ClubUnivega: The Waitress' Holiday

Left home with about $25 in Canadian coin from my tip jar, plus $200 from the bank.
I wanted to go to Capilano, but scaled back my plans because of snow.

For all the time I spend reading and fantasizing about bicycle touring, I'm very bad about planning and then actually getting going on a trip. But back in November Amtrak was offering very low fares on the Cascades line between Vancouver BC and Portland, Oregon, so I booked a trip for mid-January, which was the first week I could fit in around everyone else's holiday plans.
My coach ticket cost $24 round-trip, passenger only. I planned to leave my bicycle - my old, reliable K2 hybrid commuter - at the Fairhaven Station, because I would need it to get home to Ferndale on the evening of my return. Cab fare would run about forty or fifty dollars and there is no bus service after 6:30pm.

Bicycle parking at Fairhaven Station

Naturally, things didn't start off quite as planned. It was snowing a little as I biked across town to the transit stop, like tiny cold sand grains against my face. At the bus stop on LaBounty Road, I realized I'd left my bike lock at home and had to ride back for it. The bus was just heading away over the freeway when I returned; I tried to intercept it at the intersection of West Smith and Northwest, but just missed again. Chasing the bus brake lights down Northwest for about a mile before it finally dropped me, I rode all the way to Fairhaven Station, about twelve miles, in about the same time it would have taken on the bus, except that I arrived flustered, damp and with rosy cheeks and nose. At the bike rack, my odometer read 6400.00 miles exactly, a better omen for the rest of the trip, I thought.

A passport is required to cross the border. You have to enter your passport number into Amtrak's online booking system to buy a ticket. Passengers are required to arrive at the station only about a half-hour before departure. Once on board you fill out a customs declaration form, which is collected by Canadian officers who board the train in Blaine to check passports. On the return trip, you'll fill out the customs form and pass through screening by US officers at Pacific Central Station.

Lots of leg room in Coach

There was no sign of snow in Bellingham, but as the train traveled back north past Ferndale and Birch Bay, we headed into serious snow fall. This made the view from the train seem cleaner and fresher and added to the excitement of leaving, but I worried whether I would be able to get around as planned in Vancouver - I'd packed over-night clothes I could layer for getting around the city on foot, but nothing really warm enough for very bad weather.

Train travel offers a different, but still interesting, perspective compared to driving or biking by road. You'll see back porches and backyards with laundry on the line, warehouses, loading docks, truck yards and junk yards, and get a survey of new trends in colorful graffiti art styles. In clear weather the Cascades route has some spectacular water and beach views of Puget Sound, and also tideflats and wetlands populated by bald eagles, herons and other water birds. But on this trip the snow was so heavy I got only a monochrome view of grey water blending in to the clouds and falling snow.

To the left as you leave Pacific Central Station

There were a couple of hostels close by the train station in Vancouver, which apparently had been cleaned up for the 2010 Winter Olympics, but the neighborhood is a bit seedy and they were already looking run-down. I'd taken down addresses of a couple of places on Granville Street, so I spent a few hours walking around Chinatown, the harbour and Granville before looking for a place to stay.

Granville Mall is Vancouver's nightlife center, with exclusive clubs and expensive theaters side by side with dirty dives and sex shows. After I'd walked several blocks up one side of the street and down the other, the sky was beginning to get dusky, and I began to feel I was attracting attention - a couple of men offered me suspicious-looking smokes - so I decided I'd better settle on a place fast. There were several hostels besides the two I'd checked online, but the lobby entries were hard to spot from the street, they all looked a little dodgy, and I was foot-sore, tired and feeling less adventurous by the minute. Half-way down the next block, I spotted a two-story-high sign for Howard Johnson's. I had heard of HoJo's of course, but they're not common in the Pacific Northwest and I'd never stayed in one before. It seemed like the optimal combination of novelty and familiarity. Cost about twice as much as a bed in a hostel, but the room was clean, cozy, private, quiet and nicely furnished, painted in warm shades of creamy yellow and mustard.

I had a very good veggie burger dinner at a pub called Rosie's at the corner of Robson and Hamilton. Not being the club-hopping, pub-crawling kind, I turned in early and got up early the next morning for another walking tour.

Vancouver went through one construction and development boom before the Olympics, and building has resumed again. There are high-rise towers, apartments and condos and commercial buildings in progress everywhere. The University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University both have downtown campuses, and there are many vocational/technical schools and ESL schools. I had breakfast at a boulangerie where the workers spoke French to each other, but I was too shy to try out my community college French skills. Across the street was a Transylvanian bakery and pastry shop, which fortunately didn't open until 11am.

That's Svein Tuft on the far right - winner of the 2008 Gastown Grand Prix.
Next year's race is scheduled for July 11, 2013. Put it in your Day-Timer.

British Columbia is the origin of Ryder Hesjedal, Svein Tuft, and more eminent racing cyclists than I can name off the top of my head right now. The Vancouver region puts on a series of big-time bicycle races in the first half of July, which they advertise year-round on colorful window-posters in Gastown. Sadly, this is as close as I came to cycling greatness and excitement in January.

Canadians are famously polite

After walking around for a few more hours, my toes began to feel raw. The snow had mostly melted, but it was cold and damp and I wanted to see something besides the usual tourist spots, and learn to get around the city independent of cars. I decided to try out the SkyTrain, the city's elevated light-rail system. I bought a day-pass for $9.75 and spent a few hours looping around overhead through some of Vancouver's working neighborhoods. Snow about two inches deep persisted in the suburbs and smaller towns outside of the city center. I passed over the well-known film/TV/video production district in Burnaby a couple of times, but it looked pretty much like any industrial district, not at all glamorous.

Bikes are allowed onboard the SkyTrain from most (but not all) stations, but only one bike in each car. I saw lots of people biking around the city, despite the snow, and leaving bikes parked at the stations, but no one brought one on board.