Clean Electrons Before the Frost

Preparing my Hyundai Kona EV for an eighteen-week hibernation formed the primary mechanical errand on this morning's departure checklist. Electric vehicles require no fuel stabilizer, oil changes, or exhaust checks, trading greasy maintenance for simple battery math and tire management. I drove up to Queen's Park to complete the seasonal preparations amidst the autumn foliage. High on the mountains near Golden Ears Park, a fresh dusting of snow stood out brilliantly against the clear, crisp morning air.

 

Managing the main driving battery for a long rest is remarkably simple. I plugged into the Flo station at the park to take in clean electrons and set the target charge to 82%. That number holds effortlessly in our subterranean parkade at Carnarvon Place. That parking stall remains a steady 10°C throughout the darkest months, sparing the cells from freezing sluggishness. The car maintains the twelve-volt auxiliary battery automatically. The main pack will read the exact same 82% when the elevator doors open in March. 

Tire pressure required a dedicated detour to the local Chevron. Low-rolling-resistance tires feature stiff compounds that develop flat spots when heavy battery mass presses down on stationary rubber for months. I intentionally pumped them up past their normal baseline to build extra structural stiffness. That added pressure keeps the casing true against the cold parkade floor.

 

With electrons stored and tires braced, the vehicle is safely decommissioned for the season. Well, after we cloak it under a car cover, that is. Tomorrow should be rather low-key with any remaining packing and apartment preparations before we leave early Sunday morning. The mechanical loose ends are tied up, leaving only our passports and packed luggage for the meandering path to South America.

Gloves Before the Equator

Packing for four and a half months sounds formidable, yet the physical bulk barely changes. One packs for seven days. The calendar stretches into spring, but the luggage volume remains stubbornly similar. It took years to realize that cheap clothes can be found everywhere. A fresh T-shirt or replacement underwear is the only souvenir that makes practical sense nowadays.

The upcoming departure brings an unfamiliar atmospheric wrinkle. Typically, our winter migrations transition directly from autumn chill to equatorial heat. This crossing demands patience. Five nights in Southampton, England precede boarding, followed by a run south into the Mediterranean to collect passengers in Marseille and Barcelona. Clearing the Strait of Gibraltar and passing the Canary Islands on our course toward Brazil will take several more weeks.

Sweatshirts and even gloves make an uncharacteristic appearance. They share tight quarters with short-sleeved shirts, shorts, sandals, and umbrellas for tropical rain. My Alain Delon case accepts the extra layers without complaint. We each travel with one suitcase and a backpack, which is easily a large enough kit to live out of for a full year. Our travel differs from our youthful exploration in that prescription medicines, a blood pressure monitor, and wires for electronic devices now demand their requisite square centimeters in the 2020s.  The wanderlust remains exactly the same.

Replacing the Square with a Smile

Curating a strict, alphabetical album of one hundred visited countries demands ruthless editorial discipline: exactly one frame per sovereign border, with no room for nostalgic sprawl. For well over a decade, Morocco was anchored by an evening wide shot of Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakech from our 2010 run. It served its purpose at the time, showing the smoke of the open-air food stalls, the dense crush of evening crowds, and the familiar rooftop silhouette of Cafe Argana under a fading sky. Yet looking at it years later, the scene felt oddly distant. It was a picture of a crowded public space, not an actual encounter.

Circling Morocco again this past June finally gave me the chance to update the ledger with genuine life. That vibrant desert frame does far more than just look striking; it instantly brings back the sharp baking heat of the valley, the red dust sticking to our shoes, and the easy warmth of our roadside meeting above the palm oasis. His broad grin, the bright blue cloth catching the harsh desert sun, and those extended arms capture the hospitable spirit that Jay and I ran into repeatedly while traveling through the interior. The swap was long overdue. It shifts the record away from anonymous market cobbles and pins our memory directly to the generous people who welcomed us along the way.

 

Jay stands in a differnt image with our instant acquaintance in my daily eJournal writing from June 10th of this year.  And the images of all of our 100 visited countries remain alphabetically locked in this Flickr album.

