It's easy to hate Vancouverites.
Here they are, in this gorgeous city, with its elegant landscapes, its miles and miles of beaches populated by beautiful people, its access to mountains and ocean, and its outrageous housing market. If you happen to own already, you could sell for millions and live anywhere on earth. You probably have bulging calf muscles, a six-pack (not of beer), and you've been chomping organic food and rainforest vitamins and riding your bicycle into to work for 20 years already.
It's just impossible to be new and not a little nose-out-of-joint. You have to wait an hour to see an unfit person walk by. Most of the homeless folks I see are in better shape than I am. Drug problem? Oh yeah, but I bike 40 miles a day!
Well, I'm back on my feet, and am biking in to work again. The travel times are getting less and less. I made it home in 32 minutes flat tonight, and after the first 10 minutes, it's all uphill. I got home, and looked in the mirror at my pitiful little chicken-leg calves. I think there is the beginning of a bump- which could either be a budding muscle, or wait- I think I can smudge it off. It's just bike grease again.
On Sunday, we went for a nice long kayak up Indian Arm, and it felt great to be out on the water as always. It always feels like sweet relief when the houses drop out of sight, and all you see are the trees and cliffs and mountains. Coming back, that line of housing pushes insistently up over every level foot of land, and out as far as possible onto the water with huge docks and boats in a line. I silently curse them for ruining the view, and eye their big powerboats with the disdain of every self-propelled paddler. I imagine which ones would disappear first if the ocean levels rise, and note with satisfaction that some of the nicest ones would be underwater first. what's that? no, my grapes taste just fine.
Everyone needs a hobby.
