Wednesday, February 13, 2008

traveling

Traveling to the ferry isn't so bad. It took almost two hours to get from Whoville to Horseshoe Bay, but somehow the travel seemed to zip past. Maybe being barely awake for most of the journey or having db with me for the first 45 minutes helped with the time passing.

The early morning explosion on Broadway did not affect my travel since I was going nowhere near that area of town. What an odd bit of information to wake up to because it was the first thing that I heard when I turned on the radio this a.m. I did a double take and then the news moved on to the next event. Was it my early morning fog or did I hear that it was in Vancouver? When I hear about explosions in the news it is usually about a suicide bomber and this is what I expected almost certain that it would be related to the Israeli/Palestinian divisions. How unfortunate is that to "expect" such news? Then I heard it was Vancouver and it seemed intended. There was no accident here.

With little time to get ready, I didn't hear much this morning on the radio and by the time I was out the door at 6:15 I didn't really know what had happened for sure.

Then I'm commuting and the days events lay before me and I soon stop thinking about what happened. I'm more concerned with making all my transit connections and struggling with my suitcase that turned out to be not a struggle at all. The transit connections flowed so smoothly that I didn't even know the ferry was leaving at 8:30 until it was moving away from Horseshoe bay while I was standing in line for oatmeal and toast.

I'm in Nanaimo. My step-dad, pw, is probably out of surgery by now. He went in around 3:30 for day surgery, nothing serious, and I'm here to make sure he's looked after for the next 24 hrs (at least). I'm waiting for the phone call to tell me to come and get him at the hospital.

I'm driving his car which is a standard and I haven't driven one for years so it's a bit of a challenge. I'm doing okay, but it's definitely taking some extra concentration to get into that first gear, especially on the hills.

pw is the one who taught me to drive and it was a standard. Way back then it wasn't uncommon to drive a standard car. He owned a brown Toyota Corolla and that was my first and only car that I drove on a regular basis. We lived way out in the country and pw had me drive down to the end of the dirt road, turn around and come back. That was my first lesson. It took a lot to get out of first into second since you couldn't go very fast on that road. I don't have a vivid memory of it, but I do remember having to shift and that turning around was very worrying. I feared backing up would send us into the ditch for sure.

I don't remember subsequent lessons with pw and maybe there weren't too many more or maybe my mom coached me after that. I did take Driver's Ed. and my test was taken in an automatic car in such a small town that there was only one intersection with a traffic light and they had to set up pylons for me to parallel park since there really was no curbsides with painted parking lines. Yup, small towns.

So now I'm back in a standard car and while I once use to prefer driving a standard over an automatic, I'm starting to change my mind. Anywho...I'll drive back to the hospital and hopefully take the least hilly route there.

1 comment:

Wandering Coyote said...

Nanaimo can be tough in a standard because it does have some nasty hills. Good for you to just go for it.