Recovery Day

11 March - Despite deserving a decent sleepin after my latest rash of alcohol fuelled late nights I was awoken by a call from Mo, the Novex walker (former and future driver and now occasional biker) wanting to head out to Stanley Park for a little bit of a mountain bike session. I couldn’t commit in my current condition but we made tentative plans for an afternoon hookup. Planned to do a few errands along the drive and checked out the new bike shop that happened to be owned by one of the mechanics who originally quoted me for a hybrid bicycle when I first arrived. I was interested in checking out options for a fixed speed track bike but he only really deals in high end stuff and the quote was a bit out what I could justify but it's a nice shop nonetheless. Wandered down to JJ Beans for a low fat latte enema and after ordering heard, 'What kind of stupid accent is that?' and was confronted with Darryl, one of the Corporate Couriers who was havinga bit of a wander down the Drive. Very interesting guy, he has Native Amerind blood and although he can be a little bit abrasive at times he's certainly very good value. Chatted for a quite a while before he moved on and I used the space for email chatting. The little PDA, despite being a few years old, gets a lot of attention due to its size - it's still much smaller than the tiniest of laptops and most people are more impressed with size than power when it comes to electronics.
Was just about to leave when I bumped into Tessa, an NZ traveller who I met when I first arrived - she used to live with Steve, the Western Australian who I met at the airport upon arrival in Vancouver and it turns out that he's actuallyreturned to Oz, which would explain why his phone was cut off. A nice catchup compounded by the fact that she will probably be heading eastwards in a couple of months which might well coincide with my plans. I'd never got back to Mo about the ride and he called up wondering what the story was. Mo is a bit of a revhead (the reason why he was walking for Novex was because he lost his licence doing illegal street racing) and whilst he's a real shit stirrer at work (he loves to let me and Jason know how we're stacked over the other bikers and he's the biggest gossip in the company) he is a very good guy and he's also our main connection (besides the dispatcher) with the Richmond office. The one thing he seems to love doing more than anything is cruising around in his automobile (perhaps this is a temporary thing because he's so happy to have his licence back but i'd be willing to bet that it's what he just loves to do) and he decided that we would go for a cruise around downtown. Saw some filming outside 885 (Vancouver is used for a lot of films) and a very old but very spry rollerblader doing tricks near the park and Mo gave a somewhat tedious running commentary on every good looking woman we passed but it was kind of fun. He also let me drive his car, which was the first time i've been behind a wheel since Australia and the first time i've ever been behind a left hand drive - very strange to use my right hand to shift and centering in the lane was always going to be a problem - the one thing that was the hardest to get used to was using the indicators. Because of the mirrored controls every time I wanted to signal i'd put the windshield wipers on (had the same problem when I was driving an old Mercedes back in australia). Didn’t drive for very long but lots of fun being behind a wheel again (quite possibly one of the nicest cars i've ever had the pleasure to drive as well).