2006-07-08 100 Mile House

Lins and I bussed out to 100 Mile House (or 160 Kilometre House as it should be called) to visit Meg. We saw her place, but stayed at Trevor’s in 108 Mile (you do the metric math here). There was a Mexican party (yum), hiking, swimming, World Cup watching, and historical site and German store visiting.

2007-07-15 Smithers

Flew up to beautiful Smithers to visit Julie for a night. Only points would allow me to lead such a jet set life. I’m ever so slowly getting to no this province. It was good to visit Julie somewhere other than Vancouver, since that has never happened before. Canoeing, swimming, leech avoiding. It has been a good few weekends of the outdoor life. I should get a cottage somewhere.

Whereas 100 Mile house had a German store…Smithers has a Dutch store! Almost all the same products, but just the Dutch version. The linguistic differences are not that great and the food was mostly the same products in a slightly different packaging. Despite the animosity, how many differences are there really between contemporary Holland and Germany? One has a top quality soccer team and the other has a team that wins games.

2006-07-17 Vancouver

Went on a mini-café crawl with John to a couple of the copious coffee shops that litter Miketon. At Soma there was a recent copy of SubTerrain. It featured a photo essay of East Side alleyways. It featured a photo of the most famous of falling down houses on Prince Edward Ave and then…a photo of the East 16^th/17^th Alley way! Yes, the alley way that I walked everyday too and from the 4M. The alleyway is the only remnant of the 4M now that a monstrous house has replaced the delightfully leaning building.

2006-07-29 Toronto

Went home for a lightening quick jam-packed weekend at home. There was Prab’s wedding reception, a (slightly delayed) visit from the Stratford Cousins and as many friends, family, and city savouring as I could manage in such a short time. I even got to ride the new (and very bumpy) airport link train thing…but not the still incomplete train from Union station. It was a very rushed trip, so I’ll have to be prepared for that if it starts being a regular habit.

2006-08-01 Vancouver

Alas August was my last month in the fabulous Casa Meatella. I packed up my stuff as best I could and was very thankful for being able to use so much of Rita and Stu’s things as well as leave it there for their return rather than packing it all up. A quiet departure, but I was definitely looking forward to a new adventure on a new continent.

2006-09-03 Seoul

An hour and a half layover in Incheon. I was quite tired, and I don’t know if the bare white emptiness of the airport conveyed good sense of Korea. No worries, I’ll be back. The one amazing thing was the bathrooms, shockingly different for the same physiology. They even had a line marked on the floor for where one was supposed to stand in wait.