For all that “Victoria” claims to want to be a world class city, you’d think they’d do something about that scroungy little poor excuse for a bus station!
I was there this morning, catching an early bus to get to the ferry so I could get to the airport and fly to Chicago for the weekend. Anyone who knows me knows that this is entirely out of character and yes, I realize I’m completely destroying all the good carbon karma I’ve established by being vegan and riding my bike and living an obsessively gentle lifestyle all these decades.
But Jay’s one of my bestest friends in the whole entire world, and it’s his 50th birthday party. I received the invitation over a month ago and promptly dismissed any ideas of actually attending, knowing Jay would understand. I don’t fly, I don’t have that kind of money, and I don’t fly. I don’t like the pollution, or the body scans, or the cramped and elitist nature of flying. Okay, I took a short flight from Tampico, in Mexico, over to Cuba the last couple of years … but that was part of a humanitarian aid mission and I rode buses and trains all across the continent and back besides. Then, a week ago, after receiving a few stray photos that Jay sent to me while he was sifting through his life collection preparing a birthday photo collage I suddenly realized --- Jay is one of my bestest friends in the whole entire world, and I’ve gotta go to Chicago!!
So I checked online and couldn’t find anything that was in any way affordable, asked a doggie walking friend about travel agents, ended up chatting with Russell who was able to find a flight through Phoenix leaving from Vancouver’s airport Friday morning and returning for Monday afternoon. Through Phoenix. And I had to find my way to Vancouver and back. And it was still gonna cost a small fortune.
I thought about my bestest buddy, how he’d miraculously survived that near death experience a few years ago, how I’d travelled on the train to visit him in San Francisco when he was really hurting, how I realized then that we’re all mortals, darn it, and none of us getting any younger. I thought about the almost 30 years that have passed since we were both youngsters working in different offices, chatting on the phone, how his description of a Northern California sunset sparked my interest, about the time I drove to California, all by myself in my early 20s, to go visit a guy I really didn’t know that well but who has turned out to be one of my bestest friends in the whole entire world. We worked together in the Pacific Northwest, travelled together in Australia, he flew to Berlin to meet up with me outside the bombed out church when I was on a solo European journey in the early 90s, we drove to the incredibly amazing city of Prague. When he lived in Seattle I visited regularly, during spring or summer University breaks. He returned to California a while ago, and soon he’ll be moving to Washington DC so who knows when I’ll see him again.
I thought about all the things I could do with the money I’m spending on this trip …. the Haiti relief, the Chile fundraiser, the many local organizations who have had their funding cut by a crass, uncaring, evil bunch of thieves who call themselves Honourable.
But this is Jay’s 50th birthday and he almost died once already and who knows when I’ll see him again. We have so many happy memories, so much laughter shared between us. So I’m on my way to Chicago for the weekend (thanks Mom and Dad) …. to see Jay, to reacquaint myself with the friends and family I know, to meet the ones I don’t, and to add to a vast storehouse of fond remembrances.
As my dear departed birth father often said, all we really have are our memories ….
… a little later ….
I survived airport security, opting for the body scan rather than the pat down. I’m still not fully recovered from the woman, last year, having her way with me after I’d worked sooooo hard taking all that humanitarian aid to Cuba. Being a good citizen, helping those who need it, working for peace and justice and a liveable planet …. these things, apparently, make me a criminal - one of three out of over a hundred who was so treated. Today, in Vancouver, everyone's getting to choose .... so I stepped into the machine and got the radio waves, the (imagined greasy perverted) man upstairs found no underpants bomb devices, and I was able to proceed.
Interestingly, the only “white” people I've encountered were the airport attendant I asked to direct me (in this rather oversized airport – it’s grown since I was last here, and she had a thick European accent which brought Robert Dziekanski to mind and some relief that perhaps they’re providing for people whose first language isn’t English) in the proper direction to find the airline, the one blond woman working at the airlines, and the guy who actually asked me the questions (where am I going, why am I going there, etc). Everyone else is some shade of brown. Seriously!
Unlike many, I would guess, this put me at ease. As an El Salvador friend of mine suggested, when I saw him at a fundraiser for Cuba for Haiti recently, if anything saves this nation it will be immigrants. I had to think some about that …. some immigrants are filthy rich and greedy profit driven capitalists, I said, they won’t do us any good. But what he meant, I’m guessing (our conversation was interrupted at this point) was the sense of community, the centuries of resistance (or at least surviving) various empires. If there’s any hope for a nation fairly recently (by comparison) infected with colonialism, overrun by “vive the individual” propaganda that presses down on us from any and all available advertising spaces, perhaps it’ll be thanks to the diversity of spirit and basic urge for survival that is genetically encoded in indigenous peoples from across the globe.
Anyways, I passed all the various tests – paid the $26 US to check one little sturdy suitcase (my beloved little green case first used when I flew Wardair to visit my Grans in England way back in the 60s, back in the day when kids got to see the cockpit and they used real cutlery for the served food), double checked its tag to make sure it will actually end up in Chicago, made it through the bag search (I had carefully packed only necessary liquids in the requisite tiny containers and secured them in a little plastic bag), got my shoes off and back on without the assistance of chairs (there were a few dozen people, one chair in sight, and I didn’t think it wise to wrestle the elder fellow out of it), passed the body scan (though the last of my remaining decrepit old eggs might have been irreparably damaged by the radio waves), and found my way through the shopping centre maze that is the airport to find a cup of tea and some free internet with a view of the newly olympically clearcut mountains.
Anyways, I passed all the various tests – paid the $26 US to check one little sturdy suitcase (my beloved little green case first used when I flew Wardair to visit my Grans in England way back in the 60s, back in the day when kids got to see the cockpit and they used real cutlery for the served food), double checked its tag to make sure it will actually end up in Chicago, made it through the bag search (I had carefully packed only necessary liquids in the requisite tiny containers and secured them in a little plastic bag), got my shoes off and back on without the assistance of chairs (there were a few dozen people, one chair in sight, and I didn’t think it wise to wrestle the elder fellow out of it), passed the body scan (though the last of my remaining decrepit old eggs might have been irreparably damaged by the radio waves), and found my way through the shopping centre maze that is the airport to find a cup of tea and some free internet with a view of the newly olympically clearcut mountains.
If only I could turn the channel on the obligatory nearby tv pundits yabbering about that thing they're calling health care reform (you don't like abortion? educate women and provide birth control!) south of the border. As I leave for Chicago with 5 million dollars worth of health insurance in tow (at $5 a day), I think of one of the Street Newz vendors who's having some serious cancer surgery today, another one who's getting an annual x-ray to check on a spot he's had on his lungs for many years, a third who recently survived knee surgery, and another one who checks in periodically to make sure his HIV meds are appropriately managed. All these fine individuals would no doubt be dead by now if we lived in the land of the free.
Hurray for the profit motive, eh? And I wonder what they'll do with all this airport stuff when the oil runs out?
Hurray for the profit motive, eh? And I wonder what they'll do with all this airport stuff when the oil runs out?
