Snow is Cold

What is it with building towers in North American cities? Well maybe we could excuse this one as it’s also the world’s tallest free standing structure (apparently). They kinda cheated though because there’s a huge spike on top of the actual viewing deck which adds to the height significantly. The view from the top of the Sears in Chicago was much higher. Anyway - the views were great although it was a little hazy. There was a section of glass floor too which was cool to look straight down through!

Spent the rest of the day walking through the financial district, walking round the harbourfront, down King & Queen streets again, doing a spot of shopping, then across to Yonge St which is very funky too, albeit a little seedy, then up to the Soho of Toronto which is called Yorkville. All very nice. Lots of walking though and I’m ready to hit the sack. Off fairly early to Montreal tomorrow… Night.

There are lots of crazy old people here. One woman stared at my feet for a couple minutes before the elevator showed up and I could escape. Her aide was smiling politely but neither of them said anything… Then I met a woman on the basement level - as the elevator refused to go up like I was asking it to - who got in with her zimmer frame but could only respond to my queries of what floor she would like with a goat like, “meh”, before saying, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” Oh my god. Fortunately the guy from the front desk picked her up on the ground floor asking, “what are you doing down here?” Lol. Funnily enough I don’t think this was mentioned on their booking pages ;)

Managed to sleep through the alarm this morning but made it down to Niagara Falls today nonetheless. The greyhound station is in a stupid place related to the town, but only had to walk about 4km. The town itself is a pretty horrific tourist trap - fortunately we managed to inadvertently skip most of it by walking next to the river on the way down and taking a cab after not being able to find the right bus stop on the way back!

The falls themselves I was expecting to be bigger. I mean they’re pretty big anyway, but they weren’t so massive that I was really like, “woah”. Still, standing near the falls on the walkway gets you pretty soaked from the spray, and we took the “Maid of the Mist” boat (like you see on TV) right up the bottom of the waterfalls. They gave everyone these attractive blue plastic oversheets to wear, which were definitely needed as it was like a monsoon! Sadly the weather was pretty overcast today though so I don’t think the spectacle was as spectacular as it could have been.

Tonight we went round checking out the entertainment and fashion district, walked a pretty long way again and ended up eating in a Jazz bar with a live band playing - all very nice. Toronto continues to seem like a cool place, saw some more of the building today which have a definite British air to them sometimes. Even walked past a Winston Churchill statue today with a big memorial thing by it.

Looks like we might get rained on for the next couple days due to the hurricane which is going to cripple our outdoor plans a little bit. Was planning to take the ferry to the Toronto Islands tomorrow (not far) and row a kayak around for a while (on my uni friends’ advice), but if it’s pissing down can’t see that being too enjoyable! Anyway we shall see…

So I’m here in Trona, Greyhound turned out to be nowhere near as bad as expected although abandoned Niagara Falls until tomorrow. Got to the hostel we’re staying in (which also turns out to be an old people’s home and a student residence) around 2pm then crashed out for a couple hours having slept only a few hours the past couple nights. Bus sleep just doesn’t work for me.. And my neck is screwed!

Toronto seems a really nice place so far - wandered down to Chinatown via Bloor St. and the university of Toronto which turned out to be rather further than expected, 7 subway stops and about an hour and a half walking. There’s lots of life around - i.e. the streets are pretty vibrant - which I have to say was definitely lacking in Seattle, and I guess Chicago too to a certain extent (obviously not hanging out in the right places).

I would have liked to stay a bit longer in Chicago to get more of a feel for the place, the bus driver on the greyhound was a complete character and everyone on there seemed pretty friendly. I guess I was a bit put off by all the gangstas and lowlifes hanging around outside the greyhound station the first time plus the person on the desk and the fact the taxi driver outside didn’t want to take me back to Suni’s apartment cuz it was only 5 blocks drive and I suppose he wanted a larger fare. Anyhow with my limited schedule that’s all I could fit in - I get the impression it’s not going to be long enough anywhere but at least I can make a shortlist for next time! :)

Im off to bed, somehow it’s crept to 1.40am… Later.

Chicago is a wicked place. Has a different vibe again but the town is clean, the architecture is very impressive, and there’s loads going on all the time. We went to see Navy Pier, and walked round the downtown area on Saturday, went for lunch in a place where I found the top part of a rivet in my burrito, so ate for free. In the evening we went bowling for someone elses birthday then headed to a pretty cool club called zentro or something like that. At bowling I was chatting to a bunch of guys on my lane who were all just out of college and working trading options or consulting yadayadaya. Anyway they were a really nice group, as in fact were most of the people there! I think we must have numbered at least 20. Fortunately we were on the guestlist for the club as cover is pretty steep - I had to pay $20 the night before although that club was cool too, 4 floors at least, but that was also cuz I went in at 1.30. There were a couple of floors and an outside area, I lost Suni and her friend Pooja cuz the queue for the mens’ bathroom was the most ridiculous you’ve ever seen - they had 1 urinal and 2 cublicles for the entire club. Muppets. As a consequence I got chatting to a girl from bowling called Jess, so had some good Anglo-American banter there for a while!

