Monday, Aug. 15: Stanley Park Death March
Sorry it’s been so long without an update! I help throw a big conference every September, and the preparation & anxiety involved tends to preoccupy me. But it wrapped up on Sept. 23 and was a huge success. I wrote most of this before Rosh Hashana and my ER visit, and just remembered that I hadn’t cleaned it up and posted it. So now you get another installment of my summer vacation! And it’s already autumn! I suck!
The other reason I put off this post for so long is that I needed time to post my pix from that day onto Flickr. It was helpful to go over all those shots, since they brought back some of the less distinct events from the day. Here’s the photoset! (It includes the previous day’s meanderings, too.)
About that conference: one of the attendees was the guy from Spokane who died earlier in the year. We had a great time shooting the breeze after the conference closed, and he asked me how the rest of the vacation went. Which was his veiled way of saying, “Why haven’t you written up days 5 and 6 yet, jerk?”
Who am I to disappoint a guy who came back from the dead?
So, back by zombie-riffic demand: Monday was our last full day in Vancouver. We’d been advised by several parties not to miss Stanley Park, and figured we could meander through it for a few hours. Amy already had plans for our dinner, a can’t-miss Indian restaurant a short distance away from where we ate the night before.
As I’ve written, I did no research before this trip. In fact, the map we got from the front desk of the hotel didn’t include the entirety of Stanley Park. It cut off somewhere near the northern tip, but we had no idea how far. Amy & I are heavy-duty walkers, so we figured it couldn’t be too far.
We started our meander around 9 a.m. The previous day, I noticed a Sydney Opera House-looking set of white scalloped sails a few blocks down the street from our hotel, on the harbor. We walked down to it and discovered that they were part of the World Trade Office, which wasn’t nearly as exciting as discovering a shrunken version of Sydney’s architectural treasure. Boooo:
We got some brunch at an Italian place called Scoozis, a Greek diner-y sort of place with a sprawling wall of fame. I can’t recall any of the celebrities the gregarious owner was standing with, but it seems he was a New York Giants fan, so that was something. It’s nice to have something to remind me of NJ.
Then we started walking along the riverfront to the park. My phone’s GPS was working just fine, so I had a good idea of where we were going, but it only occurred to me after the first mile-plus to turn on the GPS-X app, so we could track the whole shebang. We were still in the marina before the park when I did that, having passed the Vancouver Convention Centre, outside of which was a wacky sculpture and a giant Orca made of Lego:
The day was beatiful and sun-drenched. You can get an impression of that from the pictures in my photoset. We weren’t taken in by the vague predictions of clouds and occasional rain, and dressed much more appropriately than we had on Sunday. Neither of us had optimal shoes for long walks, but we weren’t wearing blister machines, either.
In addition, I’d left my sunglasses in the car the night before. Rather than ask the valet to get the car so I could snag them, I wore my baseball cap. This turned out for the best, since I would have otherwise scorched my scalp from all that sun. Also, it was a Blue Jays cap, so I thought it might serve as protective coloration.
I decided that we could walk along the seawall path, and then head back up the trails into the park proper if we got bored or tired. Amy thought that sounded like a good idea, or didn’t tell me it was a bad idea, and so we leisurely ambled along, passed by roller-bladers and tourists on rented bikes. They were clunky, with chopper-like yokes. I thought about all the people I saw bicycling along in Copenhagen in ’04, and couldn’t remember the last time I rode a bicycle. Not sure when I last wore a baseball mitt, either; it can’t possibly have been when I was in grad school.
Our first stop in the park was the totem poles. I was disappointed to find out that they weren’t all old, but was heartened that one of the new ones appeared to be inspired by The Human Centipede:
We decided to cut out the eastern loop of the seawall, missing a small lighthouse in the process. I checked it out on Google Maps Streetview; we didn’t miss much.
And we walked. I’m writing from more than month away, after an interminable amount of work has demolished my finer thoughts, so I can’t offer up too many details. They don’t seem to cohere into much of a narrative. That’s why I’m glad there are pictures for this segment.
What did we see? Those totem poles; a woman playing with her dog, throwing a ball into the harbor for him to fetch; a tree that had come down a few months before and had 117 rings; Girl in a Wetsuit; kids playing in a little park with water-rifles; the Lions Gate Bridge; Siwash Rock;
tourists from everywhere; the harbor giving way to the big water of the Salish Sea; the beautifully stark rock walls that only revealed their faces when I took their pictures; a seagull doing a Zoidberg impression; the great open sky.
There was the smell of the sea and the wind and it was all so relaxing and wonderful that we tried to ignore the fact that we were walking an awfully long way.
I thought the GPS app had switched to kilometers, but no; we’d gone miles and miles on foot, and the map looked like we had quite a ways before we were back out of the park and in the city. (The park borders the West End, which border downtown, where our hotel was.)
We wanted to get off of the seawall path and cut back through the park to start our way home, but the rock walls precluded that. We considered tackling some tourists and stealing their bikes, but Canada’s politeness had taken hold of us.
SPEAKING OF WHICH! The evening after the first day of our conference, one of my advertiser pals texted me to say that one of the session speakers was a “rabid right-winger.” I’d seen the two of them talking during our post-show cocktail reception, along with two more advertiser-pals from Toronto. Pal 1, who’s from Texas, told me that the conversation among the four of them got heated, and the speaker declared, “You [Pal 1] are a liberal! And you and you [Canadian Pals 2 and 3] are socialists!”
