And the heavens open up ...

27 September - Very cold day today but I suspect it's just a hint of what's to come - went out again to Stanley Park and over the Lions Gate Bridge to North Vancouver. Got completely spattered in mud - I didn't realise how badly until I got back to the hostel - it looked like I had grey freckles all over my face. Soon after I got back it started to rain - not terribly hard but consistently - I suspect this is what i'm going to have to get used to if i'm going to live here. Was planning on holding back on shopping for proper gear until after I move into the house - i've already accumulated a few more things, which are going to make it just that much harder to move, but, it's started to rain. It's not that blat blat blat blattering that is so hard that it makes no difference whether you have your windscreen wipers on or off and that is annoying even if you're a rain god but it was miserable nonetheless. So, after lunch on Davie St (an okay lunch special from a Singapore restaurant) I decided to head over to Broadway to check out the rain jackets. Saw a few nice ones, some on special - some not on special, all of them pretty expensive though. One of the shops was the Mountain Equipment Coop where I found some sunglasses which I am in badly of need of, my other ones have been broken for a few months now and i'm constantly needing to use sticky tape to hold them together. However, when I went to pay for them I found that my wallet was missing. I searched my pockets and my bag and couldn't find it anywhere - I tried not to panic and went straight back to the previous store I was in - we searched through the pockets of the jackets i'd tried on to no avail.
The last place i'd definitely remembered using it was a cheap Singaporean restaurant where i'd eaten lunch all the way on the other side of town in Davie St. I only had a couple of bucks left and realising that this could well be the sum total of my funds for the next few days I decided to walk, run, back there. On the way thoughts were spinningthrough my head of what my options were - I still didn't really know anybody in town and I had absolutely no way to get any money (Friday afternoon is probably the worst time to lose one's wallet because the banks close on the weekend and there'd be no chance of organising anything until Monday). I thought I might be able to squeeze the hostel for my key deposit back, and there was the slim chance I could perhaps borrow a couple of bucks from Steve, the Australian I met the other day, although he really didn't know me very well and I'd hate to have to push a friendship that early in the piece; I didn't even have anything I could pawn (there was no way I could leave my PDA or bicycle, the only real things of value I have right here). On the way I found myself praying to a God I didn't believe in (i don't think I made any promises of changing faith should it turn up) but the one thing I did promise myself if the wallet turned up was to buy myself some strong drink to calm my nerves. And lo and behold, when I arrived at the restauarant and explained my situation the grim manager asked, 'What's your name?' and 'Where are you from?' and I knew I was saved.
Went straight next door to a pub whose name I can't remember and bought myself a whiskey, my heart still beating quite fast. I knew if it had gone missing it would have been a pain in the arse but not a disaster - but an avoided pain in the arse of that scale was something to celebrate.
While I was sipping away two women on the table next to me vocally admired my Pocket PC and we started chatting. Brenda and Abi their names were and they invited me to join them - I enthralled them with my tale of panic and my other adventures of the past few months and soon the rest of their friends joined them. Being Davie St the bar was one of the flamboyant variety and the others all fitted that description to a T, almost too well. Some of them belonged to a dog group and purebreeds seemed to be their passion but they were very nice and very interesting nonetheless (one of them was an ex-Olympic gymnast who missed out on his chance because of the 1980 American boycott, he didn't seem too bitter about it now). It was a very welcome night compard to what it could have been had I not found my wallet. We ate some dinner there before heading back to Brenda's place for some more drinks (very nice flat and very nice, very EXPENSIVE Canadian wine). Some of the others went to fetch their dogs prior (a very cute little pinscher, chihuahua mix and another little benjy-ish type dog whose breed I couldn't ID) and although dogs were large part of the conversation I still had a great time. Brenda passed out at some stage and the rest of us left rather quietly. Looks like i've made a few new friends.