Category: Away we go

I‘m laughing at your comments about the teaser ending to yesterday’s post. Hey, you think I haven’t learned a thing or two about story-telling and the value of a hook after all these years? Heh!

On my last full day in Vancouver, I once again found myself awake well before sparrow’s first fart. Fully dressed, showered and caffeinated by 5:15, I was out the door looking for photo ops just as the sun was breaking the horizon. It was worth the 10 block wander back down to the Burrard Street Bridge, where I found the marina at Granville Island just waking up.

On the other side of the Burrard Bridge, I found English Bay and these ocean liners sitting peacefully in front of the majestic mountain backdrop.

I captured slightly different perspective of the same scene on my iPhone.

I was back at the hotel by 7:45, keen to get started on the day’s conference events, when I checked my e-mail and received some horrible news: the sister of one of my dearest friends lost her long battle with cancer in the night. She died at 46, leaving two sweet young children behind. I was heartbroken for my friends, and angry at how helpless I felt far, far away on the other side of the country.

Not knowing what else to do, I sat through most of the morning’s presentations, but my heart just wasn’t in it any longer. Between the bad news about the daycare situation and the devastating loss for my friends, I kept welling up and blinking away tears. I even looked into changing my flight home, but since the conference organizers had paid for my flight I wasn’t sure how or if I could change it.

I slipped out for a walk at lunch to clear my head, and found myself outside the very same bike rental place I’d patronized the day before. I don’t think I walked there consciously, but when I realized where I was, I was happy enough to oblige my subconscious. I rented another bike and hopped on.

The day was brisker but clearer than the day before, and as I pedaled my heart lightened by degrees.

Once again, I could not resist the urge to stop and photograph the Lion’s Gate Bridge. And this time, i filled my purse and pockets so full of sea glass that I had a hard time balancing on my bike, camera slung on one side and sea-glass-laden purse on the other. Note to self: next time, rent panniers, too!

This time, though, instead of cutting back through the park along the causeway, I continued the loop around to English Bay. I nearly fell off my bike from vertigo when I rounded one corner and found this breath-stealing combination of open sea, sky and distant mountains. For a girl with a tough of agoraphobia, Vancouver is one white-knuckled, gravity-defying view after another!

It was mere minutes after I stopped to watch this furry little fellow cross the path in front of me to hop down and forage for lunch among the tidal pools that things got really messed up. (Aren’t raccoons supposed to be nocturnal? This was practically high noon.)

I came around a curve on the path and found a man unconscious on the path. I stopped my bike in surprise, and a rider coming up directly behind me stopped, too. We were on a fairly isolated stretch, but people had come at me from this direction less than a few minutes before — either he had just fallen, or they had stepped over him and kept walking.

We tried to wake him up, and I have to admit that my first reaction was one of hesitant fear. He was somewhere north of 60 years old, grey and a little grizzled, and it was hard to tell if he was hurt or maybe sleeping something off — although the middle of the path deep in the park is a pretty strange place to pass out.

He had fallen in the recovery position, so I adjusted his head ever so slightly to make sure his airway was open and made sure he was breathing, all the time mindful of the expensive camera around my neck, the great distance I was from home, and rather anxious that he might wake up and be very angry with me for touching him, and then we called 911 from my iPhone.

It took about an hour between the time I found him and the time I hopped back on my bike, but it seemed like three days. It took quite a while for the ambulance to make its way on the bike path down to us, and luckily a few local joggers had stopped and were able to take my cell and give the ambulance dispatch a more clear idea of our location than my “Um, we’re in Stanley Park, somewhere on the bike path near English Bay.” (It’s a 10 km loop around the park.) Another lady who stopped was a nurse, and she and her partner stayed to take over the first aid until the ambulance arrived.

We still weren’t sure what had happened to him until the paramedics arrived to put him on a back board and turned him over, revealing that the side of his face that had been against the pavement was bashed and bloody. They speculated that he had either misstepped on the curb beside the path and fell down hard, or had a stroke and then fallen. Hard. He never did regain consciousness, and the nurse said his neural response was very atypical for someone who had simply passed out.

The whole experience was rather surreal, but I had to choke back tears when the first constable on the scene stopped me just as I was about to ride away and asked me for ID and contact information, “in case he doesn’t make it.” In case he doesn’t WHAT? The very worst part of the whole thing was how much he looked like my Dad — same age range, very similar physical build. I kept thinking, “He’s probably somebody’s dad. Someone might be worrying about him.” I still wonder how he’s doing, hoping he’s home with his family and recovering well. I still feel a little guilty, too, for my first thought — that he was drunk and sleeping something off. He was hurt needed help, and for what seemed like a long minute when I first arrived, I almost didn’t want to stop.

Needless to say, I was completely unnerved and my concentration for the rest of the day was officially shot. I couldn’t stand the idea of just sitting around my hotel room waiting for the day to end so I could fall asleep, wake up and go home, so I walked. And walked. And walked. And while I was walking, I took more pictures.

