Climbing adventures in BC - day 1 of 10, in transit
Getting up at a leisurely hour, leaving my truck at the Washington Metro station parking lot, riding the metro to Washington National Airport, two connection flights and roughly 11 hours later, Megan and I arrived in Vancouver, British Columbia. So our advanture begins...
The Canadian Customs officer was polite, but overly suspicious of Megan and I.
"How did you two meet, since one of you is Australian and the other is American?"
"We met while rock climbing."
"Oh, you're rock climbers?"
"Yes, we are going climbing at Squamish."
"Ahhh, so what kind of knife are you carrying?"
"Huh?"
"I mean you must carry a knife when you climb?"
"Ummmm, yeah, it's this small knife about this long." *Gesturing with hands*
"Does it have any sort of spring loaded mechanism?"
"... No."
Climbing gear and, apparently, dangerous knives
But we were finally let into Canada, and all is well. Picked up the rental car at Budget, the lady at the counter was very friendly and helpful. She even walked us out to the car in the parking lot, "Please be gentle with her, she's brand new." Our rental only had 42km on the odometer, hmmmm... not the smartest thing to give a brand new car to climbers.
As we drove through Vancouver, we came to a street with many Asian restaurants. Since we were hungry, we stopped and had a big dinner at a Chinese seafood restaurant, very good food, if a little pricy. After dinner we drove on, and promptly got stuck in traffic for a looooong time. The bottleneck? Some sort of police road block that was only allowing one lane of traffic to go by in a four lane highway. What the $@#@@!!
After the road block the traffic was light and smooth, but we still didn't get to the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park campground outside of Squamish until 11:30 pm, after they've closed the gate. Luckily the campground was very close to the gate, we walked in, found the first empty site, set up the tent while breaking all sorts of speed records, and crashed. It has been a long day. The Chief was not visible, just a dark shadow looming high above the campground against the night sky.
The Canadian Customs officer was polite, but overly suspicious of Megan and I.
"How did you two meet, since one of you is Australian and the other is American?"
"We met while rock climbing."
"Oh, you're rock climbers?"
"Yes, we are going climbing at Squamish."
"Ahhh, so what kind of knife are you carrying?"
"Huh?"
"I mean you must carry a knife when you climb?"
"Ummmm, yeah, it's this small knife about this long." *Gesturing with hands*
"Does it have any sort of spring loaded mechanism?"
"... No."
But we were finally let into Canada, and all is well. Picked up the rental car at Budget, the lady at the counter was very friendly and helpful. She even walked us out to the car in the parking lot, "Please be gentle with her, she's brand new." Our rental only had 42km on the odometer, hmmmm... not the smartest thing to give a brand new car to climbers.
As we drove through Vancouver, we came to a street with many Asian restaurants. Since we were hungry, we stopped and had a big dinner at a Chinese seafood restaurant, very good food, if a little pricy. After dinner we drove on, and promptly got stuck in traffic for a looooong time. The bottleneck? Some sort of police road block that was only allowing one lane of traffic to go by in a four lane highway. What the $@#@@!!
After the road block the traffic was light and smooth, but we still didn't get to the Stawamus Chief Provincial Park campground outside of Squamish until 11:30 pm, after they've closed the gate. Luckily the campground was very close to the gate, we walked in, found the first empty site, set up the tent while breaking all sorts of speed records, and crashed. It has been a long day. The Chief was not visible, just a dark shadow looming high above the campground against the night sky.
posted by Boer @ 7/01/2005
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home