More thoughts on Vancouver

Not to beat up too much on this pseudo-city, but Vancouver seems less a destination and more a place on the way to somewhere else. I’m still trying to figure this place out, and an early observation is that the mayor’s office should hand out “just passing through” t-shirts to everyone. Cruise ships dock here regularly, flooding downtown with thousands of senior citizen tourists who collect fridge magnets and snow globes before they disembark to points north. Film productions descend on town like a modern equivalent of the traveling circus. They set up camp for a while, grab the shots they need and leave just as fast. There are million dollar waterfront condos that sit vacant for months on end waiting for their summer residents.


Everywhere you turn construction projects are underway, and there’s more homeless on the streets than anywhere else I've seen. It all ads up to a city in transit, a big giant revolving door of a town.

So, in keeping with this apparent stepping-stone personality of Vancouver, I’m choosing to treat it as a spring board to the Great Elsewhere. I'm living for the weekends when I can ride my bike amongst the redwoods, kayak the ocean inlets, and hike the local mountains. Maybe this is just life in the Pacific Northwest, where it’s not about the city, it’s about the larger surrounding environment.

So, my head scratching about where we currently call home continues. It fits well with the slogan for our vagabond life – home is where the luggage is. Or, in Vancouver’s case, home is where we keep the camping gear.