Author: Rae

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The Kindness of Strangers

Well, I’m packed and just about ready to go (not yet hooked up), and waiting for Rack Attack to open at 10. I thought of just heading out and calling them en route, but there’s a courtesy phone here at the park, so it will be a lot easier to make calls.

*sidebar*

I need to fix that melted fresh water intake ASAP seeing as I have no other way of filling my fresh water tank. Oops. Oh, well, that should be a relatively easy evening at Walmart kind of project.

I also need a new sewer hose. Mine decided to spring a leak this morning; thankfully after I finished dumping the black tank and had quite a bit of grey water already going through! It’s just a pinhole, but this still qualifies as an emergency. 🙂

*/sidebar*

My neighbour saw me struggling to get the bike in the trunk, so he helped me with that and then we turned our attention to the kayak. It is now in the rig. The stern is in the cab and the bow is just nosing into the dressing room. It’s going to be so much fun getting it back out. *rolls eyes*

I am going to start off by calling Rack Attack in Vancouver, where I bought my kit on Monday, and ask them to make arrangements for me with their store in Coquitlam. If that works out fine, then the detour won’t be tooooo bad since there is both a Kal Tire (need to have the tire pressure checked) and a Mr. Lube near the Rack Attack store.

Today will be a success if I make it as far as Chilliwack and Hope would be a triumph. What disappoints me is that today is a beautiful day, perfect for hiking, and I had a short hike planned for just after Hope. That’s most likely going to happen tomorrow… when several days of rain are going to start. 🙁

I’m loving the new laptop! It was no hardship to put away the iMac last night, so much so that I forgot to synch my contacts and calendar! Thankfully, I don’t have anything going on in the next few days, so I can do without my calendar for a bit. 🙂

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The Opposite of a Product Recommendation

I’ve simmered down just enough to write about this conclusion I reached on Wednesday: Rack Attack sold me the correct rack parts for my vehicle, as per the information provided by Thule. However, the information provided by Thule is incorrect. I had to piece together clues gathered from a few sources, including blurry pictures in the nearly useless instructions to conclude that I’m missing some key parts to get the stupid roof rack installed.

Rack Attack closes early on weeknights (too early for me to have been able to go after work) and does not open until 10AM on Saturdays.

I’m going to try to get the boat into the rig tomorrow morning. If it fits, I will go to the Rack Attack store in Coquitlam with the rig towing the car, as that store is sort of en route and get them to make this right for me. If not, then I’m going to have to leave the rig parked on the street here and come back to get it after driving all the way out to Vancouver with the toad. Then, I still need to get the rig’s oil change done. Let’s just say that departure is being delayed. I am NOT happy.

Thule is garbage, plain and simple, and they have absolutely no business staying in business. Their products are shoddy and fit together poorly and their instructions are a joke. I am very, very disappointed that I gave five hundred dollars, which is a lot of money to waste!, to a company that does not care enough about its customers to provide them with the correct information.

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Traffic Rule Differences

Driving all over Canada and the US, I’ve discovered that the rules of the road are fairly universal, but there are some variances. Here are three that I’ve encountered:

1) You can legally pass people on the right in California/it’s okay to drive slowly in the left lane;

2) Until very recently, you could not turn right on a red light in Quebec. The law was repealed so that you can now turn right on a red light in Quebec, except on the Island of Montreal and most intersections in the rest of the province. Even though I’ve spent most of my driving years in Ontario or on the border thereof, I still feel like I’m breaking the law when I turn right on a red light, or left on one at a one way street;

3) A flashing green in BC does not mean the same thing as a flashing green in Quebec and most of the rest of the continent, apparently. I learned this on Monday after nearly causing a ten car pile up, peeving off about ten drivers, being flipped off by about ten drivers, and having one driver make his opinion of my mental capacity very clear. In Quebec, a flashing green light means that the opposing drivers are sitting on a red light and I have the right of way to turn left. In BC, it means that the other drivers are also looking at a flashing green light, that I’m supposed to yield when making my turn, and that the light is pedestrian controlled. Oops. I apologize to everyone who was sitting at the corner of Kingsway and 10th in Vancouver on Monday morning around 11:30. I’m not an idiot or otherwise mentally deficient; I’m just from another province!

Bonus: your headlights must be on at all times when driving in the Yukon. *makes a mental note to stick a note by the door reminding myself to make sure I turned OFF the lights when I park Miranda*

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Testing!

Well, I’m on the laptop and I cannot believe that I’m doing ‘normal’ online tasks with it, like going through the blog’s spam queue and listening to Youtube videos! I look forward to blogging with it on the road. 🙂

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A Chance For One Last Hike

Well, I will have no excuse for not staying in touch on the road! I just brought home ‘Kevin’, a 1.5Ghz, 12″, aluminum casing Powerbook G4. I did a lot of research and spoke with a lot of people, enough to feel confident that I got a good machine at a fair price. It’ll be nice to be able to watch DVDs on it; the battery has plenty of juice to watch at least one movie.

The seller lives in North Vancouver and I decided to just go meet up with him there instead of trying to find a mutually convenient time to meet ‘halfway.’ The meet up point, a Starbucks, was just a few kilometres from Lynn Canyon (which explains why I didn’t mind driving the 100 or so klicks round trip *g*), so I packed up my hiking boots this morning! We met at six, spent about a half hour going over the machine (which helped inspire confidence in the seller), and I was on the trail by six forty! The gates to the park close at 7PM, so I parked a few blocks away on a city street in order to not be rushed.

I couldn’t believe I was there, under those magnificent towering redwoods on a glorious Tuesday evening! If I could with me only one visual memory of Vancouver, it would be of the view from the Twin Falls bridge, of all that turquoise water smashing down on the rocks below. My boots were very comfortable, albeit stiff, and I savoured every second of my hike. I even stopped mid-span on the suspension bridge and looked down. How far I’ve come since Eagle Canyon!

Four months in the Greater Vancouver Region has been perfect–just long enough to fall in love with the area and savour its treasures, but not so long as to grow jaded. How marvelous it was yesterday and today to use the GPS as I did in Ottawa to only to fine tune my drive to a specific address while knowing exactly what route to take to get to the general area. I’m ready to go, but sad at the same time, feeling much the way I did last September. In fact, after so many months of hardly driving at all, I feel like I’m starting fresh, like a complete novice again!