Today after rising late we went to the park to see the latin music festival, walked round some more, I went up the Sears tower which is ridiculously tall - you can see for miles and miles and miles - and listened to some Chicago history gumph. Then we went for pizza in this apparently well known place, was pretty crazy deep - like 2 inches. By this time it was getting on and I was supposed to get a bus at 8.45 to Cleveland then Buffalo then Niagara. Unfortuntely the fucking incompetent on the ticketing desk gave me tickets for the 12.01am service but told me I could use them on the 8.45. Well, by the time I got to the door they were already running late and wouldn’t let me on the bus because the 12.01 goes a different route, so I asked if they could wait while I went to sort things out but they basically said, “no”. I was livid. Now I’ve had to come back to Suni’s apartment and wait around for 3 hours because there is no other way to get where I want to go (at least under $500) and I won’t get in to Niagara until 3.30 tomorrow afternoon. I’m so pissed off. Now Yuki’s going to be waiting round for another 3 hours on top of the 9 she already has to at hamilton airport. That sucks. I hate buses and all other things public transport. It’s a shame because now I’ve embittered myself after what was otherwise a really fun weekend. Still, I can’t change it now so just gotta get on with it… I’ve heard some interesting stories about the people on the greyhound buses so can’t say I’m looking forward to this trip at all. Anyway, will speak to you soon from Toronto, which I where I’m heading tomorrow night. Later.

Spent an awesome last day in Vancouver. As usual I left the packing as late as possible so was still going around 3.30am and was making phonecalls pretty much up to when I got on the plane!

As I said I was flying into Chicago (via Calgary) out of Vancouver, well this would have been all well and good but our plane needed a replacement oil cap on one of the engines. Air Canada spent a while trying to find a replacement part but eventually gave up and we had to all get off and get on a different plane.. This meant that my flight time was delayed 2 hours, resulting in me missing my connection to Chicago. On the plane the staff said that there were agents on the ground in Calgary who would be able to direct us appropriately, but on arrival of course there was no-one to be seen.

I headed down to the baggage reclaim but was told that my bag probably went somewhere else cuz I was going on to the US, so after a while, and getting bounced around different people, I eventually was sorted out by an amazingly helpful lady working for United Airlines (thank you whoever you were!) who found my bag in US customs then booked me on the next available flight, even though technically I should have been sorted out by Air Canada (but they have some kind of partnership). It did mean though that I had to fly via Denver, wait for a while, then catch another plane to Chicago, arriving at 12.15am. What a nightmare. To add insult to injury, I was singled out by US immigration for their terrorist style treatment, as they have to select a passenger at random to conduct a fuller search, so I had to put my shoes through the x-ray, open my bag, jump through hoops, etc. Great.

I finally made it into Chicago centre around 12.45am, and was supposed to be going out for someone’s birthday with Suni so spent approximately 10 minutes in the house then straight out again! Crazy day.

I suppose I should write this now while it’s a) fresh in my mind and b) I have a moment to spare!
Well I arrived a respectable 10 minutes late at the aforementioned rendezvous point. We got to rent a Pontiac Sunfire - the same revvy piece of shit that I had the first time we rented a car - and after declining to wait while they vacced it out we set off at approximately 8.30.

I’d written some directions for us, but they only started from I-5 (Interstate 5 I guess) once we were over the border. It didn’t even cross my mind that it would be a problem navigating highway 99 out of Vancouver, but around 20 minutes later we were asking a Chinese guy with a fishing rod for directions down by some lake or other. He didn’t speak Eengrish though. Fortunately we found another lady walking down the side of the road who informed us that we had to take Steveston Highway past the airport. Why of course.

Anyway the journey after that continued without incident, apart from the fact that we had to queue for 40 minutes to get to the American border, then had to wait 30 minutes in their immigration office or whatever it is, fill out some forms, have our picture taken, give our index finger prints, and pay $6…

On arrival in Seattle we headed straight for the space needle, figuring it was best to go first before we checked in and had to park the car up. We ate lunch in the central building of this big kind of amusement place that surrounds the space needle, inside which there was a big dancefloor cleared and lots of geriatrics dancing around. It was kind of bizarre.

We were quite fortunate because the clouds had cleared away offering us magnificent views of the city and across Puget Sound - a huge body of water that eventually connects with the Pacific Ocean. There are suburbs stretching out in every direction and the skyline REALLY looks like Sim City because of all the hills and lakes and stuff - like someone’s been messing around terraforming an interesting landscape :) we could also see Mt. Baker in the background which looked way more impressive than it does from Vancouver, although you could also see the Cascade range, which starts immediately North of Vancouver, in the distance shrouded by clouds.

After that we thought we would have a quick wander round the city and park the car up. First of all we went to a 7-11 where there was a height gauge on the inside of the door, obviously to better identify people who steal from the store with the camera image, then drove along underneath the monorail toward downtown. Checking in proved a little more problematic than expected due to the fact it was rush hour and there’s a lot of one way streets in the city centre, still after about 4 circuits we eventually found the car park we were after and went in to dump our bags. On getting to the room I was shattered so I closed my eyes for 30 minutes while Pete checked out the local papers for the night’s entertainments. Pete was quite keen on going to watch the NFL preseason game - Seahawks v Cowboys - but it would have been a mad rush so we ruled it out. We would have gone to see a baseball game the following day but they were playing away - how inconsiderate.

For dinner we headed out to a sports bar & grill as I thought it would be nice to sample the American lifestyle - drink beer & eat meat while watching sports. We ended up in a place called the Fox Sports Grill. Had I known Fox Sports was owned by Rupert Murdoch maybe I would have insisted we go elsewhere but hey. After our attempts at humour fell on deaf ears with the hostesses, we sat down at a table and ordered a beer. After a few sips though my stomach decided to start giving me serious grief again which continued for the next 3 hours, nowhere near as bad as before but still not ideal when we were trying to enjoy a nice sit down meal.