The Low-Stress Art of Vanishing

The art of disappearing for four and a half months lies in making a potentially catastrophic exercise in logistics look like a lazy Sunday afternoon stroll. Departing this coming Sunday for Brazil carries the theoretical weight of an international expedition, yet decades of winter migration have reduced the enterprise to pure muscle memory. Where amateurs panic over packing cubes and misplaced boarding passes, our departure routine runs on comfortable, automated rails. Experience breeds effortless efficiency. The chore list exists entirely in our heads, ticked off without a single elevated heartbeat.

Today brought the inevitable migration of our financial ledgers, moving antique Microsoft Money from the anchored sanctuary of the desktop to the road-ready laptop. While the working files reside safely in the cloud, redundancy remains our domestic religion. Twenty minutes vanished into verifying localized mirrors, syncing fresh archives, and confirming that redundant backups existed across enough disparate media to survive a small solar flare. The files opened immediately. The ledger was running seamlessly on the portable machine before the morning coffee had completely cooled, ready to tally Brazilian reals with cold, calculated precision.

Between digital housekeeping and balcony botany, a brief sortie to the uptown Walmart anchored our annual civic obligations. For years, our impending winter absence has dictated an early delivery of seasonal gratitude to the people who actually keep Carnarvon Place standing while we roam the southern hemisphere. We secured the requisite gift cards for Dax, our resident building manager, and Rosie, our ever-diligent janitorial lady, ensuring our domestic standing remains intact long before holiday postal rushes begin. They earned every penny. Meanwhile, out on the deck, Jay took the shears to the balcony pottery, giving the sprawling two-and-a-half-foot lemongrass an aggressive crew cut in the optimistic hope that a mild Lower Mainland winter might allow it to survive until spring.

Leaving the country for a third of the year ought to produce at least an ounce of genuine administrative dread, yet the entire routine unfolds with next to no stress. There is no frantic scramble, no slammed drawers, and certainly no existential packing despair. We simply work through the domestic maintenance by rote, sipping tea, watering shaved herbs, and quietly folding down the edges of ordinary life until Sunday morning arrives.

Fragments from the Family Archive

My father passed away back in April of 2019 at eighty-six, and at the time, Laurie and I pieced together his obituary and saved a copy here in the eJournal. Life marches on, yet vintage prints have a curious habit of resurfacing when least expected. Laurie recently aimed her phone at a handful of old family snapshots and dispatched them via WhatsApp. Thanks, sis!  Naturally, they sat quietly on my phone for a number of weeks before I finally migrated them over to Flickr.  I'm going to ask for her to resend some as I managed to prematurely lose a whole batch somewhere between my phone and the cloud.  Time and files slip away easily.

Today's five images offer a random sample of life, beginning with the top frame of the two of us together during his years living in Maine. I was back in the region on a vacation from my teaching post in the Middle East in the early nineties. The subsequent two snapshots carry indeterminate dates, captured in moments known only to the original photographer. A fourth image appears to be his high school portrait, dutifully posed. The selection concludes with a shot of Dad as a little tot, an artifact entirely new to my eyes. These five frames now hold a secure place in the public visual record.

Junes on the Move: Connecting Europe and North Africa

A few years ago, Jay and I realised our retirement calendar had a distinct blind spot. Our long winter getaways reliably carried us toward equatorial heat, yet vast stretches of Europe and beyond remained stubbornly locked behind winter chills during those months. The northern calendar had more to offer. Setting aside the entire month of June provided the logical bridge to explore temperate regions under comfortable conditions.

Our inaugural venture in 2023 proved the value of using the northern Mediterranean coast as a launchpad for low-friction exploration. We leased an apartment on Avenue Durante in Nice for thirty days, relying on the clean tram network and coastal SNCF rails to stitch the shoreline together. Having the tracks right on the water turned regional travel into effortless day trips, letting one pop over to Monaco for the afternoon, browse Friday street markets in Ventimiglia, or hike the steep trails above Èze without ever hauling luggage between hotel rooms. Moving alongside that turquoise sea confirmed that a fixed coastal base beats frantic packing every single time.

Nice, France

The 2024 journey shifted our focus to an overland traverse across the Baltic states. Landing in Berlin, we used regional rail to bridge northern Poland and Lithuania before catching our homeward flight out of Riga. We tracked stations with precision. Connecting those capitals by land provided a grounded sense of northern European geography that air travel entirely skips.

