Oh, Canada!

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7/12/99 -- Well, this is a big entry. I've been a little busy being on vacation to write it all down, and I reckoned that since I won't be able to upload for another two days anyhow, I'd spend a little more time staring at the fire than writing.

Well, last entry I was on my way up to Glacier National Park. I got there the morning of the 8th, after spending the night in a rest stop a few miles north of Helena.

Ah, but before that happened. On my way to Helena, I stopped at a gas station to call AT&T to ask them where I should swing through next to get cellular reception. Oh, they said, we can't tell you that at this time... out systems are "upgrading". I got a week's credit out of that eventually. I spent at least 20 minutes of the phone with two reps and a supervisor before that happened, and then it happened. I guess I was hopped up to get gone and make my way closer to Glacier, so as to get there as early as possible. I was getting into my car, and put the phone on the roof of the car... you can see were this is going. Then a girl hanging out with friends at the station told me she really liked my car. Oooh! So I commented to her that I'd only seen one other Saab since Chicago, that being the one parked at Old Faithful. We small talked about Saabs for a minute, then I hopped in my car and drove. 2 Miles later the heart attack happened, I pulled on to the shoulder with a screech, and pulled out the giant Maglight and scoped the inside of my car frantically. No, I vividly remembered placing the phone on the top of the car, but not taking it in with me... and it was just past dusk, so I turned around, put my hazards on, rolled my window down, and drove at 30 mph in the left lane with my head out the window and the flashlight illuminating the lane I'd been driving in. I got all the way back to the gas station where I'd been on the phone, and there it was, right in the dead center of the left lane just outside of the gas station, in one piece! Called that providence and moved on. Right after resolving to never ever get into my car without scanning the roof. Already my roof has claimed a pair of Eddie's glasses, and now almost my phone.

Ok, back to the good stuff. I got to Glacier National Park. I'd decided to sacrifice spending the entire day there to an extra 6 - 8 hours in Banff, so all I did was drive over the incredible "Going-to-the-Sun Road", which crosses the park East-West, achieving an elevation of 6,664 feet at Logan Pass. I drove the road pretty much straight through, I think I stopped about 6 times for overlooks, and once for lunch. The view was pretty spectacular. I drove past quite a few falls, the runoff of the melting icecaps, a bunch of Glaciers, and just amazing vistas. More "just... wow" moments.

There was a light dusting of fine red speckles all over a lot of the snow, which I learned were special algae with a hard red capsule coating to protect them from the snow till it melted.

At one stop I saw some cyclists and started yakking at them about how I wanted to be on a bike, and had he read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance? Wouldn't you know it, he had it in his saddlebag. It's the guy in the middle of the photo to the right.

Here are two of the coolest sights I recorded while traveling along that road. To the left is Bird Woman Falls, and to the right is Lake St Marie.

On my way out of glacier I noticed that some parts of Montana are not as hilly and neat as others. Some of Montana was chock full of these farms, growing barley, I believe. And that about did it for Glacier and Montana, and I headed up to the Canadian border at around 4:30 or 5pm. As I approached the border, I had a momentary anxiety attack, and mentally went through my inventory just to make sure there couldn't be any problem. Now, when I packed for leaving, I had packed with that in mind, and knew damned well that I wasn't carrying anything bad, but still, once burnt...

Border crossing proceeded without incident, and I moved North. The first thing I noticed was that southern Alberta was really alot like southern USA. All the radio stations were country, and it looked like the photo to the right.

My first stop was in a place called Fort Macleod. I intended only to stop, perhaps have some ice cream, review my maps and tour books, and head out. As I pulled up by an ice cream store, I leaned out the window to ask a dude if I could park where I was.

This isn't such a good story, and I wasn't sure I'd tell it. This guy was Native American, and he was stone drunk. Now, being the sensitive type, I'm going to link to my disclaimer here. On with the story. Mike, he said his name was, told me he wanted to show me a few things around the area, and I should come with him. Although I only had a little while in my estimation, I figured here's a little adventure and followed him down to the river, listening to him rattle on about a guy named Charcoal who was a Native who'd been hung in Fort Macleod. There followed a slightly unpleasant adventure, which is found at the previous link because it's long and involved, and I begin to wax philosophic. Nothing bad happened to me, but I was pissed and upset as I headed off to Calgary, if you just want to skim.

