Monday was so great. High spirits, made the ferry when we didn't think we would. Lovely Hannah rescued my water bottle for me and delivered it by hand. Ran into Christina and Johannes (also so lovely) AGAIN because they are our dopplegangers (I guess). Drove into Van on a cool but beautiful day, singing along with Foreigner and John Mellencamp, sights set on Ikea.
And then I bought the wrong map.
So, we missed our turn off but we had a map (after I got the right one) but there was another 'major roadway' coming up. Maps should really be selective about what is in fact a 'major roadway'. Ours wasn't. Not in my opinion, anyways. And that's what's really important in this story. So we continued along the roadway and then we got...kind of lost. EVEN WITH A MAP! It's absurd. Anways. Totally not the only absurd thing in this story.
So we somehow got off the bridge and got situated in Coquitlam where we encountered the WORST DRIVERS IN THE WORLD. Somehow not aware of the term 'blind spot'. So sad. And Coquitlam is also the land of the vertical climb. And this is a very bad thing in a uhaul. So as we achieve 500 ft above sea level in a couple of meters and boxes topple over in the back, we then realize that there is an irritating median between us and the road we need. And this happens a couple of times. And then I ask "what's burning?' and my husband calmly replies, "It's us." Oh sure. Just the tires, thankfully. Just! We finally catch a break onto the road, ignoring the smoking rubber smell and drive into New Westminster.
By this time my perfectly well-intentioned hydration habit is catching up to me and when I see the next traffic jam, I decided I can't...quite. So I pee on the side of the road and we're off again. Finally, the big blue and yellow comes into view. We were both about ready to throw someone through a plate glass window and we weren't even in Ikea yet. We grabbed what we needed in there and got out as fast as possible. Luckily, the Trans-Canada was right there. We sped along it and missed the turn off which led us right into North Van.
No kidding.
So we pulled over into a parking lot, took a deep breath, fixed our resolve and turned around. I'm obviously not a very good co-pilot. When we finally got into Mount Pleasant (which has been plunderously changed for the Olympics, we ran into more irritating median trouble. After screaming at the windshield, we turned down one of the narrow-like-a-bronchiole streets, clipped a mirror and finally pulled over in front of Scott and Jo's. While Scott and Matt when to see whether it was a mirror or a small person, I told Jo about our day.
And then Lovely Jo aks, "What were you doing in New West?" which was exactly what I needed to make me laugh finally. They made us delicious dinner, we went for a relaxing walk with the dog they were watching for a week and then cratered for a nice long sleep.
Scott and Jo were brave and sweet enough to come back and help us unpack which went super smoothly. Matt and I went for a big shop at Safeway (because we left all of our refrigerated food in Victoria by accident -maybe a nice parting gift?). We called a cab because we had a small nations worth of food with us and a super nice guy named Raven Hope picked us up, gave us some great advice about shops nearby and his facebook info. "If you ever need a friend in Van," he said.
Vancouver, despite our first tour of the ENTIRE city, has been very good to us. We have a really organized landlord, really sweet neighbors and a beautiful neighborhood to grow in.
Bri
P.S I think I've mentioned this before but I'm obsessed with Glee. I make Matt sit through it with me and he really gives it an honest shot, bless his heart. Anyways, the last episode I saw had this great song on it. Go figure, I go from posting worship music to Lady Gaga covers.
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