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The MOVE

On Sunday, we moved Johanna into her apartment in lower Manhattan.  It's a nice place, three bedrooms and two roomies, quite small, but big windows give it an airy feel, and it's near a huge Whole Foods and the subway among other things.  Lots of people were out and about and I don't think I saw anyone over the age of 30.  Sean came down to help, which was much appreciated on the larger items (it's a third floor walk-up).

But.  It RAINED the whole time.  We all got soaked.

Many streets are blocked off on Sunday, making getting in and out of the neighborhood tough, and her stretch of Orchard Street was one of those blocked off.  So we drove around the barrels, no problem parking right at the door!

199 Orchard Street, Apt. 3B, NY NY 10002.


The TRIP

We had a lovely time in Vancouver and Vancouver Island, an unusual vacation, to say the least.

A bit of background here: a few years ago I had a sophomore named Mariesa Mason from Vancouver in class, and she came twice to our Byrne Thanksgiving reunion, taught me a lot about varsity women's hockey (although she left the team her junior year), and over the years we got to know her parents Bob and Merri and younger sister Rebecca when they came to town.  John met her and her mother on one trip.  (I finally met older brother Mike at Mariesa's graduation in May.)  They live on a farm outside Vancouver, and Mariesa and her parents were always asking us to come out and visit with them.  A few weeks ago Bob got tickets to several of next winter's Olympics events, so we are going out next February.  A really cheap fare popped on a fare-watcher, so we made the decision to go this time, too.

We spent a few days in the City of Vancouver, a grand city.  On the night we arrived there was a huge annual fireworks off the waterfront right next to our hotel, an unexpected extra.  It came with an expected extra, rowdy partiers in the building behind the hotel who kept us awake until they gave us a room on the other side of the hotel for the remainder of that night.  The city has a first class aquarium with Janet's favorites, sea otters.  It also has a great art museum, a museum of First Nations artifacts (what Canadians call Native Americans), loads of parks and great restaurants.  Nearly everything was in walking distance of our hotel.  The only down was that for our entire visit, the region was suffering a heat wave of such historical proportion that it was the hottest since records have been kept (1880); it went over 100 F five straight days.  (And we still haven't turned on our air conditioning in New Jersey!)  While we were there, the big comical/sad/incredible 44-indictment New Jersey corruption-money laundering-body-part-brokering scandal broke and we spent a long time in a Starbucks reading the NYTimes account.  My favorite two details (and in this scandal, that's saying a LOT): the man who gathered all the details of the misbehavior became a government informant after he was charged with passing a $25 million bad check – which he had deposited at a drive-in window!  And one of the mayors accused of taking bribes did that  – by accepting a donation to his legal defense fund for another offense! 

The Masons had not clued us in to what they had planned for the rest of the trip other than that we were going to their farm and then family places on Vancouver Island.  The Island is off the west coast of British Columbia and is the only part of western Canada that is below the 49th parallel.

We spent a day and night at the farm, about 150 acres, on which the Masons grow a few pigs and lambs for their own consumption (we had some of their lamb and ham for dinners), turkeys to give away in the fall, some cows, and several thoroughbred horses.  Bob had once competed for the Canadian national team in show, now he rides every day for fun.  The house is very small and modestly furnished, and for the first and probably last time I slept in the bedroom of a former student.  Mariesa is in East Timor -- go look it up -- working for Land O' Lakes on a US AID program for a year.  It's a very pleasant place and a reminder that farms are hard work.

We then headed off to the Island, an hour and a half ferry ride through spectacular smaller islands, first to Victoria, the very picturesque and pleasant provincial capital of BC.  During our walk around Mariesa called her parents from East Timor.  We also visited Craigdarroch Castle, a gloomy stone pile of a house built by Robert Dunsmuir, who came to Vancouver asa penniless Scottish immigrant and ended up owning about half the island.  As we drove out of the city, Bob went into the tiny Esquimalt First Nation reserve; he is a development consultant for them in addition to his real estate development business.  It's a much cheated and deeply troubled band.  A few years ago the Canadian federal government settled a large sum on them to compensate for having taken most of their lands, which includes the land on which the provincial capital buildings now sit.

Then it was to Bob's mother Nancy's house on Fanny Bay on the east side of the Island, with mountains behind us.  His parents bought this house 30 years ago, then a modest affair but right on the bay.  Bob's younger brother Matt has made a lot of money -- a really lot -- and has spent a fortune adding to the house and the property.  The guest quarters are over one of the garages and that's where we stayed for the next three nights, in a room about the size of a gymnasium, complete with sitting areas, yes, plural, a kitchen and dining table.  The compound, which is what it has become, includes several barns, many immaculate flower beds, a very large covered sitting area with barbecues and ovens -- it and everything else are right out of Architectural Digest -- a tennis court, a small harbor with pricey boats, more kayaks that I could count, and on and on.  There is also a large hangar in which Matt keeps a Lamborghini, a Porsche, an antique Beetle,  numerous ATVs, motorcycles (a couple of high end Harleys he has never ridden), and -- his own four seat helicopter.  After taking Matt back to Victoria the next day, his pilot came back and took Janet and Merri and Rebecca up for a 20 minute ride around the area.  I have pictures to prove it, yes, Janet did go up of her own free will and did not have to be prodded, either.  We also went out kayaking several times, once at night under the stars and another time Bob and I went all the way across the bay and back.  It's a beautiful island, it looks just like what you think of when you envision the Pacific Northwest, and I doubt we will ever set foot in as luxurious a house and compound again.

On one day we took another ferry over to Denman Island, a smaller island off Vancouver Island, where Merri's family and all sorts of cousins (never did get it all sorted out) have homes in a 400 acre wooded site along the shore.  The house reminded us of a typical Jersey Shore house in season: people sleeping everywhere including outside on the deck (it rarely rains in the area in July and August), casual meal routines and an acceptable sense of mild chaos.  I had a fascinating conversation with Rebecca, who is headed to St. Lawrence in a few weeks, and one of her cousins about the South Asians (mostly from India) who make up a large proportion of the Vancouver area population -- nearly half of her high school.

It was then back to the ferry for the gorgeous ride back to the mainland, and back to the farm for our last night.  Our cheap fare had us fly out of Seattle, so Bob drove us down to Seattle-Tacoma Airport, through lots of scenery.  We had three hours so we had a nice slow sit-down meal at the airport branch of Anthony's, a very nice seafood restaurant.  Although we were given two middle seats when I had booked the flight, we were able to change to an aisle and window for this trip.  Johanna was kind enough to pick us up at the terminal after midnight and we went home relaxed and feeling as if we had been away for a month.

We'll send a few pics along.