Volume 6: Pete in Canada Part 19. Beaver Las Canada. 1 Continent, 2 Blokes, Infinite Weird Sh*t
Day 45 – Whistler
Today started out with some great luck. We used Spoonys employee discount to rent our bikes, then while I was waiting in line to buy my Park pass there was a bloke in line with a 2 for 1 deal so I only paid half price for my pass. I reckon it was as I past my cash over and received my Park pass at that very moment all luck for the day would be to end.
Apparently the part of the brain responsible for risk taking becomes smaller as you get older until eventually the most adventurous thing you do is swing your rocking chair past 30 degrees. I wasn’t quite there yet but I was on my way. Today was spent on the massive mountain bike park, with rides so long you had to catch a chair lift up the mountain, something I would’ve thought was the most awesome thing ever when I was 12 and gone straight to the most advanced course and took on those 20 foot drops (most likely after my brother had done it and been standing there calling me a pussy if I didn’t do it). On our first run we did the beginners course which was enough to see me nearly go arse over tit a few times while trying to avoid crashing into the advanced riders hurling down the mountain in the few sections the beginners course intersected with the advanced runs (or the “I believe in god so if I die it’s all good” runs). Not a great start for the confidence. Having survived the beginners run, Brad and I stepped up to an intermediate run, known as the “B line”. What little confidence I had that I wasn’t going to walk off this mountain without a limp, if I was in fact lucky enough to walk off the mountain, was shattered on not my first but second massive stack. At certain parts of the track there were steep drop offs which I tried to take slowly. A tip for beginners: do not ride your front wheel brake. At relatively slow speeds the brakes tend to lock the wheel. When the front wheel is travelling at 0kmh and the back wheel is travelling at 20kmh you’ll find your arse travelling at 15kmh as it flies over your head. I had 2 massive stacks where I flew over the handle bars and skidded for 2 to 3 metres on my back before stopping. Thankfully for the ladies my face remained unscathed. My back was all scratched up, but luckily no bears could smell the blood. By now my confidence was shot, the rocking chair was even starting to look dangerous, so I spent the rest of the day on the beginners run and at the skate park.
The skate park proved to be a lot of fun, providing you ignored the “No mountain bikes allowed on the skate park” signs. There were half pipes, jumps, and a big bowl. I even went a little crazy and did a 3 foot drop off one section, ignore the fact I wasn’t aware there was a 3 foot drop so it had nothing to do with courage but rather more finding yourself in a situation and shutting your eyes and hoping. As I enjoyed the relative safety of the skate park a family of 4 were enjoying the day riding their bikes. Well, they were enjoying the day until the 8 year old daughter had a massive stack after generating some speed wobbles and then just doing a massive face plant. While it was an amazing stack, what was more amazing was watching the father process the thought of “Bummer, should I get off my bike and help her? But if I get off the bike I’ll be having less fun. Man, being a father means making some tough decisions”. The time he took to get across to her was an eternity, to the point where I was about to step in to see if this little girl needed an ambulance. He eventually made his way to her, dusted her off, and they were back on their way.
After we handed the bikes back to the rental place, Brad went and checked out the local employment opportunities. A lift operator, or as they’re known in the industry “A lifty”, would start out on the stellar amount of $9.20 an hour. Spoony had been working 3 months so he had advanced up the corporate ladder to the point where he was making $10 an hour.
Surprised by the huge money to be made in the lift operator game, we went back into town and had dinner and a pint at the Longhorn with Spoony. After a pleasant meal we headed back to the campsite for a short power nap that lasted 12 hours. Asleep by 8pm, maybe we were getting too old for this shit.
Day 46 – Whistler to Vancouver Island (Nanaimo)
I awoke this morning after my 12 hour power nap and did a quick roll call on the body parts that weren’t sore, there were few present. The massive stacks from yesterday, coupled with the last 2 weeks of camping meant possibly the only non-sore part of my body was a small corner behind my left ear.