So I continued to Calgary, and when I got there I found it to be a clean and pleasant City. The whole way there I was tuning to different Calgary radio stations, and kept hearing about this "Stampede" thing. I drove around Calgary's main thoroughfares for a while, getting a sense of its size, and neighborhoods. At 8:00pm I parked on a pretty happening street and strolled down it, till I came to a spot called the Second Cup, where I read some Zen and chilled out a little with a cup of coffee. I asked after the nightlife, and was recommended a bar called the Ship & Anchor, as a casual place. I went and found a place where I could park my car within walking distance of the bar where I could crash for the night, put the car in city parking mode (think "Shields"), and went off to the Ship & Anchor.

Well, it was a plenty fine place, with many, many good beers on tap, all of which that I sampled were good. Unfortunately, I felt very little connection to the people who frequented the place, based on how they looked, I suppose, all clean-cut and made up, and I didn't make any friends there. S'ok, I had brought my maps and was happy enough to review my status and evaluate how long I could spend in Banff and the other parks of the area, and it was a rather lovely night to be on the patio enjoying a fine brew after being on the road for quite some time. I spent some time there, and headed back to my car to sleep.

The next morning, the 9th of July, I woke up at 7:00am and headed immediately back to the Second Cup to get coffee, snack, and finish Zen. Which I did, finishing it with a solid 2 hour stretch. My seal of ultimate approval goes on that book -- it is truly the type of book which changes your outlook on life. You all must read it. If you have, go ahead and tell me, 'cause I wanna talk about it.

So I roamed around Calgary for a wee bit, and I found out what this whole "Stampede" thing was about. As one of the residents put it, "the whole city goes Cowboy." But not just the individuals. Businesses get into it, and I don't just mean the restaurants and bars and fun stuff. Here's a picture of a bank I went into to get cash:

There was a pile of hay in the corner, too. Here's a random Calgary resident:

Then I went to see the South Park movie, and after that, I suddenly decided it was time to leave Calgary and head to Banff. It was 5:00pm, and I'd planned to spend another night in Calgary, but I just got going. It only took me a little over an hour to get to the park, and I just headed in, provisioned a little at this town called Canmore, and found a campsite at Johnstons Creek. I was prepping sausages by 8:45. Of course, the sun was still up... Banff is 500 klicks from the Mountain/Pacific time zone border, and is way up north as well, so no, kidding, it stays light out till 11:00pm. In the light of the sunset, the mountains of the Canadian Rockies were glorious.

The next morning I intended to do a badass hike up around Cory Pass, to an elevation of 2,360 meters, really I did, but I drove into Banff first to talk to the Park Visitor Center people, and when I got there I got a little sidetracked window shopping for cool gear. Oh yes, the town of Banff itself was a little nauseating, with it's quaint storefronts and its malls and people milling around shee-shee restaurants, and overpriced outfitters and everything. Still, I suppose to each their own, some people like forests and mountains and the great outdoors because you can go out into it and experience it, and some people like it because you can build a resort in it.

So by the time I was done with lunch, it was too late to set out, and I didn't get a chance to do a really sweet backcountry hike, and instead had to content myself with one of the paved, high-traffic (but nonetheless sweet), smaller treks. I went to Johnston Canyon, and hiked to both the lower and upper falls. I nice 2.5 kilometer hike, it turns out, right alongside this canyon that it took the river which flows through it approximately 8000 years to carve.

When I got to the upper falls, which I went to first, I stood and stared at them for quite a little while. For one thing, the spray was casting this awesome double rainbow. Also, waterfalls, like fire, are mesmerizing and soothing, as white noise for the eyes and ears.

Besides the coolness of the falls themselves, there was also a very cool phenomenon, pictured at right, but I forget the name of it right now, although I remember it began with a "T". T____ Wall, something like that. If you know, tell me. Whatever it's called, it's like this -- algae grows on the wall of the canyon near the falls. They are that funky pale orange color. Around the algae, lime accumulates, leading to limestone lattices around the algae, on which more algae grows.

While I stood there, I became aware of a woman standing and staring as I was, so I began to speak some thoughts that had been in my head while I was staring at the falls. I pointed out the double rainbow, and then mentioned how I thought it would be cool if we could get a time-lapse video of geological processes, like the uplifting of mountains and the wearing away of canyons. Well, she said, perhaps one day we might view the world through something other than eyes of flesh and blood, and will have a geologic perspective of time. That would be cool, I replied, but I'm not holding my breath. After a little while I headed down from the upper falls.

