On the Road Again 2015 #15

It is hard to write a blog when one is on the road and has limited access to the internet. It is can be frustrating to want to write and to not be able to.

My son, along with his wife and two kids kindly once again drove me to Nanaimo. We walked around for a bit, the kids played in the park, we watched people trying to catch crabs and then had a nice late lunch or early supper. Unfortunately it was cloudy and threatening to rain for much of the afternoon. It was a portend of what I could expect the first day of my trip. Nanaimo is an interesting town. They have done a great job on their waterfront area. Unfortunately, the town is so stretched out along the highway that without a car, one can not see it all without a car. Even the walk from the park to the restaurant would have been tiring for a three year old.

My son and I have ever been good at saying good bye. I am not  too sure why. While this time leaving was perhaps not quite so traumatic for me as usual - it was hard. My son and I did no better saying good bye or talking about how we felt this time than any other time. I suspect we will never master that particular skill.

The hostel on Nicol Street in Nanaimo was great. It is a rather deceivingly large house that had lots of rooms and surprisingly, a large lot (for a city) that one could wander around on. While there were other people staying there, they were either in their room or out and about. I had the nice living room to myself. I was content to spend my evening reading. I didn't go out except to look for a Bank of Montreal. There were no branches downtown and so I had to pay $2.00 for the pleasure of withdrawing my money from an ATM.

A number of people came in after me. None of the 6-7 people had cash on them so they all had to go to the closest ATM to get some. The owner of the hostel appears to not like using technology. Usually one needs a  MasterCard number to reserve a room and  one does reservations all on line. For the Nicol Street hostel, I had to telephone the hostel and confirm that there would be room for me. The last person who came in around 9:30, didn't have access to his ATM until the following morning. The operator wouldn't let him stay. It was also the first hostel I have been in where it was suggested to the woman in the "female" dorm that they lock their door - just in case.

In spite of all of the coming and going, I had a four bed room to myself. The mattress was a bit thin, but the bunk beds were made of wood and therefore there was no squeaking or shifting of the frame. Having a room to myself meant that the next morning I didn't need to feel bad about my alarm clock going off or the noise I would make in getting my stuff together. It was a nice hostel - not quite as luxurious as that one I usually stay in (and which had increased their rates) - but it met my needs perfectly.

The next morning I was up by 5:00 and outside waiting for the taxi that I had arranged the night before. I got to the ferry terminal in good time to catch the first ferry of the day. There were no problems with the passage and I was on the mainland by just before 8:00.

I love it when a plan all comes together.

On the Road Again 2015 #14

It is Sunday. Today I am leaving for central Canada. It will be my usual slow start. A drive to Nanaimo at some point today, a stay at a hostel over night and then catching the first ferry to the mainland tomorrow morning. In the past few years I have taken a Greyhound bus from the ferry to Whistler because hitchhiking from the terminal area looked to be almost impossible. There are no shoulders to stand on, no where for a car to stop safely. As well, once the chaotic ferry traffic has left the area, there would be very few cars heading up the Sea to Sky highway. While the strategy of catching a bus had the advantage of me getting easily to Whistler, it did mean that I had to wait outside the terminal for a few hours for the bus. I never got to Whistler until well after 12:00 PM. Greyhound is no longer operating that particular bus. I will have to take a local bus that only goes up the highway for 10 kilometers or so to a town called Lions Bay. I am hoping that if there is a turn off for a town, there will be a safe place to stand.  I will be on the road far earlier than normal, but starting at a point much further south than usual. It could be interesting and hopefully fun.

It has been, from one aspect, a long summer. I left home on the 25th or 26th of June (with a short stop over in Sudbury), and I got here on July 1st. I am not too sure where the time has gone. I have spent almost two more weeks on the islands than normal, done a few things that I have not done before (including showing my daughter and her two children around  a few parts of the island and looking for houses to buy) and generally had a really pleasant time. But it was, as usual not long enough. However whether I am visiting here or Sudbury, my stays will never be long enough.

I know that once I am on my own in Nanaimo, I will be okay - but right now I am a little bit sad and filled with that sense of apprehension that always proceeds a trip. There seems to have been a few more serious accidents along the Trans- Canada than usual - or at least more have been reported. I always, before starting a trip think about the possibility of being in an accident. Never once I start, but always before.