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom:

Sea planes are photo-worthy:

And then, in that endlessly strange day, I stumbled upon a giant street party celebrating Vancouver’s 125th birthday. I’m not sure if the giant Lego orca was part of the 125 celebration or if it’s always there, but it made me homesick for my Lego junkies back home. (The stage to the left is a part of the 125 celebration.)

And then, finally, it was time to go home. It was a great adventure, if not a little more stressful than it had to be. The flight home was just about perfect, and after all the spectacular scenery I’d been watching for days, it was the sight of the rolling flats of the Ottawa valley that once again brought me near to tears.

That’s my place, I thought as we flew over the muddy brown farmland just hinting to green. That’s my home. I belong there.

And I was practically bouncing in my seat with anticipation to see my family by the time we banked over downtown and I caught this once-in-a-lifetime (well, once in MY lifetime, anyway!) shot of downtown Ottawa.

Home.

Tuesday marked the second day of my trip to Vancouver, and also the whole reason I was there in the first place — to give a presentation at a conference about social media in government and how we use social media at Army News.

I was keen to give the presentation. So keen, in fact, that my body refused to acknowledge the time difference between Ottawa and Vancouver (something to which I never quite acclimatized) and I was wide awake for the day at a little bit before 4 am. Hey, I’d slept in by Ottawa time zone standards! So, I puttered about the hotel room playing with my umbilical cord (erm, I mean, my iPhone) and getting myself dressed, and as soon as the sun was up I set off to explore another corner of the city before the conference started.

I took some pictures but honestly, they weren’t even worth sharing with you. Although the rain had blessedly stopped, the light was still flat and uninteresting, and most of the shots I took never made it past mediocre.

My morning got considerably more bright when the conference started. The first presentation was excellent, and then I was up. I had a great time speaking, and got some fantastic feedback from fellow participants. Can I brag for just a minute? Here are a few of the tweets that greeted me after my presentation:

From @AndreaGulay: Listening to @DaniGirl – Example of Best Practices – So glad she is here! #smgov

From @shannonmcfadyen: A mobile site is cross platform vs apps that are proprietary. A great consideration – thnks @DaniGirl #smgov

and: Thanks @DaniGirl for an informative #smgov presentation. Your candor was refreshing

From @opportunityknck: @DaniGirl Great talk … well done and informative #smgov

From @chicken_scratch: A shout out to @Danigirl for an engaging presentation this morning at #smgov #yvr. Who knew the Canadian Army was so hip?! #pr #media

Isn’t that terrific? And during each break in the conference, people were coming up with me to chat, to know more about what we’re doing, and to talk a little bit more about the points I raised. One sweet woman even said mine was her favourite presentation and the most useful. Totally made the scary flight in with no coffee for five hours worthwhile!

We had 90 minutes for a lunch break and I was still twitchy with energy from my presentation, so I stepped out for a brisk walk and found the sun shining! I’d had it in my head that maybe I’d walk to the close edge of Stanley Park and poke around for a bit, and then wander back. I walked past a bike rental shop as I walked up Robson Avenue and popped in, thinking I’d find out what I needed to rent a bike and what it would cost to rent one after the conference was done for the afternoon. It was so inexpensive and so straightforward that, with more than an hour left in my lunch I just rented one on the spot and hopped on.

I tell you, while it was never on my life “to do” list to impulsively rent a bike to ride the sea wall at Stanley Park — but it should have been! First, after walking everywhere for two days, the sheer speed with which the blocks whizzed by as I rode was exhilarating. Then I hit the actual park, and started seeing things like this:

And this:

It was undoubtedly the most scenic bike ride ever, and a gift of a day because the forecast had once again been calling for rain.

I don’t know why, but one of the things I most wanted to see in Vancouver was the Lion’s Gate Bridge. And so when I came around the bend and could see it so clearly spanning the background, I had to hop off my bike and enjoy the moment.

I poked around for a bit, and eventually hopped off the sea wall and wandered down to the boulders exposed by the low tide so I could take a few pictures like this one.

That’s when I made a discovery that made me gasp in surprised delight. You know what I found? SEA GLASS! Tonnes and tonnes of great big gorgeous pieces of sea glass.

Remember how excited we were to find it last summer in Nova Scotia? This put that bounty to shame. I quickly filled my pockets, but was precariously close to running out of lunch hour and had to move along more quickly than I would have liked.

In fact, rather than complete the full circle around Stanley Park, I decided to cut through the park along the causeway that leads to the Lion’s Gate Bridge and follow it back to downtown. By the way, I have never seen a park with so many rules for cyclists as this one — ride your bike here, don’t ride your bike here, walk your bike here, and god help you if you miss a rule because people will yell the rules out at you. Yeesh!

By the time I got back to the conference I was a little sweaty and well-exercised, but we had an afternoon of really interesting presentations.

All in all, it was a stellar day and I was totally forgetting to feel homesick — right up until the point just after the conference ended around dinner time that I got an e-mail from my daycare provider telling us she was quitting the business as of the end of the month. Sigh.

And that’s when things started to go really sideways. Cuz you know bad news always travels in threes.

