« It was a moonlit night, in old Mexico... Suddenly, I heard the plaintive cry of a young Mexican girl. La, la-laaaaaaa… » Ok, there was no moon, and it was old Vancouver, not old Mexico, but… The song, for some odd reason, rang into my ears, and I had to quote it.

Having just walked out of the Kingston pub, smoother by about 5 pints of Heffeweisen beer, I had walked straight to the Waves coffee shop on Pender, knowing it would be open 24 hours. So what, if it was past midnight? The city lives on much later than that…

At Kingston, I’d had to deal with the overwhelming feeling of being home, after Shawn had treated me with a beer, « This one’s on me, Vince », l’air de rien, making me feel like I belonged, like I was welcome there. And I knew I was, too, that’s the worse part of it.

So why does one feel an urge to move away from the greatest place on Earth? I guess it has to do with the pain inside, the pain which drives one to keep moving, forever wandering, never home. Never safe.

Yesterday, last week, last month, last year, I was sitting at the Iggy, greatest bar on the planet, in a remote corner of the Cayman Islands, seeking relief from the pain in a pint of Sting Ray, the local brew on tap. Today it’s Heffeweisen on tap at the Kingston pub. At the Kingston where everything started and everything ended.

So I now I’m writing from Waves late at night, homeless shelter, wireless shelter.

Vancouver has me by the… Love it to death, but death won’t solve anything. Chimeras remain, and they don’t know geography.

Deal with us, they warn me, wherever you are. Or be stuck forever. Stuck in limbo, between two worlds. Between what has been and what could be. ‘Cause you could be in the most awesome place on Earth - and you probably are; if you haven’t dealt with us, you’re food for worms. You won’t make it. The only thing that matters is this: grow up or loose the race. But winning the race, you can do that anywhere, no need to be somewhere special. Because you only win against yourself. No stadium, no track, no crowd to watch you run. You win or loose in the intimacy of your own mind, of your very heart. And there is no cheating, no shortcut. Only you will know what you’ve achieved, or wasted. Only you will cross the finish line. But when you do, the sun will shine, curtains will be lifted and horizons drawn. A fourth dimension will be created, one where everything is possible and loneliness impossible. One where you are a king, ruling over a gentle people, without a crown, and without power. Only yourself will you own and only yourself will you serve. A kingdom based on beauty and sharing, on selfless triumph of the soul over ego. Tempted? We’ll see you there.

You’ve gotta love your chimeras.

Vancouver, like most other cool places, likes jazz. Our jazz festival is currently enthusiastically jamming - pardon the pun - the city streets.

Water St., main artery of Gastown, was closed off to car traffic for two days and on a perfectly sunny Saturday afternoon, I happened to wander by. Music was flowing from a stage set up in the middle of the street and a large crowd had gathered to listen. But off to the side, another crowd seemed to pay no attention to the musicians on stage and stared in awe, heads up and mouths gapping, at a building wall. I am not one to ever be left behind when it comes to looking towards the sky, so I got closer and looked up too.

There, high in the air, hanging from fixed ropes attached to the roof, four human spiders were dancing. They followed the music’s rhythm, graciously bouncing off the vertical facade, flipping, looping, incredibly avoiding the windows and seemingly weightless. The spectacle was eerie and the perspective defied imagination. I scrambled for the camera, slid through the crowd to the foot of the wall and captured these stunning images. (Note: don’t forget to click on one of them!)

It seems that at least half of this blog’s entries are photo posts. So.

Introducing the brilliant Lightbox JS v. 2.0 script. From now on, your life has been made easier and the viewing of photos is even more fun. As before, you have the option of clicking on any of the images embedded in my posts to view them full size.

But they will now be « overlayed » by Lightbox JS on top of the temporarily grayed-out blog page. There are a few major advantages to this new functionality:

• There no longer is a need to reload the whole blog page after clicking on an image;

• The photos now appear in a slideshow-like fashion; all the images on a post are linked together so that one can actually view them all in sequence rather than having to browse down the page;

• Photos can now all have a caption;

• The new look is very cool!

So cool in fact it might eventually replace my main photo gallery script. But in the meantime, why not give it a try? Hovering the mouse over the image makes the navigation controls appear if there are more than one image in the post (click on the left image area or keyboard P = previous; click on the right image area or keyboard N = next). Just hit the Close X button to return to your reading.

