I'm coming to your country, guy

Today I left Seattle for lands to the north. I was not disappointed.

It was no more than a couple hours from Seattle to the Canadian border. The other traffic was almost exclusively Washingtonian, and I felt special for being a Floridian on the road to Vancouver. The border crossing team thought I was special too; when I told them it was my first time in Canada they had me park and go inside for a security check. I gave them my passport, car keys, and cell phone -- harsh! -- and waited in a folding chair until they cleared me to enter their country and be an expatriate for a couple days. Then I drove to East Vancouver while singing what I can remember of the Canadian national anthem, as well as, for some reason, the "Charge of the Light Brigade" song my brother made up fifteen years ago. It's his birthday today (the 7th). Happy birthday, Alex!

Though the cities are comparable in size, Vancouver driving is different from Seattle's. In Seattle, I-5 and I-90 pierce downtown and are major urban thoroughfares. By contrast, there are no highways that run through Vancouver. BC 99, which took me to the city, stops being a highway when it enters city limits. I'm not sure what drove this decision; the lack of a central artery robs one of a way to orient oneself within a city. On the other hand, interstates are ugly and no one likes them; long-distance travelers like me especially hate them when they run through cities we don't intend to visit.

The good news, when I crossed the border, was that Zhuge Liang (as I dubbed my GPS, after the Chinese strategist) knows Canadian roads! The bad news is that, as I learned online, downtown parking in Vancouver is very, very expensive and time-consuming. So after establishing myself at the Days Inn, I hopped a bus. It was my first public transit of the trip, and getting on the right bus (the 19) going the right direction (downtown) to the right place (Pender and Carrall) was an adventure. I almost couldn't get on; bus fare is $2.50 and requires exact change, and the smallest thing Bank of America had given me when I visited them in the morning was a ten. But by a stroke of good fortune, the fare machine on the 19 I hopped was out of commission, which meant I got a free ride!

Where was I going? Well, to the obvious place when one visits Vancouver, of course: the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden! Apparently twenty-three years ago a master Chinese architect came to British Columbia and, taken aback by its beauty, offered to design a scholar's garden in the style of the Ming Dynasty in downtown Vancouver. British Columbia obligingly bussed in sixty builders from China who were schooled in traditional fifteenth-century methods of architecture and had them erect a garden using only the materials and techniques that would have been available in Ming China, right down to the then-contemporary understanding of Feng Shui. The result is fucking gorgeous. Though situated on just three-tenths of an acre, the garden feels like it must be ten times as big due to the manifold and canny tricks of perspective employed by the architect. You can look at a stone, take two paces left, and look at the same stone again, and you'd swear it was a different stone in a different setting. And all the perspectives would be breathtaking if they weren't so serene. What's best, perhaps, is that the garden is no replica, not a copy of some Ming garden in China; it is an original, built to take best advantage of the space and scenery of Vancouver. There's even a red maple tree planted alongside bamboo in the eastern (yin) side of the garden to symbolize the union of China and Canada in the accomplishment of this project. This is the sort of thing you only get to see once, so if anyone visits Vancouver, look this garden all the way the fuck up. Take the guided tour.

Oh, and go on a rainy day. It turns out cool, rainy days in early July are the best time to see Vancouver; everything's open but there are no crowds, even downtown. I got lucky, because today was just such a day. Vancouver rain is the finest rain I've seen, transparent and inaudible; you go out without an umbrella because it looks like such a light rain, and a block later your clothes are soaked. Fortunately, I brought an umbrella, and it protected me as I went to a big ol' downtown tower to snap some shots of the city from up high. I walked to the tower from the garden, about eight blocks, along Hastings Street through the center of downtown. The pot-smoker concentration in that area was even bigger than Portland's. What follows is an actual conversation I had on the way to the tower:

"Hey, man, you have the time?"

"Sure! Um, 7:05."

"Cool. Man, you want a toke?"

And it was thus that I learned that if you give someone the time in Vancouver you will be offered a joint. I declined. Marijuana is de facto decriminalized in Vancouver: it's illegal, but no one's likely to cuff you for it as long as you don't call attention to yourself. I will post later a picture I took of a pot-related merchandise outlet situated next door to "The Amsterdam Cafe." As an American I find this highly amusing, along with the bilingual road signs (everything's in French, even though I heard a lot more Mandarin and Spanish today than I did French) and more liberal attitudes about sexuality. (One store near the garden played a song whose refrain was "birthday sex, birthday sex" over the speakers, and one of the buses I took had a free sex-ed ad up top.)

