Month: July 2018

Friday, July 20 – Vancouver, BC

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We landed an hour early, which is very strange. The schedule was 8:00am departure and 11:30am arrival, which make for a 6 1/2 hour flight after accounting for the fact that we are in Pacific Time here, and three hours behind. Our actual flying time was just over 5 hours, and we spent 20 minutes taxiing at EWR. But I’ll take it.

Pizza gets a haircut, July 2018

Of course, our hotel room wasn’t ready when we got there, we we dropped the bags and went out to explore and get some lunch. I’m not sure where we wound up; we went through what purported to be Chinatown, but didn’t see a single restaurant. So we walked over to the Gaslight district, where we found an pizzeria which did not add garlic to the tomato sauce. Winner! They had an interesting way of serving the individual pies: with a scissor.

The next challenge was getting home, as by this time Sally’s ankle was aching. Taxis in Vancouver are rare on the street, and there are no Uber/Lyft/etc. After failing to flag one down, I tried ordering one online which seemed to be working, but the driver called and said the address he had for us was miles away from us and he wasn’t coming. I finally managed to flag one down, but it took 20 minutes or more until we were inside.

The ride to the hotel was about 10 minutes.

Rosewood Hotel Georgia, July 2018

As the hotel had called while we were eating, we knew that the room would be ready when we got there. And it was, with our bags already in the room (1).

After resting for a while, we went downstairs and tried to eat in the hotel bar. But everything interesting was garlic-infested. So we went out to a noisy but pleasant restaurant where we managed to get some good food.

It’s 9:00pm, the sun won’t set for another few minutes, and we’re pretty tired. We were up at 4:30, and it’s after midnight back east. So that’s all for tonight.

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(1) We are saving money left and right. Not only did we avoid tipping a bellman to bring the bags up to the room, but our taxi driver from the airport dropped us at the side door and we avoided the doorman as well.

Airports are depressing places

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EWR Terminal C, Gate 97, July 21

We got here as scheduled. No Uber’s would accept our ride, but a Lyft came right away. The security was normal, under 10 minutes with TSA-Pre.

The gate is – always! – as far from the curb as possible. But we’re here. We have a place to sit, and the flight is on time.

The gate is on a lower level in the terminal – no windows. We have the usual moveable rows of five conjoined blue leatherette chairs to relax in.

Anyway, it’s boarding time. Talk to you from the other side.

The Bassman Cometh

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So, to my double surprise:

1. A few of you have been asking if The Bassman will be blogging about our upcoming trip, and …

2. I opened up the blog and the last entry was exactly one year ago (tomorrow).

New Jersey, July 19 – All my bags are packed, and I’m ready to go

I guess the excitement of our last trip, the excitement of our national political discourse, and the excitement of what’s been going on in our household have kept me out of the blogosphere.

In case you missed it, I/we missed the spring this year. Sally broke her ankle in March, which resulted in her loving husband providing 24×7 nursing and home care. This effort was compounded (1) by our decision to renovate our ground-floor bedroom, requiring us to (a) move all the stuff we own out of said bedroom, and (b) move most of the stuff to a couple of smaller (2) bedrooms on the second floor of our house. We also had to cancel a three week trip we had planned for May; you’ll have to wait until September to read about the rescheduled edition.

But anyway, it’s July, Sally’s sufficiently healed, and we fly tomorrow morning to Vancouver, BC to begin a two+ week journey through the Pacific Northwest. We’ll stay close to the coast, visit the San Juan Islands, Seattle, and end in Portland.

Packing for this trip seems relatively stress-free. Compared to our last major trip to Africa, we need a lot less preparation.

First off, pretty much anything we forget, break or lose we can buy along the way. If we can’t find it locally, Amazon awaits. Especially in Seattle, which is where Amazon lives 😉 . That was not true in Africa – what we brought was what we had. Even in Iceland, we assumed we couldn’t acquire much.

Second, we don’t expect the relatively extreme weather we had in African and our previous trip to Iceland. Cold weather clothing and heavy rain gear is just not required. I’m expecting moderate summer weather, maybe a shower here or there, and a few cool mornings. But since we won’t be running around in an open car at 6:00am, even if it’s cool overnight it won’t affect us much.

Finally (and this affects me alone), this trip doesn’t require the same photography planning as either Africa or even Iceland. I don’t need the heavy, specialized long lenses for animal photography, nor do I really need the same backup planning. I’ll take a few extra pieces just in case, but not much.

So the alarm is set for 4:30am, my bags are all-but packed, and we’re ready to go.

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(1) The effort was compounded. The fracture was not, although Sally – never one to do something halfway – broke both her tibia and fibula.

(2) “Smaller” is technically correct, as it describes the relationship between the size of the new rooms and the ridiculously large bedroom we normally occupy. Further, one of the rooms acts merely as my closet and dressing room. And neither is really “small” by any objective measure.