29 Hours in Vancouver

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Not Granville Island
Orig­i­nally uploaded by Blue I’x

This past week­end, Brian and I had tick­ets to the No Doubt con­cert in Vancouver.

We orig­i­nally planned to spend a good long week­end there, vis­it­ing Brian’s mom in White Rock, and hang­ing out in and around the GVA. How­ever, when it came down to buy­ing flights (admit­tedly recently – last week), we decided that we needed a day at home for house/yard work reeeeally badly, and decided to devote our Fri­days off to that.

So on Fri­day we mowed the lawn and weeded the gar­den, and did some other gen­eral yard clean-up. That evening we went to our friends’ (Rob & Kiely) house for a bar­be­cue and a cou­ple rounds of dominoes.

Bright and early Sat­ur­day morn­ing (5:30am), we got up, tossed a suit­case together, and caught our flight to Abbotsford.

Brian’s mother and aunt picked us up from the Abbots­ford Air­port, and brought us to Brian’s mom’s place in White Rock. She has a beau­ti­ful lit­tle back­yard porch where I spent most of the day chit-chatting, and soak­ing up the sun and the won­der­ful damp sea air. Brian brought his mom an old com­puter of his to give to her – which is a huge improve­ment over her old one. But then he spent all day set­ting it up for her and fix­ing her inter­net prob­lems (par­tially caused by a 10-year-old modem). I didn’t mind – I was in a fan­tas­tic mood. The fur­ther west I go, the bet­ter I feel in so many ways. I can’t explain it.

The con­cert was Sat­ur­day night, and it was AWESOME. We arrived just as Bedouin Sound Clash started, and they were pretty good. They reminded me a bit of Sub­lime – and Brian and I rec­og­nized a song or two of theirs. Paramore came on next, and sur­prised me a lit­tle. I was sorta expect­ing some­thing like Avril Lav­i­gne, but it wasn’t too bad. The front woman reminded me of a lit­tle ani­mated match­stick. She had a TON of great energy, and her bright orange hair looked just like a wild lit­tle flame.

No Doubt was amaz­ing too. I’ve been a fan of theirs for about 12 years. They were my favorite band for a long time. When Gwen Ste­fani went solo, I wasn’t all that into her music… It was a lit­tle more dance/pop/something than I tend to lis­ten to. So when they announced this tour as No Doubt, I was thrilled. Visu­ally they were great, totally inter­est­ing and new, but I still absolutely rec­og­nized ‘old’ No Doubt in there. Even the way they moved. Tony’s two-footed hop across the stage, Adrien’s nothing-but-boots-and-a-tutu. Gwen’s abs. Ha. The woman is incred­i­ble. She has one of the most incred­i­ble bod­ies I’ve seen, and she’s had 2 kids and turns 40 this year! I know she has the time and money for a per­sonal trainer (and prob­a­bly chef, etc) but still. Kudos to her! The moment the band came on stage, 95% of the GM Place audi­ence was on their feet danc­ing and singing along, and most of us remained on our feet the whole time! I can’t remem­ber the last time a con­cert did that to me!

It was Brian’s first big con­cert like that – and he thought it was great too. I hope that means I can get him to more of them!

We had dri­ven to and parked in North Van­cou­ver, and taken the sea bus over to down­town, then hopped on the sky train to the show. So it took us a good hour and a half to get home after­wards, and since we were up for 21 hours straight on Sat­ur­day, we slept in on Sun­day. Myself more than Brian. But he was still work­ing on his mom’s com­puter. When I got up (around 10), Brian’s mom made us french toast. Before long, it was time to head back out to the Abbots­ford Air­port for our flight home.

The flight was fine, but REALLY bumpy com­ing into Cal­gary. We basi­cally tried to land in the mid­dle of an intense storm. It was prob­a­bly my bumpiest/scariest land­ing, but for some rea­son I felt REALLY trust­ing of the pilots, know­ing they would land us safely. We had to abort one land­ing, which was strange. We were com­ing in, get­ting closer and closer to the ground in the pour­ing rain, and then sud­denly the plane engines got REALLY loud and we started fly­ing sharply AWAY from the ground. I’ve never seen that hap­pen before! We cir­cled around, and tried again – This time, suc­cess­fully. After land­ing though, we had to wait out on the run­way for a while, because the ground crew had been called inside, due to light­ning in the area. Pretty crazy! But we all clapped once we were on the ground, and I think the pilots did a great job.

We are home now, once again. But again, not for long. Brian leaves for Toronto tomor­row, and I’ll fol­low him on Wednes­day. We’ll be back on Sun­day, but I’m leav­ing town again for work the next day.

Busy times!!!