Patience. The first lesson in owning a VW Bus is patience. You learn this very quickly while driving in the mountains of B.C. constantly getting overtaken by newer SUV's and giant semi-trucks. At first it's an annoyance, especially the wind shakes you get after a big logging trucks pulls out in front of you. Then after a while you begin to take pride in taking your time. Almost laughing at the fact you're climbing a mountain road at 40km's an hour, taking in all the scenery as the van hums pushing second gear with all it's might. The second lesson you learn driving a VW bus, one that was practiced frequently on the last leg of our drive to Vancouver is what I call ten o'clock and 2 o'clock. Remember driving lessons when they say to always keep your hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel. You've probably got a bit relaxed about it now, and sometimes you may even drive with your knee keeping you inbetween the lines, cigarette in one hand, coffee in another. Don't do that in a VW bus. The surface area of these vans versus the weight of them don't match up. We had some serious windgusts that I felt my heart drop as far as we would have, had I not been white knuckling the steering wheel at our beloved 10 and 2 o'clock

So after a few sketchy moments inbetween Merrit B.C. and Vancouver, we arrived to a beautiful sunshine filled sky, painting the mountains and valleys a most vivid green. The kind of green that you see in postcards. We had not made solid plans as to where we would be spending our time in Vancouver, but decided to phone our old neighbour Mel's dad who lived in Surrey, just outside of Vancouver. We met at a mall near his house and he took us back to where we've been staying for the last 2 nights. It's been a great time spending time with Terry and his family and they've taken good care of us. I'm going to do some work with him for the next 2 days, which will be fun and help out with a little bit of cash.

Lastnight I met up with my long, lost little brother who I haven't seen in 6 or 7 years. He was DJing at some swanky nightclub on Granville St. and put me on the guestlist. It was amazing to reconnect and find that we still share the same tastes in lots of things. Ahh, genetics. Amazing things. The club was called Republic and it had been a while since I'd been to a real nightclub, sorry Saskatoon, The Overdrive doesn't count. It feels good to be in a big city again, I forgot about the constant buzz that is present in the big city. Good restaurants open late, more variety of food, more multiculturism, but also more traffic, pollution and noise. Can't have it all I guess...

Anyways, we've decided to spend the weekend here for Thanksgiving as Terry and his family have invited us for their Sunday evening Turkey feast, which is awesome. We've also decided that seeing as how Eir is celebrating her 1st Birthday on Saturday it would be nice to do something special and not be caged up in a van. So we're going to take the girls to the Vancouver Aquarium and probably have a BBQ that evening. I don't know how I feel morally about the Aquarium, but I suppose I'll make that decision when I see it for myself. That's all for tonight, working man tomorrow and should get a good rest.