For the Remembrance Day long weekend we went to Sidney over on Vancouver Island to partake in Jeff’s mom’s 75th birthday celebration. We had Chinese food for dinner because why not and overall it was a pleasant little trip, even if the ferry ride over was accompanied by the nigh-endless serenading of car alarms blatting from the vehicle decks. The chief steward at one point came on to the PA to announce that the car alarms of every BMW were going off. The vehicle owners had apparently calibrated their alarms to perfectly match the vibrations produced by a large commercial ferry.
After arriving and kibitzing with Jeff’s mom, his sister and their family, we headed into bustling downtown Sidney and spent some time walking along the pier.
Below is a photo of yours truly.
Some observations:
- I have my dad’s right ear and my mom’s left ear. I think this is becoming more pronounced the older I get. It is also a little weird.
- Am I developing jowls? I don’t want jowls. I am either ordering or inventing a jowls-prevention kit.
- If you look closely you can tell I am freezing my butt off. Because I totally was.
- I escaped seagull poop, both on the pier and bombed from above.
- People on the pier were catching tiny novelty crabs. They were like finger crabs. Very small is what I’m saying here.
I also liked this sign for the simple way it says you may die:
The motel room was odd in that it was actually cool and we had to turn the heat on (the condo is almost supernaturally warm, staying at 23ºC or higher no matter what the temperature outside is, as if it was constructed atop the endlessly burning fires of hell). The ferry trip back was much quieter, due to either better car alarm control or fewer BMWs.
Overall it was a nice little jaunt. Sidney is one of those towns that manages to pull off quaint without descending completely into either kitsch or self-referential hipster irony.