The Story So Far

Right! Well I've finally got an hour or so to spare, so here goes!

I'll start with before my trip to Canada.. just for completeness sake. I made my way back to Reading on the 29th of June and spent that day and most of Saturday doing the final clean of the flat before we moved out. Was hard work.. Especially wiping down all the walls. We hadn't done it since we'd moved in so there was lots of dust and that just turned into droplets and marked the walls up even more. Was a long process! Spent the rest of the weekend, until Monday, at my parent's, before returning to Brighton.

Tuesday night was sort of a leaving do. I invited all the regulars and a few extras and it turned out to be a great night. We went to Smugglers, a bar in Brighton (used to be pirate themed, but now not so much - Booo!) where there are pool tables and lots of comfy chairs :D

Click here to see the rest of the photos from the evening.

The day of the flight I had to be up bright and early. Set the alarm for 6:15 and had to be out of the house by 7am. The time at the airport was pretty uneventful really. After lining up for ages to get through security, I had breakfast and waiting to get on the plane. I'd chosen a window seat (and paid extra) so that I could take pictures but they wouldn't let me have my laptop and my camera bag on the flight, so I had to choose the laptop really (not that I used it - but the laptop bag had the rest of my stuff in it.)

Once I got on the flight I was pleased to note that 1) There was no one sitting in the middle of the group of seats I was in and 2) the aisle seat was occupied by a very nice girl from Quebec called Daniella. The flight went a lot quicker than I thought. I watched all the movies (one about a famous dog with a toupe, one about a farmer/astronaut and Music and Lyrics) and talked to Daniella. I'm sure I pissed her off by continually pointing mountains out to her which all looked the same. I was just thrilled to be seeing real mountains again!

On landing into Vancouver, I had to wait around for a few hours for a shuttle/bus to take me to the Ferry Terminal. It was quite a wait, and was a very hot day, so I bought myself my first Slurpee in 12 years and my god it was good! Sat next to a couple on the shuttle who giggled when I told them I worked for Eli Lilly, correctly guessed that they'd heard of the company through Cialis (the ED drug) and was treated to innuendo about their sex life on the trip through Vancouver. They were actually very nice and the guy was pointing out local landmarks to me and helped me figure out what I was doing once we got to Horseshoe Bay (the ferry terminal).



I was supposed to be getting on another shuttle at Nanaimo (the Ferry's destination on the island) to get to Courtenay but while I was walking around the foot passengers departure lounge, I ran into an old school friend, Oliver Zihlmann, who was waiting for the same ferry. I was going to meet up with him in Vancouver when I'm there later on in the trip so it was some surprise to see him sitting in that seat.

I hung out with Ollie on the ferry and we met his brother on the other side, and he gave me a lift to where I'm staying now, in Courtenay. It was a long day of travelling.. I think I got into Courtenay at about 8pm local time, which is about 4am UK time. So it was about 22 hours of straight travelling.

My first full day in Courtenay was spent getting my bearings as well as as a drive around in my host (Maureen)'s car. I went up to a beautiful beach called Goose Spit (as attractive as that sounds). There are some amazing views from there! There are plenty more pictures in the set on my flickr page.



In the evening, I'd arranged to meet my friend Chad. He came around to Maureen's for a BBQ and then we went out in his HUGE truck! We went to his friend Gord's place where I met Hetty, a guy (also with a big truck) who took us to the Music Festival that was happening nearby. We were going to try and sneak in through the 'poaching routes' though the forest but we ended up trying to drive in through the VIP entrance first, and it worked! They waved us in behind another van! We stayed around for about an hour. Not watching any of the bands, but drinking cans of lager in the VIP area and laughing about how lucky we'd been to get in for free.



After that, we went to a local bar called 'Gullivers' where I got very very drunk on tequilas and lager and forgot alot of what happened the rest of the night!

Anyway, I'm going to have to stop writing for now.. This is taking much longer than I thought and its getting late! If you want to see all the photos from my trip (well the ones i'm happy to show people), they're on my Flickr Page.

Stay tuned to hear about my day on the lake and also, find out what a Cougar means!

Chris.