The Pit of Pat

I have received many subtle hints directing me to how awesome a certain friend’s travel blog is, while mine collects dust and cobwebs. The truth is, they’re right. Andrea’s London blog is really one of the best I’ve seen, her updates are fun, informative and presented in that straight forward and slightly kooky manner that makes me thankful that she and I are friends. Her pictures are absolutely phenomenal and I’m certainly feeling a desire to work with a similar zeal once I get on my way.

I’m in Victoria now, my last few days here before I head off to Vancouver with Ash for a brief city sojourn. Then it’s off to Hawaii for essentially an overnighter plus change before I’m off on the Big Flight. I’ll get to all that when I’m actually doing it. In the meantime here’s my update.

Ontario
I spent a lot of the time hanging out with Mom, trying to get some of my travel details straightened away, getting flights checked out and selling off the last of my clunky belongings on eBay to make some quick cash. Did quite well in that department actually, selling my banjo and a CR-78 drum machine. Spent a weekend at the K-Man’s in Ottawa Prime. Pretty fun times to be sure, booked some flights, and got a piece or two of gear at MEC. Ate at The Table, a delicious vegetarian restaurant downtown. Kyle, Johanna and I went on a hiking/spelunking trip which was exceptionally cool. I discovered that I really enjoy exploring caves, and I think we all had a great time doing so. Pretty amazing temperature differnece between the hot day in Gatineau and the entrance to the cave, only a few feet below the trail. No pictures unfortunately, but I’ll be back for sure. Took the Casino shuttle back to Gananoque and spent some time visiting my family. My Dad’s side of the family decided to have our Christmas dinner at Thanksgiving, so we had a big feast at the beginning of my last week in Ontario. We exchanged gifts, and had a great time and I remembered how nice it is to have family around for special occasions.

That last week flew by, making preparations, trying to find gear and saying goodbyes. Had a night out with Paul and Phil, so we were three quarters of Late Night Naked Radio together again like old times. Lots of laughs and just a general feeling that we should work together again. There were lots of great moments enjoying Kingston and Gan, but it was also a tough time, saying goodbye to Mom’s family, trying to wrap my head around the fact that the first leg of my journey was about to begin. Seems silly, but these were the things I was thinking about - at least after my Canada Council of the Arts grant proposal was done. That was a huge stress that was great to get off my back, that’s for sure. Now it’s submitted and I can only wait to hear from them.

Saying goodbye to Mom proved exceptionally difficult. The times where we’re around each other for extended periods of time are some of the best I could ask for, but there’s the weight of knowing they’re only temporary which stards to sink in near the end, not an easy thing to deal with. With Dad, it was kind of a whirlwind thing, as he was visiting Ontairo and actually just getting ready to return to PEI around the same time I was leaving. I’m going to miss having Dad’s fresh outlook and shared excitement on this trip, I know it’s not going to be easy to do a lot of it without him; he and I just work well together as travelling companions, but of course there’s no reason to rule out that this might just be my solo expedition doubling as a scouting trip to plot out the best and worst for another trip with family. There’s certainly no lack of interested parties, but it’s not easy to take the time off to do this kind of thing, and I understand that perfectly - in any case there are some journeys best taken alone, and this one feels that way.

Kyle came down to pick me up, and we drove back to Ottawa and hung out, again these goodbyes aren’t easy for me, but I think we made the most of our rather rushed second visit. I finished as much as I could do on the net, printed all my tickets off and packed up Ashley’s monitor and all my gear. Kyle’s going to be taking careful charge of my computer and monitor throughout my absence, which is the least I can do for all his help in getting me started on this trip. Saturday after work Kyle came home and we made the mad dash to the airport, I checked in and we discovered it’d be $120+ to ship the monitor, so we decided Kyle should just FedEx it. I said goodbye to my friend and went through security, knowing that no one else wants to come with more than he does, but that we might someday be getting on an Air New Zealand plane together some day. For now, it was off to Victoria with a stop in Toronto. The flight from Ottawa to Toronto was kinda nasty, not very fun at all, delayed for awhile and with the sound of a boiling tea kettle coming from somewhere in the back of the plane for most of the flight. Yeah, not exactly comforting.