The day I left for Vancouver last week was very much a Monday, in the most pejorative sense of the word. Due to huge line-ups at the security gate, even more huge line-ups at the Tim Hortons inside the departure lounge, and the most terrifying turbulence I’ve ever been subject to (as in, holding on to the seat in front of you in a white-knuckled death grip) I didn’t actually get my first coffee of the day until we were flying somewhere over Winnipeg, a good five hours into my day. And my personal TV thingee didn’t work. And thanks to the lack of coffee, I had a pretty good headache.

I’d been watching the weather for weeks, and the forecast for the day of my arrival had never varied: rain. Not showers, and not even a hint of potential sunshine. And it figures, this was the one time that the forecasts were 100% correct. The clouds were so heavy that I could barely see the tops of buildings let alone the mountains as we made the quick trip from the airport to downtown. It was the flattest, dullest, least-photo-friendly light you could possibly imagine — and yet I was still taken with how gorgeous a city Vancouver is. It reminds me of Ottawa, and of London Ontario, where I grew up. I was first struck by how green everything was, and by how livable the city seemed.

Despite the ongoing downpour, I was determined to make an adventure of my time in Vancouver. By the time I checked into the hotel, it felt like it should be late afternoon but in fact, it was barely 10:30 in the morning and the whole day stretched out in front of me. I packed my favourite lenses into my camera-backpack, grabbed the complimentary umbrella the hotel so courteously supplied (should have seen that as foreshadowing!) and headed out. I wasn’t even completely sure where I was headed, but by the time I hit the lobby I figured Granville Island would be a good place to start.

With umbrella clutched in one hand and holding my jacket closed over my camera in the other, I stepped out into the rain. After a block or two, I shifted my backpack to my front to better protect it from the rain. The walk to the aquabus mini-ferry that would take me across False Creek to Granville Island was only about eight blocks, and I was delighted to find an edifying cup of Tim Hortons coffee on the way.

This is the Burrard Street bridge, a block down from my aquabus stop. I’d spend a lot of time on my Vancouver mini-vacation either pointing my camera at or standing on this bridge pointing my camera at something else. And FWIW, when the light is so unbearably flat that the world is almost monochrome anyway, B&W photography is your friend!

This, on the other hand, is the Granville Street Bridge. Most of Granville Island, which isn’t really an island but a peninsula, is tucked underneath it.

And then, like a burst of sunshine, I found the public market. It was warm, it was dry, and it was unbelievably photogenic.

I wandered happy little loops around the market building for a couple of hours, stopping now and then to have a bite to eat (fresh cheese and spicy sausage for lunch, a banana and another coffee for a snack) and to touch base with the rest of the world on my iPhone.

I have to tell you, I started out homesick and never really got over it. I love love love traveling, and exploring a new city by myself with a camera is just about the definition of a perfect day rain or not, but everything I saw I wanted to share with someone. When I saw this candy shop, for example, my first thought was for Beloved and how he’d be drooling over it. I even e-mailed him this picture: Wish you were here?

And then I discovered the amazing Kids’ Market at Granville Island, and missed the boys even more. It’s a whole warehouse dedicated to kids’ stuff — multiple toy stores, book stores, kids’ clothing stores, and even a huge indoor play structure.

Alas, I could only spend so many hours in the warm, dry and not-raining market before I had to move back out into the rain. I explored the marina for a few moments before hoping back on the aquabus and heading back downtown.

It was still only mid-afternoon Vancouver-time by the time I made it back to the hotel, even though it felt like it should be the middle of the night. I paced around my hotel room for a little while, considering various options, before I decided that the Pacific Centre would make a good option for more rain-safe wandering. Plus, they had a Tim Hortons. It was all I needed to motivate me back out into the wet, umbrella clutched like a talisman.

I was too tired to be interested in much more than idle wandering, until I discovered H&M. I’d heard people raving about H&M before, but had no idea what a fantastic store it was. Really, why do we not have one of these in Ottawa? Great quality stuff and, at least while I was there, amazing sale prices. So what did I stock up on? Clothes for the boys, of course.

By the time I was shopped out, it was close enough to dinner time for me to call it a day. I stopped one last time to take pictures of these daffodils across the street from my hotel (it’s been kind of disappointing to return to the pre-spring muddy brown that predominates here in Ottawa after the lush verdancy of emerald green and blooming Vancouver!) and thought the composition with the umbrella in the background was a nice take on the old “April showers May flowers” cliché.

Soaked to my knees and thoroughly walked out, I finally made it back to the hotel room. It would be nearly a full day before my hiking boots dried out! I figure I probably walked a good 10 km or more, and though I was quite proud of myself for actually getting out despite the rain, it seemed by the throngs of people in the street that getting out in the rain isn’t much of an accomplishment for Vancouver natives.

The view from the hotel room, by the way, was pretty spectacular, looking right down on Robson Street and the commercial district.

I had to laugh when I was listening to the local weather that evening. Not only had it been a rainy day in Vancouver, but it had been a record-breaking day for rain. The previous record for April 4 had been 18 mm of rain, and up until the evening news broadcast, more than 30 mm of rain had fallen. Somehow, that made it all worthwhile. 😉