1st day driving!

One of the standing jokes my father makes, and has made ever since I began to learn to drive at age 15, was “well, I hope you'll be able to reach the pedals!”. To which, as you can probably imagine, I usually rolled my eyes about or ignored. Until yesterday.

Yesterday was my first day driving my “van”. Its big-ish, so a bit awkward at first to manoever. Corners need to be calculated slightly more widely than in a regular car, shoulder-checking is somewhat challenging; and then there's reversing - I've got a whole new respect for backing up now.

But the funny part was that finally after 22 years of making it, dad's joke came true. I realized while I was about halfway through the drive that my right leg was getting cramped. When I mentioned it to dad, he said something like “well, why don't you just rest your foot on the floor?” to which I had to reply something like “because my feet don't reach”. Yes, yes, haha. I had the seat pushed all the way forward, and it doesn't adjust up or down and even if it did I wouldn't be able to adjust it down because if I did I wouldn't be able to see over the steering wheel. Haha, go on, keep laughing. But like any well-adjusted short person, I came up with a solution; I took one of the pillows from the extra bed above my driving head, put it at the small of my back and it was enough to push me forward so that my feet could touch both the ground and the gas pedal. From here on in, its driving bliss. Hah!

The trip began when dad and I left Victoria around 10:30 in the morning, and in the first half hour or so I drove fairly cautiously. One might say uncharacteristically so. While I boasted that I'd driven our school van from Paris back to Amsterdam in a freak snowstorm back in November with seven of my colleagues after a weekend there to see Tracy Chapman play, and more recently the same van filled with biking friends and bikes back from Luxembourg, thinking that this was decent practice for driving this “van”, I quickly realized (but didn't admit too loudly) that this home-on-wheels would be a bit more awkward.

But. I managed to figure out how it handled, and after that first half our of trepidation behind the wheel, I got it sorted out and continued to drive it northwards up the meandering coastline highways from Victoria for the next several hours.

The drive took us through beautiful coast scenery – of course – and several quaint towns and substantial cities. We stopped at a few places including a Pioneer themed log cabin restauarant for breakfast, and the town of Chemainus. Chemainus, population 4500ish, was a town that thrived on its sawmill industry up until the 1980s, and is now well-known around these parts for how it has taken street art to a new level: the town buildings are covered in fantastic murals, mostly depicting the town's history. Once we finally found a spot to park the van (can't exactly slip it into the only free spot between cars in a parking lot) dad and I took a walk around the town and took all the pictures that you'll hopefully be able to access in an album I will hopefully be able to (eventually) post here. Chemainus has a Wednesday market, and it was Wednesday, so we were able to buy the lettuce and cucumbers we needed for salad for dinner. And we found the Dutch bakery in town, of course; somehow dad and I have magnets in our noses for finding out the Dutch wherever we go.

So I am writing this from our camping spot in Black Creek, about halfway up Vancouver Island, where I'm having trouble getting an internet connection. Apparently recent thunderstorms knocked the wireless connection at the campsite out of whack (and who would've thought, anyway, that there'd be wireless access now while camping! Not sure if I love that idea or not). It rained much of the time while we were driving, but the sun is now out and I'm feeling a bike ride coming on. Not a bad first day on the road. Enjoy the pictures!