It’s All New Again

Sticking with the plan – a proper balance for the visit to Victoria – Friday consisted of catching the ferry and getting to the island. Nothing more. Nothing grand. A simple trip I’ve done a hundred times before.

We’re on the Ferry!

But with the boys and the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world with me, it’s all new, again.

And how cool is that?

I reserved a space on the ferry. 7pm. I didn’t want to arrive too late in Victoria. If I remember right, they shut off the lights at 8.

We took the new highway – The South Fraser Perimeter Road – which is about the most counter-intuitive road of all time. It goes north to the river. It goes under 3 bridges. It winds into Delta. It’s about as weird a route as has even been designed by man. Sort of like taking the Atlantic Ocean to get to the Pokemon Store in Japan.

It caused the Prettiest-girl-in-the-world’s head to nearly explode. But for the boys, it’s all part of the adventure. We drove past containers stacked 10 high and they were amazed. The Prettiest-girl-in-the-world was unsure how they’d even did that (as the cranes she used to see at her old job couldn’t stack them that high).

Me, I want to stop and see if I could tip them over.

Apparently that’s frowned upon.

However, with that new road, we made record time. Like we had warp drive or a desperate need to find a bathroom after eating burritos and coffee. We made such great time that, after parking, we had time to go inside.

Hullo, hullo, guv’ner

Ok, it wasn’t actually ‘time to go inside’, it was more of a need. The youngest was bouncing around in the backseat like someone had caged up the Flash and poured hot sauce on his private parts.

So I took him inside, again, a place I’d seen so many times before.

But with him, I saw the hat display and played with the hats. I saw the popcorn vendor and all the popcorn I refused to buy the youngest. We smelled the fudge in the fudge store. We touched the things that looked like they shouldn’t be touched and imagined where we would fly the massive remote control drones for sale.

It was glorious.

The Gulf Islands

On the ferry, I would have parked myself in the buffet and written. It’s all fair and good, but with my new family, they took me outside to see if we could spot whales and the seals, Fluffy, Fluffy Jr., Fluffy Sr., Jasmine, Dexter, Angie, Loki, Bad Leroy and JEFF.

They were all underwater and refused to come out to be seen.

Outside, the wind cut through us and no one seemed to care. The sun set against the islands, the sea sparkled, the air tasted of salt. We took pictures, The-Oldest played with my old iphone that we’d given him and The-Youngest tried to photobomb every tourist’s magical picture.

I can’t remember when I had such a great time crossing the straight to Victoria.

It was all new, again.

Next up, the first day in the Capital of BC.

The drive From the Ferry