Back at the hostel we wandered down to the common room type thing with our bottle of Absolut Mandarin (cheers Gurpal :)) and sprite figuring there might be some other people up for going out. The paper had turned out to be pretty much a dead loss - seems Seattle’s Monday is to Vancouver’s Tuesday, i.e. nothing goes on. We were pointed in the direction of a place called Cowgirls Inc. by the waitress in Fox Sports, which sounded kinda like Coyote Ugly, but then when we walked into common room I spotted a couple of guys who I was sure I recognized from uni. I went over to say hello and they were indeed on the same course as me. How bizarre. I’d spoken to them both before at uni but we did all the introductions and usual catchup thing. There was also a Dutch guy there who barged into the conversation then started a competition with Pete over how many places they’d both been to.

Once we’d finished the vodka it was already about 11.45pm so we ended up going to the nearest pub possible with John & Chris and their friend Kirsty (or something like that!) which turned out to be an Irish seafood restaurant? Not something I’d necessarily put together but I think that’s what they were going for. After we left there we went looking for a pizzeria or something but there was NOWHERE open for food. Sucks. In fact, compared to Vancouver the city centre definitely lacked life - there were nowhere near as many people around and nowhere near as many places open after hours. So we took some pictures and went home to pillage the 6 ribs that Pete had kept from his monster portion earlier. Everyone in the hostel wanted a piece of them so I had to guard Pete’s half while he went for a smoke.

Our hostel was called the Green Tortoise, we had to book there cuz the HI was full - and seems that in Seattle there is a choice of only two hostels! It was pretty basic - two bunks and a sink with not much room to spare, very loud as we were facing the street, and very hot even though we had a fan running. Still I had a very good night’s sleep due to being shattered, and I guess a little tipsy. After the first day in Seattle though I wasn’t that taken with the place given what we’d seen - a similar amount of homeless and crazy people as Van but with a lot less life. On the second day though we found some more interesting places - in the morning we walked around the fish market, inadvertently walked past the first ever Starbucks, walked round the old part of town (which has cobbled streets and is very leafy and 50s gold rush looking), checked out the stadiums (which are HUGE and very impressive), and ended up in international village (next to Chinatown) by accident. It was actually really nice around there and looked like a pretty rich part of town. There’s a lot of high tech companies in Seattle apparently, there’s a whole suburb which has sprung up around it about 10kms from downtown and in the distance you could make out Redmond, home of M$, from the top of the space needle.

In the afternoon we walked along the seafront back to the fish market then walked around the shopping district so Pete could buy some trainers and some Gap jeans which turned out to be exactly the same as the pair he’s already got! After that we headed over to what is supposed to be the hip part of town, and this was TOTALLY different to the downtown area - a very cool and classy kind of looking place called Capitol Hill, so that kinda improved both our opinions on the place as a whole. Then we drove up a big hill so that we could get the picture postcard shot of the space needle in front of the skyscrapers, went back to Capitol Hill to eat in a cool Creole style restaurant, then returned to the lookout to photo the skyline again in the dark. All very nice.

Heading back on the “freeway” it became apparent that Americans can’t drive for shit. Everyone undertaking in whatever lane they like and people sitting in the fast lane even though the rest of the lanes were empty, even when you drive right up behind them! I tried to educate them as best we could by signalling where they should move to after going past them, and we got a few to move over :) but man. So bad. About half way back our petrol gauge started going up instead of down so thinking that was a bit odd we pulled off to get some “gas”. The first place we arrived at was absolutely surounded by nothing and it was very dark and spooky looking with a very old looking “mini mart & gas” sign… It was empty anyway so we headed to the next available place. That looked a bit more hopeful as it was a shell garage, had a couple cars outside, and was well lit. After I filled up the tank though this van kind of thing pulls up, a couple of hillbilly looking peeps got out the front, opened up the boot and about 6 more hillbillies jumped out of the back! I’m pretty sure they’d all been drinking considering how adamant they were that they hadn’t. All of them had ripped up dirty clothes on & mullets and shit. Weird. Fortunately by the time I’d been to the “restroom” they’d all cleared out though.

Re-entry into Canada was a mite more simple - the guy asked us a few questions about what we’d been doing then waved us through without even asking to see our passports! Mind you if you’re already coming from America I guess they don’t have too much to worry about though given the rigmarole they put you through :) we almost got lost again as apparently re-tracing the same route doesn’t work and we ended up at a dead end (lol) but it was only a minute or two lost.. I dumped the car in the car park next to the hire place as I didn’t fancy getting up at 7 again and trudged home - man we walked a long way that day.
So Seattle was interesting but surprisingly different. I have to say it had a lot more of an industrial feel to it and I guess less charm. One thing different is that there were a hell of a lots more black people around - for some reason there’s hardly any in Van! The American money is crap too. Also, this is probably the last of these essays you’ll have to read as from now on it’s gonna be pretty busy ’til I get home :) shame. Got rid of my board and lots of clothes today but still have to pack everything tomorrow to leave on Friday.. Fun.