The flight to Victoria was delayed due to a skunk’s having been squished on the runway at Lester Pearson. This boggles my mind, but I guess its not that rare an occurrence. I was parched and extended the hospitality of Air Canada by asking for basically every type of juice they carried. I discovered that their Cranberry Punch is no longer available, or at the least they’re phasing it out for economy, but the air host was kind enough to get me one anyway. When meal time came, I expected there to either be no vegetarian meal for me, as is usually the case, or a bizarre interpretation of the term; last time I got a veggie meal it was a chicken dish. Instead to my astonishment and pleasure (although I had already had a big lunch to compensate for imagined future disappointment) I was served a delicious curried chickpea dish on rice with chutney and a fruit salad. It was probably the best airline food I’d ever received. After thanking us profusely for choosing Air Canada, a move more than likely influenced by WestJet’s exceptional in-flight service, I stepped off the plane into Victoria for the first time in my life.

Vancouver Island
Waiting for me at the gate was the Ashmaker and Kelly - who he’s stupidly, but quite typically, neglected to mention to the rest of us. Kelly’s pretty much the nicest person I’ve met in a very long time, and besides having wheels which allowed us to save a long walk from the airport to Ash’s place, she bakes delicious cookies, cooks a mean curry and has the skills to pay the bills when it comes to outdoors life and backpacky stuff. We picked up my continually-shrinking belongings and set off to Ash’s place. I was quite surprised at the size of his 1-bedroom basement apartment. That is to say, it’s rather large and inviting. My sleeping bag had arrived at Ash’s place and I unpacked it to great squeals of delight. It’s light as shit, packs up small, and very warm. Unfortunately it came with a $60 UPS fee which makes me feel, well I’m sure you can imagine how.

We did some weekendy activities, walked a bit and got to check out downtown Victoria. For the most part I was very impressed; it’s a really cool city with a fairly British Islesy feel. Lots of young people. Lots of friendly, young, pretty people. I was happy to get out of the downtown, as I wasn’t sure I could take much more of the friendliness. In all honesty though, it’s a pretty vibrant and fresh feeling town with a great history and it seems to accept both the past and the present quite nicely. On Monday I got picked up by a Megmonster, who was bearing a surprise - her sister! Apparently Kaihley’d flown down to live with Meg in Gabriola awhile back and she’d kept it from me quite well. I had called once, and gotten Kaihley, and had though ’shit that sounds like Kaihley’ but dismissed it as ridiculous since Meg hadn’t told me anything. Never. Again.

It had been a rollercoaster day for Meg and her crew, saying goodbye to the last co-resident of the Dome the same day they picked me up. By all accounts Paul sounds like someone I’d like to meet, although I’m not sure he’d approve of the snippets I was given to help come up with that belief. In any event, the hour and a half drive to Nanaimo in the dark was a bit scary - I’d forgotten how much I don’t like driving/passengering. It was all worth it though on the ferry ride to Gabriola, when you could just feel it in the air that things were going to be very pretty soon. Even though it was considerably darker than I had hoped, I was still able to get a good sense of the lush forested island home of my friends, and upon seeing the geodesic dome I would call home for the next week I was very, very pleased.

I unpacked downstairs, admired just how big Nature had grown, and said hello to Jim again - it’s been awhile since I’ve seen this ex-Islander and he’s certainly adapted well to the West Coast. He seems a lot more himself, in a hard to describe way. We talked for awhile and then I headed to bed and slept like a baby.

The next week was filled with fun and merriment, beautiful scenery and a great feel for what Gabriola life is like during the fall. The house is absolutely incredible, and it just feels warm and homey in a way that was almost overwhelming at first. The sights are first class and the West Coast nature is quite different from anything I’ve experienced so far. Amazing examples of trees and plants I’ve never witnessed, even some Giant Hogweed warnings hehe. Saw a ton of deer, some fishies and huge seaweed. The village part of Gabriola is pretty nice in itself, friendly and artsy. In the art gallery you can get a feel for the absolutely jaw-dropping level of quality of the resident artists and artisans. As a musician, I didn’t feel so bad - but Meg was quick to point out there are just as many talented musical artists on the island as visual/mixed media.