Warsaw, Poland

By June of 2025, we tackled a wider regional arc across the Balkans. Flying into the north of Italy, we pieced together trains and long-distance buses to thread through Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bulgaria, eventually reaching Bucharest. Moving overland from the Adriatic to the Black Sea corridor revealed how distinct each neighbouring border remains. The complex ground transit proved far easier than the guidebooks made it sound.

Belgrade, Serbia

The 2026 circuit carried our late-spring travels across the Mediterranean into Morocco. Arriving in Casablanca, we travelled by train to Tangier, hired a car through Chefchaouen to Fes, and joined an overland route out to the Sahara dunes at Merzouga before swinging back through Marrakech and down the Atlantic coast to Agadir. Camels proved predictably stubborn. Circling from arid desert passes back to coastal breezes showed the full, varied scale of the country.

Tinghir, Morocco

For 2027, the initial clues are already surfacing on the ledger well ahead of time. Early whispers point toward a Dutch staging ground, an extended maritime loop around the British Isles, a quick dash across France, and an eventual return to familiar North African shores in Tunisia. Broad hints beat strict timetables. Four successful seasons have shown that dropping early breadcrumbs is half the pleasure of building the next road.

Our Farewell to 2026 Duck Dinners

Retirement introduces a strange paradox into social calendars. One assumes open days yield endless flexibility, yet coordinating the final "Duck Party" of the year proved remarkably elusive with everyone constantly drifting in separate directions. Today offered our final window to host for the season before the calendar closed. By the end of the evening, the traveling rubber ducks had migrated onwards to Richmond. Ed and Shinji now carry the solemn duty of hosting the gathering when spring returns.

Winter approaches swiftly along the West Coast. Everyone arrived before 3:30 in the afternoon to beat the fading October light. Outside, temperatures hovered around a brisk 8 Celsius, firmly dictating that hospitality remain indoors. An afternoon spread of chips, cheese, and crackers accompanied a sampling of robust Quebec ales. Unibroue's "Fin du Monde" and its fellow brews clock in at a formidable 9.0% ABV. They worked quickly.

Rather than braving an outdoor stroll, the gathering retreated to the soothing warmth of the hot tub for an hour. Steam rose against the thin glass panes while the chilly autumn air pressed against the outside. Water soothes weary bones. It took another full hour of lounging and conversation before everyone drifted back upstairs to assemble for the evening meal.

Jay orchestrated dinner from a methodical clear-out of the refrigerator. The resulting feast delivered comforting, layered flavours centered on chicken curry, yellow dhal curry, a sharp pineapple chutney, and a crisp salad. Rather than serving conventional rice, a quick trip to a local Ethiopian market secured a fresh stack of injera. Injera is a traditional sourdough flatbread made from fermented teff grain, recognized by its spongy, cratered texture and distinctive tartness that pairs exceptionally well with rich stews. Jay sliced, rolled, and briefly microwaved the delicate rolls just before serving. The meal vanished quickly, as did Jay's fruit cake and ice cream

Throughout the evening, the television cycled through vibrant slide reels of June's journey through Morocco before meandering into an eclectic archive spanning forty years of shared memories. Nonstop conversation anchored the room. The glowing gas fireplace maintained a welcoming sanctuary against one of the rare cool, rain-swept evenings of late October. The incoming BC Election results closed the evening. Twilight arrives abruptly now, unmitigated by any seasonal clock shift on our home turf, though boarding our winter flight will inevitably demand resetting watches during a Toronto stopover where switching to standard time remains entrenched. It drew to a tidy, earlier close than summer nights, but proved a thoroughly satisfying send-off for the flock.

A Record on Borrowed Time

An optional errand in Metrotown provided all the justification needed to step out into the morning air. Boarding below Carnarvon Street, the SkyTrain tracks climbed the grade through South Burnaby under a brilliant sun, an almost scandalous sight for late October in the Lower Mainland. Morning runs beat the crowds. The month began typically enough with a couple of damp, gloomy days, and another brief spell of grey crept into the middle of the calendar. Aside from those interruptions, it has been blue sky day after day.