As I got back on the path leading to the lower falls and the parking lot, I encountered two guys returning from the Inkpots, a collection of 7 hot springs a few extra klicks up from the upper falls. "Hi there, how are you today?" one of them inquired, as we fell in together on the path. I love it when a rapport occurs immediately and without question. They are Marcus, on the left, and Gabriel, in the middle, archeology students living in Calgary, out in Banff for a day trip. Gabriel was actually headed off the Caribbean the following day, lucky dude. We talked about New York and Calgary, and our studies, and my obsession with human-electronics interface, and nanotechnology and the semantics of genetic engineering vs. organic machine building, and a bunch of other things. We went to the lower falls together, which was cool because you walk under this tunnel of rock to stand at the bottom of the lower falls, and get completely attacked by the spray of the falls, which is exhilarating, let me tell you. We stood around and went "wooooo!" for a minute and continued back to the parking lot.

On the way we stopped by the ice cream stand, and I found it amusing that all three of us had been thinking from the time that we had arrived and passed the stand on the way up that ice cream would be great when we returned! The dude selling ice cream was cool too, and the four of us talked about metaphysical nonsense for a while, and then we all discussed my experience in Fort Macleod, which I was still thinking about, and none of us came up with any answers, but we did agree that telling a Native to "get a job" might very well be adequately answered by "How? There are no bison herds any more..."

When we parted company, it was 7:30pm and I hurried over to a campsite, since I had resolved to for once setup camp early enough so that I could read in sunlight after dinner for a while. I almost succeeded, but then I spent forever chopping firewood with a borrowed hatchet -- I swear, there was something wrong with my technique or my wood (huh, huh, I said "my wood"...), 'cause there were some logs that took me 10 minutes to break apart. Took so long my stew got cold.

But, while I was chopping, my neighbors from next campsite over invited me over to sit around the fire and chat. To the left they are pictured, Don and Dot. Actually, it's funny, I was unable to determine the nature of their relationship at all, and it didn't occur to me to ask until much later, after we'd parted company. They could have been dating, or remarried to each other, since they both were talking about different sets of kids.

Anyhow, that's not important, what's important is that when I finally got my frustrating fire going, I abandoned it (temporarily, I thought), to join Don and Dot by their fire and eat my stew. When I arrived introductions were made, and I met Mike, who was camping with his convertible mustang and bicycle at the other campsite adjacent to Don and Dot's. "We're on football," Dot said after intros, and conversation flowed easily and profusely on and on and on. Mike fetched for me one of his fine microbrewed IPAs. Don is retired but drives a school bus, Dot teaches fourth grade English, and Mike is an aerospace engineer, who did EE in undergrad and masters in Aerospace. He said his team has satellite positioning code accurate to 10 meters in 2k of machine code. Hot damn!

We all talked waaay into the night, about so many different things, like what I'd been doing up to now, and what I should do when I continued, books, children, camping, driving, climate, well, everything. Mike mentioned a road between Lake Powel and Mexican Hat which has a sign for a curve 10 miles in advance, with signs at halfway intervals (5 miles, 2.5 miles, 1.25 miles, etc) until 100 feet... because when you get there, it's either turn 90 degrees or plummet 2000 feet off the massive plateau you've been driving on. Dot asked me what book inspired me when I was younger, and I told her about The Hobbit, and how my father had read to me The Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was younger, which impressed her so much that she wrote my Dad a card thanking him for giving me a love of books when we parted company.

Also, Don's read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance! Dot had not, and so I immediately ran to my car and gave her my copy. Like I said before, I believe, I'm very much down with the exchange of gifts, particularly books, between travelers, a concept Melanie introduced me to from her tales of living in Sri Lanka.

We talked until 1:30 in the morning, and when I woke well rested and refreshed, Don and Dot were inviting me and Mike over for bowls of cereal, coffee, and juice. Don and Dot rule.

It was the 11th. Another late start, which are becoming a little more common, what with me staying up late and camping in grounds choked with tall lodgepole pine trees which prevent the dawn from waking me up. I got underway at 10am, perhaps, and headed up to Lake Lousie to start the activity for the day -- a drive up the Icefields Parkway, past some of the most accessible Glaciers in North America. Since I needed to cover ground all the way up to Jasper, I wasn't going to be doing any in-depth coverage, but I stopped in at the visitor center, read about Mountain and Glacier formation, and selected one 1-hour hike to do. Then I drove up the parkway, stopping at a few overlooks, doing my hike up to the Bow Peak with it's phenomenal overlook of Peyto Lake (pronounced PEE-toe, hey, I didn't name it). Apparently it's crazy blue color comes from the particles of silt which wash into it from the meltwater of the icefields. In suspension in the lake, the particles happen to absorb the right combination of other colors, and the result is pictured above and to the right.