Went back up to Whistler on Sunday for a day. Actually we were supposed to be going on Saturday but after going to bed at 4.15am making the 8am bus wasn’t looking hopeful and unsurprisingly I/we slept through the alarms. We dragged ourselves down to the downtown bus stop for the Greyhound anyway at 9.30am but there were literally no seats so we thought sod it we’ll go tomorrow instead. As a consequence, my sleep pattern is in ruins because of the late nights and early mornings and I still feel like I’m recovering from the beer poisoning incident, but hopefully that’ll have sorted itself out before I leave on Friday…

So yes, on Sunday we got up at 6.30am and headed down to the bus depot to be sure of a seat. 2 hours later we were back in tourist paradise where it was rather windier than I would have liked - good job I took a jumper. Bumped into my friend Jess almost straight away and spent a while catching up before heading over to the gondola station to go check out the summer views for comparison. It was actually pretty weird being there with absolutely no snow - the vibe was definitely different and to be honest within a short time I was ready to leave again! I’m very happy with my decision to move on for the summer, but then for me it was never really a consideration to stick around after the season finished…

We were told that our staff passes were still good to go summer sightseeing so we got to ride up for free, bonus. Well, I say that but actually my pass had been hotlisted - probably the final insult from the dickheads in charge - but there was a reasonable person working at the Springs Building (admin centre) who sorted that out for me :) so THEN we got to ride up for free.
A huge bike park has been constructed in Whistler for the summer mountain biking (which I have to say did look pretty awesome) and there were plenty of serious looking people about with full face helmets and bling bling full suspension bikes. If we’d been staying around longer I would have looked into hiring one and reliving my youth :)

At the top it was a touch chilly - the board said it was only 7 degrees but I don’t believe them. The good old roundhouse was still open but I refused to go into the restaurant because I know there’s at least one person there who I don’t want to see! So instead we rode the peak chair right to the top of the mountain. The views from up there were pretty spectacular - there’s still quite a few glaciers around with snow on so I got some good pics and they’ve just put up a big abstract stone statue of a man which apparently is there for the olympics.

After going back down I met with Beth & Lave to see what they’d been up to and we got attacked by wasps as we dined on the patio, then we headed over to Lost Lake to see what it was like as I never made it over when I was around before. Unfortunately they operate a shuttle bus there in the summer so there were a lot more people around than there would have been previously, but oh well at least I’ve seen it now! After that we went walking round the shops for a while before it was time to take the bus home.
There’s something I definitely didn’t like about the whole place, especially in the shops, I think because the whole town is just so false. I mean I know the people who run the place want everyone to be super friendly but I for one can do without having enthusiasm shoved down my throat :) plus you know that all the cool kids probably resent the fact that there’s so many tourists around. Plus the fact that everyone there is pretty much a lazy bum :p anyway, that lifestyle, as you may have gathered, is not for me. I don’t know how the hell the guys that are still there have managed to stick around for so long without going nuts…

When we got home it was about 9.15pm, actually we went to the bus depot on the way home as they’d overcharged Yuki for her ticket by $3, and spoke to this moron on the desk who was very unhelpful and said basically they can’t help unless you still have the travel ticket, which you have to give to the driver to travel, great. I called him useless and we left - really we should write a letter of complaint just on principle. Anyway when we got home I started trying to sort out transport for Seattle the next day. We were going to take the greyhound at 6.15am, but getting up at 4.45am didn’t sound like the best prospect! So instead we’ve decided to hire a car from a company called “rent-a-wreck” :) Avis have a clause whereby you have to be over 25 to rent… How ridiculous. So, 8am at rent-a-wreck it is. Seattle here we come!

Had a particularly unpleasant experience the past couple days after having the liquid equivalent of food poisoning :/ actually it was nowhere near as bad as when I had food poisoning at uni but violently throwing up and feeling like shit for most of the day isn’t high on my list of “fun things to do”.

Anyway, I’ve finished my jobs now so I’m waiting to get paid (still), was a little bit worried when the guy I’m working for suddenly decided he wanted to integrate a new system for their shopping cart so meant I had to spend some time learning more new things, but all’s well.

I’ve changed my trip plans a bit so now I’m going from here to Chicago - it seemed a bit of a waste of time spending $110 and 19 hours on a bus to go to Banff for barely 24 hours (plus paying for a night’s accommodation and another $50 to get to Calgary airport the next morning). I had to pay an extra $80 to alter the flight but hey, I still save overall and it was going to be a bit rushed next week as we’re going to Whistler tomorrow (after missing the bus this morning) then I’m heading down to Seattle with Pete for a night on Monday.

I felt kinda bad about spending only a couple hours with Yuki next week before I leave too seeing as we’ve spent most of the past 7 months together! We might be meeting up in New York and/or Toronto briefly though as turns out one of her friends is staying in New York right now too!

Am looking forward to my “holiday” - it’s gonna be hectic spending only a couple days in each place and covering large distances in between but will be wicked to see some new places :) I’ll be very sad to leave Vancouver but hey, I can always come back :p

I went second hand book shopping today and bought ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ - need something new to dig into whilst travelling after finishing J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’, which I thought was quite good although it kind of picks up and leaves off without really giving much away :) the second hand book store was, unsurprisingly, full of books and had a very cool atmosphere in a very antiquated kind of way. Certainly had more character than Chapters anyway (with the requisite Starbucks inside) and the store lady let me off without paying tax cuz she saw my UK driving license :p
I didn’t realise books were so damn expensive though. Perhaps this is the first time I’ve ever bought a book that’s not a textbook :)

Anyway, gonna take off for a brief walk along the sea wall while there’s still a bit of light - my days are numbered and the nights are closing in…

The exit route has been pretty much planned out:

I’m kissing (bitter)sweet goodbye to Vancouver on the 24th August, then making my way cross country to Banff in the Rockies, then flying to Chicago out of Calgary, staying with my friend Suni from uni for a couple days, then heading to Niagara Falls (the Canadian side) for an afternoon, then up to Toronto (also hopefully to stay with a friend, if I ever hear back) for a couple days, then Montreal, Boston, and finally ending up in New York to crash at Phil’s courtesy apartment in Manhattan for a few nights before eventually flying home to Heathrow on the 8th (or 9th by the time I get home!).