It's funny how long this post got, and how much longer I could make it go on, considering that all I did today in the way of touristy stuff was go to the garden and tower. The lesson is that when you're on the road in a really new place, a lot of small things become adventures. I could talk about the very yummy pho I got near the hotel (it's a Vietnamese vermicelli variant that uses rice noodles, for those who don't know; I discovered it first in SF). I could talk about how Canada has $1 coins and $2 coins, and how weird it feels to carry a $2 coin around in your pocket, and how Canadian coinage makes different clinking sounds from American. I could talk about the beautifully tranquil traditional Chinese-style framed painting I practically stole at $15 from the garden gift store, the cheap price being for no reason other than that it was done by a Caucasian -- who the lady at the counter raved to me about, saying how sincere the girl who painted it was and how much that girl would love to hear from me by email how much I liked the painting. I could talk about how the posted gas prices in Canada don't look like gas prices in America -- no decimal point, strange configuration of digits -- and I still haven't figured out what that's all about. There's so much! But this will have to serve, as I need to lie in a warm bath with a Neil Gaiman book and recover from all the fun I'm having. Today was beautiful.

Purple Hays

The skies are indeed purple over Hays, Kansas, a city of 20,000 in western Kansas. The landscape is sort of purple, too, and my mood is purple to top it off.

Today's my birthday, and it got off to a great start with a gourmet breakfast prepared by Jacob, then a lunch of a ground beef popover and a chocolate "Matterhorn" (a mountain-shaped chocolate baked atop a cookie and served with sweet cream) at Andre's Patisserie. I reluctantly bid him goodbye in the afternoon, then drove four and a half hours to Hays without stopping except to refill Blackbird's tank and empty my own. (Rule of traveling I've discovered: never pass up the opportunity to take a leak.)

I took the interstate after all, having been assured by Jacob that there is equally little worthwhile to see on any route through Kansas. I don't agree with his assessment that it's boring, but it's certainly rural, and tourist attractions are few and far between. The land's green and brown spaces are amazing. The high point of the drive, however, was certainly the expedition past a massive wind farm. There must have been hundreds of individual mills gyrating in the breeze. The three polished, rotating blades of each turbine looked so sleek and modern, like something out of a TV commercial for either renewable energy or Mercedes-Benz. If they had no purpose at all, their beauty would make them a landmark and a tourist attraction. It's odd that they're not viewed as one, and there are no roads leading from I-70 to within the churn of the wind farm.

The four and a half hour drive felt longer than it was, and I arrived in Hays feeling drained. Here I made an unpleasant discovery: my cell phone does not have any reception here. Investigating online, I made an even more unpleasant discovery: AT&T does not cover western Kansas at all, and most of the western United States in general is covered only through AT&T's presumably less reliable "partners" or is completely uncovered. Virtually all of Nevada, for example, is an AT&T dead zone. This knowledge scares me. If I break down on the highway in a dead zone I won't be able to call AAA, and God knows I have no idea how to fix anything on my own. Fortunately, I've been able to make contact with Wiley, my host for tomorrow, through Gmail, and she's expecting me in the early evening. But I need to think about backup plans for communication, or else make sure I stick to paths that get reception.

Hays itself feels oddly tense. The people have a look on their faces like they're besieged. Maybe it's the weather, which NPR says may reach 100 degrees tomorrow, or maybe it's my imagination, me projecting my anxiety onto the strangers around me. I ate dinner at Montana Mike's Steakhouse, which served a passable ribeye. I've been trying to avoid soda this trip, but I couldn't pass up the most unique thing on the menu, Sierra Mist with pear flavoring. Sweet! The pear taste was overpowering and delicate at the same time. As usual, I almost didn't order it but then thought "what the hell." I'm learning to recognize the moments when I should say "what the hell" and live a little.

Happy birthday to me! With luck, the next post will come from Aurora, Colorado, outside Denver. In the meantime I'll try to figure out why Hays exists, out here in the boonies, as opposed to being a tiny interstate stopover like the other towns I passed.

Packing list

As of this writing, I've got all the following, mostly ready to go.

- My car. Still unnamed. (I discovered that when she's coasting down from a high speed she makes a subtle noise like a siren or whistle. It's very distinctive. She should have a name that honors that.) Also, car supplies: tire gauge, tire inflator, spare tire, directions, AAA member card, windshield fluid, paper towels, and requisite paperwork proving ownership and insurance.

- Seven or eight changes of clothes; also, a laundry bag and an extra pair of sneakers.

- Sleeping bag and pillow.

- Groceries: plastic silverware, various nonperishable food items like snack mix and canned oranges, a few perishables like bread, cheese, and jam in a cooler with ice packs, and lots of water.

- Toiletries, including medications; also, emergency medical kit, containing various Band-Aids, antiseptics, Tylenol, emergency blanket, etc.

- Six electronic devices and their power supplies and other cables (see last post).

- Small box of surprises.

- Cash, credit cards, and passport (in case I can't resist hitting Vancouver).

- Books; pens and paper.

And I think that about covers it! :D We're close now. If all goes well, in 72 hours I'll be touring Eustis.

Dreaming of electric sheep

My God you guys I am so busy! So much time and so little to do! Wait -- strike that -- reverse it. Thank you.