So click on the pictures below and enjoy! And stay tuned for the next photo post: The Vertical Dancers.

When I got up at 6:00 am, I rushed out of the house to look north at the mountains. The sky was blue above me but a layer of low clouds topped the entire Coast Mountains and the Lions were nowhere to be seen. Qu’à cela ne tienne. The forecast was calling for an afternoon clearing and I decided to have faith.

The trail to the Lions starts in the little town of Lions Bay, just north of West Vancouver’s Horseshoe Bay. I hopped on a bus, then a second, and a third and by 8:45 am, the C12 Community Shuttle was dropping me off at its last stop off Highway 99.

I started up the steeply climbing streets at a brisk pace, following directions I had found on the internet to get to the trailhead. People were watering the lawn of very fancy houses and saluting me as I walked by, wishing me a pleasant hike.

I had my hiking boots on and the bright orange pants that have accompanied me on so many great mountains. At 9:05 I was at the trailhead and left behind a couple of gentlemen by their car, obviously getting ready for the trail too.

Adjusting my backpack, I strapped on the waist band, pulled the shoulders in closer to me and unfolded my ski pole. I had reset the Suunto Vector to sea level and started a differential altitude measurement.

The first part of the Lions trail winds through a thick forest on an old logging road. The canopy is dense and the sun rarely shines through the trees.

After an hour, I reached the fork to Mt. Harvey, took a right and pressed on. I crossed Harvey Creek and, having left the logging road behind, I followed the steep and rugged trail at a slightly slower pace, trying to keep the rhythm up scrambling over fallen trees and loose rocks.

At one point, wondering why water was dripping from the tip of my hat, I looked through the foliage and realized I had reached cloud level and was now climbing out of sight from the world below.

The trail became difficult, ascending straight up the mountain forest and then around 1100 m., the snow appeared.

At first in small patches, it soon covered most of the ground even though I was still under the blanket of trees. The trail became invisible and I had to rely on scarce orange tree markers. The snow was hard enough that I could climb without sinking in and yet had no need for carving my steps.

But climbing in snow is a slow and energy-demanding process. When I finally reached a clearing in the trees and emerged on a narrow ridge, I was quite ready for a break. I had been walking for 2 ½ hours and looked up expectantly, hoping I was approaching my goal. But to my dismay, the West Lion was still towering above me, surrounded by menacing clouds that came and went, opening and closing windows in the sky.

From my location to the foot of the rocky cliff, an immense snow field planted with a few rare trees looked rather inhospitable. The slope was very steep and lead straight to the rocks where I had no hope of ever climbing up.

I assumed the trail would have gone to the right cutting through the snow slope at an angle and away from the ridge, and so I did too, heading up slowly and pacing myself for the first time. I didn’t want to give up so close to the finish line.

I really wished I had crampons but as long as I tested each step, I progressed without much trouble. It wasn’t late enough for the snow to have started softening up too much and I followed old crampon tracks probably left a few days earlier.

A half hour into the snow field, I approached the real crest where the Howe Sound Trail winds its way from Cypress Bowl.

The slope grew almost vertical and I finally had to dig my frontal steps into the hard snow, taping back into almost forgotten habits from some 25 years ago… At that stage, the climb becomes rhythmic, almost hypnotic: right foot up not too high, one, two, three kicks, it holds on the third. Left foot up, one, two, three. Then the now short ski pole in the right hand goes up. Then right foot. Left foot. Pole.

How I admired Everest climbers, right there and then, as I struggled through my 1500 m. at just above the speed they achieve almost 6 times higher on the Earth’s tallest peak.

And then I was on the ridge. Empty space on both sides, filled with white and grey clouds. To the left, it went up to the Lions. I turned left.

The edge of the ridge was actually dangerous, a real overhanging snow cornice on which you wouldn’t want to walk unless you had a thing for free fall.

So I stayed away from the edge and went as far as the base of the West Lion. Climbing the remaining 100 m. or so of the Lion itself supposedly has got more to do with rock-climbing than hiking and even though there are reports of a fixed rope on the Eastern side of the tower, it is very loose rock up there and I was in no shape to attempt it.

It was 12:15 pm. The hike had taken me 3 hours ½ from the highway.

So I unpacked my lunch and ate. The clouds were moving fast and I could see around me periodically, catching glimpses of the two Lions, Unnecessary Mountain to the south and even Lions Bay below. But the breaks were short lived and by the time I got the camera out, the white shroud had closed up on me again. Vancouver remained out of sight.

