On the Road Again 2014 #9

My final night's sleep on the train was perhaps the best one I had had. Or perhaps it was just that I didn't mind being awake at 5:00. I had enjoyed the trip, but I was anxious to get off. I knew I had another six or seven hours of traveling to do and I wanted to get on with it. Fortunately the train had managed to make up the hours it was late and according to my schedule, we were going to get into the Vancouver train station on time, or perhaps even a bit early. That meant that I would have no problems making the bus/ferry/bus connections. I spent the last few hours on the train looking out the window at the Fraser River with its log booms tied up to the shore and its current raging down towards the sea. I have always enjoyed looking at the Fraser River

I am always surprised at how quickly trains get to the center of a city. One moment it seemed as if we were in farming country and the next we were in the dirty industrialized core of the city. When one enters a city by bus, it seems to take forever, but by train it feels as if it takes but moments.

The train had a lot of cars. In Winnipeg it had been a surprisingly long walk along the tracks from where we got off to where the stairs were. Some of us had noticed that while the economy passengers had had this long walk, the train had stopped so that the sleeper class folks had not. We just assumed that it was another example of the class system on VIA Rail. However in Vancouver, the engineers "parked" the back half of the train near the stairs, disconnected the 4-5 front cars and moved us to another part of the track closer to another set of stairs. It meant that we did not have to walk so far. That was a nice touch!

I had not checked my pack so there was nothing keeping me at the station. I walked out the big doors and across the park to the Sky Train Station. Each station has a telephone connected to some helpful people who told me which train to get, where to get off and where to find the bus to Horseshoe Bay and the ferry to Nanaimo. I had to wait 7-8 minutes for the next train, got off a few stops towards downtown, walked around the corner, got on the express bus to the ferry terminal, got off the bus and walked on to the ferry. After the one hour and forty or so minutes ferry ride, I walked out of the terminal and got on the bus to Duncan. It was that easy. Of course being a Saturday, the traffic was very light in Vancouver. Otherwise I would have not made that ferry.

What I had thought might take me all day only took four or five hours. There was no fuss, no waiting around, no fears about missing a connection. By far the hardest part of the entire journey from Sudbury to Duncan was the walk from the bus terminal to my son's house. The 20 minute walk just about wiped me out and reminded me that I was not yet in shape to hitchhike. In spite of that realization, I arrived in Duncan with a sense of - if not failure, at least a sense that I did not somehow "deserve" to be on the West Coast. It had just been too easy. I had met some nice people and had had some of the best conversations I have had in years.  Any one who had ridden VIA Rail in the economy class knows that it is not the easiest way to travel - but it is easier than hitchhiking. I suppose part of me missed knowing that I had had put myself at risk - just a little bit and that I had survived. Another part of me just does not like being like everyone else.