On the road again…

I think this is my last road trip on my current contract. And I have to admit that I’m burnt out. I need to find something new to do. Would really love to find a way back to teaching. Anyway, I’m currently in Duncan, BC. I’ve passed through before but I think I must have missed it somehow…probably because I am always racing to catch the ferry when I’m in this neck of the woods.

I am actually surprised I even made it here on time today! I set the alarm clock last night before I went to sleep…and then forgot to turn it on….good thing I basically don’t need an alarm clock anyway. In my entire life I’ve probably only ever slept in once or twice. And yet I always set  the clock. I think I’m afraid of that one really important day when I finally do sleep in…so I keep setting it….sometimes I even set two…just in case…then I wake up 5 minutes before they go off and stuff them under my pillow…go figure.

Anyway, this morning I woke up 5 minutes before the alarm that wasn’t set should have gone off. Then I desperately tried to get a couple of things done before I headed for the first ferry…the ferry I came dangerously close to missing.  Half asleep, driving to Horseshoe Bay, all the darn construction and at the last moment I did my usual and mixed up my left and right and took the wrong lane…and missed the turn. Gads, you’d think I’d have this stupid thing figured out by now…but apparently not. So now I’m in a panic, rushing back down the highway in the wrong direction trying to get turned around at Caulfeild. Pay my exorbitant ferry fare and drive down the empty lanes…all the other cars are already on board..I drive right onto the ferry. My only comforts are the fact that i actually made it on….and there were two or three cars that loaded after me….I wasn’t last…that counts for something.

About 25 minutes out of Nanaimo I opened up the laptop to see exactly where I was headed…and the thing went to a black screen that had a line of error text on it. Uhhhhhh, this is not good….. Turn the thing off, and restart it. It tells me it didn’t start up right last time (yeah, I sorta got that part). It wants to do an error check. OK. Just as I am pulling into Departure Bay it decides it will start up properly. Whew! Getting to the hatchery without a functional computer would have been embarrassing and rather useless. I really, really want a Mac laptop….

On the road again, and for some reason I got the wrong road name in my head…..and headed down it for a short distance before I questioned myself….and turned around and found the right road.   It’s always comforting to see those little signs that say “Salmon Hatchery” with a little arrow beneath…pointing me in the right direction.

As I’m heading down the road the sun is peeking up and through the thin fog. The field of dried grasses is lightly frosted. Gorgeous…and I was running late and couldn’t spare the time to stop.  Oh well, some images that don’t make it onto the camera stay in your head. It really was pretty. I thought maybe I’d catch it tomorrow morning, but the forecast is for rain. Maybe I’ll get lucky Wednesday morning.

Anyway, found the hatchery, had a tour, went and found some lunch, found a nice spot near the water in Cowichan Bay, took a couple of photos, back to the hatchery, left and found my hotel. Strange folk here. I paid in advance via the internet and they almost seemed to not like that. “If you want to make any long distance calls we need your credit card to unlock the phone” Uh, no, I’m good, got a cell phone with me.  Just want wireless. “Oh, we don’t have that, wired only, if you want wireless, give us your credit card” Uh…no, that’s OK, I can live with a wire….

I head over to Save on Foods for some milk and nibbles…and the Save on Foods looks like it is half empty. Half the shelves are bare, the produce department has a few produce tables in a huge empty space. A little weird for my taste so I head across to Safeway. A bit more normal. They actually have food…..