Today was my turn to drive, with today’s destination Vancouver Island. Without giving much thought, we figured we’d head to Victoria for the night, and catch the ferry from Tsawwassen, a port south of Vancouver no doubt named by a dyslexic explorer. In order to get to the dyslexic port, we had to drive through Vancouver. Now, the thing that had struck me about Canadian roads was the excessive use of signs. If you were approaching a stop sign, there was a sign in front of the stop sign saying you were approaching a stop sign. If you were approaching traffic lights, there was a sign in front of the traffic lights saying you were approaching traffic lights (thanks for the heads up, there were so many times I thought I was approaching a Christmas tree until I saw those signs). Now accustomed to the Canadian way of having signs indicating you were approaching a sign, I figured a major exit like the exit to Vancouver off of Highway 99 would have ample pre sign signage. BUT NO! You pretty much round a bend and before you can read the sign indicating the Vancouver exit you’re driving past it shouting “S#$t! We just missed the exit”. This meant we took the scenic route, driving through North Vancouver, across Lions Gate Bridge and through the traffic of downtown Vancouver.
Thankfully, when we finally got to the dyslexic port there wasn’t a massive queue for the ferry, so we waited all of 15 minutes before driving on. In what surely must be the breaking of some maritime law this big boat had no bar. Surely that’s the first thing you think of when you design a boat! The designers of the Titanic knew it, that’s why they didn’t waste any time on designing the ship to have enough life boats. Despite that glaring omission, it was generally a pleasant ride.
Off the ferry and heading towards Victoria with great gusto, it was when we were about 20kms out of Victoria that Brad did some quick calculations and realised the weekend was only 3 nights away. Impressed by his ability to still know what day it was after 46 days of drinking, I was even more impressed by his proposed suggestion that it would be better to spend the weekend in Victoria as that was a bigger city and hence had bigger parties. It was now agreed it would be better to spend the weekend in Victoria so we pulled a massive u-turn and headed for Nanaimo for the night. The great thing about this tour had been that we planned little, because with planning comes expectation, with expectation comes disappointment. Expectation is a burden too great for reality to carry. I loved the lack of planning as the most memorable moments in my life have come when unexpected. However, there are some merits to doing planning. In this case, had we decided to go to Nanaimo in the morning, and instead have caught the ferry from Horse Shoe Bay instead of the dyslexic port, we would have saved ourselves 4 hours driving time.
Anyway, I went with that crap about the journey being more important than the destination. This is probably the best way to approach life when going to Nanaimo. While the Cambie Hostel was great with a cheap double room with its own bathroom, that’s pretty much where the highlights stop for Nanaimo. Underneath our room was a bar; in that bar was essentially a meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous who’d dropped from the meeting agenda that annoying point that deals with the stopping of consumption of alcohol. I’ve never seen a bigger collection of alcoholics in the one place in all my life. These were lifetime alcoholics; you could see it on the skin in their face. I got talking to the barmaid, a lovely lass from Melbourne named Steph who was off to South America after her tour of duty at the Cambie, and she said these patrons where in all day, every day. While I talked to her, Brad got stuck talking to some 40 something alcoholic named Mav. Mav was a dodgy alcoholic who spent most of the night playing the bar workers off against each other saying that she’d paid the other bar worker for a 6 pack, and that she would now like to collect that “paid for” 6 pack from the other bar worker. Needless to say, no cash ever exchanged hands with any bar worker, and no 6 pack was exchanged to Mav. To add to the ambience, out back there were too drunken 30 something women who would get into a fist fight periodically. At the pool table were some 40 something alcoholic couple, who’d no doubt met at a liquor store, got engaged at a liquor store, and held the wedding reception at a liquor store. In a commentary on how bad Brad and I play pool, the drunken bloke had a chance to win the game by potting the 8 ball into a side pocket. In a commentary on the effects of excessive use of alcohol over a long period of time, the drunken bloke ended up jumping the queue ball off the table, missing the 8 ball by about 2 and half feet (above it) handing victory to Brad and I. I’d won games before when people have potted the white off the black, but never when the white has been launched 2 and half feet off the table. Out on the street, were either more alcoholics or crack heads, it didn’t really matter what you labelled them as they all fell under the umbrella of fucked up lives.
