hydrangea blossoming

hydrangea blossoming
Hydrangea on the Edge of Blooming

Thursday, January 27, 2011

Vancouver Adventure

Months--even a year--can go by without our getting up to Vancouver proper, whose heart is only about 20 miles away from us here in Point Roberts.  There's the traffic, there's the parking problem, there's the fact that I like it where I am and that the internet can deliver unto to me most of the things I might need so I don't really need to do much shopping in the 3D world.  Nevertheless, we did make the adventure trip on Tuesday.

The weather people had promised us partly sunny.  Unfortunately, the part that was sunny was not anywhere between Point Roberts and Vancouver central.  Very grey and in and out rain all the way.  It seemed very adventurous until the traffic made it seem a little more in the oppressive field, but we continued on to Granville Island where I longed for some linen supplies, and then we drove on to various places where Ed was chasing photographs.

He has a series of photographs taken thirty years ago by a well-known Canadian photographer and he is trying to retake the photos, to document the changes over that time.  He's been in touch with the photographer who has given him some sense of where he took the pictures, but it is not exact: e.g., Broadway, somewhere between Renfrew and Rupert.  Not an enormous distance, but still, after 35 years, hard to track down.  And then, we suddenly thought, 'maybe he was shooting south, not north?'  Indeed, a puzzlement.

It was about a 5-hour adventurous trip in all and I was reminded once again how living in Point Roberts, mostly staying in Point Roberts and the near environs, causes one to lose track of what cities are really like: how many people there are, how many buildings, how much color clash, how close together everything is.  It surely lacks a sense of harmony.  I was reading a survey of 20-somethings the other day and how they overwhelmingly looked forward to living in a city environment with all the action that promises.  While, doubtless, the 60-somethings are thinking about sun and trees and water.  Ah, we live, we learn.

1 comment:

BuckyHermit said...

To avoid the traffic and parking, you can always drive up to the Park-and-Ride near the River Rock Casino in Richmond, park your car for $2 and take the Canada Line to Vancouver instead.

Its proximity to the freeway would make it more favorable for going to/from Point Roberts.

(Here in Richmond, it only takes me 30-ish minutes to get to Tyee Drive -- very favorable drive compared to the folks in Vancouver proper.)