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We spent a day or two in Edmonton at the home of our daughter, Rebekah.
The day before we left for B.C. I drove up to Whitecourt for a couple of hour visit with an old friend. He remarked on their last trip to Vancouver and the “Bermuda triangle of Kamloops”. There is an interchange at the base of the big hill in Kamloops. The Trans Canada and the Yellowhead highways come together. Coming into the interchange from Alberta on the Yellowhead it is as easy to miss your lane and to find yourself driving east on the Trans Canada towards Banff or into surface streets in downtown Kamloops as it is to be heading up the hill in your intended direction.
As my e-mail to the friend said, “We left Edmonton at dawn and just checked into the hotel in Merritt BC after successfully navigating the Bermuda Triangle of Kamloops on the way. Leg is doing better today. Juanita did most of the driving. Only stress on it was hitting the brake on the passenger side.”
The evening before the departure to B.C. I went with Nick and Ezekiel to Ezekiel’s soccer game. It was a pretty misty moment to watch him tearing up and down the field with such energy and as much competence as anyone else. He is still on meds for leukemia until next spring, but there was no sign of the pale, bald lad of a couple of years ago.
The trip through Jasper and into B.C. was routine. The highway was busy but not summer vacation busy. It was a clear, sunny day and we had an unobstructed view of Mt. Robson when we stopped for coffee.
When we checked into the hotel in Merritt the desk person remarked on our home address and said “There were some people from Meadow Lake who checked out this morning. They came and stayed a night and then went to Vancouver intending to stay there and sightsee for a couple of days. They were back the same evening to stay here before heading home. Vancouver was too busy for them.”
We went to Mary Brown’s for supper. Mary Brown’s is a Newfoundland based chain of chicken restaurants that also sells a selection of groceries produced on The Rock. This one was run by a middle eastern man. We had chicken wraps which use tortillas. I love it when cultural appropriation works out so well.
There was still lots of light after dinner. We drove around and looked at the flooding in downtown Merritt before heading to Walmart and back to our hotel, both built on high ground.
The next morning I did the driving over the Coquihalla Highway. We stopped for a while in Chilliwack and hung out at the McDonald’s to use their internet connection and give my leg a bit of a rest. Arriving in Coquitlam we drove around to get our bearings and figure out where we were supposed to be at one. We had been admonished not to get there too early or too late. Shooting to arrive at the Goldilocks moment involved finding the address in an area that we were not familiar with and then going for lunch with the confidence we knew how long it would take us to arrive at the party locale.
After lunch we got a call from my niece saying we could come early and didn’t have to park hidden on a nearby street, but they had acquired a parking spot from a neighbour in the condomaze. Not sure I like cities and their concept of parking spots being rare and precious.
We had a good visit with my nieces and Bonny, my sister’s friend who was hosting the party. A few more family members showed up and then the party girl, my sister, Sydney. She was quite surprised when she got to the top of the stairs in the condo and her husband had his hands full to prevent her from stumbling backwards and falling down the stairs. Now that would have been a memorable surprise party.
A good time of visiting, reminiscing, and gift opening was had by all. There were some games and quizzes as well. After the party wound down we went in search of our very first Airbnb. The hostess met us and pulled up a traffic cone so we had somewhere to park. I already grumbled about city parking so I won’t say anything more.
The room was clean and as pictured on line. The bathroom was not integral to the unit as we had understood from the listing, but we were alone on the second floor so the out the door of our room and into the bathroom was not much of a hardship.
After getting settled we went out for a drive and for dinner. With some searching we found a Whitespot restaurant to buy a gift card. It was busy. We waited about twenty minutes to be seated at a table. We had been planning to dine but looked at the menu and realized we weren’t particularly hungry, were not inspired at the choices and less inspired at the prices.
I don’t mind paying extra for a meal we want, but have a hard time wanting to pay extra for a meal neither of us want. We bought the gift card and left.
We ended up driving down to Marine Drive and stopping for a snack at McDonald’s and then driving the Marine Drive loop out through the University endowment lands and back into Kitsilano before heading back to Burnaby and our digs. A lot of the through roads in Kits have been “calmed” for traffic. Used to call them dead ends, but I guess you can’t get much calmer than dead. With some backing and filling we managed to navigate them. Near Jericho beach you could see people setting up their stealth camping vans for the night. I used to find the idea appealing. Less so with each passing year.
Some things have changed since we lived on the coast. One of those things is that BC Ferries have added a reservation system. There is a fee. The fee is higher the closer it is to planned travel date. We reserved a relatively early ferry a couple of weeks prior to remove risk of sitting through several sailings before getting loaded on the ferry to Langdale. The system works well.
Got to PR.
Found key for Airbnb under the green flower pot. Self contained one-bedroom basement suite with all you need for snacks and breakfast. Perfect. Way better than somebody’s couch or them disrupting their sleeping arrangement to provide you with a bedroom. Quiet time in evening and morning with no need to be social. One block walk to the beach so one of us can go visit old friends and the other can have something to do.
Our best man, Claudio and I drove out to Palm Beach and flew the drone a bit.
