the charm of the highway strip (and tiring thereof).

for the right amount of money (too much), canadian tire will fix your car on a long weekend and give it back to you on canada day. pricey, yet somehow miraculous. after getting our car back yesterday afternoon, we opted to spend yet another night in edmonton with the lure of a barbecue at our friend andrew bursey's place.

this was a lovely choice, save for the troubles that would face us trying to drive from edmonton to vancouver the following day. it's a fourteen hour long drive at the best of times - a length of drive i was hoping to leave behind me with my twenties - so an ambitious undertaking to begin with. this was only enhanced by the fact that the yellowhead highway had washed out west of jasper (for those who don't know, that's a pretty major route to wash out). so we were rerouted from jasper to lake louise. this involves driving in kinda the wrong direction amid mountain goats and slow-going rv's for about three hours. the upshot is that driving from jasper to banff usually requires having a park permit and is therefore something neither aitor nor i has ever done. you know what? canada is pretty fucking beautiful.









oh, whoops. did i sneak in a picture of my beautiful life partner?

to make a long story even longer, the trip ended up taking us eighteen straight hours of driving (did i mention aitor doesn't drive?). british columbia is beautiful but after the sun went down sometime after we passed kamloops, i was pretty ready to get to ol' terminal city. i had to stop from driving the prerequisite 130 kph down the coquihalla.

when we did arrive, we were met in vancouver by my family who greeted us with a big platter of sushi (the best things about vancouver). i say my family, but really it was the vancouver contingent of my family - my brother, mother and her spousal equivalent. we will be visiting my dad on the island where he lives in a few days. but for now, sushi-filled sleep calls.

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