I then made the only wise decision that remained: I took a nap. It’ll clear up, I figured. So I lied down on a flat rock, snowy ridge to my right and rocky edge to my left, rested my head on the pack and fell sound asleep.

When I woke up, the first sensation was one of intense heat. I opened an eye and closed it right back, blinded by bright sunshine. A glance at my watch: 13:30. I had slept for an hour. I sat up and looked around, astonished.

This was a new day. The clouds had vanished from the area, receding to a distant horizon east of me, way beyond Seymour Mountain. Around me was blue sky and I could see all of Howe Sound and the mountains surrounding me. And Vancouver!

I jumped to my feet, grabbed the camera and ran to the rocks below me to shoot the Vancouver scene. Then I turned around and started up the ridge, still running, to go take pictures of the Lions from a better point of view 50 feet above me. But I had to stop half way up because after climbing into snow for a moment, I realized I should probably go back and put my boots on.

By then my socks were soaked and the two hikers from earlier arrived at my level; they must have thought I was crazy, running around in my socks like an excited kid. They said hi and commented on how nice a day this was; they must have taken it for granted. They were an hour and a half late and hadn’t even noticed the clouds. Oh well. Some things are better left unexplained.

So as they were taking pocession of the ridge and beginning the picture taking process themselves, I put my shoes on, finished my own session, packed up my things - making sure I left no garbage behind - and headed down.

It was 14:10. I was worried about catching the 16:40 bus back to Horseshoe Bay. I have bad knees and descent is not my strongest asset. The snow field was easily negotiated: a sliding run, never straight downhill but angling left and right, where each gliding steps covers 3 or 4 feet of controlled out-of-controlness into now melting snow.

Then into the trees. I lost the orange markers for a while but I knew I’d find them sooner or later, besides I had the GPS turned on and tracking in the backpack and a topo map in my pocket, printed from the internet.

By the disappearance of the snow, my knees were complaining. When I connected with the trail heading towards Harvey Creek, they were plain mad at me, and my toes started some complaining of their own.

I’m an adult. My feet cannot still be growing. So how could hiking boots bought 6 years ago have become too small? And yes, I did a descent test before buying them at La Cordée in Montreal, on my way to the Alps.

In any case, by the time I hit the logging road, I was going slower on my way down than I had been on my way up. Between the knees and the toes, I walked like a crippled old fool and was very glad nobody was around to see me.

I swore every bad word I knew in French, then Spanish, then English, and arrived at the bus stop at 16:32.

The bus showed up a few minutes later and I struggled through my pockets to find the loonie I needed for the extra zone fare in addition to my monthly pass. Couldn’t find it. It must have been lying somewhere on the snow field.

« Are you looking for a loonie? » the driver asked.
« Yeah, I replied, I just came from… »
« Don’t worry about it, hop on! » he said.

I love Vancouver.

Great hike, some pain, 6 hours plus a nap. I’ll do it again, later in the summer. In the meantime, stay tuned for Part 2, the stuff I started writing at the top, high on rich expedition food, Gatorade, amazing views and fresh air.

...

Oh yeah, a loonie is what we call our one dollar coin.

They are dry and cruel, and merciless. They know no boundaries.

When I think of deserts, my mind fills with sand, stones, heat and hopes for survival. I picture snakes, scorpions and mirages, and my defenses instinctively go up. But at the same time, there is a deeper call that resonates through the scorching air: the call for open spaces, for immensity, for adventure, for solitude and peace.

However there’s no need to travel to Africa to find ourselves in a desert-like environment. Our everyday life is intrinsically webbed around the very principle of deserts. But we seem to have forgotten this, just like we have forgotten about dragons and angels.

Take our oceans, for instance. The sea is a desert, above and below, where sand is replaced by water, and heat by moisture. If careless, one will die there just as surely as in a desert, by drowning rather than heat exhaustion, but in the end does it really matter?

Yet the ocean yields the same qualities as a desert: it’s immense, endless, empty, moody, ever-changing and yet frozen in time. Set sails across the seas and you could find yourself, or loose yourself. But one thing is for sure: you’re alone out there, you feel like a grain of sand and finally there is no need for playing games and wearing masks. A desert sees right through you and so does the ocean.

But there are other deserts, one needs not live in Arizona, in Africa or by the ocean.