Our last time in PR was two year’s ago for the 50Th high school reunion. The time before that was on my own while Juanita was tied up. It seemed over half the people I visited were sitting around waiting to die and I left in a funk. Fewer old friends sitting around waiting to die this trip. Those other people died.
My mother said at her hundredth birthday that she didn’t know what she did to be punished by living to a hundred. She said all her friends were dead. I mentioned that only one in ten thousand lives to a hundred so she needed to have cultivated twenty thousand friends. She was still sharp enough to get the joke, but it is no laughing matter. Even at seventy, outliving one’s friends is getting to be old.
Billy Graham said if he knew how old he was going to get he would have cultivated younger friends. Not sure even that is enough. I have some pretty sick younger friends. Pretty selfish viewpoint isn’t it? But it’s hard not to be affected by death. Not so much my own death. I have the assurance of going to heaven and if I’m wrong in one way I won’t know any better and if wrong in another way will get what I deserve. It can be hard to outlive others though.
Well, back to the visit. Saw some old friends. There was a supervisor I used to visit in PR. He is 88 now and has forgotten much of a lot of things and is living in a home for the bewildered.
At the urging of his son I picked him up one day. He was cheerful and well dressed and humourous and not entirely sure who I was, but pretty sure I was somebody he used to know. We went for coffee. He banged his head getting into my car. Periodically on the drive to Starbucks he would periodically rub his head and say, “I’ve hit my head!”. I was careful to make sure it didn’t happen again.
As we waited in line at Starbucks he hit on all the young women. They appeared to love it. Harmless, safe flirting I guess. Old enough to be no threat. Way old enough to be beyond creepy.
As we talked over coffee and treats a lot seemed to come back to him about who I was and what we had done together at work. He mentioned a few other people. I suggested we visit one of them. He was all for it so off we went to Stan’s place out in Paradise Valley.
I drove up the driveway and parked near the house and went up the stairs to the door. There was a wheel chair lift there, but I thought nothing of it. Stan’s wife answered the door. I asked if Stan was home and she looked a little surprised I would ask, but said he was. I said I had Cliff with me and could we come in for a visit. “Of course! Bring him in!”
It was a shock.
Stan had gone in for a “minor” operation at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver.
There are no minor operations.
St. Paul’s is probably no worse than any other hospital, but I am biased against it. My mother was convinced they killed my brother. I am convinced they tried to kill my father. A girlfriend interned there and said they would minimally treat injured homeless people and kick them back onto the street before they died so the hospital stats weren’t hurt. A co-worker bled to death from a nosebleed across the street from St. Paul’s waiting for treatment but that was more a 911 screw-up and I digress.
Back to Stan.
Stan is locked in. His brain is fine. An untimely blood clot broke the connection between his brain and the rest of his body. Prognosis after the glitch from this minor operation was dead within three months max and never able to move any part of his body or speak again. They were planning to give him a wheel chair that he would navigate by blowing in a straw. That was two years ago. They didn’t know Stan. Many people started building ferrocement boats in my home town. Most didn’t finish them. Stan did. Stan survived one of the nastier divorces I have seen close up and came out of it a lot wiser. He gave me advice based on that experience that saved our marriage when my wife and I both thought it was done for.
Stan is heroically better than the prognosis. He moves his hand enough to operate his wheel chair and can shake your hand and speak. He is hard to understand, but getting better. If anybody can break out of being locked in it will be him.
Cliff was compassionate and held Stan’s hand and said nice things. I sat there and tried to process the change in Stan. The last time I dropped by it was with a friend to be shown around Stan’s collection of classic cars that he restored. What a step change.
I took Cliff home and lead him through the security doors and keypads into his own lockdown.
The next day I dropped by for one more visit with Cliff. His face lit up when he saw me.
“How are you? I haven’t seen you in a long time!”, he said.
“No you haven’t”, I said.
He queried, “how long has it been?”
“Yesterday.”
We both laughed.
I brought him a printout of his regimental emblem. He remembered a lot more about his time in the regiment in the early 1950’s than stuff a lot more recently. He got misty and starting talking about he would like to get back involved with them and help them out and pondering how he would go about that.
What do you say?
Juanita caught up with a few of her friends from when we lived there. We visited with family and enjoyed a family BBQ with us as the honoured guests.
I drove out toward Lund and visited with an old friend from work and with another old friend from my childhood. We all seemed to start talking from where we left off from years ago.
We left Powell River and drove out to an early ferry at Saltery Bay on a Wednesday.
We didn’t make reservations. Mid-week, even after a long weekend, I figured there would be no problem with ferries. First ferry, that worked fine. Second ferry, not so much.
We stopped twice in Sechelt. Once to get a muffin for my sister’s birthday. A second time to buy some window cleaner and a cloth to clean the windows while we waited in the ferry line at Langdale. Here’s the cost of complacency. The ferry arrived and started loading. It ended loading and we were the very first car in the line for the next ferry.
I guess the ferries are busier than they used to be and I have become too complacent. Enjoyed walking in the sunshine and reading our books, but cancelled any thought for dim sum in Vancouver and had just a brief visit with my sister on our way through Burnaby.
We had a long, but uneventful drive out the Fraser Valley and up into the interior of B.C. to Clearwater, a couple of hours north of Kamloops. The next day we drove to Edmonton.
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