggle to board the number 17 bus in Vancouver. Due to a heavy backpack, getting up into the bus proved to be a challenge, and while I struggled, the bus driver waited impatiently for me to board. I guess not everyone has patience for a person struggling on crutches. Perhaps he was just having a bad day. The rest of the journey was a breeze, and now I have 5 precious weeks here with two lovely indoor only cats named Tai, a siamese and Maggie a persian. At the moment Maggie is under observation by the vet with some test results due back any day now. In the meantime they will have me around full time to care for their every need. After less than a day, I am already working out the best way to move around my new digs, and this will get easier as time passes. It's shaping up to be a very relaxed time, and I am looking forward to being here during my recovery period. I am very grateful to the owners Phyllis and Ken for trusting me to take care of their place and the kitty kats in spite of my injured leg, and I feel confident that all will go well. So let's get started then with this first week of cat r and r shall we? Next blog will be May 7th. all the best, Paul The Thoughtful Wanderer