Things that might be decidedly odd…

Vancouver

Summer is such a busy time! I’ve got a few minutes before heading off to bed, so I’ll recap what I’ve been up to lately.

Last weekend, I went to Vancouver, BC for the weekend. It was Vancouver Pride, but mostly I just went to visit some friends. It was a fun time, but somehow I managed to spend $300 (CAD = USD these days) without staying in a hotel or buying anything while shopping. It was all food, drinks and cover charges.

Robert and I drove up on Friday after work. Upon arrival, our hosts (Jean and Javeed) were already having a small cocktail party so things started off right away. Later we grabbed some food and went to 1181 where we ran into various other Seattle people. We tried to get into Odyssey, but eventually gave up once the line stopped moving. We ended up at Numbers which was fun but so extremely hot I couldn’t really dance for very long.

Saturday morning involved wandering around Robson St and Davie St doing some light shopping followed by more eating and drinking. That night, we managed to get to Odyssey early enough to get in without waiting forever. Once inside, I felt really old though. I’m not sure why we go there. The crowd is not our scene, it’s not cheap ($15 cover during pride weekend) and there’s always a long line. Oh well.

Sunday was the parade which we watched for a while before seeking out some food. I had some of the worst Mexican food I’ve had in a while. Note to self–just because the employees all speak Spanish doesn’t mean it’ll be decent. Yuck. After that, we went back to the condo for some prefuncing before heading over to the Trouble T Dance we bought tickets for the previous day. It was no doubt my favorite part of going out on the whole trip. There was some dancing, but it was just a nice space to be in with a good number of people. Afterwards, we ended up at an impromptu party at a friend of a friend of a friend’s place nearby. We had some pizza. I spilled my glass of wine all over the place after trying to set it down on the curved edge of this funky coffee table. Robert fell asleep and started snoring in the middle of the party. We were terrible and probably never welcome back. After that, we somehow got the bright idea of going out to Odyssey yet again. I ended up getting to bed around 2am I think after having a few cocktails.

Monday morning, I got up at 6:30 so that I could drive back home in time for a work meeting. Ugh, I was so tired. I didn’t make the work meeting because it took something like 80 minutes to get through US Customs. Every car in that line up had BC plates, I swear. Monday was a local holiday (BC Day) and with the current exchange rates, apparently a lot of Canadians decided to drive over the border to get in some good shopping.

Vancouver Island

I took Monday and Tuesday off from work so that I could take an extended 4th of July weekend. My friends and I went to Vancouver Island, spending the first two days in Victoria for Canada Day and the next two out at Goldstream Provincial Park for camping. Unfortunately, I didn’t take a lot of pictures, but here’s one of me standing at the western terminus of the Trans-Canada Highway in Victoria:

Vancouver

On Friday afternoon, Robert and I drove up to Vancouver for the weekend. It was yet another brief to escape Seattle for a weekend scenery change. We stayed with these two guys Jean and Javeed we met back in August while in town for Vancouver Pride. On Friday night, we hit up 1181 and Odyssey for drinks and to see some strippers. Unfortunately, the strippers weren’t at Odyseey that night because of a special Madonnathon, which was fine. Strippers aren’t really all that exciting to me, but I admit they’re sort of novel since we don’t have them in Seattle.

Saturday we did some shopping and saw lots of different parts of town–Stanley Park, Gastown, Downtown Eastside, Granville Island. That night, we went to a house party being thrown by a friend of one of our hosts. All in all, it was a nice getaway where we got to know a bunch of new people and see the town a bit more from the perspective of some locals. It was definitely the best visit I’ve had there before, which is not to say the previous times were bad at all.

One thing that was surprising about the trip was the amount of snow not just on the road up there but also in town. Vancouver looked like it really got slammed by the snow storm that came through here last week. Even in the west end near the water front, there was still snow piled up from the plowing that happened days before. There was even more snow every time we ventured outside of the lower elevation downtown area too.

I didn’t take too many pictures, but the few there are here.

Vancouver

By the time Robert came to pick me up on Saturday at 7:50am, I wasn’t even done packing. I stuffed what I could into my bag and got out of there after just a few minutes. We then picked up Larry and Drew and were on the road. With Robert’s driving speed, I think we were at the border by around 10:30. We stopped at the duty free shop to buy alcohol, but it was fairly crowded. Then somebody waiting in line dropped a big bottle of spiced rum which shattered and went all over the floor. Then it was like a game of 20 questions with the cashier. Basically, they didn’t want to sell us more alcohol than we could take across the border duty free (FYI, 40oz per person when going into Canada). Out of frustration I just walked out of the store. Never mind the fact that almost nobody ever gets stopped and asked to pay duty unless they’re bringing like a truckload of booze in. Anyhow, eventually we were across the border and then soon in town.

After dropping our luggage off at the hotel, we grabbed lunch at The Fountainhead on Davie Street. From there, we went to Wreck Beach although it was probably 3pm by the time we were on the road. Wreck Beach is a very popular and famous officially legal nude beach. It’s adjacent to the UBC campus (possibly right on it actually), which sorta made me think about how it would have been interesting to have gone to grad school there. I had my application ready back in 2004, but I didn’t send it off because I’d already gotten my admission from UNC.

Upon arrival it was very crowded and these greeters (for lack of a better word) almost immediately descended on us asking all sorts of questions, which I found very annoying. Billy led the way down towards the gay part of the beach. We had to walk through the forest on a trail for about 20 minutes, but it was less crowded and more layed back down there. Unfortunately, you couldn’t swim in the water because of high coliform count (i.e., treated sewage). Not that you’d want to anyways as it was some grody stagnant water, although there were people playing in it (ew). It was nice to lay out in the sun though. This was not my first time visiting a nude beach though. In fact, it was exactly a year ago today when I went to San Onofre for that purpose. I’d have to say I was much more comfortable this time, probably out of experience and having friends to go with.

