Island Introduction

To get to Victoria you have to be really hung over and catch two buses that are so sick-inducing you spend the whole hour-and-a-half with your head in your hands while the other passengers keep their feet well away from your groaning. Andreas was fine, despite attending the same party the night before, and took pictures of the middle of nowhere Ladner Exchange.

I recover from motion sickness during a transfer at Ladner Exchange.
Then the ferry. See Andreas marvelling through Active Pass, and some multi-cultural (First Nations, Indo-Canadian, White) guys drinking beer from White Spot cups and playing guitar. After they yelled at us for a few minutes we obliged to be their audience.


This guy couldn’t play too well, and occasionally talked loudly about obscene sex acts.
On the Schwartz Bay side friends picked us up and shuttled us into town for dinner (chili) and birthday cake (Thanks Anita and Alistair (now 27)). We also drank beer and watched the Olympics before heading downtown–with a brief stop at my Brother’s apartment, the “Hobbit Hole.”

Brad’s apartment does not fit Alistair.
Oh ya, Anita also gave Brad her Great Aunt’s banjo from the Depression.

Brad learned the Banjo in a couple hours and plays it down Yates Street on our way to breakfast.
Saturday night at Steamer’s Pub was alright as usual. The band was Hey Ocean. After closing Andreas bummed a cigarette of some women in the smoking pit outside. He doesn’t smoke, but the look went well with his swollen eye (another story).

She only gave him a menthol, but Andreas was still pretty cool as a smoker.

After some 2am pizza at The Brickyard these three turned down Yates at a pretty good clip.
For a relaxing Sunday Scott put us up at his place in Sidney and by the afternoon Andreas and I were sailing for the first time on his boat, the 76 Trombones.

Scott’s house: front, back and our guest room upstairs. Andreas said it was pretty much the coolest house he’d ever been in.



Sailing was cool. Andreas steered well.Then we made Sushi for dinner at Sco’s (another first for Andreas).
Breakfast the next morning was scheduled downtown again, 30km from Sidney. Even if we had a bus schedule we weren’t catching one without any change so we hitchhiked on Highway 17. Soon enough a really nice guy in a Jetta with a couple kids’ seats in the back picked us up. We learned about swimming in the freezing ocean and how to deal with car salesman.

Crossing the highway to hitch into town. Our ride said he’d drop us off downtown but let us out at Mayfair Mall instead. So Andreas got to ride a double decker bus the rest of the way. Another first.

Free breakfast with Cat and Ross at Floyd’s. You toss a coin for the meal: double or nothin’.
Monday morning meant Tofino time, where we were to meet some fellow Emily Carr students who took the Nanaimo Ferry over. We rented a very nice car because all the cheap ones were gone. We also drove all over town to finally find an over-priced mini-to-mini cable to plug our iPods into the car deck. Donuts and hot chocolate at Tim Horton’s and singing along to good music (New Order/Joy Division, Sufjan Stevens, Weezer, Of Montreal, etc.) all the way up island.

The rental: a Chevrolet Monte Carlo.

Andreas with the World’s Largest Hockey Stick in the town of Duncan.
Arriving at the hostel in Tofino that evening priorities were set: get beer and drink on the dock. Even friendlier than the RCMP officer who let us enjoy ourselves were the two locals in the VW Van that picked us up and took us back to their house boat for some top-notch Canadian socializing: more beer, bongs and guitar. A couple guys were German; I think the owner of the place and the van was Quebecois. That Rob guy on the guitar was particularly intense. We traded making up lyrics to folk songs.

Party with the locals.
Finally, the beach. Long Beach, just a few km outside Tofino. Cold and gorgeous. Both evenings spent in Tofino would be like that: drinking on the beach, trying to start a fire, freezing our asses off, clear starry sky.

Long Beach.


Mike bought an axe, like on a whim, at the local co-op. Then (unrelated) I tried to make everyone help me prop a giant log into the beach.
When the propping-a-big-log-upright-into-the-sand failed everyone went out to dinner and I built a fort.


A fort I built.
Finally, on the fifth day the rental was due back at 1pm so we set off from Tofino at 7am. With an hour to spare we stopped in at my old apartment (Andreas got a tour of my old view), my university and the Provincial Legislature. Then we literally chased some buses downtown and missed some good timing to the next ferry so we shopped along Comic Book Row (Johnson Street) in downtown Victoria before the 1.5 hour bus back to the boat and, eventually, Vancouver.

Andreas meets our Queen.

Tired, the ferry back to Vancouver is spent in contemplation and a good book.