Incidentally my flight from Calgary to Chicago cost more than my flight from New York to London. Grrr…

Just remembered that on one of our midday restaurant outings we walked out of 2 restaurants before deciding on a place to eat. The first was an all you can eat Thai place that actually set RULES for its all you can eat menu!!! That’s just not cricket. Besides I didn’t think I could stomach anything off the menu..

After that we went to this authentic Korean place, which is always full (of Koreans, presumably), but Gurpal couldn’t understand the menu, so after waiting around for about 5 minutes, we headed out of there too :)

Eventually we ended up in Bento sushi, but we actually ate there, so that doesn’t make for an interesting tale :p

Right now Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is on TV, what a quality movie.

Gurpal left today, marking the close of the penultimate Vancouver chapter. Now I have just a week and a half left :(

Anyway it does no good to brood. In the past few days we’ve been up to quite a lot. On Monday we went on a rather strange night out to first, the Beaver, then after declining the huge line outside Plush (again) we ended up going to the Roxy, which is a place we’ve often debated going to. There was a band playing who were actually really good, but there were some interesting (to say the least) people inside..

On Tuesday we went to meet some of Gurpal’s old friends and ended up getting smashed at the Backstage Lounge and, latterly, Tonic. It should have been a cheap night out because of the drinks prices but quantity over quality prevailed! We caught the aquabus over to Granville Island from Sunset Beach which was cool and saw a seal on the way. Then the girls became high maintenance (well, one in particular) and wanted to get some food before going to the bar, which wasn’t a hugely popular decision, then the same girl decided she’d had enough and left about eleven thirty! Gurpal was gutted as he was trying to get in with her :p hehehe. Actually he had an awesome night of rejection but told me not to write down exactly what was said to him :D
I wanna tell you anyway though cuz it had me in stitches. He went to speak to this girl who was next to us on the dancefloor, and they exchanged a few words, then she came out with, “I’m sorry, I don’t want to talk to you anymore”, so what can you say to that?? I went over and shook her hand because of the brutality of the remark, lol.

On Wednesday I took a day off while Gurpal went to meet his friend Gill, although we revisited the store he used to work at for nostalgia’s sake! Then on Thursday we’d decided to go over to Vancouver Island to see what Victoria was like. Basically, we didn’t have the best time of it as we spent 9 hours of the day on public transport…but the ferry crossing was really nice and picturesque, plus we got interviewed by a local cable channel who wanted us to compare the ferries with those in England! We saw a load of killer whales on the way home too which was cool. In Victoria itself we spent about 2 hours, about 45 minutes of which was spent eating in a poor excuse for a seafood restaurant, where Gurpal’s bag got nailed by a bird overhead, and the rest was spent running between the sites, getting a picture taken outside, but not actually going inside any of them! It seemed like a bit of a waste of a day to me but hey, at least we can say we’ve been there now, plus from what we could gather it sounds like there’s not much else to do there than what we accomplished anyway :) we missed the ferry on the way there by 10 minutes which was a bit of a pain in the ass, but got really lucky with all the buses as we got every connection pretty much immediately (the ferry terminal is miles away from downtown, so we had to transfer..). On the way home there were a bunch of noisy kids on the bus which wasn’t really what we needed, and some woman pushed me out of the way cuz, I think, she got pissed off with all the Chinese people blocking her path and turned round to go the opposite direction. Still, there was no need for that!

On my way home I picked up a Chinese takeaway from a new restaurant, which had no customers, which maybe gives some explanation for why both the chef and the serving girl came out to thank me for my custom, lol. Gurpal had gone out with his cousin for dinner but we’d agreed to meet later and go to see Doc Martin & Kaskade at Richards on Richards with Pete, his mate from home, Nick and his girlfriend Allie. I couldn’t believe that the last time we went to that club was back in May when Si was staying with me!!! Absolutely crazy how fast the time has gone. It was a pretty good night to be honest but they shut the party down at 2.15 after only a couple of encores :)

I still didn’t say anything about the Lawler gig (June 22nd) and the BT gig (July 22nd) did I?! Man that was pretty long ago too :( Lawler was amazing, the best set I’ve seen in a looong time, but I was a bit disappointed by BT. I had the choice of either going to see Deep Dish on the Monday or BT on the Friday, but seeing as I’d seen Deep Dish before and I’ve been a fan of BT’s music since forever I felt I had to choose the BT show. I don’t really regret it but it sounds as if the Deep Dish night would have been better! The problem was that I was expecting more of a live show than a DJ set, but it was pretty straight up 4/4 (although he played some awesome breaks mixes of his tunes early on), so I was a little disappointed not to hear a bit more diversity. They let some stupid wannabes on stage too who couldn’t even dance and just sleazed about, and the crowd weren’t friendly at all, so I guess they kinda all contributed to me not thinking it was that fantastic! Still, I got to meet BT backstage for a little bit so I was happy :)

Apparently my IQ is ~138. Cool :)

Shit I completely forgot that on Friday night I went to see a Canadian Football game! Daz had been on about it for a while and seeing as he’s leaving next week (I think) this time seemed like the ideal opportunity.

