Back to the grind (RC to Langdale to Vancouver par velo)

I wake up well-rested and excited to tackle the day.   Maybe I'm heeding the message of my little motivational item that I posted on Facebook last night:

How many more springs do you have? Get out there and look and sniff and feel as if it was your last spring!

I pack my saddle bags, early practice for Europe in June, accept a new translation project, and get ready to pedal back to Vancouver.  I get to the Chinese restaurant in Gibsons in a record time of under 25 minutes!  At the time of this writing, 12:38, Hans & Denise, who are taking the CAR, are 8 minutes (and counting) late. The arrive at the table at 12:44. Ah well, my ferry doesn't leave until 2:30 pm and I'm on CT (Coast Time ;-).

How is this as a location for CHEAP & GOOD Chinese food?

Mongolian Chicken tastes as good as ever and I am now endlessly obliged to my host for paying for my overindulging wine consumption. Kamsa Hamnida, Hans!

I reach Langdale before the ferry and notice another cyclist (in shape and on a super-fast road bike) ogling my bike. Seems he entered the main road behind me (on my way to lunch) and couldn't quite fathom why he couldn't catch up with this older guy riding a bike with panniers. Now he knows why but I let him know that I can't believe how people like him get even close to my speed without a battery. (In Horseshoe Bay he will put his bike on the BUS though ;-(

The air starts stinking again halfway between Horseshoe Bay and Dundarave, where a Maserati and a Ferrari (I kid you not) go as fast as 60 km/h to pass this cyclist going 40 in a 30 zone.                                                                                 I'm whispering to Karma 'please let them have got stuck in this' when I cruise by the usual grid-lock around Park Royal 10 to 15 minutes later.                                                                                        But then, experience has taught me that Karma does quite well without a prompter;-)

A visit to Grandma (more pedaling) is quite uneventful. I open one of her white wine bottles of 1975 vintage and am amazed to see that there already is almost a whole glass missing. Corks LEAK after 40 years!

The taste is not the same as it was 40 years ago. It tastes more like alcoholic fruit punch now.  Can't complain ;-)

Another bike ride in the evening and on the way back to North Vancouver I am rewarded with a spectacular view of the setting sun reflecting in the glass façades of down town and an almost full moon reflecting in the harbour.

Good Night, world, stay safe!

Country Living ( Life-of-Chris potpourri on the Sunshine Coast)

So I'm sitting on a couch doing something on the computer, when out of the corner of my eye I see an OLD yellow Lab start HUMPING the naked foot of his owner.  Not wanting to witness this and the unavoidable conclusion I head to the kitchen to refill my wine. That's when I hear the owner shouting "Chris! Can you bring me a napkin???" 







AAARGHHH!  I decide that I have to instantly cycle to the store to get more booze and to get to the door I walk through the living room again when I see the dog LICKING its owners foot.  

NEED MORE WINE NOW!







Thanks A LOT. NEVER AGAIN will I be able to watch a dog licking its owner's face again without having second thoughts !!!!!!

no, No, NOOOOO!

NOT (!!!) my kind of thing.

A bottle of Copper Moon Sauvignon Blanc quickly brings peace to my world again.

So do two images seen on FB

#1

Donald's Grandfather was born less than 100 kms from the little German town that I was born in!

#2

He he he ;-)

I fall asleep for an hour (blame it on the wine or on all the cycling) and when I wake up am royally rewarded by some delicious duck for dinner (alliterations abound!).  I burn my friggin fingers when my hand touches the hot handle but that's worth-while to get a feel of that fabulous fowl.  Thank you, my gracious Gastgeber!

One-legged duck ;-)

And the sun rises again ;-)  And it's WARM today. That's what the forecast had predicted but then it's safer to wait for the actual weather than believing the forecast in this town ;-)

Almost awake

The Pervert Dog is trying to use camouflage to hide from my eyes(see that embarrassed look on his face?).

A giant strange bird is doing acrobatics to use the feeder that is definitely not made for a bird of its size.

Time to Hop onto the bike and fly towards Sechelt.
During the mandatory stop at Davis Bay, I get my feet wet. I'm wearing sandals for a reason ;-)

Some things are so big they need to be towed

"I'll start building that bridge to the mainland"

HELL NO!  There's FISH in there !

Now here is a question: Do people at Davis Bay dress to match the colours of the public washroom building?

Or did they paint the public washroom building to match people's attire?

Back to the Vietnamese restaurant in Sechelt. This time it is spicy chicken on noodles.  Not a single green pepper in the veggies, only yellow and red peppers.  Cam On for not being cheap at the expense of the culinary arts.

Stop at Davis Bay on the way back.

another example of 'Man plans and God laughs'

I buy some more Copper Moon and promptly fall asleep for 2 hours on the couch

Since it is almost 5 pm when I wake up, I'm not the least bit shy to start the day with a glass of wine ;-)


My hosts have guests over, and these include an older German widow by the name of Marlene.  I have no idea how old she is (North of 75?), but she has a ZEST for life.  She reminds me immensely of Frau Besuch, the woman with the Turkish coffee, the Gugelhupf, and the cigarettes who I used to visit until she died at the age of 89 a little more than a year ago.  Frau Besuch might be gone but it's nice to see that there are other fabulous women like her out there. 

