My mom, when she was asked her opinion about this or that movie, would often say that it was "good" because there was "a lot of nice scenery." I think that's what she said about Mary Poppins. I know she did not like The Godfather. The scene wherein Sonny comes to grief at the toll booth--not very nice scenery. Nor could she give her imprimatur to the guys eating Chinese food right from the white boxes while plotting murder in the dimly lit room of a mansion purchased with ill-gotten gains.
So maybe the reason I've never been able to allow myself to be impressed by beautiful scenery is that it's connected in my mind with my mom's tastes in movies. But I couldn't keep my guard up while driving along BC-99 from Vancouver to Whistler. It's only around a hundred minutes. For the first forty or so, you look out to the left and see way below an expanse of salt water and, to the right, snow-capped mountains. Then for the last hour or so it's mountains on both sides. There are screens on the sheer cliffs that the highway winds through, to keep rocks from falling onto the roadway (or the vehicles traveling along it). I was wondering how they hung the screens, but probably a better question is how they built the road in the first place.
Anyway . . . really beautiful country. Possibly it's easy to impress a flatlander but my goodness! Amanda's view is a little different, as the main reason for our trip was the Ironman Canada Triathlon, which she competed in last Sunday at Whistler. She therefore had the opportunity, on an unusually warm (80°) day, to bike for 112 miles through those mountains after having finished the swim. It pretty well demolished her sunny disposition. She nevertheless ran-walked the marathon and finished the whole ordeal in 14 hours, 14 minutes. There are photographers out on the course taking pictures of the competitors and, perusing the photos of herself a few days ago, she expressed relief that she seems never to have been caught walking. ('ve kept it to myself till now but it's possible others feel as she does and that the photographers therefore don't regard walkers as worthy subjects.) Lots are walking two or three miles from the finish line, but everyone runs in the finishing chute, which appeared to be around 500 meters long: it's fun to stand along there and watch them come in, their faces a peculiar mix of exhaustion and elation.
Vancouver is the most cosmopolitan-seeming city I've ever been in. You hear I don't know how many different languages being spoken on the street--different Asian ones, lots of French, and, excepting the American southern drawl, every different variety of English. The adult-oriented businesses are wholly integrated and may be next to a Macy's or a restaurant (of which there are a zillion, featuring every conceivable cuisine). The downtown is filled with identical-looking residential high-rises. I have no idea where the people who can afford to live in them work. The streets are full at all hours with people who do not appear to be prosecuting the work-day routine or preparing to pull another 8-to-5 tomorrow.
One odd thing about Vancouver, a city of more than 600,000: it lacks a highway "bypass." Granted, there could be no bypass on its watery side, but, supposing you want to drive from Whistler to Seattle, it seems you are obliged to drive right through downtown Vancouver. There's our hotel again! The drive thus seems longer than it looks on a map, especially if by "Seattle" you mean the suburb of Bremerton, which is west, across Puget Sound, from the city, so that to get there by car from the north requires you to drive past the east side of the city, then curve around southerly, westerly, and northerly to your destination. We were at a Hampton Inn next to the Bremerton ferry station, and the ferry ride to downtown Seattle--round trip around eight dollars for adults and half that for kids--takes about an hour. If you walk northerly along the waterfront from the landing dock, there is a carnival with the usual amusements. It was my bad luck that the Mariners were on the road, so my family cruelly exploited my fear of heights by forcing me to ride on the ferris wheel that swings out over the water before, next day, going up the space needle. The famous Pike Place Market is a cluster-f and less than ideal when you are trying to keep track of kids.
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