I saw Pal 1 at dinner that night, and he repeated the story, adding all sorts of details about how the conversation moved from healthcare (it’s a pharmaceutical conference) into labeling all the participants. He said the speaker had grown so frustrated that he threw his hands in the air and left the conversation.
I told Pal 1, “That’s why I don’t talk to anybody about anything. You’re too likely to find out awful shit about people and who they are.”
But the next morning, I saw the two Canadian pals waiting for their ride to Newark Airport. I hurried out to say hello and find out if I’d have to do damage control. I didn’t want them boycotting the conference because of a bad experience like that, even though they’d been coming for years.
I said, “[Pal 1] told me you had an . . . interesting conversation with [the speaker] at the reception.”
They both looked at me a little puzzled. One said, “Yeah, we talked for a bit.”
“All good? Because [Pal 1] told me it got a little heated.”
“Really? I thought it was a pretty constructive conversation. [The speaker] is coming from a really different direction than we are, since we have socialized medicine back home. I don’t think it was a bad talk at all.”
I thanked them, wished ’em a safe trip home, and remembered the Foreign Office minister’s first line from In The Loop: “You needn’t worry about the Canadians. They’re just happy to be there. (Pause) Yes, well, they always look surprised when they’re invited.”
So we decided we just couldn’t mug people in Vancouver, and continued our Bataan Death March of Pleasantness. When we reached Third Beach, we found a road leading back into the park, and headed up to follow the interior trails back to the city. We grabbed some water and snack food at a concession stand, then got back to walking.
The trail, it turned out, shadowed the seawall path, but at least we were under tree cover and out of the sun. And it brought us by . . . The Lost Lagoon! (it wasn’t interesting, but had an awesome name)
We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary last March, so maybe this will change later on, but we’re still in the “As long as we’re together, we can (generally) laugh about weird circumstances.” Like a walk that would ultimately hit nearly 10 miles over the course of a single vacation day.
I’m lucky that I found a soulmate who’ll see the adventure in experiences like this. Or at least one who doesn’t bitch and complain that I’m an awful husband for leading her on walks that neither of us are prepared for.
When we got out of the park, I tried to find a route back through the city that would put us near a cab. But my city of reference is New York, where it’s impossible not to find a cab if you’re, um, of a certain pigmentation. I have no idea how to find a cab in a normal city.
(About that pigmentation thing: I once stumbled out of a Halloween party in the west Village in a drunken, recently-passed-out-and-vomiting haze. It was 2 a.m. and I was covered in fake blood, having gone to the party as Roy (as in “Siegfried &”) and carrying a duffel bag with my regular clothes, so I could change the next morning. Within 10 erratic steps, a cab pulled up to see if I was a fare. Please keep a straight face when telling me that the same thing would’ve happened if I was black.)
We walked along some condo-lined streets, closing in on Howe and the Metropolitan. We didn’t come across any cabs and decided we could make the last mile-plus just fine.
Amy zonked out when we got to the hotel. I went out to get some Tim Horton’s (and stop in the at Harry Rosen, where I was assaulted by that Cuccinelli blazer I mentioned on Day 4). We both rested, cleaned up, and then got dressed for early dinner.
Amy’s food-blogger pals had recommended Vij’s as the must-go restaurant for any Vancouver trip. The place took no reservations and opened for dinner at 5:30, “so show up before 5:00 and wait,” she was told.
We did. There were already a dozen people waiting when we arrived. I let her stay in line while I walked around the neighborhood, clearly not having walked enough that day. I stopped in at a used bookstore and comic shop, but didn’t buy anything. I reminded myself about my shopping ban, and how I have more than enough to read for a while. As in, 40 years.
I rejoined Amy outside the restaurant, where customers were bantering away. Some had been to Vij’s before, and wanted to make sure they got the first seating. When the doors finally opened, I inadvertently cut off someone who had gotten there before me. I apologized profusely, because it was a clear breach of protocol to cut in the line. We hadn’t queued up outside; we just knew who had arrived when. It was vigilante seating.
It was a mind-blowingly awesome meal. For appetizers, we had
- Pork belly (naturally raised) sauteed in tamarind, on paneer
- Chickpeas in star anise and date masala on grilled kale
followed by
- Rajasthani-style goat curry with lightly spiced vegetables
- Beef shortribs braised in yogurt, tomato and cumin curry
On top of that, they served super-awesome chai. I’ve never been a chai drinker, but this was all that. They posted the recipe on their site
- 4-5 orange pekoe teabags
- 1″ cinnamon bark
- 1 1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds
- 4 green cardamom seeds
- whole milk
- 5-6 teaspoons sugar
- 5 1/2 teacups water (the actual size of the cup in which you’ll serve tea)
The pork belly was fine, but served shredded instead of in squares, which kinda removes the character. The shortribs were fantastic, better than the ones at Cru the night before. All in all, the meal was a fine reward for completing our Stanley Park Death March.
We finished dinner before 8 p.m. and drove back over Granville Bridge. I made sure to grab my sunglasses before getting out of the car. We conked out right after getting back to the room. We had a long day ahead of us on Tuesday.
Not that we knew it at the time.
Coming next: Day 6: Maple Salmon, Border Crossing, and Black Bottom
(I have an idea: why don’t you check out the whole Vancouver photoset?)