Last Day

Welp, all checked out. I'm off to wander round town for a while (maybe see stanley park again) and then get on my flight this evening. I feel I should do a big sum up post but I lack energy and creative juices, so I'll just have to keep my awesome insights to myself.

In unrelated news, I learned while waiting for the wifi to connect that the solitaire on my laptop can play itself. I am entirely redundant.

And Zeus warned the leaders of the twelve tribes that any return to Kobol would exact a price in blood

The price in blood aforementioned has yet to be determined, I'll have to wait and see how many Canadian Mountain Mosquitoes (which are as big as a bear, I know because I also saw a bear today for comparison) made off with mine today.

Today was my journey into the wilds of North Vancouver, which involved a Sea Bus, then another bus to get out into the forest. This seemed vary familiar to me because the woods of british columbia are the equivalent of the BBC quarry, they are used by every tv production working out of Vancouver. So I was in Cylon country (Incidentally there's a group in Vancouver that do tours of varying places in the city that double as the ruins of Caprica City that Helo and Boomer run aimlessly around for a whole season, which I don't find awesome at all).

My first stop in the forest with a HUGE suspension bridge bridging the river below, then with a treetop walkway. I thought I was safe, because cylons can't climb stairs, but then I realized I was thinking of Daleks, I was still quite at risk from 8 foot walking killing machines with machine guns in their arms. Of course, spoiling the illusion the post-apocalyptic landscape was all the other tourists who insisted on not fleeing for their lives or looking pained from radiation poisoning. Even a squirrel seemed confused as to which post-apocalyptic world he was in, starting to look like he was going to jump and get my face, he instead decided to try to claw his way into my bag. Naturally I took a picture of this before reclaiming the bag (nice try buddy, but they're MY radiation meds).

Then I was off to the real mission of the day, the Grouse Grind. Doesn't that sound appealing, I'll let their description speak for itself:

The Grouse Grind Trail is located in North Vancouver, B.C., at the base of the Grouse Mountain Resort ski area. It is an extremely steep and mountainous trail that begins at the 300-metre-elevation and climbs to 1,100 metres over a distance of approximately 2.9 kilometres.

Lacking any kind of useful equipment like boots or walking poles, I nevertheless went anyway. I feel it's a personality flaw of mine that constantly looks at things like that and says 'Hell yes', but that's exactly the kind of stupid, dumbass attitude that got me to Vancouver in the first place. They're not half kidding about the steepness or the mountainousness, some of the path was still under construction and other bits were pretty much just following a stream up. Having spilt some water early on, I had to ration my remaining bottles (quite accurately in the end, drank the last sip when I walked out of the woods). In the end my time wasn't that impressive considering the fastest is 26 minutes (freak) my roommate has now done it twice this week in about an hour each time, which just seems strange. It was worth it for the view from the top (ignoring the fact that I could have taken the lift, it's quite depressing to take it down in two minutes). Mountains on all side, snow on the ground, grizzly bears, it was everything a mountain top should be. God help me but if i were here another few weeks I'd probably climb it again, WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME.

Having traced back my steps to the hostel (bus, seabus, mile walk through town), I then found that the locker with my passport and laptop in had just plain vanished (along with all the others on that level). In that wonderful frame of mind where everything works out for the best I just went up to my room and found the note on the door saying the desk had my stuff, which then after 10 minutes of searching they found. A less exhausted person might have asked more questions but I'm learning to just accept things when they work.

Two more days.

One week to go.

The hostel? They're out of maps? Whatever shall I do? Fortunately, there's another hostel across the street I faked admission to to gain a map. SUCCESS!

Then after, enjoying the escape for the puritanical drinking laws of the states, I decided to demonstrate my driving skills at the arcade across the street and kicked assss. Also there seem to be two porn shops right next to each other here, you'd think that'd be a little competitive.

GHOST WIZARD

Sacramento is a ghost town. There is nothing open after 6 and I'd be lucky to see 10 people in a street at once. It's both eerie and peaceful. Had trouble getting onto the hostel wifi so came outside to write some stuff in peace and distraction less but then found I could get onto a public one out here. Why I don't know.

I have blogger guilt for not blogging, but if I started too much now I'd have to go through the back log of all the cool crazy stuff that's been going on, my flickr feed (www.flickr.com/alex_parsons) will make a substitute (albeit a poor one I know) for actual writing.

Updates

Good god, it is NOT always sunny in Philadelphia.





The downside to using celestial navigation to work out north is it goes
out the window when the sun goes away and people on the street are
LOUSY at directions. So I walked about an hour more in the rain than I
meant to today.




But hey, here. Will go explore tomorrow. Jani and Kelly are both super awesome as I haven't mentioned New York here yet. Might go back in more detail later on. I also ran into Jesse Novak (who does the music for Olde English on occasion) in Brooklyn, who seemed pretty surprised to be recognized and possibly slightly creeped out. Yeah, probably.

FRIDAY IS TODAY

Scary moment there where I thought I hadn't booked enough time in Boston, but it turned out it was just the date on my laptop was wrong. I can now go back to normal levels of travel stress.

Morning in America

I'm in Boston Bus station, waiting for the storage place to open so i can go explore for a few hours before I check into my hostel. I tried a McDonalds breakfast thing, but in retrospect that was a bad idea.

Boarder crossings remain a weird affair, having your finger prints taken underneath a portrait of George Bush definitely crosses the line into creepy. You really can't imagine there are many portraits of Brown hanging in UK customs.