Planes, Trains, Automobiles and Helicopters

Our "chariot" arrives!

We flew out here to the west coast on Air Canada, we plan to come back east on a VIA Rail train, we were chauffeured around by family and friends while here; all means of transportation we have experienced previously, but to get from Vancouver Island over to Vancouver city, we got a chance to experience a new form of transport, Helicopter. 

This trip out to the West coast was planed originally for spring of 2020, and we all know what happened to travel plans then. We were going out to visit my sister and then take an Alaskan cruise, and she suggested we take a helicopter from the Island over to Vancouver City, as the helicopter terminal is right beside the cruise terminal. Regis was not too sure about this as she is a bit of a nervous flyer, but I thought it was a great idea. 

Tight quarters

The cruise got cancelled but this year we decided to still go visit the west coast sister for a couple of weeks, but we would instead take VIA Rail’s Canadian back east. My sister again suggested the helicopter as an option to get us to Vancouver and after a couple of friends assured Regis that it would not be TOO bad she agreed and booked us two seats on the Helijet to Vancouver. 

So on a Tuesday morning we arrived at the Helijet terminal in Nanaimo and checked in for the helicopter flight across the strait. We watched the shiny blue & white helicopter come in across the water and very gently touch down on the Helipad. Our luggage was all taken to be stowed away because there is no “Carry-on” at all due to the size of the helicopter and 10 other people were booked to go with us leaving no extra room. Even my cane had to be stowed away in luggage.

No backing out now . . . .

Now a helicopter is no commercial aircraft. The pilot and co-pilot are right there sitting in clear view, and you are belted in not with a seat belt but a three point harness. There was a pocket on the back of the seat in front of me containing safety information of the Sikorsky helicopter, but there was no entertainment system or fold down tray for food and drinks. In fact there were not even armrests between the seats. If you thought Economy seats on Air Canada were cramped, welcome to Helijet. 

Everyone belted in and the short safety chat completed, all doors were securely closed and

Flying into Vancouver

the engine started and slowly built up speed and sound - they do suggest and provide free hearing protection. The actual take-off is really very undramatic; rather than the sudden thrust forward as a jet tries to build up enough speed to overcome gravity, the helicopter very gently lifts off the ground and once in the air, slowly shifts from upward lift to forward propulsion. The actual flight is quite smooth. The helicopter vibrates and shakes slightly, due to the massive engine and propellor being right over your head, but the flight itself is smooth with no turbulence. At the end of our 20 minute flight, the helicopter slowed, turned and gently set us down on a helipad in Vancouver harbour. 

In my opinion, it was a pleasant but different way to travel, but you might want to ask Regis her opinion. I purposely did not tell her about the helicopter crash in Ottawa the day before. 

Landed safely in Vancouver

City Life

A nice city walk

When I was 15, we moved from a house on a street of similar houses in the “burbs” to a 100 year old farm house on 250 acres of land. Although I had grown up living in the city, I took to country life quickly and found I loved it. I looked after a neighbour's heifers in our barn, and worked on his farm in the summer. To this day, I do not turn up my nose when we drive past a field spread with manure; to me it is a pleasant reminder of living in the country. This idyllic country life only lasted a year however, when Dad got transferred to Halifax with his work and we were back in the city. My love of the “Country Life” remained and my goal was a house with land in the country. When I got married we had an opportunity to rent a nice house in the country with lake frontage for a ridiculous low price. I'm glad we were renting, because I hated it. I think I went down to the lake twice, and every time I needed something it involved a 30 minute drive to the city. That was when I discovered that my idealistic dream of the country life was not what I wanted – I had become a city dweller.

Traffic

I discovered that I loved living in the city and the closer to the heart of the city the better. There are a couple of factors causing this. One was that I like to walk. I walk to get groceries, I walk to take pictures, I walk to explore, I walk to visit friends and family. Walking in the country was usually a walk to "walk"

How to totally mess up a busy intersection.

with no real goal or destination, just out and back; walking in the city is always new and exciting. After years living in the city I am still discovering new trails to hike, neighbourhoods to explore or places to walk to.

