Diary Entry 2

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Monday, May 4

Vancouver rocks. It is ridiculously beautiful. Unreal. I don't know how anyone ever gets anything done around here. I don't know why people aren't just standing still by the waterfront all day going "Dude, we live here." (Like they do in Madison.) Vancouver is, like, the city Breakup Girl would create if she had time to play SimCity. All of which is to say, if I already lived and worked here, an entire pride of Leonis could not drag me away. Harumph.

Other highlights:

1. Speaking of which: the big slogan in Vancouver these days is: "The Truth is Outta Here."
2. Here is Breakup Girl taking a boat tour of Vancouver Harbour:

BG TO TICKET SELLER: Hi, one for the 2:30 tour, please.
TICKET SELLER: Just one of you?

BG TO TICKET-TAKER: Hi.
TICKET-TAKER: Hi, welcome, just one of you?

BG TO SKIPPER: Hi.
SKIPPER: Just one of you today?

3. Another ridiculously beautiful thing here is Stanley (as in Lord Stanley, as in Cup) Park. It's right on the water (which is surrounded by mountains) and you can walk/bike/skate the ~7 km. perimeter. Though my rented inline skates ("Just one pair?") had all the handling precision of a shopping cart, skating the seaside loop was beyond stunning. I felt a certain kinship with the only other unaccompanied person in the entire park: the nice man who talks to the geese.

And finally:
Never mind Animal Husbandry (see Entry 1); we have found the official book of BG's WT '98: It is .... Julie, by Jean Craighead George -- the sequel to BG's all-time favorite book, Julie of the Wolves. YES it's in Large Type for Little Readers, gimme a break, I suppose you've all finished the new Pynchon. Anyway, first of all, Julie is an Inuit girl, so finally getting around to the sequel on this trip is an homage to the First Nations of this region. Second, Breakup Girl may be your hero, but Julie is Breakup Girl's hero, so by the Transitive Property of Heroes, she's yours too. If you want to learn a little something about bravery, pluck, or gutting a walrus, Julie's your girl. She flees a loveless arranged marriage, manages to get raised by wolves when she's not thrilled about how things are going at home, and winds up with tasty Siberian boy -- or at least finds one who will wait for her to finish her education and wrest Alaska's wilderness from the stranglehold of "progress." Damn, she got game.
Also, Julie's father, Kapugen, knows a little something about dealing with loss. For a while in the first book, he believes that his daughter is dead. Here is what he did: "He kayaked up the Avalik for almost a week to grieve alone. Then he came home. 'That is how it is,' he said. 'It cannot be helped.'"Are you listening, dumpees? You kayak, you come back, you deal. Just one of you.

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