The streak feels miraculous. Mark the weatherman on Global News confirmed just how anomalous this autumn has been, pointing to rainfall totals that read like misprints. A standard October in our corner of the West Coast drowns under roughly 157 millimeters of rain. The contrast is startling. As of today, the gauges at Vancouver Airport sit at a mere 14.3 millimeters. That places us, for the moment, beneath the all-time historic record low of 18.3 millimeters logged back in October 2002. Were the ledger to close this afternoon, it would stand as the driest October since bookkeeping began. The month still has a week to run, however, and that slim buffer will not survive the weekend.

Tomorrow will break the streak, though forecasters expect the front to sweep through quickly. That leaves roughly a week of decent, manageable weather to close out the month before our departure on November 1st. Time is ticking down. It remains to be seen where October 2026 ultimately lands in the provincial record books once the incoming system delivers its payload. Until then, one simply takes the gift of dry pavement and crisp light on an unhurried ride across Burnaby.

Thirty Years Ago in New West

Thirty years ago, landing in British Columbia did not involve swiping through digital listings or cross-referencing street views on a phone screen. We touched down in 1996 fresh from the heat of Dubai, leaving behind tax-free contracts and shipping our entire, meager household across the ocean under the name of one of Jay’s penpals. Interestingly, our temporary baseline was Vancouver's Patricia Hotel on Hastings; we'd seen it was cheap in a BC accommodation magazine and telephoned from overseas for a reservation,  The real task was finding an anchor before the container docked.

The search method was straightforward. We bought tickets, climbed aboard the SkyTrain, and treated the elevated tracks as our personal reconnaissance platform across the Lower Mainland. There was a single line that ended in Surrey.  To narrow the hunt, we used a primitive outfit found in the newspaper classifieds that churned out printed address sheets of available rentals. We unfolded that tractor-feed, dot-matrix printed list on the train to see where we might head. If a neighbourhood sat beyond walking distance of a station, it was crossed off. That transit spine carried us straight into New Westminster. The station back then bore no resemblance to the massive shopping concourse and condo complex that encases it today; it was raw Expo 86 concrete, open air, and bare platforms overlooking industrial tracks and quiet streets. The printed list led us just a short walk over to a rental tower at 838 Agnes Street, where we secured unit 903.

It was basic, functional, and entirely ours. For two years, that coordinate served as the engine room for setting up life here, initial teaching terms at Pitman, and getting used to West Coast rain after years in the desert. Looking at these two photographs from 1996, the view outside tells the real story. The one above looks out from the ninth-floor balcony toward the open expanse of the New Westminster station area before modern development swallowed the sky, while the other peeks from the bedroom between neighbouring towers toward the grey ribbon of the Fraser River. It was our first perch in the Royal City, but thirty years later, that river remains our constant anchor, now from the other end of downtown on Carnarvon Street.

Homework for the Flock

Retirement has cruelly stripped one of my distinct pedagogical pleasures in life, namely the assigning of mandatory homework with impossible deadlines. Fortunately, the impending arrival of the 'Duck Group' this coming Saturday has presented me with this rare opportunity.

The gang will be descending upon Carnarvon Place for dinner. It marks the final formal gathering of the year. Recent convocations have tilted heavily toward wine, but an introductory round of beer alongside pre-dinner appetizers seemed appropriate.

Initial calculations focused on frugality. There are four or five vintage cans lurking in the permafrost near the rear cooling element of our refrigerator. They have occupied that prime real estate for an embarrassing number of years. I am reasonably certain they froze solid during the polar vortex of twenty-twenty-three. Being far too much of an unrepentant miser to toss perfectly serviceable alcohol into the recycling bin, I reasoned that our guests could perform civil duty by relieving me of the burden.

Conscience, or perhaps sheer survival instinct, intervened. A stroll down to the local BC Liquor branch in New Westminster was undertaken to procure an additional fifteen-pack. The familiar Big Rock variety carton was nowhere to be seen. What caught my eye instead was a twelve-pack variety carton from Unibroue, hailing from Chambly, Quebec.

A glance at the specifications rendered the purchase of a bulky fifteen-pack entirely redundant. These are not timid lawnmower lagers. These are heavyweight Belgian-style concoctions clocking in between seven point seven and nine point five percent alcohol by volume. Two cans of this nectar equate to roughly half a conventional six-pack. A prudent economy of volume, if ever there was one.

