Tuesday July 3rd.. leaving Canada

We arose early to clean out the van. This was a chore.. we had been in it for nearly 3 weeks and there is plenty of storage space. Our bags felt heavy and we now had a couple of kilograms of food left over. We ate all we could.. a large breakfast indeed. We arrived at CruiseCanada at 9.10am. A monosyllabic German checked our vehicle and made circles on the inspection sheet. He said there were problems but wouldn't elaborate! I was surprised.. we hadn't had any problems and returned it with the same amount of petrol ("gas") as we had been supplied.

These problems amounted to nothing in the end.. returning the van took all of 10 minutes and was a routine performed without any interpersonal interaction.. we were just one of a huge number of consumers in this operation. They were pleasant and professional, but you really get the idea of how little humanity you can get by with when you have to run a huge operation.. the way of the world these days. I was really pleased we had subsidised the smaller businesses in Tofino and Cowichan bay.. they are really quite a contrast!

This shouldn't be interpreted as a big criticism. This is necessarily a big business. I have no idea of how many vehicles this company has, but I would imagine it is several thousand.. the depot in Delta alone is huge. We had travelled 3,800 km.. and you know that 31c per km charge.. well it's really 36c when you include tax. We haemorrhaged another thousand dollars into their till.

Today was a transit day. We had a pleasant taxi driver to the airport, but he couldn't speak good English (despite his own assertions that his English was good) and his driving was independent of any lane markings.. he was honked a couple of times. Anyway we got there safely.

At Vancouver airport.. different demeanours!

Soon we were being processed through US Customs. This involves being photographed and having fingerprint scans. William was nearly recruited into the US Marines by the officer who was impressed by his height and promised "If you think you're buff now, we will make you really buff". We transitted through Salt Lake City,

All tired!

US Rockies

Giant Reversi Game

This was a fairly small jet to Salt Lake City

Salt Lakes

Blurry, but it shows a policeman on a Segway at Salt Lake City Airport
In Vancouver they patrolled inside the terminal on bicycles.

I was glad I didn't watch the inflight movie.. it was completely green on all screens.

Cauliflower clouds

and late in the evening we finally flew into NYC. Wow! It's big and bright at night.. Here's a really crappy photograph. It's a two second exposure, so no way could it be in focus-

First view of NYC. There were a few illegal fireworks happening in premature celebration of Independence Day
but I didn't capture them.

Exhausted we piled into a cab ($45 flat rate to Downtown) and our cab driver Moss gave us an impromptu description of the sights along the way. Flushing meadows, movie studios, posh celebrity area, a hotel that Obama visits whenever he's in town and eventually, our home.. the Salisbury Hotel. It'll be 8 nights here. Don't ask me why, but we watched "Scary Movie" until about 2am... crazy!