We were brave enough to venture outside to a fast food restaurant. In there was another crack head seeing what he could get for 5 cents. In a sad indictment on Nanaimo life, the young chick who served us seemed pretty much accustomed with having to deal with these people everyday.
After dinner we had a few more beers in the Cambie, talking to Steph, before heading to a bar called Queens. This was a dive bar just above the Cambie on the dive bar scale (I could see how it got such a regal name). It was filled with fat chicks, and we somehow stayed there until closing time at 2am.Nanaimo: the collective known for a group of alcoholics.
Day 47 – Nanaimo to Tofino
Today we headed off to the sleepy beachside town of Tofino. We dragged ourselves from the hostel room at about 10am, checked out and headed to the café next door to get our complimentary muffin from a woman with a “How the f#$k did I end up in this crack town?!?” demeanour. I always try to end all conversations with people like that with “Have a great day” in attempt of giving them sort of glimmer of joy for the day, but I figured this woman hadn’t had a nice day since 1989.
Highway 4 was to lead us to our destination, a long curvy road that seemed to have roadwork being performed every 2 miles. Luckily, it was Brad’s turn to drive and I was now starting to take some joy from the fact I had crushed the “Mr Early” side of his personality and he was now coming around to my way of thinking.
Just outside of Tofino we went into the visitor info centre to get an idea of the highlights around town. We represented our country tremendously, with me wearing a t-shirt that had a picture of a young topless woman obscuring her chest with 2 giant watermelons advertising Daisy’s Big Melon Green Grocery, while Brad had his FCUK t-shirt that gave insight into the deep inner workings of the male mind by having the inscription “One of us is thinking of sex…okay it’s me”. This only came to our attention when the visitor info chick made some crack and asking if we were into funny t-shirts. Australia’s 2 finest ambassadors; again building another healthy image of its citizens. We thanked the visitor info chick for her help, checked out Long Beach, passed some comment about it being quite short, and headed into town to find some accommodation. My first impression of Tofino: so this is what happens when your sister becomes the mother of your children. The locals just seemed to have a certain look about them that’s hard to describe, they all just seemed to look very similar yet different from the rest of the Canadian population. To paint a picture of how slow and sleepy this town was, there was some 20 something bloke trying BMX tricks down the main street, while another kid tried skateboard tricks at the main intersection.
When we checked into the campsite we were somewhat under whelmed by the original site allocated to us. It was hidden in the trees, on a 30 degree slant with more rocks than come out of most quarries. We headed back to the check in desk and asked if they had anything better. They did. In fact a lot better. A campsite just metres from the beach. In another oddity of touring logic, Brad initially wasn’t keen to take the site as it was over $40 a night, an amount he would’ve dropped at any bar in the country without giving a second thought. I think I might I’ve dropped some profanity, pointed out how awesome it would be to watch the sunset over the beach with a few tinnies, offered to pay, before Brad came around. We set up the site just metres from Mackenzie Beach. We did indeed watch the sunset over the beach with a couple of tinnies and I did start to entertain the possibility there is a God. God sensing this opportunity to get another punter on board, served up some delicious campfire cooked chicken wings beautifully marinated in barbeque sauce. God, now like a politician in the last moments of an election campaign, then delivered 2 Quebec women who needed help with their camp fire. I was now starting to understand what The Doors were singing about, I would’ve loved to have light their fire (not quite obvious, but that was an attempt at a double entendre ). Firstly, they needed an axe. Secondly, they needed a big strapping Aussie bloke to cut up that wood. Thankfully, unlike me, Brad is quite strapping and he cut their wood. Whilst we finished off dinner, they came back to our site again asking us to help them start the fire. We’d only managed to get our fire started courtesy of another new neighbour having a propane torch, so we asked to borrow that torch again before rushing to the Quebec campsite like fire fighters, but instead trying to start a fire. We chatted for a short time, but without trying to be too forward we headed back to our site offering the girls the lure of free beer. Free beer; great for catching blokes, not so great for catching women. Unfortunately, they didn’t come back to the site again for the rest of the night.
God, like a true politician, had promised so much yet at the end of the day had failed to deliver.
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