Inside 3 hours and well inside 20 bucks I'm at the YWCA hotel. Compact room 8th floor. Costs less than BC Ferries charges for the car.
BC Ferries -- 13.60
Blue Bus -- 3.75
One seat back row metal dude pierced punk & a long & lean boy-man born and raised in Chemainus. Works on building outdoor adventure hardware. Geekiness is pervasive on this bus and the girls are going for it big time -- toques, gadgets, sideburns... On the ferry: families, dads and boys... Chemainus boy-man asks, "Why are you going to Vancouver?"
"Oh, visiting -- any excuse to get out of Nanaimo -- where are you off to?"
"Visit my uncle, haven't seen him for a while. I was visiting my sister in Nanaimo -- did some hiking and rock climbing. Maybe do some shiatsu -- someone my uncle knows."
"Oh, what's that? Some kind of massage?"
"Yeah, well, I was doing some swimming / log rolling kind of stuff with my friends and the one guy launches off the end of the log but it all goes wrong and he ends up with his tail bone on my back. So maybe this shiatzu guy can set it strait."
I say, "I'd hate to let a chiropractor work on anything near my neck."
"Yeah", he says, " but mostly I'm just visiting my uncle and the shiatsu guy's a friend of his. But hey -- I'm packing up to leave my sister's and I says how'm I gonna pack up all this stuff, so I buy a $200 pack -- here it is."
Says I, "It's an investment."
"Yes, and the next project I was supposed to be working on got cancelled -- well, not cancelled exactly, but ( long complex story of Fort St John oil companies vs provincial government bureaucracies) I went ahead and bought a state-of-the-art off-road mountain bike..."
"It's an investment", says I.
'Yeah, I guess, but it's a $2400 bike. But my sister's in the business, so I got it for $1700."
I love this kid.
From the shared bathroom at the YWCA hotel:
"Mommy! I need you to wipe my tushy."
