Seattle, Washington to Cobble Hill, B.C.: We survived, and had fun too!

January 24, 2013

The Panama Hotel gets some good reviews as a historic place, and the setting for a book: "The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet". According to Wikipedia. it was built in 1910 with America's first Japanese architect, and many Japanese people stored their possessions in the basement when being shipped out to internment during WWII.

However. the main history is as a flophouse, and despite some admittedly good quality sheets on the rickety bed. it retained its historical ambiance! So we were only too glad to make our way down the two flights of steep stairs and retrace our steps to the King Street station.

Our plan was to claim our bikes (in their cloth bags) and then fight them onto the Amtrack Cascades, which, we had been told at the San Diego ticket window, had no baggage car.

The baggage man at Seattle said "Why don't I just label them for Vancouver?". "Say What?" " Yes. and we'll put them in the baggage car."

Since we figured the bikes were already in the maw of the system, they might as well take their chances on this last short leg. So off we skipped to board the train without lugging the bike bags.

Amtrak says that no matter what your "theory" of why they should not wreck your luggage, they do not care.

We haven't taken our bikes out of their bags yet to check them, but the bags took a beating. These rips are from unpadded sharp bits of the bikes within. Not expecting to turn them over to the baggage manglers, we did not take any defensive steps.

The train ride revealed just how far we had " fallen" from our glorious time in San Diego. The sky was grey, the sea was grey, the trees were grey. Cold looking mountains loomed to the East. Still, we enjoyed riding the train, as always, and it did its job of easing you from one environment to the next, much less abruptly than happens on an airplane.

Magestic but cold looking mountains, from the train

We are back to the forest industry, as seen from the train.

Unlike the crossing from Canada to the US, which we had done on the train back East, there was no stopping right at the border, for officious stormtroopers to stomp up and down the cars. Rather the train pulled in to Vancouver and our stuff was put on the platform for us to pick up and walk by customs.

The comforting "no weapons" sign was followed by a very nice young woman customs agent who chatted about our trip and ended with a "Welcome back to Canada". Admittedly, this is rare, with Canadian agents usually being very taciturn, but it was still nice.

The comforting feeling of returning to Canada. On the other hand, no one actually shot at us in the US.

Nice ended for us at the Pacific Coach Lines (PCL) ticket window, for our bus to Victoria. There the woman, cleverly taking her cue from my safety vest and bike helmet on my head, deduced that our bags contained bicycles. This apparently lights up dollar signs in the PCL eyes, and she demanded $15 each to be added to the already high bus fare. The argument was that a bicycle is a bicycle no matter its shape or how it is packed, even if it is in a standard suitcase, or bag, such as ours. "Televisions, sofas, bikes, it's all freight", she insisted.

So, we demanded to speak to the supervisor. I began with my typical approach, based on analogy (Dodie hates that): "My cell phone can show TV shows. Do you want to call that a TV and charge me for freight? Of course you don't, because while it may be a TV, it's small and fits in a permitted size bag. You have no business dissecting what is in my bag." "Lookit", he replied, "Let's stay focussed on bikes - that's a bike, $15, the bus leaves in two minutes, are you going or not?".

Grrrr!

The PCL published bike policy. No mention of "freight", and seemingly only directed at bikes in boxes.

The Greyhound policy, however, is even more brutal than PCL: bikes have to be in boxes, and then they attract a $30 fee!

Dennis was at the Victoria PCL station, heading out for cycling in Cuba. The ticket lady was not impressed by his plastic bike bag, insisting a box is required. However, she left the decision to the bus driver. As we have also read in some CGOAB blogs, Dennis feels a bike is safest from baggage mishandlers when in a clear bag.

The ticket lady was fortunately busy enough hassling us about the bikes that she decided to let it pass that we had in our hands collectively eight carry on bags. The limit is one each. When we reached the actual bus, though, the pleasant driver offered to put all our bags in their own compartment under the bus. Good one!

Our ship passed its sister on the run, in Active Pass, a narrow channel that is always a treat to sail through.

Sister BC Ferry. These boats were controversially made in Germany rather than locally. Amusingly, the recorded voice in the elevator has a German accent.

More grey, but this is still the interesting Active Pass transit.

Then at last we touched again our Island home. At least, that is, our home island. to actually reach home required Marius to come and collect us from the bus station. Thanks Marius!

Home is where those things I thought of while freezing on Hwy 101 are: The home fire, the cats, the comfy sofa, real bagels, real coffee, etc.

Cat and comfy sofa. Of course, to experience the sofa you have to evict the cat. and ward off the other three.

So what am I thinking about now? Hwys 101 and 1!

In case you think the blog ends here, it's not quite over. Watch for the statistical summary: costs by category, temperature range by day, hit count by day, and so forth. All coming soon.

Rate this entry's writing	Heart	2
Comment on this entry	Comment	0