The other factor is I love being around activity. I love walking through crowds of people, I love traffic, I love ships coming and going, I love construction. The hustle & bustle of the city that bothers many, I find interesting. Although not a particularly “Social” person, I love watching and observing people. The city is the place to do this. I enjoy walking through peaceful forests and country meadows, but my favourite walks are exploring cities.

Lots of people to observe

When my son moved to Ottawa, he lived right downtown and I loved visiting him, and his move to Toronto puts my visits right in the middle of one of Canada's most vibrant cities and I love spending time there. We visited friends in Vancouver who for a while lived in an apartment right in that city's heart and I immediately knew I'd love living that close to things. I found that when I travel I gravitate to rentals in the heart of cities or towns all over the world. I love being able to walk to city markets and finding local wine shops. Regis says I can somehow “smell” markets and always manage to find interesting markets to explore. When I retired I spent three months in China in an apartment in the Suzhou and could walk anywhere. We had an apartment right on the Danube in Budapest, another just outside the wall on the river in Chester UK, one right in the middle of the walled city of Lecce Italy, and on the waterfront in Auckland. I loved them all.

I've discovered that I have become a city person and love life in the city. The country is nice to visit, but the city is where it's really at.

The Commute

Vancouver, City of the Commute

Coming to a city like Vancouver, you learn to appreciate living in Nova Scotia. We worked in schools that were located in the suburbs while we lived in Dartmouth, so we were generally going against traffic going to work and coming home afterwards. My favorite was the year I worked out in Sackville. I would leave the house, head towards halifax, but turn off towards Bedford before hitting the traffic to Halifax. I would then head up the Magazine Hill all alone on the road facing a solid line of traffic on their way downtown. Coming home was the same, I'd leave the school, take the exit to the highway, and see a steady stream of people coming out of the city on their way home. No traffic jams, no waits, no frustration – it was great!

I recall being out here in Vancouver on another visit and was amazed at how much commuting was involved in living here, but this time we really noticed it. I think it was because there was so much construction and our friend picked us up from the airport and warned us about the interruptions and traffic delays all the way home. So, in between catching up on things, we were told about all the commuting horror stories. It was worse for them, because they just recently moved back out to the suburbs from an apartment right down-town. When they lived downtown there was no commute, and so the hour long daily drive which was just part of living in Vancouver before was suddenly a real pain in the butt!

Easy Commute - Water Taxi !

It is probably more obvious with people like our friends who commute all the time. They know all the problem areas and the short-cuts. It's on the freeway, off at this exit, down this back road, back onto the highway, avoid the bridge, through this short-cut, don't forget the construction on this section. I could never have duplicated the complicated route from their house to downtown Vancouver. We did get to see lots of British Columbia scenery on the way however.

"I don't do commute - I fly"

Now everything about the commuting wasn't negative. There is the entertainment value. Our friends do not always commute together, so have developed their own unique routes to minimize their commute. As a result there was a fair amount of; “Why are you going this way?”, Where are you going NOW?”, “Don't take this exit, it's a mess!”, AAAAH, didn't you remember all the roadwork down this road?”

But at least we did not have to drive . . . . . .

Names withheld to protect the guilty.

Cruisin'

Not our boat . . . . .

Why would I want to spend a week on a boat? What would you do for a week with nothing to do but watch the ocean go by? Going on a cruise was never a vacation option I considered. It just made no sense to me a all. Lots of other things I was willing to try, but I was not interested in cruising. I then discovered how “easy” it was. Yup, it was the “Big Easy” that finally got me onto a cruise ship. A friend took a cruise that sailed from New Orleans, and her descriptions of all the fun she had got me interested. It was the couple of days in New Orleans that sold me on the trip not the cruise. I have always wanted to visit New Orleans to visit the French Quarter and hear some of that famous New Orleans Jazz and Blues, and try some of the delicious spicy Cajun & Creole food the city is famous for. The cruise was a compromise to get me to New Orleans. We booked a trip to Louisiana that culminated in a seven day cruise departing from New Orleans.