Today I thought I'd share my electronics catalogue. I'll be accompanied on my journey by no fewer than six gadgets. To wit:

- My cell phone, of course.

- Kino, my voice recorder.

- A Garmin Nuvi GPS for the car, which nearly guarantees that as long as I know where I'm going I will never get lost.

- A brand-new Sony digital camera.

- An Inspiron laptop, a very old one that my brother used in Japan; it's slow as the devil to load up, but it'll serve my purposes.

- A 30-GB iPod Classic, which just arrived today.

My brother argues my car should also count as a gadget, but I think he's being silly. The car is a car. It is way above the level of gadget. (And as of tomorrow evening, it will have its permanent tags.)

Two kinds of card

These came about a week ago, when I was in the middle of Alice's story. Five hundred of them plus a shiny business card holder for $7.99 plus shipping. Take out the gray interior border and this is exactly what the cards look like. Simple, pretty, informal rather than professional. I think they send the message I want to send, which is a friendly "this is a real thing and here's how to get in touch with me." If I ask someone for a story and they want to know whether I'm for real, I can say "sure, here's my card." Having a card means you're for real. I guess it's reasonable for someone who's been asked a personal question to want something tangible to guarantee that this isn't a scam and that if it is they know who to sue. Part of what I have to do is reassure people and encourage them to visit the blog, and this card accomplishes both those things. No cell phone number, though. I hate telephones, especially cells, and I'm going to be doing enough talking to strangers without also finding them on the other end of the phone line.

For the record, I got the cards from an Internet company called VistaPrint in what I think was a first-time special; if you need a bunch of business cards cheap I recommend them. (Just be willing to wade through a few pages of marketing -- no, I don't want the same image on a coffee mug or postcard -- before they let you actually place your order.)

I also visited Verizon today to find out if their nationwide-Internet deal is any better than AT&T's. Nope. The same bandwidth at the same price with the same minimum two-year commitment if you want the rebate on the same very expensive card. There might as well just be one company offering this service. It may just turn out to be necessary to pay full price for the card, because I'm not sure what percentage of budget inns offer wireless networking.

The Chinese room

I first heard a couple years ago that the Chinese word for "crisis" was composed of two characters. The first, it was said, meant "danger;" the second meant "opportunity." This struck me as one of those claims that's fabricated out of whole cloth for a political speech or a mailing list thought of the day, so I Googled it. The skeptic in me was pleased to discover that I was partly right; while the first character of the word does mean danger, the second means a crucial point, which is not the same thing as an opportunity. Still, the saw was closer than I expected to the truth -- and whether or not it's true, it could be true. Many crises do contain seeds of opportunity, as much as I prefer to think of them as situations to be skirted whenever possible and torn through in the most expedient possible way otherwise.

Case in point: this morning my desktop computer got a virus. Actually it got the virus last night, but it wasn't until this morning that it quit working. Beyond my ability to fix; it wouldn't even let me reboot in safe mode. I handed it over to a technician this afternoon. He seems optimistic, but there's still a pretty good chance I've seen the last of my old compy.

So you have your danger. At the same time, though, it's an opportunity: I was going to need a laptop for Lover's Lanes anyway. This episode gives me the impetus to look into laptops sooner than I might otherwise have. I'm typing this post on a discarded laptop of my brother's to find out whether his oldish machine might nonetheless serve my purposes. (Two trojans in four hours so far, so early indications are not promising, but I've still learned something and will sleep well tonight.) Tomorrow maybe I'll go on Dell's website and see if there is such a thing as a high-security version of Vista for wi-fi compatible laptops. If, God forbid, my desktop doesn't come back to me all sparkly shiny and happy to see me, it'll just mean I'll have a laptop that much sooner.

I am philosophical to avert a nervous breakdown.

But it's still all true.

What will happen on the road if my computer gets a virus? I'm gonna be connecting to a lot of different networks. I'm going to need a first-class firewall, aren't I? I should find someone who knows more about technology than I do to talk with me about the challenges of cross-country travel with a laptop.

What do you call a blank audiobook?

Behold the Olympus WS-321M. It is a digital audio recorder that sports dual internal microphones, runs on a single AAA battery, and doubles as an MP3 player (albeit a small one at 1GB).

Her name is Kino.

Okay, so I stole the name from my friend's laptop computer. See, the portable computer gets the name of a traveler. (Kino's Journey deserves its own blog post one of these days.) But this is not a laptop computer; this is the device that will hear the stories of the people in each land I come to. Kino is tiny at 1.5"x3.75", yet her fidelity and playback are remarkable and entirely adequate for my purposes. A double-USB wire is included so I can easily upload her stories to my laptop, though with 35 hours of storage space she can go a long time between transfers. She is quiet and discreet, yet it's easy to tell when she's recording, so no one will complain that they didn't know the mic was on. She is the perfect vehicle for a story on its way from your memory to my catalogue.

Douzo yoroshiku, Kino!