After returning to town and showering, we had dinner at some Chinese/Singaporean restaurant on Davie Street. The food as well as the service were both pretty good. One of the waitstaff (perhaps the owner?) even brought us a complementary mixture of orange brandy and Grand Marnier afterwards, which was really nice. We left a pretty substantial tip in the end though. We then tried to find this party where were supposed to watch the fireworks. It turned out that the guy wasn’t in town. There had been no official invitiation. Everybody just assumed since they’d done this a number of times in the past, they’d do it again this year. Instead we watched the fireworks down by the beach, which was very crowded. Once the fireworks were over, we went back up Davie to try to find a bar. Most of them had very long lines, but we managed to get into a place known only as 1181 Davie. The drinks were on the expensive side, but it had pretty good service and a nice decor. After that, we went to wait in line to get into Celebrities. We probably waited about 30 minutes before getting to the front of the line only to find out cover was $30. We all decided that was too much to pay and went back to the hotel room to drink and eat pizza.

The next day was the parade. We had brunch at a Milestone’s on the parade route and then walked around a bit to find a good vantage point for watching the parade. After the parade, we briefly checked out the festival, which was much smaller than any other pride festival I’ve seen (Durham, Seattle, Portland). As we were walking towards the shopping areas of downtown, I ran into Jeff and split off with him from the Don, Brent and Shepherd. I’d been trying to meet up with him at various points over the weekend, but it was very hard coordinating with anybody given the crowds and limited international cellphone roaming situation (no texting, 65 cents per minute to call). We walked around town doing some shopping for maybe an hour before I had to head back to the hotel to get ready for the cruise we were going on.

First, the cruise I went on (with pretty much everybody from our little group that went up) was leather and denim themed. While that’s not really my scene, all my friends were going and it sounded fun enough. It actually wasn’t as leathery as I expected. It seemed like a lot of guys just wanted to go on a cruise and the other option (the go-go aka twinky cruise) looked less desirable. The views from the boat of Indian Arm were spectacular. The food and music were also pretty good. Overall, it was a nice 4 hours or so. Getting back on land, we hit up a few bars. We started out at the The Pumpjack which I found very underwhelming. It was too dark and just felt off somehow. I mostly sipped my drink while watching gay rodeo on the TVs. We bounced pretty fast after everybody finished their drink to 1181. There we started talking to some guys from Seattle and San Francisco Robert had been talking to on the cruise (not leather daddies). I talked with this guy Carl for a while. I mentioned to him how whenever I go to San Francisco I feel like I’m not cool enough to live there. He said I just needed to find my niche and then suggested some club nights that would apparently be right up my alley (e.g., Drunk and Horny and a night called Wetdream which they thought might not be still going on). Anyhow, I found it cool that people were trying to suss out my niche in that city. After 1181, we went over to Numbers for some dancing. The dance floor was very hot and humid, but I danced for a while there (maybe as long as an hour?) before returning to the hotel to sleep.

Monday morning was a day recovery. I had something like 7 drinks over 8 hours the night before, which is a lot for me. Unfortunately, I also awoke with cold symptoms which only got worse throughout the day. Still, I wasn’t really hung over–just tired and sick. We all grabbed brunch together then split up to do some shopping and final exploring before leaving town. I think we ended up leaving Vancouver at around 5ish. The border was a breeze (just 5 minutes at the truck crossing) and we were soon back in Seattle. I got dropped off last. When I was getting my stuff out of Robert’s car, he realized there was a mysterious bag in there. After some investigation, we found a hotel receipt in the exterior pocket. It wasn’t our luggage, but somebody else who had been staying at the hotel from Hong Kong. The receipt indicated they had checked out that day. When we picked up or bags, the bellhop loaded them and this extra bag into the car I guess. I guess everything got straightened out and the hotel was going to send somebody down to pick up the bag. I think I’d be pretty pissed if the hotel had not only lost my bag, but accidentally given it to somebody who took it to another country with them!

I didn’t get a whole lot of pictures for whatever reason. Most are of the parade and even then pretty much just when there was something interesting (i.e., some eye candy). Still, you can check them out here. Also, there’s the obligatory video of gay guys dancing on a float.

Back from Vancouver

I just got back from Vancouver, BC. It was a busy weekend for sure, but I’m too tired to go into all the details right now. Suffice to say, it was a pretty good weekend even with the cold I seem to have developed yesterday evening. I’ll get up some details and photos when I get around to it–hopefully some time tomorrow.

Swimming and Vancouver Prep

A couple days ago my new Orcas punch card came in the mail, so I was able to go to practice again. I went this evening, which I believe is the first time I’ve been on a Friday. I didn’t quite finish the whole routine, but I was within 150 yards of it. Afterwards, a few of us went out for dinner at a Chinese place in the International District which was nice.

Tomorrow I need to get up early so that I can be ready to meet my carpool for Vancouver at 8am. Fortunately, swimming has tired me out, but I’ll need to get up extra early to pack. The plan is to get out of here early so that we have time to stop at duty free and make it out to Wreck Beach at a decent hour. Apparently, the gay part of the beach is the place to be on the Saturday before the pride parade. It should be interesting. After that we’ll probably go out to the bars and clubs I imagine. Sunday is the parade and afterwards a bunch of us are going on some sort of 4 hour cruise up the coast. Then on Monday, we’re all heading back to town (I’ve already taken the day off from work).