Knowing we had to be at the car cleaning place for 9am, we set an
alarm to get us up and about in the morning. It duly went off but as
I stood cleaning my teeth looking at the clock in the washroom I was
puzzled to see that it was an hour earlier than I had thought. Yet
again yesterday we had passed through a time zone, from Mountain to
Pacific time, and I had not changed the time on my phone (alarm
clock). By that stage I was too awake to go back to bed so it ended
up being a very early start.
We
dropped Morty off to be cleaned, or “detailed” as they call it here.
It should take about four hours as they will clean all the door
wells, upholstery and the engine as well so it looks good to sell.
The chap from the car wash dropped us off at the Lougheed Mall so
that we could get the Skytrain into downtown Vancouver. The Skytrain
connects the outer suburbs to the centre of town with four coach
trains that whiz you around. It’s a pretty good service and for $8
you can travel all day on the train and buses. Again it’s an honour
system, not what we are used to in the UK.
From the Lougheed Mall to the centre of town it takes about
twenty five minutes. It is just one big urban sprawl with shopping
malls, housing estates and a few tower blocks along the way. We had
heard that there were waves of high immigration to Vancouver from
China and south East Asia and this is evident on the train. A high
proportion of people are of Asian origin and we were surrounded by
new, and unintelligible to us, languages.
We spent the day running a few errands and doing some shopping
but mainly focussed on where we will go next. Stef has agreed that
Indonesia can wait until it’s a safer place to go to so we now need
to look at alternatives. We headed for the downtown branch of
Chapters, a big bookshop chain, and looked around for options. The
most likely combination is to replace Indonesia with a trip from
Hong Kong, through southern China and then through Laos and Vietnam,
hopefully also still going to Malaysia. We bought the Lonely Planet
books so we can firm up plans and then headed down to Tourist
Information.
Here we got the usual selection of booklets and leaflets about
what there is to do in town and what is going on. This weekend is
the Grey Cup, the final of the Canadian Football League, so town is
likely to be full of footie fans from across Canada. Having seen a
game in Toronto neither of us are that bothered but we are still
keen to see an ice hockey game. The Vancouver Canucks are playing
tonight and Thursday but with no hockey last year, games are sold
out for the year.
Our only option is probably to turn up at the game and see what
the touts (scalpers) have got to offer. We went across to the
Ticketmaster booth to get a seating plan for the stadium so that we
would know whether or not we were getting good seats only to find
that some tickets had been released this afternoon for tonight’s
game against the Chicago Blackhawks. Stef threw all caution about
budget out of the window and opted for the best available seats.
We dashed back out of town on the Skytrain to go and pick up
Morty knowing we had to be back in town in a short while for the
game. When we got to the “detailing” shop they were still finishing
off. He looks very clean and sparkling new but we were told that the
seats and carpets were still not quite dry. I had a sneaky feeling
that we should have told them we would pick him up in the early
afternoon rather than last thing as I think they did not start work
on him this morning.
Their definition of “not quite dry” matches my definition of
sopping wet! The carpets were dripping water onto the floor and the
cushions that we sleep on were also pretty wet. I had a feeble
attempt at trying to dry them with a hairdryer but to no avail. The
friendly lady in the campsite office had finished her shift and when
I asked the night person if there was anywhere we could leave bits
to dry I was met with a dismissive and unhelpful shrug.
Time was not on our side and we had to leave to catch the game.
At the Skytrain station, and at each stop along the way, hockey fans
were gathering and heading down town. As with the football there was
good natured humour and banter going round and a definite sense of
excitement building with some of the fans.
Our tickets had set us back a bit but it was worth it for the
seats we got. They were in the Siemens Club area and we were eight
rows away from the ice, just to the left of the sin bins and
referees box. The chap next to Stef seemed happy to explain the
rules of the game and to give some insight into the teams. One of
the Canucks players has just started playing again having been
suspended for over a year for an attack on a player from a different
team. We have had a quick look around on the web and whilst what he
did was wrong, there is a history of the other player also making
violent attacks on Canucks players. The impression I have about ice
hockey from the little I have seen on TV in the UK is that it has
the same reputation as rugby for fights breaking out.
The game itself was mesmerising. It is so fast paced it is hard
to follow the action. Players are continually swapping over,
averaging about a minute on the ice before they change. It is easy
to see why, the game is so fast they must quickly get out of breath.
There were the odd occasions where tempers flared but nothing really
of note. These guys whiz from one end of the ice to the other, slam
into the Perspex screens when they are battling to get the puck, and
then whiz back down the other end again.
Before the game started an announcement said that if in the
audience you got hit by the puck, to stay where you were and someone
from the stadium would come and attend to you. The screens are a
good couple of metres high so I thought it unlikely this would
happen but these guys flick the puck up into the air pretty high so
I am sure it must do in some games.
The home crowd really got behind their team and after what to
me seemed like a close match, the Canucks secured a much needed
point scoring win at the end of the third twenty minute period. If
there was one thing I did not like, which was the same as the
football, it was the unsporting way the teams were introduced. Both
national anthems were played at the start but while the home team
came onto the ice in full floodlights with their names read out, the
away team simply sidled into their bench in the dark. At the end of
the game there was no shaking of hands and cross team camaraderie,
both teams simply disappeared. When the “man of the match”, well
three of them, announcements were made, the crowd booed when one of
the Chicago players were nominated.
There were 18,630 at the game and as with the football, people
started to leave before the game was over. Outside the police and
Skytrain people had the crowds well under control and we probably
only waited about five minutes before we were on a train heading
back to the campsite. Having enjoyed the game it was a pain to come
back and find the carpets and cushions still wet. In desperation the
carpets went into the campsite laundry room, as there was no way we
could dry them inside Morty, and we spent the night sleeping on a
slightly soggy bed!