My bags are backed, the box that I am mailing back is sealed and ready to be mailed.... I guess I am off. Wondering and occasionally dreaming about that magical ride(s) that will get me here to there; wondering who will pick me up, where I will sleep and how long it will take me.On the road #14

It is Sunday. Today I am leaving for central Canada. It will be my usual slow start. A drive to Nanaimo at some point today, a stay at a hostel over night and then catching the first ferry to the mainland tomorrow morning. In the past few years I have taken a Greyhound bus from the ferry to Whistler because hitchhiking from the terminal area looked to be almost impossible. There are no shoulders to stand on. As well, once the chaotic ferry traffic has left the area, there would be very few cars heading up the Sea to Sky highway. While the strategy of catching a bus had the advantage of me getting easily to Whistler, it did mean that I had to wait outside the terminal for a few hours for the bus. I never got to Whistler until well after 12:00 PM. Greyhound is no longer operating that particular bus. I will have to take a local bus that only goes up the highway for 10 kilometers or so to a town called Lions Bay. I am hoping that if there is a turn off for a town, there will be a safe place to stand.  I will be on the road far earlier than normal, but starting at a point much further south than usual. It could be interesting and hopefully fun.

It has been, from one aspect, a long summer. I left home on the 25th or 26th of June (with a short stop over in Sudbury), and I got here on July 1st. I am not too sure where the time has gone. I have spent almost two more weeks on the islands than normal, done a few things that I have not done before (including showing my daughter and her two children around  a few parts of the island and looking for houses to buy) and generally had a really pleasant time. But it was, as usual not long enough. However whether I am visiting here or Sudbury, my stays will never be long enough.

I know that once I am on my own in Nanaimo, I will be okay - but right now I am a little bit sad and filled with that sense of apprehension that always proceeds a trip. There seems to have been a few more serious accidents along the Trans- Canada than usual - or at least more have been reported. I always, before starting a trip think about the possibility of being in an accident. Never once I start, but always before.

My bags are backed, the box that I am mailing back is sealed and ready to be mailed.... I guess I am off. Wondering and occasionally dreaming about that magical ride(s) that will get me here to there; wondering who will pick me up, where I will sleep and how long it will take me.

Moving On #3

Duncan, at first glance, is a much more likely place to move to. The weather, while it is quite frequently grey and gloomy for what feels like months on end, is also rather glorious for even more months of the year. During the warm months there is very little humidity. No matter how hot it is during the day, by evening it generally cools down. The range of temperatures is, as compared to central Canada, fairly small. Temperatures in Duncan on average only fluctuate 35 degrees in a whole year (-6 to 30 degrees Celsius). Ontario's temperatures can fluctuate 25 degrees within a week. And no matter how wet it gets in Duncan - seldom does one have to shovel the stuff!

The housing costs in Duncan are very comparable to cities in Ontario. While I have not seen the insides of any two bedroom apartments, it appears as if $800-900 can get one a  reasonable two bedroom apartment - about the same cost as Ontario. Duncan also has a vibrant social and cultural life. There are number of open air markets in the area, there is a lot of home grown music, and if there are fewer (and less varied) restaurants in the area, there are certainly sufficient for my needs. People are more relaxed/friendly (in part I have argued because of the more benign weather). They are, for example, more likely to talk to you on the bus.

But there are no seasons here. Because there are far fewer hardwood trees on the West Coast, the fall colours are significantly less glorious. Summer sort of seems to slip into the rainy season they call winter which by February slowly evolves into summer.There is no mad celebration of spring after a winter of fighting the cold, of wearing boots and mitts and hats, of shoveling the snow from the end of the driveway or getting into a car with the vinyl seats so cold that the heat is sucked from your flesh. One wonders if the various equinoxes and solstices of the northern climates that mark either the leaving or the return of the sun were ever as important to celebrate in warmer climates when the seasons have less impact upon daily life.

The cost of living here is higher. Food is substantially more expensive, in part because so much of it is shipped across the strait by ferry, but also because there is so little competition. Duncan has three reasonably large grocery stores. All three stores in Peterborough would be seen as reasonably high end stores. There are no low frills/budget grocery stores in Duncan or anywhere else on the island.  People just seem to accept the high cost of food as being normal. The cost of getting around is also more. Gas is more expensive and if one wants to visit any where off island - the cost of the ferry makes one hesitate.

