Vancouver

My non-stop flight from London to Vancouver actually did end up stopping in Toronto because we had to divert south to avoid the volcanic ash. I ended the long flight with a fun welcome back to Canada in which I was suspected of trafficking in child pornography. See, when I went through customs the investigating officer of Canada's equivalent to the TSA (understandably) thought I looked nothing like any of my identification. I helpfully suggested that she look at the eyes since that part of my face looks the same despite the dramatic differences in my hair and facial hair. She asked if I had ever worked in customs, and when I replied that I had not she said she had never had anyone tell her how to do her job before. I was too taken aback by her touchiness to say anything, or I would have apologized and clarified that I simply meant that with my particular face and those particular pictures of me, my eyes are the most consistent factor. I wasn't trying to make a statement about how to identify people in pictures in general. She then started asking me about my recent employment and didn't believe that I'd earned enough from teaching to travel for as long as I had been doing so. My inadvertent insult was rewarded by me being taken into a back room, along with all of the obviously Muslim men, where my belongings and laptop were searched for drugs or child pornography. Oh, profiling. Good times. In her defense, I do look super sketchy with my travel beard. 

Once the airport security determined that I am in fact not a threat, I was able to head out into the city. That day I mostly just trudged out to the hostel and ate some Thai food. I considered signing up for one of their day trips before realizing I could just spend bus fare to get to the same places. 

The next day I went out to the art museum, which had an exhibit titled Visceral Bodies. The main section held a collection of da Vinci anatomy sketches that were mostly instructions on how to make an anatomy book. The sketches were mostly correct, but because they were never published, most of da Vinci's insights wouldn't be reconstructed for another 200 years. Other highlights included the drawing of a torso with its organs exposed that Kati used for poster in Tis Pity, sculptures that including vocal cords and innards on display and others that employed the use of medical tech to make art.

When I finished my long tour of the museum, I wandered China town before checking into by far the sketchiest hostel I have ever slept in (which, if you're a regular reader, you know is saying quite a lot). It turns out that while West  End of downtown Vancouver is a beautiful neighborhood full of trendy shops, well-designed and maintained parks, and delicious restaurants, whereas downtown Eastside is a junky-infested shithole where there's an open drug market a block away from the police station. My hostels in each part of town reflected their locations. In the west end, a couple blocks from the bay, the slightly overpriced hostel was clean, modern, and full of clean modern young people. The hostel in the eastside only cost $60 for seven nights, and was also overpriced for what it was. The dilapidated building was full of falling apart beds with filthy mattresses that were regularly sprayed for bug beds out of necessity, lockers that had been crow-barred open, and a lot of older junkies who were let in despite the sign saying that no one over the age of thirty-five could stay there. A hand-scrawled sign in the common room warned not to bring your laptop into the hostel since it would be stolen: don't sleep with it under your pillow or anything, and when it is stolen don't bother reporting it, just buy one that was stolen from someone else at a pawn shop. Had I seen that sign and the rooms before buying a room for the week I definitely would have gone back to the other hostel, despite my obsessive need to not spend money. I got out of the room to go watch How to Train Your Dragon, which was fucking fantastic. 

I spent a good part of the next day walking the twelve kilometer perimeter of the forest covered peninsula that is Stanley Park. A sign told a First Nations legend about how a particularly impressive stone just off the coast was a man made immortal in stone as a reward for 'unselfishness.' By the way, I love the Canadian term for what Americans call Native Americans or Indians. First Nations is more accurate (humans are not native to the Americas and have never been a singular unified people -- hence nations, plural) and sounds way more badass. Stanley Park was home to giant basalt cliffs and a great deal of wildlife, notably numerous herons and some bald eagles. 

The end of the park closest to downtown had a number of totem poles. 

On the city side of the short bridge was a more modern art in a small park: 

I enjoyed a late lunch at a Mongolian barbecue buffet. I filled up several bowls with vegetables, raw meat, and marinades to be grilled for a couple minutes in a huge swirling metal bowl. Afterwards, I relaxed in the large city library for the rest of the day.

The following morning I finished reading Jack Kerouac's On the Road on a bus out to Lynn Canyon. As soon as I arrived I felt at home in a way I hadn't in over a year. The flora and terrain just looks and smells right in the Pacific Northwest. 

