Vacation Vancouver – Days 3-4-5

Friday’s Adventures As promised, we spent Friday in downtown Vancouver. Took the bus downtown (buses, “sky-trains”, “sea-buses”, and “sea-cabs” are everywhere in Vancouver). So bused to China Town and we hiked throughout the city.

The highlight of China Town for me was seeing a truck deliver live sea food to a Chinese street store. The picture above is cod, at least that’s what I think they were. They were flopping all over the place and a few flopped right out of the container. In addition to this there were crab crawling all over. A little different than what we see in Rochester.

During the walk we saw many homeless and probably drug users. Drugs are a huge problem in Vancouver. The current strategy is to use treat addiction as a purely medical problem. This philosophy sees addiction as no different than cancer (that’s a quote of a Vancouver doctor). If they arrest and jail all the users, they go right back to using, which is expensive and ineffective. Likewise, forcing a person into treatment that they don’t want seems useless and again expensive.

So instead, they try to help the drug addicted to stay safe and hope that someday they will choose treatment. They provide clean needles, clean drugs, and hotels and safe houses. I don’t know how many of their addicts seek treatment, but I’ve got to think that the safe and clean strategy must make Vancouver an addict’s dream come true. Now I don’t have a better strategy and I’m sure I’ve greatly over simplified what is really going on. I don’t know if there is a good answer to this problem. It’s very sad.

Okay… back to the vacation. Lorri’s highlighthad to be Friday evening. She and Jeremy went on a bike ride with about a thousand bikers. The last Friday night of each month bicyclists from around the city meet downtown Vancouver and then ride throughout the city’s main arteries. It is a different pattern determined on the fly each time.

The event is called "Critical Mass". The goal: to congest traffic. The message: “see bicycles” and “make the city safer”. By the way, Vancouver is a very mild in respect to weather, so bikes are everywhere all the time.

So Lorri and Jeremy went on the ride and disrupted traffic. While waiting for the ride to begin other political protests were being organized. Lorri was invited to take her garbage, along with everyone else there and dump it on the
mayor’s front lawn (his house). This is because all city employees are on strike including the garbage services. So for about 6 weeks garbage has been piling up every where. The mayor made the mistake of saying that the strike was “not his highest priority”. These protestors were trying to help the mayor reprioritize. Lorri did not take part in the garbage protest and will not be arrested on this trip.

Kind of makes me grateful for Rochester’s faithful sanitation personnel and our wonderful bike trails through the area.

That night Jeremy went out with friends while Lorri and I found a hole in the wall Greek Pizza Shop and had a slice and wonderful Greek salad. The pizza was completely void of raw fish.

Saturday
In the morning Lorri went on a little bike ride to a wonderful and huge park about 2 miles from Jeremy’s apartment. Wonderful trails, so we went for a short walk in them with Jeremy. After, we drove Jeremy around doing some errands. He doesn’t have a car, so our rental was nice for him to get some things done.

Finally after a burger (beef!), Lorri and I left Vancouver and drove to Seattle. Besides the beauty, there is not much to report except an hour in line at the border. Get your passports!

We made it to Seattle and stopped at the “Public Market” on Pike Street. This is the place where they throw the fresh fish around. You may have heard of it. It was fun and we even bought a pound of smoked salmon; it’s one of Molly’s favorites. Sorry Molly, no t-shirt, just some smoked fish.

After walking around downtown Seattle for an hour, we drove around for about two! We wandered looking for the best views of the city. Later we stopped at the south end of Lake Washington near a Boeing factory (huge!). The lake was gorgeous… and there was a little burger shack and some docks to walk on. So we ordered fish and chips! (Yes, more fish.) And we took our food out on the dock to eat. It was very beautiful.

Finally we went to the airport only getting a little lost on the way. We were scheduled for the red-eye (12:55 AM flight). The flight was extremely over-booked and we hoped to get bumped (hotel and 300 bucks!). But apparently people make and change reservations all the time, so in the end no one was bumped and every seat was filled on the plane.

Sunday
We sat in our seats on the plane and both fell asleep until we were awakened by the pilot’s voice telling us that we were landing, 6 AM central. Lorri’s mom picked us up (she’s an early riser - God bless her) and we crawled into our bed at her home in Minnetonka at 8 AM.

Tomorrow Molly and I will be taking in the Twins’ game and then we will come home. Back to work and school on Tuesday. Thus ends the trip! Thanks for thinking about us, praying for us, and reading.