Moving to B.C. also means switching health care systems, car insurance and getting a new driver's licence. It means having to learn how the civil service/bureaucracy works. It means that my fairly comprehensive knowledge of how the courts and the social service system operates in Ontario will no longer be useful to me or anyone else. Moving means that I lose contact with some people that I have known for much of my adult life. Moving away from Ontario means that I will no longer see the hills, the river and the lakes that have shaped so much of who and what I am.

While it would be fun to watch my two youngest grandchildren grow up, and to see how they evolve ( and perhaps they need my attention more), it is unlikely that my son would commit as much energy to watching out for me as would my daughter. I suspect I would have to work harder to remain connected.

There are so many things to consider about moving. I know I have to move. I know that I will move. I suspect that whatever decision  I make - part of me will feel that it was the wrong one.

Moving On #2

There are only two options for me in terms of living closer to my adult children. Well actually there are three, but the third choice is not, more the pity, mine to make. One of my two kids could decide to move to where the other lives. Then, while I would still have to move, the choice as to where I moved would be obvious. However the possibility of my daughter moving west or my son moving east is so far removed from reality that all of us living in the land of Oz is more likely. Of course they could both move to a central point, but none of us have a desire to move to Winnipeg.

My two choices are Sudbury, Ontario and Duncan, BC. While I suspect that most people would assume that where I wanted to live out the rest of my life would be a no brainer; that any one in their right mind would prefer to live in Duncan as opposed to Sudbury. But they would be wrong.

Sudbury has a number of attractive aspects to it. It is not the dreary, scrag covered hillside,  moonscaped town it use to be. In 1972, Inco built a new refinery smoke stack. That ensured that the toxic sulfur dioxide would no longer rain upon the ground and thereby upset the pH balance of the local lakes and destroy the vegetation (the fact that those same pollutants fall somewhere else doesn't seem to bother anyone in Sudbury). Sudbury has, in the last 40 years or so, turned into a reasonably attractive city. Nothing can hide the fact that the city is built on solid rock. There are streets that twist in strange directions to avoid a sudden upthrust of rock) and there are rows of houses that look as if they are perched, somewhat insecurely on the hard, dark nickel bearing rock.

The weather may be Sudbury's biggest downside. Winter can be cold, there can be lots of snow and in general it lasts for months and months. The blackflies and mosquitoes are present for what feels like an almost an equal number of months.

There is not much of a downtown core. It is not for the lack of trying, There are restaurants, a few stores and lots of offices. I think people would like to make their downtown attractive but the buildings even when they were new, were at best, uninspired designs. Thirty or forty years of pollution later, the buildings are tired looking, dirty and quite frankly rather unwelcoming. The retail side of a vibrant downtown core has either gone out of business or has moved to one of the numerous strip malls or large indoor malls scattered well away from downtown. But on the side streets there is a glimmer of hope, a sense that things could be changing; that there are entrepreneurs who are innovative and creative; who are prepared to try something new. It could be interesting to see that process unfold.

Sudbury does have beautiful lakes, including the one at the center of the city. There is a great science center, lots of shopping, good music including some great concerts, some decent restaurants and a vibrant multicultural life for those of middle or Eastern European heritage. While their Saturday market is not large, it has some potential. The people that I have met seem to be kind, friendly people.  The hills are now  covered with grasses and small birch and popular trees. One hopes that in a hundred years much of the majesty that must have been Sudbury might be returned. There is much to look at and enjoy. If one likes the outdoors - it is perfect place to live.

Most importantly, my daughter and two of my grandchildren live there.  The kids have been a joy to watch grow up. It would be great fun to live closer to them and to be able to cheer them on as they play their sports and become the wise and capable adults I know they will become. My daughter has always been a great daughter, a wonderful teacher and even a better friend. I can't imagine a better person to support me in my elder years.

Sudbury, while it is not the ideal place has much that attracts me.

Moving Again ?

This is the start of a new thread or a series of conversations with myself (and anyone who happens to stumble across my ramblings).

I am thinking of moving.......again.  I appreciate that thousands if not millions of people move every day.  Many of them move even further away than I am thinking of. Of the millions of people who move each day, many if not most of them are gambling (and losing) far more than I am. But still, for me, moving is a big deal - even thinking about moving 500 kilometers to a different part of the province is mentally exhausting.  Moving 5,000 kilometers across the country is almost beyond thinking about. The very thought of moving could make one question one's sanity. While I am surprised that I have I have come to the point where moving is a possibility, people I have talked to are not. In fact it seems as if they are surprised that it has taken so long for me to make the decision.

