Afterlife, Part I: End of an Era
Righty. It’s been a while, and we’ve taken a while longer to sort through all the photos, and then I’ve taken even longer to write stuff down. And because there’s a fair bit of material to chew through, let’s do a trilogy! Why not, they even made a trilogy out of the Hobbit, and that book is like four pages long. Also, let’s completely ignore the beautiful way our posts have been categorized, so far. Let’s mix Han Solo with Rollei photos and random bits and all. Revolution! Chaos! Anarchy!
Okay, let’s start right where we left off. Shortly after all the sunsets and beaches with Albert all over, we had our first visitor! A few weeks ago, Agnieszka’s Mum, Maryjka, dropped by. I was still working at the time, and the weather was shit, so we didn’t do a lot. We DID go to the Vancouver Aquarium, though. And although my best guess is that you’ve all seen fish (even frozen fish at one point), there are still a few photos. Of course there are.
We enjoyed ourselves. Albert and I took the unbeatable bike-stroller-combination to get there, and then we had a good look at dolphins, barracuda, octopuses (I looked that plural up), jellyfish of all size and color, and stingrays. Amazing creatures, I even petted a few. No, really. They have a shallow tank where the stingrays swim in large circles. You get a brief about how to approach them, and then you can really, actually touch living stingrays. They feel like velvet, quite extraordinary. Afterwards, you smell like fish.
Of course, it wouldn’t have been the full experience for Maryjka without our beach and Albert’s swing. 🙂
This must have been the single one afternoon without rain while she was here. Albert learned that the Polish word for ‘grandma’ is ‘babcia’, and for days after she’d flown back home, the first thing he said in the morning was ‘Baba! Baba!’ (Also during that time, he learned that the polish word for ‘It’s raining cats and dogs’ is ‘Leje’. If you need a laugh, ask him how the weather is. It’s a running gag between him and Edek now, no Skype conversation is complete without it.) The two weeks went by far too quickly, and with far too few photos taken. I take full responsibility for that, and promise not to write the second trilogy in the series, as a way of self-punishment.
After that, there were a few more uneventful weeks at work. I got two shots in the trailer of ‘Doctor Strange’, which looks pretty promising. Here, let me show you, thanks to the power of the internet:
(That looks awfully small on my machine. Good to know that the power of the internet does have its limits, after all.)
I did some more look development on a small number of effects, which was fun. On my last day at work, I gathered the couple of nice folks I got to know a bit better on the roof for a few rounds of farewell drinks. End of an era, I guess. Not all of it was fun, but the last few weeks made up for a lot.
(Rollei)
(Rollei)
(Handing me back the Rollei after taking this one, Philip used his iPhone to take the same photo. It gives me great joy to be able to report, it didn’t look anywhere near this nice.)
I understand it would probably help if I introduced all of them quickly, but I’m going to pull a stunt I learned from the film industry, and put you off until the Extended Edition is released. Because we really have to rush along in the story here. (Of course, the Extended Edition will end up not being released at all, due to budgetary reasons, but you don’t know that, yet.)
(Rollei)
We haven’t seen Erik in ages and were really happy when he announced he was coming to Vancouver. Albert has become a bit shy, lately, and took several meetings until he trusted him with his toys, though. 🙂 The Burley goes everywhere with us, as you can see. We had to have the front wheels cleaned with pressurized air and an oil spray, recently, because there was so much sand in them, they didn’t turn anymore. 🙂
Completely unrelated, but there are SO many cherry trees in Vancouver. It’s a shame they don’t blossom all year ’round.
(Rollei)
(Rollei)
Photo: Claudia
Photo: Reinhold
Photo: Claudia
Right up our street, as they say. 🙂 So wait, who are these people suddenly contributing photos to our blog? Why, my parents, of course. And because the weather was really bad during Maryjka’s stay and for many, many weeks after, it finally decided to let up and show us its sunny side. And good riddance! I was almost ready to do the unspeakable and go to a solarium, just to stock up on Vitamin D. 🙂
(Rollei)
(Look, look! I got the focus right, for once!)
Photo: Reinhold
For the first week of their stay with us, we just did the usual stuff – hang around beaches, have breakfast at the Red Umbrella, take walks around the Lost Lagoon. My parents went around town, and it was nice looking at their pictures and seeing the city through their eyes.
Photo: Claudia
Photo: Claudia
Photo: Reinhold
Photo: Claudia
Albert took that first week to re-acquaint himself with his grandparents. Once we were sure that we’d all be getting along nicely, we finally took off towards Vancouver Island. It’s roughly 300km from our door to Ucluelet, where we’d rented an apartment. And it only took us 8 hours to get there. Phew! Which makes the idea of driving the 1200km to Banff seem rather ridiculous, so we might end up not doing that. But that’s another story for one of the sequels. (Yes, of course I’ll tease future storylines in the first part, how else would I convince you to read the second and third?)
My parents brought a car seat for Albert and it’s already one of the better purchases we made for him – he loves it. Even today, when he sees a photo of our rental car, he practically tries to jump into the screen and screams “Auto! Auto! Auto! Auto!” After our frightening trip to the U.S. border the other day, we were extremely relieved at how much he liked riding in his new seat.
And so we packed our lunch packages, picked up our car and drove to Horseshoe Bay, and took the ferry to Nanaimo. Reasonably small boats, these ferries, they only hold a hand-full of cars and passengers, and it’s a really cozy experience.
(Rollei)
Photo: Reinhold
Okay, who am I kidding? The ferries are larger than I thought (I only know the one from Konstanz to Meersburg, so that might explain it), with capacity for 350 cars and over 1200 passengers. They have everything there – souvenir shops, burger joints, and – yay! – a kid’s room with a few toys and a slide. On which Albert perfected his stair-climbing skills, and figured out how to sit down and then scramble forwards on his butt, so now he can slide all by himself. (We still have to catch him, but at least he can get up by himself. Picking him up and putting him at the top of the slide a gazillion times in a row really started making us feel our backs.)
The ferry ride was painless, and so was the four-hour drive. We only made one short break, which is a bit of a shame, because there are some really nice spots along the route. But never wake sleeping kids, especially when in a car.
Photo: Reinhold
This photo is awesome, I’m ever so slightly jealous of my dad for taking it. 🙂 It looks into English Bay (you can see Burrard Bridge and Yaletown in the back), and the lighthouse on the left is the one we hiked to in Lighthouse Park. The island on the right is Passage Island, and if you look at the area in Google Maps and draw a straight line from the bridge to the ferry route, you’ll see that the time window for taking this shot isn’t exactly huge. Also, useless knowledge for discussions you’ll never have: it’s about 15.7km from the ferry to the bridge. (Thanks, Google Maps’ ‘Measure Distance’ tool.)
Photo: Reinhold
Photo: Reinhold
(Rollei)
Photo: Reinhold
(Rollei)
Photo: Reinhold
(Rollei)
Photo: Reinhold
We got to our condo in the late afternoon. It’s in a perfectly quiet area (although most of Ucluelet would qualify as such), just a few dozen meters from the beach. When we got there, there were two deer grazing in our front yard. They didn’t give a damn about us pulling up in our van, just looked at us with innocent eyes and continued grazing. Crazy!
The condo itself was huge, the kitchen alone was probably half the size of our apartment here in Vancouver. Everything was modern, comfy, spotless. If you ever visit Ucluelet in a group of four or five people, consider the Bella Tramonto. I’ll wrap it up at this point and end this first part as all first parts should, with a sunset. Which was taken from our patio. Yes, that was our view for a week.
In the next part: trails, no whales, and style over story!
Photo: Reinhold
