Those were the parting words of my Airbnb host, one of the most personable and friendly local people I have met on tour so far.  He and I chatted again this morning about all sorts of things.  Eventually I opened up to him and shared some of the crap I'm dealing with my late father's estate.  I told him I was off to see a lawyer today in fact and biking downtown to one of their swank offices.  It would no doubt cost over $200 an hour but I needed sound advice and a strategy.

Due to this being peak season in Vancouver no less, it is very hard to book Airbnbs so I had to shuffle around.  The first one I could only get for 3 days and will be changing another one after seeing the lawyers.  The hosts were super cool about this and let me store my bags on the sundeck while I took care of all this business.  First stop was off course to bike to the library scanners to basically finish the entire job.  After hammering it all out, I was able to lighten a whole backpack worth of shit.

Before all this happened, I spent a couple hours talking in detail with my best friend from high school who picked me up and offered to buy me a large breakfast.  I told him politely to knock it off because I take my fitness super seriously and just saw six pack abs, so all I needed was a coffee.  He laughed and said ok then, coffee it is.

He is an extremely busy man with three kids and taking care of aging parents, so I wanted to respect his time.  During our visit, I was able to condense over a year's worth of bullshit with the estate and the lawyers and share with him the key points.  He agreed that for sure it was a mess and gave lots of useful advice.  He also said that I suck at confrontation, which is basically true.  

In my defense, it is not that I don't confront.  I prefer to keep the peace and seek other means of handling conflict.  However, when the circumstances line up and people intentionally treat with me with disrespect or mess around with justice then I will silently observe and gather evidence while planning my revenge.  And when that happens, you better watch out.  This is exactly why I was seeing the lawyers today.

Anyways.  I wrote to one of the hosts before leaving, "This is not your typical trip to be sure.  I need to bike downtown and deal with lawyers and a bunch of other shit in a short amount of time.  You guys helped a lot with getting my feet on the ground at the start of the trip and I really appreciate that."

While biking, I happened to see a bike shop. I walked in and asked, "You guys do tuneups?"  He said, "Sorry guy, we're booked a month in advance."

My jaw nearly hit the floor.  "A month in advance?  Geez, well it must be high season then."  He made up a bunch of excuses then I realized any tuneups were going to have to wait until Dubai.  At least thankfully I had that option.

During the conversation with my best friend, he asked many times if I would consider moving back to Canada with my wife.  While very appreciative of my passport and the fact that this was always an option, I was starting to get reminders once again of these annoyances which drove me to leaving the country over 20 years ago.  And talking to my wife earlier on this, she wasn't interested in immigration.  But now that the door was starting to close in China, it was all causing considerable anxiety.  

A third country was looking more like a matter of necessity for the pre-retirement future, not just a nice option.  Maybe it would be Tokyo or Dubai or somewhere else.  Who the hell really knows.  This trip would at least help with reconnaissance.  Sure I could always come back to Canada for a visit, but I was already starting to feel a pile of stress.

The fallback option of just taking a year off and figuring shit out in Cambodia was looking even more attractive now.

Anyways.  It was time to focus on the immediate goals.  I stopped for a nice healthy lunch and finished off the scanning all in one blast.  Feeling much lighter, it was then time to chat with the lawyers.