So why am I doing it? Why would anyone think about moving for the fifth time in 10-11 years? That is an absurd amount of work and expense. One could think, with some legitimacy, that I didn't know what I wanted or that I was infected with a particularly virulent form of the " grass is always greener on the other side of the fence" syndrome. The fact of the matter is that I do know what I want (but what I want/need changes over time) and with one exception, I have only made the previous four moves after much soul searching, anxiety and profound reluctance.Three of the four moves have been painful and even as I watched the truck with all of my possessions drive away I would have done almost anything to change my mind. But I didn't then and I suspect that I will not this time.

I am 66. While my health, with one small exception is reasonably good, I can feel that my body (and sometimes my mind) is getting older. I don't move as much or as fast as I use to. While I like to think that I use my energy in a smarter, better planned way, the fact is that I have less energy to use. And there are certainly days when I wonder if my brain is deteriorating at a faster rate than my body.

I live alone, in a beautiful city with all of the needed supports. I have a great dentist, a doctor and a cardiologist. Peterborough has great food, music, two post secondary institutions, lots of green space and nice people. It is also five hours by road from my daughter and six ( not counting getting to the airport) hours by plane from where my son lives.When (not if) I need some help (as I age) both are too far away to help. If I needed a lot of help, they would have to make some major sacrifices to be there. While I know that they would want to help, it seems to me that that is far too much to ask.

It is not that I don't have friends in Peterborough - I do. Some of them I have known for well over twenty years. But most are my age.  All are busy, all have families. I don't think that that they are that much healthier than I am.  While it is tempting to fantasize that we would all grow old together - and then die around the same time - that seems an unlikely fantasy.

So if I need to move closer to family, and given that one "child" lives in central Canada and the other on the West Coast - where should I move to? It is not as easy of a question as it would seem to be.Moving

On the Road Again 2015 Interim #10

When I was first invited to Hornby a few years ago I was warned that one needed to get a ride from someone on the Buckley Bay to Denman ferry as there was very little chance of getting a ride from anyone once on Denman Island. Once the ferry traffic has disembarked from the ferry, there is no one else travelling to the other side of the island to catch the next ferry to Hornby. This complication was the primary reason why I had not visited Hornby. I don't like asking for a ride. I don't mind standing somewhere with my thumb out - if people choose not to stop - I don't feel as if it is a rejection of me personally. But if I ask them face to face and they say no - then it is a direct rejection. I prefer to not be exposed to such possibilities. It also feels like begging or asking for charity - I don't like that feeling either. Which may be a bit strange as I spend some summers travelling through the help/charity of other people.

I, because my hosts had picked me up in Nanaimo on their way to Hornby, had had no problem getting across Denman Island the first time. I was concerned however, about my return trip. On Wednesday morning my host drove me to the Hornby ferry terminal. He had only time to ask one driver if they were going all the way (the answer was no) before the ferry was loaded. I walked to the front of the small ferry and hoped for the best. I was the first off the boat and as soon as I could, I stuck out my thumb hoping that someone who was going across the island and ideally south on highway #19 towards Duncan would pick me up. I was fortunate in that the person who my host had spoken to took pity on me and while he hadn't planned on going  to the ferry terminal, did so just to drop me off.

I was feeling pretty lucky and in my silliness assumed that the hard part of the trip was over. I was wrong. It is a bit of a hike up the hill from the Buckley Bay terminal to the entrance ramp on the highway 19 heading south. While I suspect the ambient temperature was about the same as it had been on the smaller islands, the lack of a sea breeze and the heat being reflected off of the dark pavement made it feel much  hotter. Halfway up the ramp there is a notice saying that pedestrians (and farm machinery) were not allowed on the four lane divided highway. It is perhaps interesting to note that bicycles are allowed. The shoulders are very wide and are great for hitchhiking and biking. I remain unconvinced that someone on a bike is at less of a risk than a pedestrian.  At the very top of the ramp there was a large sign stating that hitchhiking was not allowed and that drivers could get charged for stopping. Clearly not a spot that was conducive to getting a ride.