Space above us, after all, is a desert. Just look up at the sky on a starry night and no matter how many people are around you, you’ll instantly be transported up there, among a million stars that are so far apart they might as well not exist one for another. There, in the emptiness of space, your mind will face the same questions that arise when alone in the desert: Who am I? Why am I here? Is there a meaning to my presence in this place? Where am I going? Can I make it there? Will this kill me or make me stronger? And so the answer is yours, and yours alone.

Want something even closer to home? All right then, here’s the ultimate desert. We live in it, we thrive in it and yet we have completely forgotten it even exists. But as Neo found out, « The Matrix has us ». Replace « Matrix » by « desert » and you’re in. What desert am I talking about? Society, of course!

I hear laughs, now. « OK, man, you’re pushing it a little far this time. Society is everything but a desert. It actually suffers from the opposite problem: it’s too crowded. Our world is overpopulated, we can never be alone and we are forever going with the flow. Not a desert at all. »

But are you sure? Think about it for a moment. What defined our deserts?

Immensity. Society has no physical boundaries. We live in a world of communications and global travel. Walls and borders are falling. Cities are becoming giants. Cultures are melting together. We can get lost all right, and nobody really can help us find our way home but ourselves.

Harshness and ruthlessness. Need I say more about that? Our world is harsh and ruthless to say the least. Society has no pity for the weak. It’ll crush you if you flinch. Survival of the fittest.

Loneliness. Sure we live surrounded by hundreds of thousands of people, literally piled on top of each other. But therein lays the paradox. Never are we so alone as when we live in society. The masses and crowds have no consideration for individuals. Never better than in a crowd does one realize how truly alone he/she is. As people pass you by on the street, blank faces over lonely souls lost into their own deserts, you get to experience true isolation.

Whether around us are dunes or waves or galaxies or people, in the end, our path through life is mostly a lonely one. It’s a race for survival, it’s a test of patience, it’s a battle of every moment.

Yet once in a while, it seems, those who are lucky - or ready – enough meet another desert survivor and they walk alongside for the rest of their survival course. How many of us are following a mirage is hard to say.

But in the end, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. I love deserts in all their forms. The urban one doesn’t scare me. I feel at home here. But one thing is for sure: a smile from a stranger on a crowded street is better than a bottle of water in the heart of Sahara, it beats a life jacket in the middle of the Pacific and it even works better than a space station somewhere in an empty universe. It quenches, hydrates, cools, warms, buoys, shelters and propels at the same time. And who cares if it was a mirage…

These are busy days and as always when I run out of time, the most important things suffer. So I haven’t played with my camera nor written anything decent in a while. But I am planning a hike up the Lions this week-end, so stay tuned for fresh news and a higher perspective.

In the meantime, I am delighted to point out the release of Serendipity version 1.0. In case you wonder, Serendipity is the wonderful weblog software which brings this wonderful post to your wonderful computer. Whether you already are a blogger yourself or not, do yourself a favour and check it out. It rocks! Way to go, Garvin and the gang!

So long.

It’s popular, and infamous. It’s in, hip and fashionable. It’s crowded. It’s steep. It’s mean. It’ll kill you if it can. It’s Vancouver’s baby. It’s the Grouse Grind.

They’ve called it a « High-angle Social Club » and « Mother Nature’s Stairmaster ». The mountain trail’s numbers are harsh. Bottom altitude: 300 m. Top altitude: 1100 m. Elevation gain: 853 m or 2800 ft. Trail length: 2.9 km. Horizontal distance traveled: 1.36 km. Average slope: 63%.

One goes there to suffer, there’s no better way to describe it. But to suffer in good company is already a little easier. So in addition to a few lost tourists and even fewer normal Vancouverites of all ages, the main crowd is young, fit, often single, and focused.

The traffic up the Grind is almost completely one-way: up. No winding turns here, the trail simply heads straight up. On many occasions, hands are needed to steady the climb, so steep it is, and I’m not talking about clutching trees but the ground itself. Then to go down, you either ride the gondola back or use the slightly less vertical BCMC trail to the east.

Today was my first encounter with the beast, at last. We gauged each other, evaluating the opponent’s weaknesses and strengths, trying to figure out a way to break him. I think we ended up with a tie. I wouldn’t dare say I did brilliantly, far from it. But my last real trail run went back to last November, so all and all, the legs and knees did ok. No way to run up the Grind today, though. I could not have managed it, and there were way too many people going up the hill, in an almost Himalayan-like procession, with the same bottlenecks around steeper steps.

