Three for Three and Eight for Eight

Having accrued only a few social contacts during our first 10 weeks in our temporary location, we tend to gravitate toward town and college activities. Those at the college tend to be free or 'by donation'. By a random twist of fate, we had something happening each week night this last week. Monday - movie, Tuesday - movie, Wednesday - music concert, Thursday - kayaking, Friday - play. Over the preceding weekend we had also seen a movie on DVD. That's 3 movies, rather closely packed together, unusual for us. And all three were good, three for three! They were "Melinda and Melinda", "The Mistress of Spices", and "Urga - Close to Eden". The first was Hollywood, but clever. The second and third we can highly recommend. In fact, for me the third is one of those special movies that will stand out among all the movies seen in a lifetime - despite leaving me depressed about what is happening to the planet in our lifetime.

Thursday's weather forecast was belied by the actual weather; no thunderstorms nor even rain arrived. There was wind, but the Kayak Master chose our route to circumnavigate Newcastle Island in the safer and easier direction. Eli has become accustomed to the kayak, finding it reasonably comfortable and no longer tippy. Nevertheless, the cold and dark may shut down our season. This was our eighth reasonably successful trip; so we're eight for eight! Each trip was between two and three hours of paddling, We started the sessions in September, so this is perhaps more kayaking than we'd do if we owned kayaks. The university provides kayaks, all gear, transportation, and the Kayak Master at a cost of $5 per time for students (e.g. Eli) and $9 per time for faculty (e.g. me). It's typically a small and fun group.

On Friday evening, we attended a play, "How the other half loves", at the Nanaimo Theatre Group's facility, the Bailey Theatre. The play was witty and interwove the lives of three couples simultaneously, rather than sequentially. It worked well. The Bailey is a perfect size, generally well designed, and in good repair.

Yesterday we again hiked Arrowsmith, but this time with Ray. The weather up high was foggy and increasingly cold and wet as we ascended. As enjoyment turned to deep despair, we hurriedly ate our lunch and turned about well before the summit - worried about wet slippery rock becoming iced. Nevertheless we had a good workout. Ray had driven, so we picked up our car at Ray's after a spot of wine. We may try another weekend hike with Ray next Saturday, but the forecast needs to change first. So ended our frenzied week.

Richard
2006.10.29

Arrowsmith, not Aerosmith and for sure not Erosmyth

This morning we headed up island in the direction of Port Alberni, with the intent of hiking up toward the top of Arrowsmith (5962 feet summit). Fog wisped across the road here and there. The various trailhead directions we had gave detailed instructions, all of which started with something like "take the Mount Arrowsmith exit off Highway 4". It turns out that exit has no sign and is a logging road, 'with the gate open' as we learned from a local. Once we found the exit, the trailhead directions were just fine and we parked at about 780 meters. The 'Judges' trail up Arrowsmith is very well marked, but is steep - we were frequently clambering hand over foot. We were concerned that coming back down would be super tricky i.e. steep, loose rock, loose soil, human skulls and femurs, the whole works. Suitably invigorated at 1230 meters, we had lunch and headed back down.

We then went to Port Alberni, which is at the end of an inlet from the west coast of Vancouver Island (rather like Norway's Trondheim fjord), but actually much nearer the east coast (but inaccesible from the east by water). It remains a lumbering and fishing town, but is also luring tourists by emphasizing all the natural wonders and NOT mentioning the stinky pulp mill. We grabbed coffee, some dreadful baked goods, and some excellent shrimp and smoked salmon.

On the way home we stopped at the Coombs Country Store. It has quite the selection e.g. Lakritz Batzen (licorice boats) from Germany and Austrian pumpkin seed oil (not like our pumkin seed oil - different pumpkins). Once home we devoured the shrimp from Port Alberni accompanied by cocktail sauce from the Coombs Country Store.

Tomorrow will be quiet. Monday after school is Fringe Flics ("Mistress of Spices") and Tuesday evening is a film in the Worldbridger series at MalU ("Urga - Close to Eden"). Thursday evening will be our 8th kayak adventure of this Fall. Last Thursday featured gale force winds in the strait so the John the Kayak Master took us to Westwood Lake to slalom through the stumps.