Tutto Bene, Marlene !

Ferry time again (or A brief escape from Helltown)

It’s time to leave this city for a while. I NEED to get out of the noise and exhaust stench of all the cars sitting in stop-and-go traffic.  Vancouver has become a giant parking lot. 

Now they're moving

Now they don't ;-(

Unfortunately, all of the parked cars have their engines running.  If you ever have wondered where all that exhaust gas goes, come to Vancouver and you not only will be able to smell it, it’s so bad you’ll be able to see it and feel it in your lungs and on your skin.  Yes, that’s right, if you hear about air quality problems having to do with ‘low level ozone’, what that really means and what no one will ever speak out loud is that your breathing is impeded by the result of an interaction between exhaust gases and sunlight; that’s how low level ozone is generated.  A term used by quite a lot of people in Vancouver now is “There’s no air in the air today”.  Ah well, go on, Vancouverites, keep on driving your cars and see how bad it will get.  But there is always China to point your finger at, so you don’t have to deal with the issue of how bad it has become where YOU live and breathe.

 Cycling to Horseshoe Bay, I have a reason to curse the Vancouver weather forecast again.  Sun was in the forecast; I’m being drizzled on.  This seems to have become standard in Vancouver. Not sure whether it’s the pollution or the weather forecasters having to beautify their forecast to satisfy their obligations for payments from real-estate developers, but Vancouver’s weather forecast notoriously paints a way too pretty picture. I’ve traveled quite a bit by now, and in most places the weather was actually nicer than the forecast. NOT in Vancouver. 

  I get to Horseshoe Bay and buy my ferry ticket with my Experience Ferry Card. I don’t know why car drivers keep whining about BC ferry prices.  A 40-minute ferry trip to Langdale AND the 40-minute return trip for me and the bicycle for CAD$ 12.40.   That’s GOOD value! Thank you, BC FERRIES. 

Within 10 minutes the fact that the bike is electric is noticed by two different people. A man with family comments “it’s a cheating bike” to which I reply “No, it’s a NO ferry wait bike”, to which he can only say “Sorry, I’m just jealous”.  I roll onto the ferry as the first vehicle and when I lean the bike against the designated railing, a BC Ferries worker says “Don’t lock it! I want to test ride it while you’re upstairs”, to which I can only say “Sorry, I’m taking the battery upstairs to charge it”.

I manage the remaining kilometers to Roberts Creek in record time (Brain surgery of the e-bike pays off big time) and am delighted to see that my hosts fulfilled my wish, namely hoisting a flag that I had ordered and delivered there for my arrival ;-)

 The rest of the day is filled with laughter, food, and good company. LIKE.

At 8 pm I call it a night.

Not really a surprise (because this happens every time I get out of Vancouver): I sleep for more than 10 hours. Gone is the sound of tires on asphalt, gone is the shaking of my bed every time a big bus or truck passes on the main road; gone is the appalling air that develops as soon as cars line up for Lions Gate Bridge. For me it's temporary (semi-permanent ;-(, but how can people live like that every day ?? 

Yes, I'm the fortunate one.

It takes me forever to get ready in the morning and part of the reason for that is that I only brought dirty laundry in my bike panniers.  Not entirely my fault, I was going to do laundry yesterday before my departure, was courteous to the two Asian kids cramped into the tiny laundry room of the motel by saying "take your time; I'll wait outside", only to find out that they separated their laundry into whites and darks and used BOTH washers.  Thanks a lot!

By 1 pm I get restless and have to hop onto the bicycle.  North!  It's not really sunny, more like sun-poking-thru-the-haze, but it's definitely better than yesterday. Davis Bay is always a nice spot to stop, even though I know that the fancy cloud layer formation on Vancouver Island south of Nanaimo is due to the giant pulp mill I cycled past almost exactly two years ago.

On to Sechelt, because there is a Vietnamese restaurant there that I haven't been to in almost two years. Again I just get a blank stare when I order ruou vang trang, a sign that I have to keep practicing if I ever want to drink white wine again in Vietnam.

Spicy and hot and sour mussels is the other thing I order.  It arrives, I take a bite/sip and CHAZZZAM, I am back in Vietnam.  The flavour! The Spices!  I hadn't realized of how much my tongue and tastebuds were deprived for the last two months!!

Koi. My lucky day?

A brief look at the amazing view from the houses of the Sechelt Band.

And a brief climb down to a beach close to Roberts Creek with the same Pulp-Mill view.

Super-Pulpy British Columbia !

Strange days (The stuff one thinks about lying in bed for four days)

THIS SONG kind of goes with this post.  Kind of...

I suspect there was a post of this title before.  Written around the same time of year, I suspect.

And I almost cut my hair the other day.  But I didn't, and I know why. It's because I had the flu on Wednesday instead.

Grandma asks me for my mother's telephone number today. The two haven't talked in YEARS, but today is mother's birthday. Later in the afternoon I learn about the content of the birthday telephone call and regret having provided the telephone number. I made it possible for someone to spew negative energy all the way across the North American continent and the Atlantic.

