Canada Line Doesn't Stop Here

"Stop, please. I work here. Quite a number of us, actually. Customs brokers. Freight forwarders. Cargo handlers. All the business of the wide world passes through these terminals. Canadian exports. Hawaiian mango sliced in your dessert.

"There's...NO stop...not here, not any longer? But...that yellow kiosk, down there, the 100 from Marpole stopped there, for decades. Before this advancement in mass rapid transit. Even with that stupid Fare Zone crossing, and $3.75 one-way, it was just ten minutes to this stop, and work, riding the 100, south from Marpole, across the Arthur Laing, across the Fare Zone line drawn in the river, and west.

"Sweeping changes coming in September — really? Such as? Does it include this YVR Add-fare I've been hearing of? Sounds odd, that, as if the YVR track is...some kind of add-on, and couldn't be in anyone's daily commute. It would make it $12 a day, from Marpole, where the planes take-off past our windows.

"I see. My 100 no longer will brave the storms of autumn and winter south and west of the river. I'll have to get to my hole in the hedge earlier. Catch the 10...eastbound. Oh. Five minutes, east. Then catch this...Line, ten minutes, south and west.

"Two stations bracket these cargo terminals. I can de-train at the station a half-mile short. Only that's open ground, and a foul long slog in the storms of autumn and winter. I might just ride the train past, I suppose. Eye the cargo buildings in passing. And walk the half-mile down from YVR. Buildings along that stretch should offer some shelter during the gales.

"Actually, I'm feeling a bit stunned. Just now. I'd prefer not hearing about the YVR Add-fare, for the moment. Where'd I stow my foul-weather gear, anyway? Gonna haveta dress like Amundsen striking for the Pole, this winter.

10 Days in August

The 2009 World Police and Fire Games are just finishing in the Lower Mainland...Vancouver, and suburbs all around. From July 31 through August 9. 10 days of firefighters and police-persons from around the world taking a break from saving the rest of us; instead, doing their athletic best in competition that resembles more play, than anything Olympic.

Close to 10,600 participants. All events were free to watch, at any of 69 event venues. 69 pre-existing venues, as it happens. No Olympic'like anything monumental to build, nor fund for. Nor pay for, for the next thirty years. No billion-dollar athletes' village. No years-long construction nightmare for locals to navigate, and business to survive. I've only seen smiles all around.

And that's about all there is to say about these 10 days in August.

Day Stealer

There it is. The day stealer that blew in to my Sunday afternoon. And me feeling like writing — I dunno — a couple of novels, maybe. Little thing, eh?

Suppose I should be thankful for the other stuff, yeah. For what turned out right. For D, the apartment super, actually in. That I was able, at last, to convince D a fizzing water pipe inside the second-floor ceiling, and resultant dribbling thru my bathroom ceiling below, did actually warrant an emergency call to ANY plumber. I am especially thankful for the Chinese gent, coming on a Sunday, hauling upstairs his case of tools, three and a half hours later.

I wonder how the really good writers, the ones we all know and love, how they managed, or worked around, the little day stealers in their lives...

Picturing...mmm...Miss Shakespeare. For my fun of it.

"Millie. Millie, cut me free of these constraining garments. And set another ewer under yonder weeping joist. Wait. Ack, poor ewer. I knew him, Millie. Ewer bore my beer. Fetch another, Millie."

Meh, just funnin' about. Late Sunday night, I jotted a start to...Fond Memory...working title. Maybe something for Protag. Only put down the idea, and some imagery. Too hot, too tired, to do more.

How Do I Hate Thee?

No, not here. Elsewhere, I'll list the whys.

I've stopped myself polluting my blog, for today, with a particularly witty, I thought, though nasty rant. About so many colliding things I see wrong with this picture-perfect...place on the plain. I can't call Vancouver a city, not without laughing. And lose the by the sea bit — I'm writing this. Imagery of a mirage of a city splayed like a blurry dream across a broiling plain especially fits, for its ominous connection with a divine smack from on high, impending and even deserved, to my current mind. Of course, it's people who are responsible for the state of...everything. You and me — all of big-U Us — either group-hugging, or snarling, like the animals humans really are. In every small choice we make, we build, or destroy.

I've become a destroyer. In my small way. And actually don't much care. Fed up, after decades of doing my bit so that, as it's turned out, the clearly uncaring, and their progeny, could breathe cleaner air, I've parked my bike. I motor about, these days. Haven't barked once. There is a mean look in my eyes, when I glimpse myself in the mirror. Prob'ly I'm only squinting against the bright sun. I do especially like that because they wouldn't share with skinny me cranking along the road edge they now have to, with five thousand pounds of pick-up truck, and me, grinning, unpleasantly, in front of them.

Have to qualify my meaning there. I care that I don't care. I've lost something more than the daily chance to raise my heart rate.

But, again, the rant of all that won't blacken this blog. While going for groceries this milder morn, I arrived at that decision, and came up with the idea I could do it as a story. A most twisted story. A Rant, for the therapy. And writing exercise. So I can have my rant — make them eat it, too — Mwwaahh'Haa'Haahhh! Already thinking of a pair of characters, opposites, naturally. Really need to get going on my adds over at Protag, tho.

Snapped the reflective pic before work Thursday morn. Went out of my way to find a little quiet worth looking at...[odd sentence, that oddly works].