• 12:43 PM
  Racecar Kayak Racecar

For Helen's birthday she wanted to go on a Kayak tour. Several years ago, she had gone on one around the San Juan islands and liked it so much she came back wanted to buy a her own kayak. She told me tales of sitting quietly just atop the water, resting on a kelp bed while watching wildlife. This sounded pretty fun.

To avoid dealing with the logistical problems involved with the San Juans (Our last trip there and the accompanying 5 hour wait for the ferry was discouraging) she chose to have it in a different location - Horseshoe Bay, on Bowen Island off Vancouver.

We made our hotel reservation through an unendorsed discount hotel room website, and wound up with a reservation at The Metropolitan in downtown Vancouver. Not a great price, for some reason. Must be a very busy season. The price was about twice what we expected, so we had to stay for half as long as planned, arriving today morning instead of Friday night.

Our trip has been beset by currency issues. I missed depositing a paycheck (and I don't want to hear "why don't you have direct deposit?" The answer is: shut up, please) so my checking account went into overdraft, and suffered a series of overdraft fees on small transactions (turning regular coffee into THIRTY DOLLAR COFFEE) so I wasn't going to be debiting anything this trip - Helen would be funding her own birthday trip (minus the room).

Second currency issue: we stopped at Higher Grounds coffee shop on the way into town ("Higher Grounds? They're probably, I dunno, earth friendly or something.") to get a cup of something to go with our trip pastries. Higher grounds accepts cash, or debit cards that don't use Visa's network. Guess whose network our debit cards use? Ya. So, they also have an ATM just in case. But that ATM also doesn't want to deal with visa network cards. Finally the guy said he'd accept US cash, so I handed over the last of my currency to just barely pay for the drinks, after a couple of chinese fire drills going out to the car to get my wallet, etc. Those coffees were bitter before we even tasted them. They remained bitter to the end.

The Metropolitan was full of people. German people! The two people at the check in counter were very German, the tourists we waited with in the lobby after they told us they had no rooms were German, and the Manager who explained that she would need to move us to another Hotel was very German ("I hope you heff a nice kayak trip").

"The Four Seasons," I thought. "Geez, sounds like the yum yum tree or something. Is it going to be like a best western or what?" Yes, I completely forgot that it wasn't some rinky dink hotel chain. The Four Seasons is actually very nice, full of great staff, and in a good location. I can watch Canadians spend their Saturday night wandering around downtown even now.

Looking out this window I saw a young woman get overly excited and do a pole dance on a "no parking" sign, for her camera-wielding boyfriend. Later she looked at her hands in disgust and wiped them on her pants. No parking signs: not as clean as strip club poles.

We changed into Kayaking gear and off we went. In the ferry waiting area (to go to Bowen) we found vending machines, and we found that we hadn't eaten a meal in a bit. We most of our change on a snack bag of chips and a coke to tide us over. Then we realized we probably wouldn't be eating until after the end of our Kayak thing (9 pm). Then we found that the ferry food stand didn't take debit or credit cards either. Then we got to Bowen and had to hurry.

Oh THIS is why the entry is so wide. Hi, it's me. I didn't get wet until I got out of the canoe and the spray skirt got me all wet.

Four hours later we got back from a hectic paddle race around another island. The tour guide did not guide us so much as goad us from ahead. Helen and I got the two biggest Kayaks, since that's all they had left. Struggling against the wind and current to keep up with the small kayaks, I decided that this was less fun than it sounded at first. Still.. it WAS fun.