Friday, February 28, 2014

Return to Vancouver



Early morning view of the city and mountains from the apartment.

We arrived back in Vancouver around midnight last night. Because of the lengthy walk at the airport from the terminal to Customs, we requested assistance and arrived at Customs on a battery operated cart along with several other "walking challenged" passengers.

The Customs agent chose to process the flight crew first and seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time with each of them. The final crew member admitted to carrying an apple when questioned about fruit. That further delayed the process as he explained that the apple would have to be disposed of in a nearby container. 

Finally he turned to the assisted passengers. By this time there was no one else in the Customs area! It was empty!! 

On the first cart were two passengers from Fiji. Onboard the plane they had asked me to fill out the form for them and I had transferred their passport info onto the form. When I asked the form question about whether they were bringing any meat into the country, they said no, just fish! Of course this became an issue with the Customs agent, further delaying our entry into Canada!! When we finally reached the luggage carousel there were only two lonely bags circling endlessly.

It was after 1:00am (3:00am in PV) by the time we dropped our bags in the apartment and found a notice stating that the Fire Alarm system for the building was being tested in the morning. They would start at 8:30am on the top floor...our floor!!

We were groggy but ready for the loud, invasive alarms in the morning. When they finished we drove over to Main Street for a coffee. In hindsight it probably wasn't a good idea to drive while jetlagged and just plain exhausted...but then, hindsight is always great!! Enroute I had noticed that my right turn signal wasn't working. Outside the coffee shop I saw a parking spot that should probably require proper parallel parking but there was a guy right behind me and I couldn't signal my intention to park...so...I decided to simply drive into the spot. Unfortunately I nicked the car that I was attempting to park in front of and the driver was sitting at the wheel!! She was not impressed and I was totally humiliated! ...54 years behind the wheel without an incident! It was a very minimal paint scrape on her car and nothing on ours.

My stomach was too upset to enjoy a coffee afterward so we just headed back to the apartment. I placed a call to ICBC to report my part in the incident before we retired for a much needed nap. Even with earplugs firmly in place I was woken by the announcement that they were testing the building alarm system again!!

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