At the end of three days exploring the city, we wandered down to the Riverfront to see where we would catch the ship. To our surprise the ship was already there, sitting gently tied to the wharf. We were amazed at the size of the ship. I had seen cruise ships, but never up close, and I had no idea how big they were. This was before 911, and security was not so intense, so we could get pretty close to the ship, walking down the dock, staring up at the bulk of this massive thing. Seeing it close up, I was much more interested in finding out more about it.

Now this was actually a relatively small ship as modern cruise ships go, and it was retired soon after, but to me it was huge. The next day when we actually boarded the ship and explored it from stem to stern, I was suddenly interested in this cruising thing. And the rest, as they say is history.

We have since sailed on over 13 cruises, on 6 different cruise lines, traveling to four continents, and through many different oceans. I've decided that I like cruising. We managed for years to take one cruise every year. Initially it was an ideal way to take a much needed break from work for a week during the worst part of the winter season. It was a great way to relax. There was good food, comfortable rooms, and you sailed through beautiful warm Caribbean waters while snow was flying back home, and winter was doing it's best to keep Spring at bay.

Once we retired we continued to cruise, but now we could take longer more interesting trips, and found other ways to travel. We did a canal boat through England, and a house boat down the St. John River, as well as discovering how convenient it is to rent apartments in foreign locations, and learn about how other people live. This year it had been two years since we actually took a real cruise and we were starting to experience “Cruise Withdrawal”. This trip to Calgary, and then to Vancouver provided an opportunity to take another cruise, and we booked this 18 day cruise down the west coast and through the Panama canal.

Wandering down to the Vancouver waterfront, we explored Canada Place where the cruise ships depart. There was a cruise ship in port, and strolling down Canada Walk, I was able to see down onto the ship's decks and up to the balconies with people sitting relaxing, watching me, watching them. I was instantly back in “Cruise Mode” and wanted nothing more than to be on board, feeling the vibration of the engines, seeing the waves crashing along the sides, and smelling the salt air.

Ahh, back to cruising.

SNOW???????

Happy Hikers

My sister and her husband Pete share in an Alpine chalet in the Alpine Village on the top of Mount Washington on Vancouver Island. They rent it out to people from all over the world who come to BC for ski vacations, but it is rarely rented during the warmer months, so when we come to visit her in the summer it is usually available for our use. She has always told us about the amount of snow the village receives in the winter, but of course we only see it in the summer.

This year was an exceptional year for snow, we were told, and the chalet next door was heavily damaged by the weight of the snow, and there was even a patch of snow on the road leading into the chalet. I was not expecting the amount still in the woods however.

After the excitement of the wedding, and the cleanup afterwards, Linda had a nice hike planned the next day. There is a very nicely maintained provincial park just down the road from the village, and on another visit, we had explored some of the extensive trail system in the park, so we knew what to expect. . . . .

Not at all. . . We had no sooner gotten into the mountain forests, and we ran into snow - lots of snow. There were places where the trails were still under six to eight feet of snow, and some places there was so much snow that you had to be careful not to loose the trail completely. You had to look for ends of the boardwalks, or clear sections of the trails. Other hikers often had strayed off the established trails so you could not always depend on following the footprints.

The snow of course was old, often dirty, and rapidly melting in the lovely August summer heat; there was just so much deposited over the winter that it would be a while before all the ground was exposed.

The melting snow also made for a much more challenging hike. It was wet and slippery, and the run-off from the melting snow had often carved out large caves under the snow that threatened to collapse if walked over. You could see footprint shaped holes where other hikers had fallen through.

A Snow Cave

The unexpected snow made the hike more interesting and certainly more challenging. The nine km distance seemed longer with the care that had to be taken navigating over the snow. My hiking stick (a new piece of hickory picked up in Branson Missouri) proved to be an essential tool to keep from slipping and sliding off the deep piles of snow, and my knees were complaining by the end of the hike.

Six feet of snow still in August . . . One more interesting adventure on our trip.