So I opted for a fast walk up, and made it in 52 min. Before anybody starts cheering, let’s remind ourselves of a humbling fact: that’s 50% slower than the trail record which is 26 min! Gulp.

But when I got to the top, apart from shaky legs, I still had an urge for some real running. So I took a break and then escaped the crowds and headed uphill again. Behind the station, left of the ski slope, is a beautiful large trail that heads west and north towards Goat and Crown Mountain. It’s still mostly snow-covered but allowed me to run for 25 more minutes, alone in the forest, reaching the cloud base and disappearing in it, in a much cooler air that forced me to put my windbreaker on for the descent back to the chalet.

Friends were waiting for me there and as the sky cleared up and turned sunny, we had coffee, watched a wonderful airborne documentary about B.C. at the Theatre in the Sky and then went on to the lumberjack show, which turned out to be funny and impressive.

I’m not sure I’ll do the Grind too often with summer upon us and hordes of people preparing to attack it, besides it’s not quite what I expect from the perfect trail run. But it was a fun morning, the physical and mental batteries have been completely discharged and recharged, and now I know what all the fuss was about.

She’s wearing tight bleached jeans tucked into cowboy boots, walks fast on wide strides of her short legs and then stands at the counter of a coffee shop with her feet far apart, hips thrown forward and left naked by the low cut of her pants, gesturing wildly of her left arm while unconsciously playing with her long blond hair with the right hand. She’s pretty, she knows it and she’s banking on it…

He wears his pants so low below the hips that it’s a wonder gravity hasn’t yet taken over and sent them down to his anckles. A skateboard in one hand and an old army back pack in the other, he walks past the people around him, not so much self-assured than, maybe, defiant. His hair is wild, his nails dirty and his sweater baggy, but the running shoes are new and expensive.

They pass by in a tight cluster of laughter and giggles, hand in front of their mouths and noses as if laughing was a sin to be hidden. They have given up on any Asian clothing and wear the international youth jeans uniform. But girls will be girls and culture is hardly left behind, so they are all almost running, taking short dragging steps, their feet landing flat on the ground as if still wearing wooden scandals.

The man strides elegantly down the busy street, wearing a well cut suit and Italian shoes. A Bluetooth earpiece is attached to his head and he talks loudly to an invisible business partner, unaware or unconcerned that his voice might cover the concert of street noises. He is looking straight ahead, glancing at the traffic lights, negotiating his way to a meeting the same way he will handle the deal itself: carefully but with a touch of detachment. He ignores passers by, except maybe for this beautiful woman to whom he smiles and who smiles back. They are both wealthy and can relate on that level; members of a select club, a secret society that has no real desire for secrecy and actually enjoys displaying its assets.

Late on that same night, in the darkness of a busy night club’s dance floor, they are all dancing wildly to a popular techno beat, pretending or honestly believing that they are themselves.

What do all these people have in common? They are all, to some extent, playing a role and wearing a mask. Their own mask. A carefully crafted character based on the subtly combined influences of society’s rules and directives, family and cultural input, media conditioning and hopefully, a touch of individuality.

We are all actors in our own lives, it seems, whether we are willing to admit it or not. The difference between us and Hollywood’s cast is that we are never off-stage and can never redo a scene. We can’t shout « Cut! » and « Action! » again. We play our role 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for as long as we walk the face of this Earth. We have this idea of who we ought to be, and we do our very best to stick to the part. Rarely, however, does the role come easily.

The ultimate goal in life could then be, if I have this right, to finally fusion the role to the underlying reality. To become one with who we wanted to be. To stop having to act and start just being there. To grow tall enough that no acting could possibly top our personality.

I wonder if one feels lonely, once walking through life surrounded by actors and yet not having a part to play. Or does the movie suddenly reach its apogee and take us in?

Pathetic run today after work. It was my favorite Stanley Park circuit but the performance was awful. It took me 70 minutes to cover 12 km, when I normally do the 11 km Trout Lake run in under an hour. But for my own defense, I will invoke the fact that I had a bad cold last week and pretty much spent the week-end in bed. There. I feel better.