Naturally, the titles are entirely in French. A quick photographic consult with my digital confederate, Ajith, decoded the mythologies behind each brew. Given that there are exactly two cans of each variant in the carton, the flock cannot simply arrive and bicker casually by the fridge. The assignment must be completed in advance:

• Ce n'est pas la fin du monde (9.5%): "It is Not the End of the World." A potent Belgian IPA. Sarcastic, unyielding, and likely the first to ignite a territorial dispute.

• Maudite (8.0%): "The Damned." Named after the legendary voyageur canoe that flew across the sky via a contract with the Devil. Those who drink this without reading the lore risk paddling alone.

• Don de Dieu (9.0%): "Gift of God." An imperial wheat ale commemorating Champlain's flagship from 1608. The group will appreciate the ecclesiastical naming convention, even if the gravity is decidedly terrestrial.

• Trois Pistoles (9.0%): "Three Pistoles." A dark strong ale paying tribute to lost seventeenth-century silver coins and ghostly black steeds. Deep, moody, and heavy enough to stop conversation dead in its tracks.

• Fin du Monde (9.0%): "The End of the World." The flagship triple. Early European navigators were convinced they had hit the literal rim of creation. Drinkers may share the illusion by the second glass. 

• Eau Bénite (7.7%): "Holy Water." The "lightest" offering of the lot, displaying an angel soaking in a pint pot. Pure blasphemy in a can, though thoroughly delicious.

Consider this your required syllabus, gentlemen. Study the parameters. Tim will predictably bypass the folklore entirely and hone straight in on the nine point five percent metric, while the rest will undoubtedly plot intricate diplomatic alliances.  Come Saturday at around 3:30 pm, but select your weapon early. Otherwise, you will be handed a frozen relic from the back of the fridge.  Your PDF study guide may be found here.

Where the River Squeezes and History Settles

Looking down from the balcony on Carnarvon Street, the river feels surprisingly hemmed in. From the foot of Sixth Street across to the quiet stretch of park off Tannery Road in Surrey, the water spans barely over five hundred metres bank to bank. The bluff's steep elevation deceives the eye, compressing that half-kilometre gap until the opposing shoreline looks almost within arm's reach. The water feels compressed. Bulkheads, wharves, and industrial docks funnel the Fraser into a tight, muscular throat. That urban pinch only magnifies the raw power moving through it, draining a quarter of British Columbia from a watershed larger than the whole of Great Britain. Even here, thirty-five kilometres inland from the ocean, the Pacific pushes back with a heavy twice-daily tide, driving saltwater beneath an average outgoing torrent of thirty-five hundred cubic metres of silt every second.

That relentless volume makes it an irreplaceable biological artery. Millions of returning wild salmon (chinook, sockeye, coho, pink, and chum) funnel through this narrow gap every year, fighting their way past our pier toward interior spawning beds that can lie more than a thousand kilometres upstream near the Rocky Mountains. Down in the murky sediment below the shipping channel, prehistoric white sturgeon continue to patrol the riverbed, some living over a century and growing several metres in length. The river never stops working.

Indigenous communities lived and fished along this waterway for thousands of years, respecting both the dangerous current and the massive salmon runs it carried. When outside explorers finally tried navigating it by boat, they quickly learned the hard way that the churning canyons upstream were nearly suicidal to travel. Then came the 1858 gold rush. Thousands of miners poured in practically overnight, turning this violent river into the only practical supply highway into the interior. A permanent settlement had to be established quickly near the river mouth to collect taxes, maintain law, and guard the border.

The surveyors chose this exact spot because of its geography. Flatter ground farther upstream was rejected because it sat low and defenseless. This north bluff offered high ground with a clear view down the channel, backed by deep water where ocean ships could tie up right against the bank. The military blasted through massive timber to lay out the steep hillside streets we walk today. Because this was the narrowest practical place to cross the lower river, that decision eventually funnelled the current three major bridges straight into downtown. Even after the political capital was shifted over to Vancouver Island a few years later, the riverfront stayed busy. The docks, timber mills, and railways remained right here because the physical geography made sense.

