Today was the last day for the hire car. Now we had a choice, in theory our 24 hour period meant we had until 8pm to return the car, but the office down town closed at 5pm. So we could either come back early to do the sensible thing and drop the car at the office or we could do an "automated drop off" in a dodgy down town multistory car park, great let's do that.
'8.30am wheels up', was agreed by all and would you believe we were all in the car and on our way to Whistler by 8.25am, I think everyone was looking forward to this trip. By 8.32am the first of many mind boggling questions from Charlie was delivered without mercy, "Daddy, if you were doing full speed down Whistler on a Kona Stinky how big would the ramp have to be for you to crash into our house in North Vancouver?" Errrrrrr......... "Daddy, if you have 7 nuclear bombs strapped to a Banshee Scream and you were doing the speed of light down Whistler, and your bombs exploded as you hit a ramp that was like em, the size of say, em, Mount Seymore, would you be able to reach England? This continued all the way to Whistler, which is a 2 hour drive.
Whistler was bathed in sunshine, 28 degrees said the large digital read out at the welcome centre and every where you went you were reminded that the Olympics were arriving in 2010.
Mountain bikers amassed at the bottom of the chair lift by the Longhorn and it would seem you were either biking or shopping. We spent our day wandering through the many shops looking and dreaming, often commenting on what a cool place this would be to live if only it wasn't so busy. Albert Robert Einstein Oppenheimer, would every now and then pitch in a doozy, "Daddy, if you had the front end of a Kona Stinky and the middle triangle of a Big Hit and a Fox 5.1 shok packed with dynamite, how far......... etc etc etc, still the day flew by, a grand time was had by all and sadly we departed, heading for the bright lights of down town Vacouver and some dodgy multistory car park but having vowed to return at the earliest possible opportunity.
The 99, or the "Sea to Sky Highway" to give it it's full and glamorous title is a tricky road at the best of times, but the on going expansion, turning a 'one up and one back' into a dual carriage way can cause for delays but when we completely ground to a halt half way back and everybody turned off their engines, got out of their cars, set up the BBQ's and put the music on, I began to worry, "This happens all the time" said one bloke I spoke to, "they're either blasting or some idiot has driven off the mountain". Great I thought, the hire car is due back in 90 mins. We soon resided ourselves to the fact that we were going to be late and enjoyed the moment, nowhere else would you get a party like this with a view like this.
We eventually arrived down town an hour or so late and I successfully managed to abandon the car and post the paper work and keys in to wooden box nailed to a car park wall, only then releasing that I had left all the remote controls for the gates and garage inside the car, where was Albert Robert Einstein Oppenheimer now when I needed him, we could have nuked the box off the wall!
And so ends our second week in Canada. It has been a fantastic journey so far and I hope you have enjoyed only a few of the many stories. As life settles down and not wishing to subject you all to the tedium of day to day living, I have decided to do a weekly blog from now. Please keep reading and please post your comments as we look forward to reading them. So I leave you with this thought........." If I had 17 nuclear missiles and I strapped them to some roller blades and Tom was on a Kona Stinky, riding flat out down Whistler ,how big would the ramp have to be..........
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