After Lake Peyto I headed up for a ways, and after I passed from Banff to Jasper National Park, was driving alongside the Columbia Icefields. The Columbia Icefields are a massive zone of year-round snow, which feed 8 glaciers. BTW, for those of you who don't already know, a glacier is: a slowly flowing river of ice resulting from zones where more snow falls each year than melts. After a few years, any given layer of snow is covered by enough snow above it that it is compacted, sometimes melting and refreezing a few times. Through this process, the air is squeezed out of the ice, which is why glacier ice is blue and not white (the white of other ice is the result of light scattering every which way when it hits the multitude of teeny-tiny air bubbles trapped within). After a while, the whole mass is so heavy that gravity begins to slowly drag it downhill, and in this fashion, glaciers, dragging boulders and smaller rocks beneath it, sculpt mountains with U-shaped channels and valleys. This is all stuff that I learned in the past week.

The most accessible glacier in North America is Athabasca Glacier, a scant 15 klicks from the Icefields Parkway on a side road. The toe of the glacier is an easy, 5-minute hike from the parking lot. I went up there and stood on the glacier's toe, which was kinda cool, but little bit of a letdown, since what I really wanted to do was go climbing up it. But besides the time constraint, they say people are killed all the time doing foolish things like climbing on glaciers without special equipment and guides, since often narrow but deep crevices are concealed beneath a foot of snow.

So I proceeded up the parkway and making my next stop at Sunwatapa Falls. Well, get this -- as I pulled into a parking space, I saw a green SUV to my left, pulling out, and in the passenger seat was the woman who I'd been speaking with at the falls at Johnston Canyon! She recognized me instantly, and waved, and then was gone. I headed down to the falls, which were ok, but not as nice as the ones at Johnston Canyon. Well, there she was. We both laughed, but I didn't stay because I wanted to keep moving so I said see-ya and was on my way, up to the next cool spot, Athebasca Falls, which, you guesses it! is fed by the Athebasca River, which in turn is fed by runoff from the Athebasca Glacier...

Well, the Athebasca Falls were very nice. Oh, and guess who I ran into in the parking lot? their names turned out to Be Inge and Christian, visiting from Germany. After we got acquainted, we headed off to the falls together, talking while we walked. I never found out Inge does, but Christian's a programmer, the first I've met on my trip. They told me their favorite place that they'd been to so far was Beaver Lake, but that was in the direction that I'd been not where I was going.

Athebasca Falls, as I said was very nice. Here's a massive version of the picture to the right, in addition to the slightly larger one you can get as usual by clicking on the picture. We walked around the falls for a while, checking it out from various different vantages, and then went walking through a canyon that had been carved by the river flowing from the falls, but had been abandoned thousands of years ago. You could clearly see the signs of the river's erosive carvings.

Athebasca falls was my last stop for the day. I bid farewell to Inge and Christian at the parking lot, after exchanging addresses, and headed off to a campgrounds within easy range of Jasper, for an early leave the following morning.

I stayed up late again the night of the 11th, watching the fire turn to coals. Eventually I turned in, and slept well past 9:00am, and thus completely missed the presence of a big Black Bear in the campgrounds, no more than 100 feet from my tent. I woke up completely unawares, but as I was washing up, 3 cars drove by, and someone asked me if I'd seen the bear. What bear, I asked? The bear that was in out campsite 5 minutes ago, they told me. Time to go, I thought. I got the car ready to move on a moments notice and began to hurriedly break camp, being vigilant for any ursural signs. None were forthcoming, and I got everything in my car and hit the road. The woman at the check in/out station of the campgrounds told me the rangers who showed up never spotted the bear, but apparently it was right up on a picnic table sniffing at something. If it got any food, it would be bad, as it makes them more aggressive about obtaining human foodstuffs, and frequently such bears must be "destroyed," as they put it in the bear literature which I've received like 15 times now in various different incarnations from every park and campgrounds that I've gone through.

I headed straight to Jasper to gas up, provision, get coffee, and move along towards Vancouver, which I supposed it would take me two days to get to (and had this impression confirmed by several people who about which I'd asked specifically). I decided to grab a meal at a diner, and do journal work while I ate. I found a place called Buckles and began the last entry.