It was great eating - entirely vegan and mostly wheat free - with Jim (a chef by trade) and Meg (an abundantly talented cook) cooking up a storm for the entirety of my stay. I opened up a bit after the first day or so and found my place in the house - Paul’s leaving had left a large hole and I had no illusions or desires to try and fill that hole, so I was just myself and that seemed to work best. Kaihley’s being there added an interesting dynamic - I haven’t been around 15 year olds in a long time, and a lot of the drama that Meghan and I revelled in back at that time in our lives sort of bubbled to the front of my memorybanks. We laughed about it, recalling past adventures and the troublesome time that never seemed like it would be over. I got to hear her play and sing, and that had been something I was very much looking forward to.

We got some great finds left at the end of people’s lanes for big garbage pick up, and I even managed to jerry rig a PC for them. Only catch was that it was password protected. We set it up and for fun we tried everything we could think of for passwords, with the expected lack of results. On the second day though, Nature resiliently stepped up to the BIOS and after a few minutes of typing away, suddenly the password screen was gone. The two year old had managed to get the potentially 1-12 character mixed-case alphanumeric password. I was shocked, and definitely impressed. We disabled the password only to find out the machine needed a new hard drive, but I’m hoping they or myself might find one cheap somewhere with Windows 98 on it and get them hooked up. We got an old Macintosh SE as well, which only needs a boot disk to get up and running. It’s amazing what you can find at the end of people’s driveways.

I found a book about New Zealand and a Tilley Travel book at the Recycle Depo, an ultra-cheap second-hand store which is famous for its finds. The day before I left we took a trip up to Cathedral Grove, an old growth forest North of Nanaimo, where I was humbled and quieted by the presence of some of the largest trees I’d ever had the pleasure of being amidst. It was an experience that defies words, and it’s an absolute must for anyone spending any amount of time on Vancouver Island. I have some pictures, but they of course don’t do it much justice - some of the trees were a dozen feet wide, many of them had tops which were so high you actually couldn’t see them. I found it to be a very powerful place, and can’t wait to go back.

Saying goodbye to my fellow gypsy friends proved expectedly difficult. In many ways I’ve become aware of just how precious these extended families really are, and it’s not easy to leave the comfort and familiarity of good company and great hosts. I took a late morning ferry, said goodbye to the beautiful island of Gabriola and got lost in the skanky, depressing gray of Nanaimo. I managed to get a cab to the seedy bus station, and was all too happy to be on my way back to Victoria.

For the past week Ash and I have been watching great movies (The Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D, The Edukators), eating well (albeit Kelly’s curry is far superior to the take out we’ve been eating) and taking it easy. As much as we can, considering Ash is loaded down with a lot of very complicated work, I’m planning and booking the next nine months of my life and in general we both find there aren’t enough hours in the day. It’s really windy tonight - something of a rarity - and I haven’t moved from my chair at the computer very much. I scheduled my trip around the South Island today, booked my great walks, and will be doing the same for the North Island and Tasmania tomorrow. Yesterday I bought almost a thousand dollars worth of gear, which although terrifying means that I no longer have to worry about it. All I have left are some small items I’ll get in Vancouver this weekend. I’m admittedly stressed with all this planning, especially when I realize that not everyone plans a tenth as much as I am, but I feel better having a schedule I can have the option to deviate from then none at all. I consider my two days in Hawaii a mini-vacation before my New Zealand journey begins.

Again, sorry for the delay in posting, but I’m up to my ears in maps, travel guides, and Google. There’s a Hallowe’en party tomorrow night I’m looking forward to, in the meantime enjoy these pictures.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 28th, 2005 at 2:08 am and is filed under Archived. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.