The morning fog never did leave the strait and, as we head to bed, is creeping uphill invading the neighborhood and shrouding the Nob Hill Acropolis. We're hearing an occasional foghorn - it is a working harbour, after all.

Richard
2006.10.21

Gordie's Mountain

Yesterday Eli and I made our third ascent of Mount Benson, in the company of Ray and Gordie. We started from Witchcraft Lake. There is an extensive (relatively unmapped and sparsely marked) spiderweb of tangled trails as well as logging slashes to navigate to reach the top, but as long as you're headed up, it's no problem. Nearly all upward paths converge at the summit; although there are a few other lower viewpoint destinations as well. Coming down is trickier; the downward paths do not converge and it is considered desirable to end up at your starting place e.g. your parked car, instead of 10 km. to the south. All of the paths I've encountered so far include sections requiring some clambering and those stretches will become difficult as winter makes them slippery. Perhaps the lower viewpoints will suffice as destinations during the time of snow and ice.

At age 72, Gordie knows all the paths. He's walked this mountain frequently since a boy; perhaps that's why he remains as nimble as a mountain goat. He walks up the mountain (~ 3000 foot rise) a couple times each week and does maintenance work on selected routes. On this trip, after we reached the top, Gordie sent us on a particular downward route while he took another, so he could do some brush clearing on one of his newer trails, "Whiskers". As he disappeared, Ray turned to us and said "Did you notice that this is Gordie's mountain". We replied in the affirmative. After a bit of mixup on just which was our intermediate meeting place, the four of us reunited and made our way back to the car. Gordie showed us various interesting artifacts along the way, requiring a bit of bushwhacking.

Eli and I had driven separately, so the two pairs separated at the cars for the ten minute drive back home. Eli and I picked up a DVD movie on the way, changed into fresher clothes once home, and then went for a quick late afternoon meal at Delicado's. After that we watched our film, "Shadows of the Sun" a predictable and somewhat contrived piece that kept us reasonably amused while we ate popcorn and drank apple cider. The movie was set in Tuscany, but not one faithful to the modern time period of the film. Among the contrived scenes were the carpenters working in the town square with their hand tools (don't they have shops at home, anymore?) and the steam locomotive near the end of the film pulling equally antique railroad cars, passed off as typical rail travel in today's Italy.

Richard
2006.10.15

The Harbour

The Nanaimo harbour is a colourful ( when in Rome ..., hence the '...our') mix of work boats, occasional monster cruise ships, sea planes, the pleasure craft of the wealthy, and humbler (human propelled) boats. The sea planes are the older teenagers - making loud noise as they attempt to tear free from home, quieting down once they're free, but always returning. The monster cruise ships spawn wee ferries that bring the monsters ashore to shop and recover from seasickness. The ocean front, as seen from the downtown, is much more immediate and impressive than that in front of Victoria's Empress (essentially a fat canal). But Victoria does have better shops, restaurants, and more aggressive panhandlers.

We had two recent notable forays from Nanaimo. The first to Victoria featured lots of walking - the Moss Street farmers' market (splendid near the harvest moon) and assorted art galleries. Lots of the art was lovely or intriguing or mind snaring. What captured me was the Emily Carr permanent exhibition interspersed with her autobiographical snippets. I was compelled to buy 4 of her wee books - she was also a talented writer, obviously. We dined at Zambri's and felt transported back to Italy as we worked our way through the 'menu'. I finished with grappa and was truly finished.

Our second trip was on Monday, with Edel (Eli's cousin) and Les (Edel's husband), who drove us up island, north from the Lantzville metroplex. We went to Coombs, a touristy place with 'goats on the roof', goodies, baddies, and all in between. My favorite stop was at a little fish shop near the ferry landing at French Creek where we got some wonderful (perhaps twoderful) smoked salmon.

Now we're back at our temporary home in Nanaimo, aging gracefully but inexorably. Thursday evening is the last class of our 5-week sea kayaking session. Drawn to the cold, dark, and wet like moths to the flame, we have signed up for the next 5-week session, as mentioned in an earlier post.

Richard
2006.10.10