We scored tickets through the Hostelling International (HI) trip, well actually Daz phoned me and asked if I wanted one but I thought I’d ask Yuki if she wanted to come first but she had to go to one of her friend’s parties so by the time I phoned back he’d already bought them and I had to phone up separately and got the very last one they had! (Deep breath.)

All was well though because his tickets were S103-105 and mine was T103, so one row behind in the same section. It was quite cool because we met up with the other guys who were heading down in a bar an hour before we had to leave so we had a couple of beers and a get to know you chat beforehand. It transpired that I was sitting next to our tour guide - a standardly crazy and enthusiastic Canadian chick - which was cool because she was getting involved with the crowd cheering and stuff. Over excitement about any small thing that happens seems to be de facto in American, or should I say Canadian, football, so she helped in rising to the occasion.

The game lasted for like 3 hours, but the time seemed to pass pretty quickly inside. The stadium is a giant indoor dome held up by air pressure, and when we left there was a very stiff breeze coming from the turnstiles and exit doors!! They have loads of random stuff that goes on in between plays, quarters, and halves like cart racing, people dressed up as coffee cups, the “felions” - team cheerleaders, yeah baby, firing mini footballs out of a fluffy subway sub, carrying giant sandwiches across the pitch, you get the picture, maybe :)

Apparently it was a pretty big game cuz they had the top section of the stand open, and there were like 35,000 people there, but the stadium has a capacity of some 60,000 so it was by no means full. Still, the atmosphere was pretty good, and the home time emerged as the 27-18 victors, or something like that. On the downside, pints inside were $7.50 a pop, and that’s not even for a full pint of flat, warm Molson Canadian - the Carling of the Canadian world. The queues were mental all game long too.

After we left the stadium I was feeling pretty hungry, as by this time it was after 10pm and I’d only eaten a couple pieces of toast and a couple of KFC snackers (which I had to queue for an inordinately long amount of time to get - fast food my ass) that were measly and unappealing, to be fair. We headed to a bar called Dix, which was quite akin to the Brewhouse in Whistler, but ended up just buying beers and feasting on the free monkey nuts (and then discarding the shells on the floor, which is apparently normal but made it look like a disaster area)… Our party comprised myself, Daz, his friend Phil from Whistler, Phil’s travelling companion Jim, our mutual friend Claire, and a Scottish girl called Anne who was leaving the next day and we just bumped into during the pre-game meetup.

We got tired of this bar pretty quickly because there were 2 bartenders to serve what seemed like half the crowd that had poured out of the stadium, so after a couple we headed down to the tried and tested Cambie. We were going to buy some pizza on the way but got distracted by the girls climbing on the tanks outside the army barracks (or army something) so somehow forgot. Me & Daz left the rest of the group to their horseplay and focused on the priorities at hand. We got a pitcher in and two portions of chips in the Cambie, but Daz had to escort the rest of the party in through the hostel back door so they didn’t have to queue, which left me to mind our space with the service number on a table full of, well, alternative types.

Soon after Daz got up this crazy dude who was clearly absolutely wankered came and led on the bench next to me. I was in two minds whether to get involved in conversation with him but had only made it to the hello stage when Claire came to the rescue. Unfortunately though the most normal member of the group started trying very hard with her so I had to wait for the chips to appear, then for Daz to come and claim his, before I could bail.

After escaping that scenario and devouring the pile of food I was feeling pretty full, and two pitchers later I physically couldn’t fit any more beer in! It was at this point that Daz noticed some rocker type guy who was also wasted had been quietly tucking into his/our third pitcher which was sat on the table behind us, but after a brief confrontation we decided to let it go :) then Daz put his pint down on the same table whereupon two guys who were having a play ruckus flew onto the tabletop and knocked Daz pint to the ground. I think this rattled him a little bit from the call of, “FOR FUCK SAKE” that went up afterwards :) but that’s understandable right? I thought it was some message to me that more beer wasn’t meant to be, so despite the fact that some hot 19 year old was giving me the eye I decided I wasn’t in the right place, physically and mentally, to stay at that point, so I headed home! On the way though I stopped off to pick up a couple slices of $1 pizza, as by this point it was almost 2am and I was worried what the consequences would be if I didn’t line my stomach with something else, and miraculously woke up the next day feeling fine! The game and all the ensuing results came out over $80 but hey, you only live once. Or at least that’s what I’m going to tell the credit card company.

This morning I went out and bought a bunch of 6 sunflowers (her fave) and got some croissants and donuts for breakfast. What a legend. I hope she was pleased anyway ;)

Today our agenda was to climb Grouse mountain, which is over in North Vancouver and one of the ski hills which borders the city. I’d heard reports of it being fairly fearsome (and Phil I think you might have missed out by not taking it in, or did you?!), but we weren’t phased so after dinner on the waterfront at the other side of the ferry (or seabus, whatever) crossing we headed up to the base of the mountain.