I would be terrified of riding down this mountain bike trail, but it makes me happy that some people can fly down it. 

The forest rang with the concussive sounds of woodpeckers pecking. Gods, I love the Pacific Northwest!

The view of the waterfall is courtesy of the fifty meter high and forty-eight meter long suspension bridge in the park. Had there been fewer people about, I doubt I could have resisted my urge to jump up and down to make it bounce. 

I spent the next few days just relaxing in the library, buying a new book (H.P. Lovecraft short stories) and reading it in  various parks, and wandering around to look at parks and street art. I particularly liked a sculpture of a head whose face was cracked like a desiccated river bed, and which had cool resonance when I stood inside it. 

I attempted to go to Grouse Grind, a mountain overlooking the city, but the trail was closed for restoration. Instead, I managed to walk my way to Lynn Canyon and explored some more trails there. 

After a slow paced week in Vancouver, I took a bus down across the border to Seattle. 

Update: I originally got some of the place names wrong in this post. Thanks to Brook for helping me fix it.

Eastern Canada

On the morning of New Year's Eve, after staying up all night packing and hanging out with Will and Courtney, I lugged my belongings through the snow to catch a cab to the shuttle to the airport. I watched several movies with America as the villain and didn't sleep at all, which means that I was going off of about 50 hours without sleep as I landed at the stroke of the new year in St. Johns, Newfoundland, at the extreme Eastern end of Canada (it was pretty cool to see fireworks across the city as we were landing). I then proceeded to go to a party for a few hours with Alanna to ring in 2010.

Over almost three weeks we saw a number of beautiful capes with amazing waves, some WWII era bunkers protecting the St. Johns harbor, played a bunch of boardgames, met up with Real Lindsay and Thomas who we'd worked with in Korea, and generally decompressed from our intense teaching schedules. We also worked on the pre-course homework for the Teaching English as a Foreign Language certification class that we had signed up for in Montreal. The plan was that we would spend February and March in Montreal doing the course then buy a car and make a journey across Canada then down the Left Coast to Portland in time for Renn Fayre. Suffice it to say that this didn't occur.

Instead I boarded the plane to meet our friend Mad and Jeff in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Alanna did not do so. Mad and Jeff thought I was joking when I said that I came by myself. Good times.

I toured the area around Nova Scotia with Mad and Jeff and some of their friends in the area. We saw a dance recital of one of their friends as well as an awesome play about Leni Riefenstahl, the film director for the Third Reich. It's awesome when art you go to because you know someone in it (or in this case the people I was staying with knew someone involved with each show) is actually really good.

We took a trip out to Peggy's cove, a pretty spot where the lighthouse bears this sign:


Note that most of the rest of the pictures involve us clambering over snow-covered boulders and generally ignoring that sign.

On the way back we stopped by a town with some picturesque old houses and churches and an awesome old (but still functioning) elementary school on a hill with a cemetery. Thus I have now officially been in Canada by the Eurasian Hobos standard:


I spent quite a bit of my time planning where I would go from there. I was in the enviable position of having the means and will to go anywhere in the world I wanted. I considered going to South America, particularly to see Machu Picchu, but I decided that if I was going to travel to a foreign country with no time for planning I should go somewhere where I speak the language and where I didn't need to decide which type of malaria medicine to get. This turns out to be a wise decision since a few days after I would have arrived there was massive flooding in Peru and all of the tourists at Machu Picchu had to be rescued by helicopter. I missed out on a great anecdote, but it's probably for the best.

Instead I bought the Lonely Planet guides to Iceland and Britain (amusingly, LP has guides of about equal size for Europe, the United Kingdom, Britain, England, and London) as well as some other gear I would need, like new boots and fleece lined mittens. Jeff and I went out to field test my new stuff by going camping. In Northeastern Canada. In January. Yeah, that sounds like me. We spent most of our time there finding, breaking up, and burning firewood. It was pretty fun, actually, though also cold enough that I was inspired to go out and also buy socks rated better than -40 degrees Celsius. (These socks are so thick that walking in them on sharp rocks feels like walking on thick fuzzy carpet. )

Having made my preparations, and having felt like I'd imposed enough upon Mad and Jeff's parents, I departed for Iceland (which, by the way, was not nearly as cold).