This is Deanne. Deanne was my waitress, and immediately asked me if I was on vacation, which I could tell was a preamble to asking me just why the hell I'd brought a computer with me on vacation. I liked her immediately and told her it was my journal, and explained to her the whole idea of the digital scrapbook which becomes a webpage which is like an ongoing, semi-live postcard to everyone. This she accepted.

Deanne, who stopped by a few times to chat when she had a moment, and then came and hung out at my table when she got off work (which was while I was still sipping coffee and transferring photos from the camera to the computer), turned out to be the coolest person I've met so far. She was born in Prince Albert, and I believe had her personal pilot's license at, what 18, and her commercial license a few years after. On scholarship. I found this out because I was telling her, as I tell everyone I meet, that I've been traveling, and she told me that she'd rented a plane and flown quite a fair bit South a few years ago with a friend.

Deanne must have pretty awesome hand-eye coordination, because in addition to being a commercially licensed pilot she's a crack shot with a rifle, and if she wasn't exaggerating, you could hold a loonie (oh, yeah, that's the Canadian 1-dollar coin, for those of you who haven't handled it, it has a loon on the back of it, don'cha know?) over 5 of her shots from 200 meters. She's an excellent angler, in fact, when she got up to go she said she'd like to hang longer but she had to go fishing... and is learning to hunt! Woah. Apparently one of the things she's considering doing with her pilots license is flying medical personnel into the bush to treat aborigines (I know that's not spelled right). She said she'll get into this in a little while, a few months to a few years, but right now she's taking it easy, drifting slowly, hanging in Jasper for the immediate future (she's been there for 2 months), working simple jobs to pay rent while she took advantage of the exceedingly beautiful surroundings. She was explaining to me how she couldn't understand all these people who lived and worked in Jasper, who just went to work, and went to the bar, and went home, when they lived in Jasper, right in the Canadian Rockies. In a few days she was headed into Jasper Park on horseback, to go back-country camping for something like 5 days in areas where you have to make your own trails.

Well, that's pretty cool on it's own, but Deanne's also, as you've no doubt noticed a woman, making her stand out quite a bit (see my disclaimer). It's precisely that quality of not being cut from a completely similar cloth as most of the women I know (hey, no offense, y'all. Many of you, female friends, are just as cool, but I'm not meeting you on the road) that really makes me take notice.

Oh yeah, Deanne, if you ever look up that address I gave you, and are reading this, and happen to be headed to the east coast some time, how about going on a date? You're pretty cool. Oh, and, in advance for all you jokers who are of course going to use the previous link -- up yours.

So we talked for a little while and then Deanne said she needed to get going fishing and I needed to get driving, since I was spending the next two days getting from Jasper to Vancouver.

Ok, enough about that. I got up and hit the road, and drove my ass off -- and was in a rest stop 50 klicks out of Calgary by nightfall. Aaargh! Fuck those people who were like "Oh, that's a 2-day drive"! I mean, it took me 9 hours. That's a solid days drive, to be sure, but seriously, how did those people get 2 whole days out of that? There must be a hundred things I could have done with that extra day it I'd known it would just take me a day. I could have gone fishing, for example...

Oh, yeah, enough about that. I washed my hair at the rest stop, which was important, since I hadn't stayed at campgrounds with showers the entire time I was in Banff, and I was getting that "I must shave my head" feeling. After dinner (some tuna salad and canned soup), I spread my maps out and reviewed, and was going to do this journal entry, but along comes this guy, Dan, just taking a break from a long drive asking what's up. We fell to talking, and he told me about what spectacles I should check out when I passed through Las Vegas.

So I didn't get any journal writing done at that time, and when Dan took off, I noticed a group of kids on the other side of the rest stop, I swear, partying and boozing up... actually, it was a pretty snazzy idea when I thought about it, these kids all lived within 10 minutes of that rest stop, and they could treat it like a local park, except cops don't go there. Oh, I suppose that if they made enough of a ruckus, someone would call the state troopers, but that didn't happen. I just went over to find out what they were doing there, and was invited to hang with them.Oh, I stood around with them asking questions about the area (Langley), and talking with the designated drivers (yeah! responsible teens!) about New York, traveling, and oh, what's this you're offering me? Moonshine, you say?

