BC: Lasqueti Island

Lasqueti Island welcomes you.

There is a joint for a tip in the cafe's tip jar. It's just sitting there, a few coins for company. This shouldn't come as a surprise. Lasqueti Island is full of green solutions.

Offshore of Vancouver Island, it's cut off from all facilities, utilities and services afforded regular British Columbians. No one seems to mind, they have their own solar and wind power. There are even a couple of bay side properties that could probably have a tilt at a small show tidal power system, if they really wanted. The people here all seem to be escaping something, there are writers, hippies, dancers and vagrants, they form a seemingly inclusive community with a very alternative sub-culture.

Sustainability is central, there are outhouses made of mudbrick and recycled bottles, people's possessions are recycled at the Freestore, a shop where everything is free, although it's opening hours are 1-5pm on a Thursday afternoon. Usefully, I was there on a Thursday, but refrained from taking their hundreds of records (classical and rock 'n' roll were well represented) only because I didn't like the idea of carrying them around for another couple of months...

... and I don't have a record player.

The cars wouldn't pass any roadworthy test in the world, indeed, I'm not convinced that many car owners in West Africa would trade down for most of what passes for vehicles here. Not that it mattered a great deal, walking around the island - large as it is - is perfectly fine, it's not like you could be rushing to go anywhere.

Except the cookie store. That's a place worth rushing to. It's just a cabinet off the pier. Once every other day or so it gets stocked with baked goods. Inside is an absolute treasure trove of sweets and savouries, all priced to move and sold on an honour box system. It seems a masterstroke of a business plan, set up a permanent snack stall between the two places on the island that spend their afternoons and evenings in a shroud of marijuana smoke.

My whole reason for being there was the see Luba. A friend of Gabby's, the three of us and Adrian (an old housemate) had a particularly large NYE a few years back in Sydney and since then I've kept in loose contact with her, mostly following her travels here (her blog is very well written and well worth losing a day or more reading). Luba was on Lasqueti for a dance thing and while there had teed up some work exchange and an invitation to a large community wedding. She had taken to the island like a fish to water, quite literally throwing herself at the community.

I on the otherhand appreciated the place more like a recluse may; using my few days there to read, write and just enjoy my own company after having had a particularly frenetic fortnight with Greta.

To each their own.

Five and a half years and a lot soberer later, I get to see Luba again!

Yukon: The Dempster Highway, the Arctic, and why you shouldn't drink with Greta.

Armed with a mudmap in my travel book courtesy of Becca, I had been implored - both in person and by annotation on said map - to make the trip to Tombstone at least, and Eagle Plains as well, if for nothing else than to prank her sister and go to the Arctic Circle. As fun and bizarre as Dawson City was, Greta and I were completely amenable to the idea of driving for two days to do this.

The Dempster Highway leaves from outside Dawson and travels right up to the Arctic Ocean (I'm not interested in debating the veracity of calling it an ocean or a sea, if I say Arctic Ocean, everyone knows where I'm talking about so it is useful enough to say, plus if it boils the blood of a few people, then it's just like I'm there with you, right?). The weather is mostly inclement and the road is unsealed. Before long the car looks like it's gone ten rounds with the shit demon out of Dogma. Rather than be concerned about its state of uncleanliness, I'm excited. Now my bedroom as permanent blinds and I can sleep in a little longer...

... and y'know, it may actually get dark before midnight now.

Tombstone National Monument (why it's not a park is beyond me) is pretty. The terrain is broadly similar to that of Denali, ascending through glacier carved valleys we reach a plateau at about 4500 feet where it is mostly flat for long stretches.

Beyond the national monument is about two hundred and fifty kilometers of gravel to Eagle Plains. In  instantaneous response to my musing, "I'm surprised we haven't seen any large mammals, this is exactly the habitat for it..." Greta claimed to see a moose. I'm not suggesting that she's not worthy of trust here, but the confluence of the immediacy of the claim and my inability to spot it (albeit while driving) hardly confirm her claim. There was also a very real part of me that didn't want to miss seeing yet another moose; two scampering off the road before I could really get a good look had aided the development of a growing and great frustration. The drive is pretty great though. This is one of those times where the destination - be it the Arctic Circle, Inuvik or anywhere in between - is really just punctuation to the journey. Traversing a swathe of ecosystems controlled by some mixture of elevation, latitude or both is always going to a greater reward than an isolated roadhouse on top of the world.

Eagle Plains is really just an outpost on the edge of the Arctic. There is no real special moment to be had crossing 66'33", it's rolling tundra and cold, even in summer. I suppose we were perhaps a little misguided to think much different, but it's something to lay claim to, I suppose.

Eagle Plains' bar - because that is clearly the most important room of any commercial hospitality establishment - is what I imagine a hunting lodge to resemble; animals here are frozen in time courtesy of some fine taxidermy. Their eyes seem to follow you through the room and it is an altogether ever so slightly unsettling experience. Not that I'd be the only unsettled person in the room, after spying a girl that looked a little like Becca, I inquired if I may ask her a strange question. Fending me off with, "oh, once you've spent some time out here there are no strange qu-"
"Do you have a sister in Homer, Alaska?"
"Whoa! What?! How do you?! You're right, that is a strange question!"
... and that's how we met Kate.

