Friday 17 January 2014

Was it worth it ?

Was it worth booking a trip to a sunny beach even though the Vancouver Weather Forecast called for 2 weeks of sun?

Here are the "sunny" days that I still witnessed:
1 day with cloudy breaks : cold & grey
1 day with fog forecast:  cold & fog
1 night with fog horns blaring all night
1 day with sun forecast:  cold & fog


That last picture is a depiction of the airport so anyone can guess that I didn't stick around to verify the veracity of the remaining days of the weather forecast.
Why can't the Vancouver weather forecast be like the Kona weather forecast?  The weather forecast obtained just before leaving for Hawaii called for a week of high chance of showers and it rained once ;-)

Even if the difference in weather did not render the trip worth it, I am sure Vancouver Police did: The many police cars that usually sit in front of the departure level of YVR today actually did something.  Speeding tickets to MANY full & empty taxi cabs and private cars that exceeded the ridiculously low speed limit at a pedestrian crossing right in front of the terminal building.  All this was observed from a smoking area and all the smokers agreed that Vancouver must have become a crime free area (as evidenced by the cops having nothing else to do) and therefore smoked their cigarettes WITHIN the area delimited by the green line, to make sure that the VPD did not give them a SMOKING-OUTSIDE-A-DESIGNATED-AREA ticket.

The toilets at the south-end of the domestic departure level have moved (Why?)! Food (Calamari & a black-out-torte on the second sitting) was pretty good. Security was what one expects: Employees not allowed to think for themselves but forced to follow procedure.  When I asked one why the NEXUS isle had moved from the very right to the very left I was informed in no uncertain terms that I had an incorrect memory of history and that the Nexus line never had been on the right but had always been on the left. 1984 anyone?  People voluntarily removing their shoes, even though no one asked them to.  My computer being swabbed for explosives.

Just to get away from these last two paragraphs for a week was definitely worth the trip. Canadians are becoming what Germans were 70 years ago:  Rule followers & spineless mute conformists. Getting away from that was a very much needed fresh breath of air.

A change from previous flights to Cuba:  The passengers were informed that the plane cabin would be sprayed with insecticide BEFORE boarding the plane, as opposed to being informed an hour prior to landing in Varadero as on previous flights.







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