The climb itself was pretty ok up to half way, but then my legs started to tire a bit after it got pretty ropey higher up! Looking back at it from the bottom it looks insanely steep, but once we were in to it we were committed to reaching the end :)

I probably sweated out the equivalent of my body weight on the way up (as it was 26 degrees or something and I was carrying a backpack), but we made it in 1 hour and 25 minutes, which I believe is very respectable! It was a great feeling of satisfaction to make it up there anyway, and the views over the city are incredible. Unfortunately we missed this lumberjack show they do up there, but I pretty much know what happens anyway from other people telling me, but we did see the birds of prey jobby, which was ok I guess :)
Also saw a couple bears and 3 wolves which are kept in captivity there in an area enclosed by an electric fence, and rode a chairlift down to this lookout point, which was kinda surreal as it was the first time since Whistler that we’ve ridden a chairlift, then took the insanely fast gondola ride back down to the base.

We had been invited over to Cynthia’s house (where I stayed back in April) for dinner, which we thought was going to be an extension of Yuki’s birthday, but turns out it was her niece’s birthday too that day so they were having a party for her, and had in fact forgotten that it was Yuki’s birthday at all :) so that was kinda funny. We got there so late that the party was winding down anyway by that stage, so we grabbed the free food, had a quick chat, then scarpered, hehe.

Now I’m pretty much exhausted from the day’s excursions, plus the fact I went to bed at 4 and got up early (although exactly how early is a secret), and I think we’re supposed to be heading over to Vancouver Island tomorrow pretty early, so now I’m off to bed! Wanted to get this all down before going tho cuz otherwise it would be a mission to catch up again..! Hopefully I’ll get my ass in gear and put some more photos up too, as I have millions, but we shall see, eh? :)

We kind of had a pre-birthday event today as apparently that’s just how it goes down, and also technically Yuki’s birthday (which is also incidentally my sis’ birthday, Daz’s sis’ birthday, Pete’s bro’s birthday, my friend Sophie from Whistler’s b’day, etc etc) starts some time on Saturday due to the 16 hour time difference in Japan. Anyway despite my consistent hankering her about it she refused to do anything particularly special (maybe coz she’s getting old :) so I made us a nice dinner and attempted to make a birthday (cheese)cake. I say attempted because something went wrong with the gelatin and it’s as if there lumps of glue in the cake, but anyhoo. It’s the thought that counts (and we’ll still eat it anyway).

After going to the aforementioned fireworks we were going to go up to this revolving restaurant on the 26th floor of the Empire Landmark hotel, called “Cloud 9″, however the guy on the hotel door put a major spanner in the works by saying they closed at 10.30pm that evening as it was a special event (and we turned up at 11.30, bugger) so after some mild sulking I managed to reconcile her into a green tea frappucino (like an ice cream float) from Starbucks by the beach, so that was where we celebrated in the 7th!

Town was destroyed with litter everywhere again, which was pretty disgusting, but the guys did a good job of clearing it up by the next day!

Wednesday night we were going to have a pretty quiet one, but then I learned that a certain Mr Duncan Muir was back from the wilderness of BC interior (he’s spending 4 months or so drilling for gold living with a team of 4 in tents in the middle of the woods on a mountainside), and Gurpal got in touch with one of his ladyfriends that was his old manager at the clothes store he worked at in Vancouver 3 summers ago, so we thought it was only fair if we went out properly again.

We co-ordinated a meetup in a bar called “The Beaver”, which is underneath the Samesun hostel - where we originally spent our first nights in Canada (hence the clever 3 way post title), although we were a bit dubious as to whether the girls (she was supposed to be bringing 3 friends, conveniently) were going to flake out. Fortunately they managed to make it down though so from there we headed to the Royal as they weren’t up for going crazy and clubbing it straight away (even though we wanted to..). Tia, Gurpal’s friend, knows the manager of the Royal so we only had to pay like $1 each to go in, which was a bit of a bargain seeing as the drinks in there were dirt cheap! We got one of these big leather booth things and started chatting the night away. Two of the girls peeled off pretty early, around 12ish, but the other 2 stayed ’til about 12.45, at which point we decided we were still all up for going to a club! We headed to Caprice, the scene of mayhem the week before, but we were never going to get in there in time so we crossed the road to a bar called the Cellar.

A couple of flaming drambuies (which didn’t want to light) later and me & Gurps were all over the dancefloor, although the place wasn’t rammed by any means, while Dunc & Daz propped up a post somewhere. The night was over pretty quickly to be fair as they kicked out at 2, so after chasing some people round outside for a while we headed home via Super Valu and went to bed at a fairly respectable 3. Was wicked to see Dunc again and Gurpal seems to have gotten some joy from this girl as they’re going to a party together Saturday night! I’m waiting to find out how he got on though.. He’s headed over to his cousins’ place for a couple of nights now so I’m left to prepare for Yuki’s birthday…

The China fireworks were awesome - they had some stuff that I’d never seen before! Then they had the grand finale on Saturday. Saturday was a little bit of an anticlimax as the individual shows were pretty well co-ordinated in comparison, but anyway I guess we’re all fireworksed out now!

My housemate from uni, Gurpal, arrived yesterday afternoon, so we’re going to spend a week doing lots of fun things that I wanted to do and he didn’t get round to doing when he was here before!

