05-06-25 Vancouver I Missed You!
I don’t even know how to tell you how much today meant to me. I let myself drift in out of sleep from 5:30 AM onward when the sun woke me up and then Jake was up and off to work and I watched the president and Prime Minister meeting where I was most impressed with our Prime Minister as he kept addressing Donald Trump as Mr. President, where Mr. President referred to our Prime Minister as Mark, so disrespectful
It’s suddenly occurred to me to see if there was a Rotary meeting that I could catch and much my surprise in just over an hour there was the Vancouver club meeting at the terminal city. I got myself ready and rushed down there and then as I was about to find parking and figure out how to find where the meeting was I started to have a minor panic attack, but decided to go forward. I am so glad I did as I put on my name tag from Cranbrook and represented well. The whole experience cost me $57 for the meal and $21 for the parking so they are clearly in a different echelon than I am. It was worth it, though just to see how big city clubs are compared to our small one. Interestingly, we have more members though.
From there, I found a parking space close to where my friend Julia lives as we would be going out together later. By by comparison, the parking was $2.15 for two hours. I walked to gastown, stopping first at the Fluevog store. There I was assisted extraordinarily by Bennett and Chad. Chad was able to identify my ‘ Judy Jetsons’ as I call them by their actual name, he says is orbits. I dropped off my first pair of shoes and arranged to have them re-soled and mailed to me. It was probably good that I’m still not sure what size my feet will be when my ankle is totally healed so I didn’t purchase anything, but I did enter into the 10 years of shoes draw which they will be doing on Monday I think or Tuesday. Wouldn’t that be something? I was encouraged to buy a runner type shoe that’s on for 100 bucks but decided I didn’t love it enough yay me.
Next stop was the Blundstone store where I asked to have my boots maintained. They were impressed that I had a vintage colour. Well I was waiting. I was asking a few questions and felt like I wasn’t being taken seriously as a customer. I guess that was a Julia Roberts moment. ha ha. In the end, I did purchase a new pair of clogs. Just because I am struggling to wear heels and fit into my shoe collection. Doesn’t mean that I have to buy from Walmart.
Although I wasn’t especially impressed with the treatment, I did ask where a single woman could go comfortably sit and have a beverage and was directed to the black frog. It turned out to be a great place where I met a delightful server named Michelle and we had a goosebumps producing connection. Sometimes in the most random places, you meet someone who needs to hear your story and you need to hear theirs. This was one of those moments. I ended up giving her the button that I got at convention and promptly put it on the wall and was thrilled. To the point that when I went to pay my tab, my server had paid for one of my drinks. How cool is that?
I am loving being a tourist in my old town. I can’t help but take pictures along the way and eventually I met up with Julia and she brought me to park in her building Parkade so I didn’t have to worry about any of the stuff in my car and then we walked over to the banksy exhibit.
It was as amazing as I hope it would be. I took the time to read every single sign and story behind the art and just hope it all to be true.
 From there, Julia was equally happy to head back to the black frog where we sat at the bar. (She is my kind of people) Michelle was happy to see us and I was off for the night, but we had an incredible visit and good food before the noise of an Edmonton game got to be too much for us. It was funny to see bleachers set up in a bar this is clearly the spot where the Edmonton fans come.
We took our leave and head up to the Alma for a quiet beverage has very few people were there before it was time for me to head out. We did take a shortcut through the Woodward’s building and it really is quite extraordinary.
I was so grateful to catch up with a friend from the past because sometimes the people who knew you when are the people who you get to the most be just you now. Does that make sense? I hope so.
Once I got home, I had a nice little visit with Jake and we made a plan for spending time together tomorrow night. I have to get up at five to take Mark to his surgery. He said he would take a cab, but that is not going to happen and I was glad that he didn’t argue. I didn’t bring him all this way to abandoned him now.
triumphgal 