Here follows a description of the circuit, for the benefit of Anonymous mostly, but too for anybody else who cares…

Of course, I can’t say that I fully appreciate the grandiose panorama while running. I’m concentrating hard and focusing on putting one foot ahead of the other while avoiding knee injuries and a cardiac arrest. My world shrinks to a narrow tunnel aimed at the ground before me and turned inwards, towards vital signs and various parameters to be kept under tight control, like calve cramps, side pains, right shoulder tension, diversion of sweat away from the eyes, music control and human traffic avoidance.

But the scenery remains as a blurry background and a support to my failing mental power. I catch a glimpse of the north shore mountains, feel the coolness of the forest, barely notice the overhead passage of the Lions Gate Bridge, zoom by Siwash Rock, ignore other runners (well, most of them). But I am there, it’s all that matters. The park lends me energy, the sea gives me momentum, the mountains call my name and the city of glass drives me back to her.

The starting point is the north end of Burrard street, not far from the cruise ship terminal at Canada Place, off bus #22. From there I head west roughly following the waterfront but only joining it at the end of Coal Harbour (after marker 1 km) where Stanley Park actually begins. The Vancouver Aquarium is located right above marker 2. Between markers 3 and 4, on the southern end of the point, is the 9 o’clock gun, a real old style gun that fires (electronically nowadays) at 21:00 sharp every night.

Then beyond marker 4 and then 5 are the replicas of the Empress of Japan figurehead and the Girl in the Wetsuit, free variation on Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid. The Lions Gate Bridge is lapsed right after marker 6 and then I’m facing the setting sun. Siwash Rock shoots out of the water between markers 7 and 8, and the beaches appear, Third and Second. The swimming pool by Lost Lagoon is already quite busy, and finally civilization re-emerges and the West End buildings take over alongside First Beach. By marker 11, I’m so ready to quit. But then again, so was I at marker 4. I get into False Creek and just before the Burrard Bridge, I leave the Seawall and climb to catch my 22 bus back home on Burrard itself.

It’s a great open loop, minimal street running, no repetition, lots of other fools running both ways, that’s encouraging; it doesn’t get much better than that. I could, though…

[Photo obtained via the great Gmaps Pedometer, a Google Maps API adaptation.]

So for the first time this year, Canada is doing a remarkable job at PISSING ME OFF. An hour and a half on the bus and the SkyTrain to Coquitlam to attend a West Coast Soaring Club meeting, which is only held once a month and I’ve missed the two previous months because of my work schedule.

What came out of it? Nice folks, for the few of them who showed up. But that’s the only positive thing I could find about the whole endeavor. Basically, I’m screwed. I haven’t flown seriously for almost two years. I’m dying to fly. I need to fly. I have to fly. I must fly. And I guess it’s tough luck for now.

It seems like Vancouver isn’t such a good place to paraglide after all, unless one owns a car and has a nice bank account. I have neither. In order to fly around here, I’d have to get a yearly HPAC membership. k-ching! $140.00. Then I’d have to get the Club’s membership, to make friends and – maybe - find rides. k-ching! $45.00. Then I must get a landing pass for some of the club-maintained sites. k-ching! $50.00. And then maybe even a donation for some guy’s wind-talker somewhere… Yeah right… And what do I get out of this? Not much. All of the flying sites are 1 ½ to 2 hours away. Without a car, pretty darn hard to get there.

And then there’s Grouse Mountain. Except that for Grouse, you must be a member of the local elite society, have an advanced level (which I am short of by 60 flights), get a flight check by one of the members somewhere else, and then fly as a guest, with a member, on a leash, for a season, before being put on the list! And that’s the only site at which I could’ve flown regularly without a car.

People! Get a life! Flying in Canada is now just like flying in the States. No, actually, it seems even more complicated! I’ve had great flying down there. But here, where’s the freedom? Where’s the fun? Where’s improvisation? Where’s exploration? And our country is supposed to be the land of wide open spaces???

God how I miss St-André-les-Alpes, and Castejón de Sos, and Bagnère de Luchon, and Chamonix, and Füssen, and the Point of the Mountain, and the Dominican Republic, and even the Dumps in San Francisco! Flying in all those places was magic, and it was simple. Unregulated for most, paragliding-friendly for the rest.

Canada and BC, on the other hand, sound so far like a freakin’ headache.

So maybe I won’t stay here after all. My move to Vancouver was always conditional to being able to fly. It doesn’t seem to be happening this year. I’ll have to take a vacation and go fly somewhere else, some place where paragliding is still what it should be: a celebration of freedom and adventure.

And an hour and a half on the bus and SkyTrain back home.