Interludes – Victoria/Vancouver – 06/27/2013

It’s always strange for me to go on the ferry these days. Until last week I hadn’t set foot on a BC Ferry for nearly ten years. It’s an odd experience to be on a boat that I’m not – in any way – working on . I remember when I used to think that the ferry was what cruising must be like.

My how times change.

For three years I’ve never set foot on a ship on a ship (my tall ships don’t count) unless I’m working. When I’m shipping out on contracts my commute is by plane not boat, and I usually desire to spend my vacations nowhere near a large passenger vessel. All this means that walking up the gangway to the ferry to Vancouver twice in the last two weeks was a very strange experience for me. Seriously! I keep feeling like I should be doing something! And wondering if I’m going to get in trouble for using my laptop in a public area. Like I’m supposed to be working. Apparently my relationship with large passenger vessels has been somewhat altered by my current choice of occupation!

In all honesty I’ve kind of missed the ferry. There’s not much to it anymore. Just a rattletrap old boat (I remember when this was the newest boat we had!) far past its best heyday dutifully chugging its way to and from the mainland from our little island. They’re always threatening to build a bridge (which we don’t want because it would make us a suburb of Vancouver almost instantly) and we keep telling them no.  We are quite happy with our isolation thankyouverymuch.

I’ve been lucky enough to see most of the world by now and that means I’ve seen a lot of coastlines; but few are as lovely as my own. Perhaps I’m bias (actually I will fully admit that I’m bias) or perhaps I just haven’t looked at it for a long time. Like I said the last time I took the ferry was nearly ten years ago, when I fought my way through an ill-fated audition to Canadian Idol (which is a different story which I may or may not one day relate) – so it’s been a long time since I traveled the placid waters of active pass.

It’s very seldom that I get to travel just for the sake of travelling. So even these last two jumps to the mainland (the last for Les Mis and a week with my ‘sister’ this one for a Dylan Moran performance) is cause for a fair amount of excitement on my part.

The buffet is still overpriced, the kids are still loud and the internet (though I remember when there wasn’t any) is lousy…but the view of the wake unfurling behind us against the green of the coast line makes it worth it.

Sometimes I travel so far that I forget to appreciate home, and sometimes it just makes me appreciate it more…

I’m a lucky woman…