Cleaving Vans

I have recently returned from a short trip to Vancouver for a short conference.  The conference itself was ok:  there were some interesting talks and some not so interesting talks and some talks that could have been interesting except that their presenters were not.  On the whole, I find sitting through two days worth of talks to be rather trying to the patience, regardless of how interesting the talks actually are.  My overall take away from the conference was, I think, that I'd like to have the chance to go back and visit Vancouver again for an actual vacation wherein I'd actually have some time to do something other than attend a conference.  That will, however, have to wait until I have the budget for it.

As it was, I did have some time to walk around the downtown area a bit - I went through Gastown and walked along the Waterfront a bit.  Nothing too exciting, but it is what it is I suppose.  I would have loved to have gone hiking somewhere but there was, alas, no time for that.

The trip back from the airport to my humble abode was... interesting, for some definition of interesting.  I took one of the out-of-town shuttle services and ended up in a vehicle with just the driver, an elderly gentleman who was otherwise retired, and one other passenger, an elderly lady, also retired.  And O. M. G., they were both stereotypical cranky old people.  Well, cranky might not be the right word, but I ended up listening to about an hour of nearly constant "Young people today and there things..." so, yeah, stereotypical old people.  Also, super awkward.  (None of this was targetted at me, I should say, but still...)

Anywho, I shall cap off this post with a few pictures that I took around Vancouver.

A couple of views along the waterfront.  There's actually a nice bike path along there with places to rent bikes that I would have liked to have had the time to take advantage of...

A plaque along the waterfront that amused me.

The Water Street Cafe in Gastown.  I include this since I used a picture of the cafe as the model for the Street Meat Cafe in episode one of The Word Smith - I hadn't realized that it was in Vancouver originally, I was just looking for a picture of a "street corner cafe" or something to that effect.

This is another picture from Gastown.  Featured (in theory) is the steam clock which is some sort of landmark or something.

And finally, here's a building downtown on Robson Street that's associated with UBC in some capacity.

Well, that's all for now.  Work will resume on The Word Smith in the near future, though there's no set timetable at the moment.

Freak Out,
-TFitC