Melbourne to Vancouver

Our first real day (Vancouver)

Ok, so we really have been here for two days but yesterday was a real write off. The reason for this- biorhythms, jet travel and all sorts of internal biological turmoil that results from moving way too fast. Ivan Illich had it right when he said "In contrast ..(to the bicycle).., the accelerating individual capsule enabled societies to engage in a ritual of progressively paralyzing speed."

We certainly had an accelerating capsule to travel in.. the modern Airbus is a marvel. 560 tonnes, and it gets up in the sky! And fast too.

This is taken from the inflight screen. Bad quality but you get the message!

2. The movies were actually pretty good. I really enjoyed Un Amour de Jeunesse- a beautiful story of two young lovers and the tortuous tension between the need for freedom and the wish (need?) for commitment. I found the situation to be authentic and the acting was excellent. There is a. review HERE.

3. The other movie I watched was Wanderlust. I really enjoyed it. Jennifer Aniston and a guy I recognise but can't name. I'm not enough bothered to look it up, but you can. A funny romp. Totally unbelievable, but really ideal jet plane entertainment.


3. I am now absolutely certain that getting two and a half hours sleep before a long jet flight is not a good idea. Note to self.. prepare and pack way in advance next trip.


4. The airbus is amazingly smooth to travel in. Turbulence was absolutely minimal, in fact I found it quite enjoyable as all that happened was we wiggled around a bit.. enough to make you realise that you are still alive in your zombie like state.


5. The United States travel system is really disorganised. There's more panic than thought gone into their anti-terror procedures. A farcical example is their customs declaration form. They insist that you fill it in truthfully, then reject it and make you lie on the form to satisfy their needs! By this I mean...


Q. How many family members are you travelling with? I wrote 3 because I am with Mary, W and V. This was rejected because V has Mary's surname and W has mine. You can only put people with the same surname on one form, so Mary had to do another form for her and V, but the Q remains.. "How many family members are you travelling with?" 


I was told the correct answer is 1, referring to W. I have to disregard the other two members of my family. W and I were processed together and had our fingerprints scanned and photo taken. Mary and V were processed separately, so the US ID system doesn't have us linked! The hidden assumption here is that only nuclear families with patriarchally assigned surnames are real families.


Other evidence of disorganisation is the near total lack of instructions when you pass through security (I did some things "wrong" and held up the system for 10 minutes). Loudspeaker announcements seemed almost deliberately timed to clash.... loudest speaker wins, but really you cannot understand either announcement. When we were there an alarm was sounding.. a horrible noise that went on so long that when it stopped there was spontaneous applause from the crowd!


This would have been OK if the security staff were pleasant. They weren't really.

W struck it rich at LAX- he found one US cent.

When we were in the line to board our boarding passes had no seat printed on them so a frustrated (and delightful) Alaska airline lady had to assign us seats. She had no access to our real names... just 5 letter codes!! She made up some names and gave us seats in 4 different parts of the aircraft. This made the process of filling in the Canadian Customs declaration a bit like playing paper darts in the aircraft.


6. My ankles swell.


7. It's a really long way from Melbourne to Vancouver.

Our Airbus at LAX

Finally, we arrived in Vancouver and had a delightful taxi driver who gave us tips on restaurants and lessons in British Colonial History (Ghana, India, Canada). He dropped us at our apartment and we collapsed. Late in the evening I left the others snoring and had a walk down by the river.


Some pictures taken on my evening stroll-

A really cute little ferry on False Creek

Yes, it was pretty gloomy weather when we arrived

Looking west from Kits Point

Vancouver downtown from Kits Point park.