Greta and I continued our beer appreciation to bar close and - with the lure of some Arctic-car-temperature PBR - had Kate for drinking company in the five or six hours after close during which we continued to avidly endorse Canadian brewed products while otherwise talking a large amount of otherwise enjoyable shit.

The following morning we made the decision to drive back to Dawson. Perhaps more appropriately, Greta told me that she'd be driving back, as I was in absolutely no state to do anything much more than sit and wonder where the wheels fell off. I consider myself a reasonable drinker and although my hangovers are beginning to catch up on me, a lot of the time I remain functional the following day. Greta on the otherhand, has a superpower. For the second time in my life while matching her one for one in the evening and keeping my act together then, it was in the following morning where I was exclusively a wasteland (a third was to follow more spectacularly in Vancouver) and she was fucking rosy.

Drink with her at your peril.

BC: Whistler Stinks of White Privilege

Route 99, more affectionately known as The Sea To Sky Highway, runs from Lillooet through valleys and over mountains to Vancouver. Make no mistake, it is remarkably pretty, especially the section of climb and descent between Lilloet and Pemberton.

Of course, during this section of the drive, rather than giving the scenery its due, Greta and I were both shitting bricks over a developing fuel problem. For the last thirty minutes of our journey - thankfully mostly downhill - we sat on E, needle with nowhere left to go. Crawling into a service station on the other side of the pass, we fuel up, relieved but still a little nerve wracked. Whistler, a further forty minutes away from Pemberton, is reached after dinner and we find accommodation in the old Olympic village, a pretty flash hostel that falls to pieces as far as its air conditioning is concerned. Oh well.

Whistler occupies a strange sort of place in my mind. A sort of ski Mecca, this is where a lot of friends have come to bust a knee before sitting in a hot tub for a winter drinking bloody marys. It wasn't so much a destination for me, but rather a place to go through (with some awesome roads on either side of).

Taking us in for the following two nights were Mel, Jonny, Janet and James. I'd worked with Mel at Inpex years ago and she became a pretty good point of contact for things to do and see, as well as simply putting a roof over our heads for the weekend. In traipsing through the village, the shops as well as just seeing the activities on offer and the people taking them on, one thing is tremendously clear...

... Whistler stinks of white privilege.

Here there are multiple lifestyles on offer but they can all be reduced to one commonality; affluence. Between the hippies, the barefoot yoga girls in notpants, the extreme sports junkies and the girls that deify them, they all seem to have the financial means to excuse themselves from life for regular people. It's utterly bizarre. There's a yoga camp, presumably in the mountains to better facilitate... something nature related. The extreme sport during summer is mountain biking. People ride down the mountain in search of adrenaline. In winter it'd be snowboarding, for much the same result. There are hippies too, pushing alternate lifestyles and green choices, they provide a preposterous and sidesplittingly funny juxtaposition to the consumer dens that their stalls are in front of. There is no cross section of society here. This is high society - in at least three ways - and it forms an exclusive, bizarre group of clubs that seem happy to co-exist, but if you're not one of them, there is no place for you in Whistler.

So much of this place sells itself as outdoors but it's almost impossible to take seriously. It's an outdoor theme park, certainly... but it's so divergent from appreciating nature for what it is, nevermind experiencing any outright wilderness. It's something altogether different... this is simulated nature there to be conquered.

Bet you've never seen this in Whistler before, Browning!

Yukon: Dawson City - Diamond Tooth Gertie's

"Oh, Gertie's will still be serving food. It's just over the road. Can't miss it."

The barmaid at Triple J is helpful but conveniently neglects to offer any sort of description of what Gertie's actually is. Perhaps this is deliberate. Dawson has a very, very strange feel to it. A few people had recommended it to me in my travels, "oh you'll like it..." or, "it's the gold mining town, you just have to go" but beyond that, everyone has been pretty scant on details. In our ten minutes driving around looking for something that looked like it would serve food we pass blocks of houses straight out of the 1800s. Two tone pastel paint - often times horrendously matched - sit eerily by hardpacked gravel streets. There's no signs in the modern sense, everything is painted on. Greta sums it up perfectly with an astounded, "it's like the set of a movie."

The town is a timewarp. The only sign of modernity are cars... and even then a lot of them are pretty long in the tooth.

We meander over to Gertie's and are met by a female bouncer who is dressed oddly and wears that universal gruff expression that security loves. There's a ten dollar cover charge but from the foyer we both note that there is something going on inside. Curiosity overpowers my baulking at paying to have the privilege of then buying some food to eat. Upon getting in we are assaulted by too much to take in. There is a burlesque show, indeed, under the proscenium arch is a plump red head in a corset, strangling a cat to "The Saints Go Marching In" in front of four gorgeous girls. It's somewhere between the opening scene of Temple of Doom and the burlesque show in Blazing Saddles.

There are waitresses in period inspired uniform ferrying drinks to tables. Croupiers are similarly attired. Around us are slot machines, antlers and frontier memorabilia. Finger still on the pulse, a murmured, "no one is going to believe us" escapes Greta.

I'm too busy looking at legs to really respond.

This place is just astounding.

Dinner runs us to not much as slices of pizza (which are quarters of pizza) are a dollar fifty. Over the course of four or so hours we both wind up a little ahead on the slots and blackjack so it matters little. The final show for the evening - commencing at midnight - is predominantly rock and roll covers, the only time the illusion of 1898 or whichever year it is meant to be is really broken.

... not that it really bothered me.