So I learned some things from that encounter -- the Nissan 300RX (I think that's what it's called) with twin turbos is a sweet driving vehicle, according to the account that I got, which owing to it's paired turbos doesn't feel like an extra boost kicking in above a certain RPM, rather it just feels like a car with a bigger engine. And moonshine is dead easy to make. It's not nasty, in fact it has no taste whatsoever, but it does dry out your tongue something wicked. I can see no place for it in my life, either -- it's just for getting drunk really, and not for drinking, if you take my meaning. Also, there are tons of East Asians living in that part of Canada (actually, come to think of it now, all the guys were East Asian).

The following morning I drove into Vancouver and checked it out. Another lovely Canadian city, nestled between the Pacific (or the Strait of Georgia, to be precise) and the Mountains. When I arrived in town, the first thing I did was drive straight to the ocean and put my hands in the water. West coast waters -- the very first time I've ever seen them. It's funny, here I am on the West coast! I think I may be beginning to see the attitude difference. After I had lunch in a park near the ferry terminal at Horseshoe Bay, I cruised around downtown Vancouver for a while, finding the traffic surprisingly light for downtown in a city in the middle of the day. I asked some other drivers what I should do since I was in the city for a day and a night. One of them suggested that I go to the beach, and I thought that a splendid idea, so I did just that, and I found myself on the beach 10 minutes drive from downtown at most. I went to buy a swimsuit, since I didn't feel like abusing my biking shorts any more, and I really did need swimming shorts, anyhow. Then I stopped in a comic store, and next thing I knew it was 4:00 and I hadn't gone swimming at all. I still went back to the beach, even though the sky had gotten cloudy and it was too chilly to swim. I joined a group of people playing volleyball on the beach, and did that for a few hours, and played a little hackey sack. I can still jump high enough to spike the v-ball pretty effectively, even against taller people, but I couldn't seems to get my serve back together, and only served well a few times. Had plenty of fun though.

That night I wandered around downtown till I saw a pub which called out to me, the Atlantic Trap and Tavern, which I learned later was trying to go for an East cost motif. It was there that I learned that the US women's team had won the World Cup!!! I was very excited by that, since I'd watched then win a few games while I'd been in Chicago -- they're definitely and excellent team.

I told the bartender, Rob, that I was thinking about doing a little pub crawl to get a taste of the nightlife of Vancouver, and he told me I should go to Luvafair, this dance club where they were having 80's night. Now, I don't really go clubbing, but some other guy I'd asked while driving around had told me I should go there, and what the hell, I might even dance...

So there I went, at 12:30 when the Trap closed (huh? Midnight last call?), and of course, it was full of club-going types, and the first thing that I noticed was that I didn't think anyone that I could see on the floor were good dancers. They were mostly all just bobbing up and down and swaying a little. I wandered around a little, found the fooze table, played a game (got whupped), and moved to the dance floor. I was definitely the most active dancer there, so I got up on one of the platforms where some people were dancing and shook my thang for a while. Then the lights came on, and it was 2:00, and time to go home. What? 2:00am is closing time? Exceedingly weak. I asked around, and apparently anything open after 2 is "after hours." Oh, well, just as I was getting into it, too.

So I went back to my car, slept a few hours, and got up at 9:00am Had coffee and a huge rice crispies treat at a shop right near my car called "Charlie's Place." I asked the owner if he was Charlie, since I'd seen him there list night as well, and there he was opening up, and he laughed and said, no, he was a friend of Charlie's. That was Charlie, he said, pointing to a poster of Charlie Chaplin on the wall.

I sat around for a few hours or so drinking and reading the book on adults returning to college that I've started on since finishing Zen. The owner of Charlie's Place also graciously allowed my to shave in his restroom. By the time I left, it was
almost noon. I went to a laundromat to do the first wash since I've set out. While my clothes washed, I went to a nearby Denny's and used their power outlets to begin this entry while getting brunch. I also hit an internet cafe to post the announcement that my next upload would be on the 18th or so.

Then it was time to go back to the USA -- I'm right on time for my appointment with Marc and Andy in Seattle on the 15th. A day to travel to Seattle, and pick them up the following afternoon. So I drove down to Tsawwassen, caught a ferry to Victoria, and from Victoria caught a ferry to Port Angeles on the North coast of the Olympic Peninsula. On the ferry I broke out the computer and began to finish this long journal entry. Didn't quite get to it, because I sat next to two nice people with two small boys, from Chico, CA, and we started talking, and kept talking the whole way to Port Angeles. It was 9:00 by the time I got to Port Angeles, and I was getting tired. I drove about 100 miles to a rest stop a little North of Bremerton, where I went to bed. The following day is to be rendez-vous at Seattle!

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