Someone who was here last summer and who has spent the last weeks in homeless shelters in Calgary (and a few nights outside in the open) arrives today in Vancouver. A simple Greyhound ticket reduced Calgary's homeless number by 1.  Now that he's here, all of a sudden he gets called 'X's friend' instead of 'Y's cousin'. Strange people.

Speaking of X, the other one, the one from the bridge. who made me cycle to St Pauls Hospital for nothing at 9 am in the freezing cold on Good Friday.  He called the other day to say thank you (answering the phone when I was freezing would have been preferable) and that he made it back safely to Calgary. Calgary?  Yes, the two almost passed each other.

Easter is over.  Temperatures are getting warmer. I think it might have been on Sunday, when I cycled again over Lions Gate Bridge.  The wind wasn't a wind. It was a storm.  White caps for as far as the eye could see. Joggers were being blown back and forth and from side to side in their efforts to jog a straight line across the bridge.  My bicycle is leaning at an angle against the wind that is coming from the ocean.  I can feel that my face is being deformed by the air pressure of the gusts.  And all of a sudden that thought is in my head, for just a split second. A necessary defuser: No, I'm not suicidal and anyone reading this who ever had suicidal thoughts, PLEASE talk to a friend, a good bartender, a helpline, or a doctor. PLEASE!  
Anyhoo, where was I?  Right. I was in a storm. The kind of storm where seagulls ducking close to the beach surface only have to spread their wings and they're airborne.  Maybe it was that image that generated my thought. For a split second, I thought "If I jump now and spread my arms, I will be able to fly". Fortunately, this astrophysicist is not suicidal, likes high speed along the horizontal more than along the vertical, and most importantly knows full well that my arms do NOT have the aerodynamic shape REQUIRED to pull off human flight.   But it was a cute thought for that fraction of a second ;-)

Now if I had been wearing a WINGSUIT on my bicycle, that would have been something ;-)

A famous woman architect died yesterday.  She was overweight and 65 years old. Not only does that remind me of my spare mother (same cause of death: heart attack)  but some of the stuff she designed makes me think that Gaudi's ideas have not been forgotten.

Every time a laptop dies and I have to buy a new one I am APPALLED by the amount of advertising on websites. Am I the only one that feels that this ad-onslaught is overdoing it and within 5 minutes of being exposed to it installs ADBLOCK or one of its cousins?  There are people out there that put up with this insanity of ad-madness?   Oh. Remember title.  There are girls being raped by the UN blue helmets supposedly sent to rescue them. There are people voting for Trump.   
OF COURSE people put up with ad madness.   Has the human race subdivided into Homo Sapiens and Homo SubSapiens?  If this is what 'democracy' and 'freedom' refer to these days, a few ancient Greeks are rotating in their long lost graves.  No wonder Zombie TV shows are so popular. North America is populated by the Living Dead!  Try to detect a sign of life worth living in the eyes of one of those stretched 70 year olds you have to squeeze past in the shampoo aisle.  But they're living the American Way of Life which apparently is worth protecting. I witness an example when a fat mid 50s couple (it's hard to judge age with those layers of fat; they might be younger than me) devours a dish as an appetizer that is too big for me as a main course.  Bon apetite!





I'm watching 47 Ronin with Keanu on Netflix (Thank you D!) and I almost book a ticket to Tokyo. But after realizing that the anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing is August 6 and not May 8, as I had erroneously assumed and based my travel plans on, I take distance from that plan for now.  Ah well, I'll see Saki and Hiroshima another day ;-)

She already possessed great outer AND inner beauty at the age of 15 and I'd like to see what has become of her ;-)



















In some time period after it was discovered that Volkswagen cheated the emissions-testing authorities, it's customers, standards of human decency, and the planet, sales of VWs dropped 20% in the UK, 25% in the US, and 2% in Germany.  Seems that Germans are as critical of what the big guys do wrong as ever ;-(

Rot in Hell, Volkswagen !!!

I have already completed this post and I am working on a translation, when I see it. A small advertisement on the page of a German-English dictionary website advertising prices for flights from Vancouver to Tokyo.  FUCK YOU!   I actually DID install Adblock and this shit is STILL getting through? Freedom and liberty?  My Ass!  People get upset at Fois Gras because the food gets forced with funnels down the geese's gullet to produce it. No one seems to get upset at the advertising crap being forced down our throats to produce what? 
You got it. CONSUMERS !  
And it's getting to the point where we have as much choice about it as those geese.  . 

OPEN WIDE now!

P.S.:  Remember! You DO have a choice ;-)  

P.P.S: A new waitress at Denny's get's that look on her face, when I walk in at 9:15 am and order a glass of white wine and cheesecake for breakfast.  She is saved from embarrassing herself by one of the 3 graces that have worked at Denny's for a few years and have got to know me well.  It's a competition between them, who can fill my glass of wine the fullest and get it to my table without spilling a drop.  This time it is Regina, who calls from a distance away "I got it. I got it!".  What good is freedom if you don't make use of it ???