Early morning at Nanaimo harbour: well-groomed commuters lined up on the gangplank, dressed to kill – waiting to board a seaplane.
Watching the scene unfold from the waterfront café, getting my chops around a breakfast plate.
Gargantuan seagulls are doing likewise … and they get away without paying, the damn avian swindlers!
Those flapping fraudsters would have my bacon roll clean out of my hands, if I wasn’t so attentive.
Picking up lunch and a Nanaimo Bar at Red’s Bakery, the seagulls now following me around town.
I lead them up the garden path, past the old Palace Hotel, where the cleaning staff are busy washing away the sins of a club night.
The gulls get stuck in, hovering at first and then diving down fast to scrap over the remnants of boozy late-night food.
It’s a kamikaze kebab attack, and I leave them to it – I’m checking out, I’m abandoning the island for a BC ferry to Vancouver.
Departure Bay to Horseshoe Bay, across the central Georgia Strait, over to the Canadian main.
Avoiding the children’s entertainment, for a midday walk around the deck, being followed.
Truth betold, we’re all following each other, dodging sunbathing animals – drifting along on blocks of ice, playing dead.
It’s a spectacular boat trip, the mountains of the mainland and the randomly assorted islands rising up from the horizon, keeping an eye on proceedings as we float on by.
It’s a bargain of a scenic journey, is my thought, considering I’m taking a car over the water as well.
Bunny-hopping off the ferry and straight onto the Upper Levels Highway, contending with heavy traffic and obligatory roadworks, slowing us all to a dull crawl.
I bypass Capilano for a side trip to Lynn Canyon, to watch grown people throw themselves off very high bridges into creeks and ravines and rockpools.
Nonchalantly shuffling the playlist on their smartphones once they’ve crawled back onto semi-dry land.
Small crowds gasp, while occasionally a park warden wanders past, peering over the railings to make sure no-one has hit the rocks.
It’s a weird scene, a slightly ghoulish spectator sport … especially so considering the multiple warning signs dotted around, advising of the number of deaths and serious injuries sustained from leaping off the high platforms and cliffs over the years.
The suspension bridge is an unstable affair.
I’m not for jumping today, but I’m up for a wobble.
The stifling heat of the day sends me packing to my air-conditioned chariot, and into the city, where I become a member of the YWCA – and why not I say … I’m a modern somebody.
Busy city streets, revving engines at the traffic lights, outside the old brick warehouse / the bohemian taphouse.
Outside the military barracks – by the upscale condos, next to Costco – a sprawling tree is in the firing line.
I take my evening drinks in the brewery basement, then the modern bar … a Vancouver bar, a BC yarn.
An Outside World 