photos october 22

October 22, 2000

Page 1

This is where we are staying.This is Mark's boat on pier 5, Wharf B, Victoria, BC. "Kaimanu" is 45 feet long and has two showers aboard.

The boat's hot water system is down, it's 8 degrees Celsius outside, we can't shower on the boat.

The public showers nearby on the wharf were just vandalized and are closed for the winter.

Ellen and I found our way to the Wharfmistress a few kilometers down the shoreside road. We are told

we can use their showers for a "loonie". Really? A loonie? To me a "loonie" has

nothing to do with showering, but a "loonie" in Canada is a one dollar (cdn) coin imprinted

with a loon on one side and her majesty the queen on the other. In the wharfmistress' shower a loonie gets you 7 1/2 minutes

of hot water, exactly. A "loonie" buys a wash in the laundromat or a dry in the laundromat.

If your wash isn't dry, a second "loonie" may be required, but you have to wait until the

first "loonie" is expended in the machine before it will accept another. And, so on.

This is the compact navigation site on "Kaimanu". Space is at a premium. You must realize that only one person can be in any one place on the

boat at any one time. Only one person can steer, only one person can cook in the galley, only one person at the

nav table, only one person in the companionway, only one person in the head. If YOU want to be in one place on the

boat, your partner will inevitably be in that place. There rests the "Law of the Boat." Now, if two people want to cook or navigate or

whatever in the same compartment area, the "law of the boat" intervenes. One MUST go away.

This is the Canadian Parliament Building at night. Tonight freezing and black ice are predicted for the back roads.

The grocery store is a half mile away from this point which is a quarter mile from the boat's berth.

I converted that from a measurement in kilometers.

A local Wendy's advertised that you can buy a 2 liter coke (a promotional special) with two

1/4 pound hamburgers. At the grocery store you can buy a pound of potatoes, a

kilogram of bananas, a pound of apples and a kilogram of mushrooms. We bought 400 grams of salmon, a

liter of wine and 8 ounces of roasted red peppers. Forget conversion tables. Forget figuring it out. You're trying to mix oil and water.

Here I buy food by a piece, a lump, a bunch, a handful or "enough for two for dinner". On the canned food shelf half of the label is written in

French - which inevitably is the side that shows outward on the shelf- and half in English which faces inward.

That doesn't deter me either. I turn them all so the English written side shows. If evrybody did that, we could all read what we're buying.