We started yesterday by eating sushi then going out to a night called “Toonie Tuesdays” at a bar called the Backstage Lounge over on Granville Island. Apparently it was a happening night back in the day but at $2.50 for drinks we couldn’t really complain. We played loads of games of pool (been a while) then ended up singing “No Woman No Cry”, by Bob, in the karaoke which was going on. The view out the window was amazing cuz the bar is right on the waterfront, except it looks back at all the flashy apartment buildings in Yaletown and the mountains in the distance. On our way home Gurpal wanted MORE sushi, but it had finished serving by the time we got back at 1.40 :) so we went to Super Valu (yeah, there’s no e on the end) to interrogate them about other possible targets. After launching an orange across the shop floor, and also interrogating a poor unsuspecting hottie who was buying cat litter at 2am (we were asking her why the hell she was buying cat litter at 2am, was v funny) and having an open argument with each other about the ridicule of trying to find a sushi place at 2am, we settled on going to a burger place for late night munchies. Well I say we but I was just sitting there while the food machine did his business :)

Today we went to a Vietnamese restaurant (although Gurpal initially wanted to go for sushi) for lunch then went to play pitch and putt!!! Golf is awesome. The pitch and putt was very well kept actually, although a bit on the short side, I overpitched pretty much every hole. Anyway it was very pleasant and great to play again. If you’re interested I was +10 for the front 9 and even for the back 9. Shocking.

Then we strolled back along the beach around 5.30 and it was already pretty packed even tho the fireworks don’t start ’til 10! We were both hungry again so I agreed to go for… sushi. Man this guy is an addict. He ordered 38 items from the all you can eat menu, lol. I could only finish two thirds of my rolls so got the rest to go! And now here I am. And I have to go make dinner. Adios.

Maaan I’m getting behind with this… Since I last wrote we’ve been to the ‘Celebration of Light’ - the biggest fireworks competition in the world - a couple of times, and we’re going to see China’s offering tonight, which you would think would be pretty good seeing as they INVENTED fireworks. I wouldn’t say that the shows we’ve seen so far put the Cheltenham racecourse fireworks to shame, but they were certainly impressive. First up was Canada last Wednesday, then Sweden last Saturday, now China then the ‘grand finale’ this Saturday. They launch the fireworks off these boats that are out in the bay, and people amass on English Bay beach, Kitsilano beach, all the way down toward Stanley Park and a ring of boats forms across the inlet, creating a complete ring around the show!

I thought it was kind of strange to be watching fireworks in the middle of summer, in fact at one point I had a kind of cold sensation as if it were winter due to the association between fireworks and Guy Fawkes!

The amount of people who turn up to this thing is insane. We were sitting in a restaurant last Wednesday and there were literally hordes of people walking past the window. It was surreal, like there was a mass exodus taking place or something. I tried to capture it in a photo but I’m not sure it’s come out very well yet cuz I haven’t checked! Still haven’t gotten round to putting the latest ones on the net.. Soz.

Last Wednesday we went on a crazy bender, which was going to be a lads night out until Pete agreed to letting a girl come too, loser. Me & Daz berrated him and told him to uninvite her but he wouldn’t listen. This was to become his undoing as she turned out to be really weird and meant he missed out on an opportunity elsewhere, ha. Infact therein lies a tale. After we had dinner (we’d already been for a couple beers beforehand), which was the WORST curry EVER, so much so that we felt it could be described with the words “awful”, and “terrible”, which I can’t say is a very common occurence with restaurant food.. Anyhow, I put it down to experience and we ended up heading to a kebab house for drinks as it was the only place serving alcohol (the beach was under severe lockdown) where we could also watch the fireworks, after a fashion.

When it finished there was a reverse mass exodus so we legged it to my house to get changed and tried to call a cab to town. We were quoted a 45 minute wait but one turned up pretty sharpish, so then the guy had to navigate through the people who filled the streets up to Granville. Pete, being the bright spark that he is, had forgotten to bring any ID with him. You’d think that being 6′4 and 26 years old there wouldn’t be a problem, and indeed other places we’d been too before had been reasonable, but you knew that this time, because it was planned, they were gonna be stupid. So the inevitable happened and he had to do the 45 minute round trip home to go get his passport. At the same time this girl had already turned up so me & Daz had to simultaneously get leathered and try and entertain her, which would have been ok but a 3 way conversation is pretty impossible with club music.. We started nailing down a silly number of highballs (spirit mixers) cuz they were only 2 bucks a pop, and by the time Pete got back we were way ahead of him and he’d sobered up from the journey. We kinda thought he wasn’t coming back because it was a bit of a mission but I guess he couldn’t really leave the girl there!

The next eventful happenings were on our way out, we met some guys who were marines or something like that, so somehow we got talking to them and to show us how to ‘disable’ someone :) Daz had disappeared so me, Pete & the girl took forever to walk back down to my place, stopping off to play with the fountains outside the Wall Centre and a yellow Corvette, then ending up on the beach via a conversation with a homeless guy which caused this chick to freak out majorly (even though it was nothing untoward.. She somehow made a connection with an incident in Barcelona where she ended up losing her wallet), after which Pete wanted to go home but I wanted to go to the beach :) actually we spent a while psychoanalyzing this bag of clothes that the homeless guy had given to Pete after he came back from their argument before we made it down there. It was pretty decimated from all the people’s litter after the fireworks and it was getting light by this stage! I ended up going shopping at 5.30 in the morning and going to bed at 6. Pete, after reclaiming his bag from my house had to stay with this girl for another half an hour of torment before his bus came heheh. While we were on the beach I tried to pick her up (as in LIFT) too after her & Pete had had another argument but she was too heavy so we both bailed headfirst into the sand, lol.

Anyway what the hell am I talking about? :) Enough of that. More soon!