Living alongside this rushing channel for three decades has never dimmed our appreciation of its quiet majesty nor its daily importance. The light still catches the silty boils in unexpected ways at dusk, and the deep horn of an outbound tug continues to command our attention as it clears the bridge pilings. Skylines grow taller, seasons cycle through, and shipping schedules shift, but the brown water keeps paying the freight.

A Dozen Years of Freedom

Today marks the exact twelfth anniversary of Jay stepping out of the workforce for an early retirement. On Sunday, October 19, 2014, he returned home from his very last shift after thirteen years of dedicated service at Covenant House Vancouver. Waiting on the counter to greet him was a celebratory cheesecake, vibrant balloons, and cards congratulating him on the milestone. That sweet afternoon welcome officially marked the end of his employment and inaugurated his new life as a gentleman of leisure.

 

My own turn arrived exactly three days later, on Wednesday, October 22nd. As my final cohort of students concentrated on their term-end examination at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, fellow instructors quietly entered the room bearing a farewell cake and a few mementos to remember my seventeen years teaching at BCIT, marking my definitive final exit from classrooms and computer labs.

 

That coordinated double-play in October of 2014 allowed both of us to chart our own unconventional course and step into permanent liberty. That was the week when decades of commutes, early morning alarms, lesson plans, and punch clocks simply vanished into thin air. The deliberate objective was always to cast off domestic predictable schedules entirely in favour of international departures, long rail journeys, and unhurried exploration across an open calendar. Twelve years down the road, looking back on that joint leap confirms that escaping early was sheer strategic brilliance. These past dozen years have undeniably been some of the premier years of our lives.

 

Voting Twice in the Royal City

We marked our ballots early last weekend for the municipal vote, and the numbers finally surfaced last night. Yet thanks to an ill-timed gamble by the ruling provincial party, an early general election arrived almost immediately on its heels. That overlap produced an unbearable din of competing campaign signs and lawn rhetoric, making it far harder for individual candidates to cut through the local static. The upside to this political clutter was purely logistical. It allowed us to turn out early once again today and cast our ballots for the province of British Columbia.

We caught the local bus two stops up 6th Street and joined the tiny queue outside the New Westminster Armoury. Completed in 1895, the hall stands out as a genuine rarity among Canadian drill halls, which were almost universally built from heavy stone or brick. This facility was framed and sided entirely in regional timber, flanked by square towers with distinctive flared mansard roofs. Miraculously, the massive structure survived the Great Fire of 1898 that flattened downtown New Westminster, serving as emergency shelter for hundreds left homeless by the blaze. Wood outlasted the brick. Today it remains an active wooden military post, home to The Royal Westminster Regiment. Rounding toward the rear of the property, we caught sight of fresh recruits sorting gear and running through equipment checks in preparation for weekend exercises or upcoming deployment.

The line moved with crisp military efficiency. We were in and out of the drill floor within a couple of minutes, leaving behind the gratifying sensation of having our civic chores tidy and squared away. Rather than boarding transit for the return, we drifted homeward on foot through Tipperary Park, enjoying the quiet green slope before turning down 4th Street toward our building. These photographs offer a modest visual log of our morning loop through the neighborhood.

Leisurely Heading Towards Our Departure

It was a standard Saturday routine if not entirely in form, given that Jay was nursing the familiar post-vaccine malaise from yesterday’s twin flu and COVID jabs. We made our customary morning grocery run, though with a distinctly restrained basket. With a mere fortnight remaining before our winter departure, the larder strategy has shifted to ruthless depletion.

Because the power to the apartment gets shut down entirely while we are away, leaving a single forgotten condiment to fend for itself is out of the question. Jay is an absolute master of logistics on this front; by the time departure morning arrives, the refrigerator will be stripped bare, meticulously wiped, and completely food-free.

Our upcoming arrival at Gatwick on November 2nd marks a long overdue return to standard British sightseeing. We will establish base camp in Southampton for five nights before embarking on the cruise to Rio de Janeiro on November 7th. Having not properly played city tourists in London since 2005, a dedicated day trip by rail is firmly on the docket, along with potential runs out toward Stonehenge. Besides, with fresh Electronic Travel Authorizations in hand, one may as well squeeze every drop of value from them; June will see us back again for an extended wander across the realm.