We are breaking in a new “Excellent Adventurer” on this trip. Stephanie Swaim, hereafter known as Princess Stephanie, has joined the merry band for our three days in Victoria B.C. As we can be an acquired taste it is better to start with a brief introduction, who knows where it could lead.
After a great flight on a small Alaska Airlines 76 seat jet with better legroom than American’s wide bodies we landed at SeaTac. Due to the small size of the overhead bins and the fact that the flight was sold out, we gate checked our bags which led to our only glitch on the flight. The dreaded lost bag at the start of your trip. But, spoiler alert, there was a quick happy ending when the SeaTac baggage guy showed up with my bag before any paperwork could be started. Two thumbs up to Alaskan Airlines.
We took a Lyft into town to meet up with Stephanie for a quick lunch and a chance to meet her Seattle based friend Janine before our 3:15 boarding on the Clipper Ferry. Janine was a delight, quite the life. Born in Montana, raised in Saudi Arabia and now working at Amazon in Seattle. And kind enough to allow us to stuff all our luggage into her sporty red Mercedes and haul us to the Ferry.
Our chance meetings continued as we boarded the Clipper. We started chatting with an older gentlemen, Art, while queuing up to board. Art had married a Canadian, and retired to Vancouver Island. We discussed possible adoption scenarios and he assisted us with hints for the best experience on the Clipper. It was a three hour trip. After finding seats, the discussion with Art continued with details of the process (long vowel sound O now that we are in Canada) for becoming approved for his dual citizenship. Just a heads up, some of you will be contacted by the RMCP regarding our background in the near future, if we can only find a sponsor 🤗
About (again Canadian pronunciation rule…aboot) an hour into the ferry ride Art came over and we visited the rest of the trip. He is quite a guy, retired Architect, urban planner, historical preservationist with quite an impact in Seattle a lecturer in what he calls the “Near Future”. Reads all kinds of articles & books on robotics, AI, the Singularity and such. Quite a deep conversation on the need for Universal Basic Income as we replace everyone’s jobs with automation. As Art was talking a younger Indian man, Ashook, got interested and took over the conversation as Art headed back to his seat. Ashook was a techie from Seattle and also liked to think about the areas Art discussed so he shared his expertise, but the girls were more interested in what we learned was his purpose in traveling to Victoria. He was headed over to dance…some marathon dancing event at a Ukrainian Cultural Center featuring some very popular West African “salsa” type of thing with a totally unpronounceable name…only on an “Excellent Adventure”. Did I mention that he was single and according to the girls pretty drop dead gorgeous.
I leave you with food porn from our first night. Next post will combine our victorious Orca watch and walking tour…maybe a little Butchart Gardens
