Flight to SEA

My short week in Vancouver came to an end with a very picturesque flight out from YVR to SEA. Only a half-hour flight (I remember the drive down there was about 3 hrs). The sun was out in a cloudless sky and the views were excellent. Above is YVR itself, with Richmond off to the right. I could probably find my parents' home in the pic if I zoomed in and studied it a bit.

To the right we have the Tsawassen ferry terminal, with two ferries in the pic. The last time I was on these in 2005 on the trip to Graphics Interface in Victoria, they took a very interesting route, right in between a number of small islands. I had forgotten about that, thinking that they ferry just went straight through from terminal to terminal.

The rest of the flight to Sea-Tac was over a bunch of islands (San Juan?) which I thought provided a really nice area for gunkholing on a cruising yacht. Indeed, I saw several interesting anchorages, marinas, and the like. There were a number of sailboats, but I think outnumbered by power craft, at least this morning. I'm not quite sure what these islands were, were they Canadian or American? At one point the pilot said that Victoria was visible off the starboard side. I was on a port seat so I didn't see Victoria, but if it was there, perhaps the islands are Canadian. Would need to consult a chart to confirm.

No Fun Zone

Vancouver, the no fun zone. As I was driving to Richmond from UBC I caught a glimpse of the RCMP doing what it does best: setting up speed traps! I just had to pull a U, turn around, drive down the side street, stop, and snap a picture. You can just make the cop by the van looking at me and starting to run towards me. I didn't hang around long. Besides speed traps, the cops usually set up road blocks to check for drunk drivers. I didn't come across any of these this time, but you know with the Canada day long weekend coming there'll be plenty of 'em set up.

Yesterday the weather rolled in, to remind me of what a typical Vancouver day was like. Right now they're calling it Junuary, since it's been fairly chilly most of the month. The sun is just now starting to make an appearance...every other day or so. Of course it's out now again, just as I'm about to fly out. Looks like it'll be a nice weekend.

Dinner on Kits

Last night I went out for dinner with my UBC hosts. I was treated to dinner at the Watermark restaurant on Kits beach. Apparently there was some controversy about establishing this restaurant as it was thought by local residents that it could be too rowdy (what with alcohol being served and everything). Meanwhile, as it was beforehand, the building housed the dilapidated (or nearly so, so I was told) changing rooms. I think the renovations made transforming the changing rooms to this seaside restaurant were brilliant.

Excellent location with an excellent view of the harbour. Facing west, the restaurant offers the potential for very nice sunsets. It was almost a bit too much yesterday as the sun (yes, sun! in Vancouver; it's true) was a touch blinding before it slid in behind clouds. So we got all of the white glare but not enough of the beautiful oranges, purples, and pinks.

The menu was fairly contemporary, with local items, BC or west coast at least. I had a pint of Sleeman's and the lobster dumplings for appetizer: fantastic! I love dumplings and I love lobster. Whoever put this combination together is a genius! I could feast on these for dinner regularly. They're somewhat similar to the fried dumplings that our local Chinese fast food place makes, except that our local cook's dough is a bit thicker and I'm never quite sure what meat is actually used inside the dumplings (pork maybe...hopefully nothing more "exotic" :)

For the main course I had BC salmon on a bed of risotto accompanied by a glass of Pinot Blanco. Simple, fresh, delicious! For dessert we had The Cholocate Bar—some kind of chocloate moose with a scoop of raspberry ice cream on the side, dotted with raspberries on top. Smooooooth... Walking outside after dinner, looking at the water and mountains made me wonder why I ever left!

Residency at UBC

Yesterday I flew (most of the day) to Vancouver out of CLT. It's a bit of a drive up there from home, but the airline tickets were about $300 cheaper, so even with gas as high as it is and with parking ($16 a day?!) it should still be better than flying out of GSP. As a bonus, I got upgraded to first class flying from DTW to SEA, sweet! The seat at lower right was the one I got. Plenty of leg room and nice and wide seat (I slept the majority of the 4 hr flight and enjoyed the in-flight meal—they didn't serve any complimentary meals in coach, just the $5 buns from what I heard). And I still accrued 1,200 miles. It'd be nice if they upgraded me on the way home as well.

Since we don't have an opthalmologist in Clemson (that I know of), I visited one in Richmond. I wanted to make sure my retinas are in good health. This fellow dilated my pupils and took good long looks at my eyeballs before giving them a clean bill of health. A bit of a relief, although I suspect that next month's visit to the optometrist will reveal my right eye's prescription will have changed from last year. Which will probably mean new contacts again. Meanwhile, I think the basketballs in my eyes have finally shrunk back down to their normal size so I don't see halos around everything.

This afternoon I checked in to the UBC campus residences. Nice rooms at a reasonable price. Small, plain, with a kitchenette and an internet connection. Just the essentials :)

Motorcycle Maintenance

From what I've read and from my previous experience, Zen-like motorcycle maintenance is achieved with proper tools, parts, and manuals. Last week when parking the bike at school I had a brain fart and forgot to extend the parking stand. So when I went to lean the bike to left like normal, it just kept going right down to the asphalt. STOOPID! Well, I tried to hold it up to lessen the impact, but it was destined to go down. Once it leans past a certain angle, there's no way to hold it up. For me anyway. It hit on three points: transmission cover (scratched!), left tail light (scratched!) and clutch lever (busted!). Somehow the clutch still worked, but the metal (metal? that brittle crap) lever and its housing cracked. It was off to the Harley dealer to get replacement parts. Looking through the shop guide, I noticed that there was a little ring clamp that in the manual a special ring clamp tool was prying off. Sure enough I found the ring clamp. I took one stab at trying to scrape it off its pin, but this is one of those tasks that is sure to fail without the proper tool. I would have either scraped the old housing (wasn't worried about that) or broken or lost the ring clamp. That would have caused my blood pressure to spike for suuuure, so I just decided to stop right there and go get me one them ring clamp tools. $20 later, the ring clamp came off without any trouble (well, there was one slight moment of angst when the thing uncoiled itself and sprung free to fly across the garage; luckily Friday's gig still hadn't disrupted my binaural stereo location hearing ability, so I heard where the little ring clamp was bouncing before I noticed it, still spinning on the floor). After that though, through the application of various other wrenches (some used for plumbing than bike repair), the repair took only a few minutes. I even adjusted the clutch lever to be a bit higher up on the handlebar—something that's been bugging me for a while now. So $75 and a couple of scratches later, the bike should once again be operational.