We were only a little late leaving home at 5:45am and traffic was only a little bad, so I was only panicking a litle till we got to John's house and he drove us to the train station.

We recently found out that Keith, an ex-step-father of Lisa's, was going to be on the train with us from Seattle to Edmonton. Keith was also panicking slightly waiting for John to bring his luggage. The train station was packed with people standing patiently in several serpentine lines winding around each other without any apparent pattern. A kind and knowledgeable girl directed us toward an empty baggage check window and I reluctantly wheeled our luggage train over there. The bags were immediately whisked away and I was again directed to a non-queue where Keith and his traveling companion, Dee, were waiting. The masses of people were heading south, presumably towards work. The remaining few of us were pleasantly, excitedly waiting to begin vacation.

I was still panicking though. We were instructed to bring our birth certificates and I still don't have one. I found out how to order one over the internet and it would be express mailed to Gig Harbor as soon as I was far, far away. I faithfully boarded the train while working out scenarios involving planes and taxis to go home and get it and meet Lisa somewhere along the way, as she celebrated our 25th anniversary alone.

We had a good time in our comfy seats or hanging out in the snack bar car with Keith and Dee. The train track was right along the waterfront most of the way and it was a rare beautiful sunny February day.

We pulled into Vancouver about noon and they took us into customs car by car. We were in car 8. Plenty of time to sweat it. We followed a family talking with Texas drawls and carrying a Gig Harbor bag. Turns out that the grandmother was from Houston and the rest of them lived across the street from our old house in Gig Harbor. When we were finally standing at the pearly gate waiting to be welcomed in or cast into the outer darkness, he asked for our ID. I handed him my driver's license and Lisa began digging for hers. He told us to have a nice trip and didn't even wait for Lisa's ID. Whew.

We all headed for Chinatown. When we got there I said something (kinda loud) about looking for a good place to eat. A man in front of me said "You want to go to a place that's good and cheap? Follow me." So we did. $4.25 for chow mein or rice with 2 toppings. We got shrimp lightly fried, but still in the shell, spicy tofu, ginger chicken chopped up with the bones and gristle still in it and something with a lot of mushrooms. The place was packed and the guy that led us there told us just to sit in any empty seat, so we sat with some Chinese people who spoke very little English. We didn't recognize anything they were eating. We used chopsticks. They used forks.

Keith's knee was bothering him so they headed for the skytrain (mass transit) to go back to the station. We meandered awhile (that is, Lisa browsed every trinket shop and I took pictures of dragons on lampposts), then we realized it would be nice to find a liquor store so Lisa could fix herself a drink on the train.

"Oh God. Same old thing day after day after day."

We couldn't find a liquor store in Chinatown, so we found the skytrain and headed downtown. We wandered around there until Lisa got cold and tired. We found a place for her to sit near a skytrain station and I went hunting. I'd looked in a phone book and tried to remember unfamiliar street names. I followed a couple of those streets to the end with no success and finally saw an area of cheap commercialism and dove in. Sure enough, there was the holy grail. It was packed! Liquor stores must be really hard to come by. Now I was only a little lost and had 40 minutes to find Lisa, catch a skytrain and find the station. We did.

Keith and Dee had staked out a spot in the front of the line for general admission coach class (or, as someone in line (later identified as James Koole) said, "this train has 2 classes, first class and no class"). We classily boarded first and our bags were waiting for us in our closet, I mean double bedroom. It had two chairs and our bags in it and was pretty full. We managed to shove things around and make a little space, but it ain't no suite. Once we got underway, we went off exploring and found the lounge dome-car with free champagne and hors d'oeuvres. Then a man came by announcing first call for dinner. I was already hungry again after racing around Vancouver, so we followed him. He seated us with a couple of retired schoolteachers (Harry and Mary Anne) from Vashon Island. They say it's a small world, but is everybody from Puget Sound or related to us? I was fascinated by their tales of work, life and parenthood (8 kids between 30 and 50).

When we got back to our compartment, the chairs had vanished and bunk beds had magically appeared. Lisa went off to the lounge (to get a drink, turns out I'd gotten the wrong booze) and I turned off the lights and watched the scenery by the light of the clear full moon! I tried to get pictures of moonlight on frozen lakes, but it's beyond my camera's abilities.

See?

Lisa was relaxed from the lounge and exhausted from the terribly long day and crawled into the upper berth to sleep. I was too glued to the big screen real-time tv on the wall. I kept waking up all night from passing lights, but couldn't bring myself to close the shade.

Return to index.

On to day 2.