A classic cadillac, a communist and a catastrophe on a mountain - my minibreak to BC‏

My mom is in town. This means countless trips to the overcrowded, touristy hot spot of Pike Place Market. Countless. To buy peaches, one at a time. (For those who have never been, it is a very cool outdoor/indoor market in downtown Seattle that sells fruits, vegetables, seafood, flowers and assorted crafty things - it's where they throw the fish to entertain the crowds. It is neat and I do love it, but just like the entire state of California, so does everyone else. In summer this means droves and droves of cruise ship tourists who pour off of the boats, cameras in hand and take endless pictures of Rainer Cherries and halibut packed in ice. Then there are the tourists who bring their 4WD stroller down to the market and ram it through the crowds....I love the market but I strongly dislike it in the summer months - I am not sure you could find a local Seattleite in the market between May and Sept)

So to reduce the number of times I would be subjected to tourist trap hell we decided to take a little road trip - to beautiful British Columbia! Not terribly far from here, not overwhelmingly exotic but they have Tim Horton's and they don't tend to throw seafood so it sounded fantastic to me.

Our first stop once we made it into the motherland was at a family friend's (Tim and Raven) house in Langley B.C. (okay that was the second stop, Tim Horton’s was the first stop). There was a recent baby born there so my mother needed to get her grandmother fix in and play with little Judah (who was mighty adorable). We then decided to take a little trip into Vancouver with our friends from back home to see the highlights of the city. Traffic/parking restrictions made it so taking one vehicle would be a better option - we all piled into Tim's 1960 Cadillac and went for a spin through Gas Town and Stanley Park. So in the car is Tim, Raven, Judah, my mom, me and Boosapaul. Who? It's a long story as to exactly why Boosapaul ended up with us that involves a missionary 'trapped' in God's work and a C-section, some other time, over beer. Anyway, Boosapaul is a Cambodian national briefly allowed out of his country (the government let him go because they still have his wife and children) to come to Canada. He has never been out of Cambodia before, he sleeps next to the bed on the floor in Raven's guest room, he is constantly bowing to us, he didn't find the 35C/103F weather too hot and is a former member of the Khmer Rouge (don't hold it against him, they killed his entire family and gave him no option).

My mom loved our little tour through town. She sat in the front of this Cadillac like she was the Queen of England - not that I ever imagine her majesty would be nestled between a surfer looking hippie and a former member of the a communist dictatorship. We shortly parted ways and my mother and I settled into a Vancouver hotel for the night to sleep but mostly enjoy the air conditioning.

I awoke early and set out to find coffee, and my mom packed - our things and anything that wasn't bolted down in our room (sorry Sutton Place Hotel), before our next adventure. An early morning stop at Granville Island, Vancouver’s equivalent to Pike Place Market, allowed my mother to get her market quota filled before we set off on the Sea-to-Sky highway. This is a picturesque 120km or so drive that links Vancouver and Whistler - mountains on one side of the road and ocean on the other. On the actual road are thousands of construction workers leaning on shovels. I think the idea is that they are there to make the highway wider to accommodate the 1 billion or so people who intend on passing along it during the 2010 Winter Olympics’. Hmmm considering the limitations of mountain and ocean, the highway, at absolute best, and certainly not in all areas can never be wider then 4 lanes and will quite frequently need to drop to 2 lanes. I think they should give up on the highway and devise some sort of magical portal between the 2 Olympic venues - I'm guessing the construction workers think like me and that explains why they were simply shovel leaning and not actually working.

Alas after far too long we reached the quaint mountain town of Whistler. More utilized in the winter months on account of the mountains and skiing, those crafty folks have managed to find a way to get precious tourist dollars from summer going non-alpiners. Genius. You purchase a lift ticket, ride the chairlift to the top and then...well then you are at the top. It is quite nice up there, I mean if you are the sort of person that likes mountains, and wild flowers and glacial lakes. We also were able to ride the peak to peak gondola that connects Blackcomb and Whistler mountains. Quite a little feat of engineering there I might add.

At one point I noticed an oddity; the tourists were being herded, like mountain goats - we were rapidly being forced into a chalet. I frantically looked around for my mother and discovered her sitting on a bench, chatting on a cell phone to my sister, oblivious to the hundreds of people rushing by her for cover from what I now could see was a fast approaching lightning storm.

We, along with a few hundred other people, we then locked in a chalet at the top of Blackcomb Mountain. All the chairlifts were turned off - there was no way off this mountain except walking - at an elevation of 6000 feet, with nightfall approaching and a mother with recent bilateral hip and a knee replacement - this was not an option. No one else seemed to think so either. So we all sat and waited while pick up trucks arrived to truck everyone down the mountain. If this was Guatemala - no problem, we would all be down in no time. But this is rule-following Canada, so with every extended cab pick-up truck able to hold five people with seat belts and then slowly proceed down the unlit mountain road at a safe speed....it was estimated it would take approximately 10 - 12 hours to get us all off. Not to worry, they opened up the concession stands to sell us beverages and snacks.

Safely back in Seattle now. Have to run, we are off to....wait for it....Pike Place Market.