After  experimenting with standing at various places over an hour or two - I gave up following the law by standing by the entrance ramp and headed down the highway for a kilometer or two. I felt that I needed to be far away from the sign warning drivers to have a reasonable chance of getting someone to stop. The speed limit on this part of the highway is 120 KPH.  That is pretty fast and there were times when I wished the shoulders were a wee bit wider.

I got my first ride from a young lady from one of the First Nation communities. I say young because she looked no more than 16 - very small/petite. She was driving a large pick-up truck. Within a few minutes we had established that I knew her uncle on Salt Spring, that she had at least one child, and that I was her first hitchhiker (she had seen me from the back as I was walking along and thought I was a woman). It was a very efficient conversation. She was bright, enthusiastic about life - an absolute charmer. I think I must have misjudged her age by half a decade or so. She was just too mature and knowledgeable to be only 16. Just before she made the turn to Port Albernie (which meant that I had to get out), my driver said that she was doing some work developing a community plan for her community. I passed on some quick suggestions about lending cameras to the young people and the elders so that they could take pictures of their favourite parts of their community. This helps the planners develop community plans based on strengths as opposed to looking at what the community doesn't have. Community plans that evolve from strengths are always, in my mind, better than plans that evolve from deficits.

In relatively quick succession I got a ride from an older gentleman who had taught welding at the local community college for 18 years and a Duncan contractor who had a crew of three or four working for him. Each of the gentlemen were interesting and we could have talked for another hour or two without a break. In fact the last driver and I chatted in the parking lot of Thrifty's for ten minutes. It was a relatively short walk to my son's house and I was home by 4:30.  It had been a long day. I had only travelled a fairly short distance but it was a tricky hitchhike considering that I had had to cross two islands, take two ferries and encourage three drivers to ignore a really silly law about not stopping to pick up hitchhikers.

On the Road Again 2015 Interim #8

My three days in Hornby were delightful. There was an upstairs room in the charming little house that I could have slept in but I choose to sleep out in the front yard in my tiny bivy sack. It rained a bit the first night, but the other two nights were warm with thousands of stars twinkling, visible  between the leaves of a big old maple. It was amazingly quiet - with the exception of some unusually raucous crows, and a mother and her baby calf bawling over their forced separation, I could lay there for an hour in the morning and not hear a sound. It was quite delightful.

It must be a generational thing but my hosts who are of a similar age to my son and his wife, are not early risers either. They have managed to train their10 week old baby to follow the same sleep patterns as my West Coast grandchildren follow. Late to go to bed and late to rise. I kind of like it in that it gives me an hour or two in the morning to read or write without others puttering around or me feeling the need to be social.

While on Hornby I went for a number of walks to the nearest "beach" or just down the road for 45 minutes because I was curious as to what was there. There were, while not enough blackberries on the bushes beside the road for a meal,  enough to satisfy my craving. The air was warm, sometimes veering towards hot, but there was always enough of a breeze to make it feel comfortable.

The first night my host and I went to a winery just down the road where there was a reggae dance. Reggae is not my favourite type of music but the crowd was into the music and it was fun to watch the folks dance. There was a young man who joined the band with his trombone.  I don't know if trombones are a usual reggae instrument but this kid was good and well worth listening to. As we drove home we talked about this specific musical genre, why it is important and how it has been carried around the world. I still don't get but I do appreciate the energy that it generates.

On one of the days we walked along a nature trail that followed the cliffs. Looking out in between the trees one can see Denman Island and then further on, Vancouver Island. It is interesting to note that while Hornby Island is quite hilly and of course Vancouver Island has whole mountain ranges, Denman Island in the middle is as flat as the proverbial pancake.

Hornby Island, while it is home to approximately 1500 permanent residents, is far busier than that. Hornby is a major tourist destination. What few stores and restaurants there are are focused on collecting as much money  possible in the few summer months. There is of course that love/hate relationship between the locals and the residents. The two food stores, the paved roads, the frequency of ferry service and the income of many of the residents is a direct result of the visitors and their willingness to spend money. The fact that the beaches, the roads and the stores may be busier than one would like is a small price to be paid compared to all of the benefits.

Hornby Island, like some of the other Gulf Islands has created an image of itself that it sells to outsiders. It is an image of being somewhat laid back, relaxed, perhaps almost hippy like (this laid back relaxed atmosphere extends to having a nude beach). The tourist love it - perhaps because it is not really an act at all. Hornby struck me as a place that was pretty laid back.