Originally published 8/6/2005
Seattle to Port Hardy
7/23, Saturday, Day 1
Clear
Traveling from Seattle to Bella Bella, British Columbia takes
about 25 hours. Some of that time is spent waiting for ferries but you won’t
get there much quicker than that. Maybe you can take a later Tsawwassen
ferry and wait in a longer line. Your call. I hate being late,
though. That’s my personal problem so 25 hours it is.
Dave and I left Shoreline at 2:30 AM on Saturday the 23rd of July.
We stopped briefly at the rest stop short of Arlington to meet up with
Larry and Keith who we would be paddling with. All three of them are
veterans of numerous kayak trips, with Larry and Keith having visited this area
at least four times in the past. Dave had been to the region once. This
was my first overnight kayak trip, period.
Dave explained to me how each of us had particular job
responsibilities to perform:
Keith enjoyed cooking and had done all of the meal planning so he
had procured the food and would prepare the meals.
Larry, having a pyromaniacal bent, would build and nurture the
fires. Any food prep done over an open fire was also his responsibility.
Dave’s job, he claimed, was to clean the fish that our meal plan
dictated we provide by hook or by crook (more on that later).
My job was to clean up after the meals. I inherited that
responsibility from Dave who considered cleaning fish a major step up.
Leaving the Arlington rest stop we caravanned to the international
border where we were “greeted” by a singularly humorless Canadian border guard.
Think of a young Randy Newman with a short early-70's Caucasian Semi-Afro
receiving a failing grade at UC and you have a visual of this guy in his glass
booth. We guessed that his demeanor was due to his disappointment in not
being a part of the big drug bust on the BC-Bud-Smuggling-Tunnel under the
border the week before. http://www.historylink.org/File/7928
Picture him in a cold booth
and uniform
Photo of young Newman, early
1970s - Getty Images
Or maybe he had been a part of it yet now found himself back in
his cold, dark guard shack reviewing passports of kayaking reprobates. A
bitter pill to swallow. I should mention that one of us had been denied
entry into Canada twice for a “crime” that had since been de-criminalized.
I will say no more about it other than to say that it wasn’t me. We
didn’t know what the computer records told him and weren’t about to ask as he
had the look of someone desperate to get even. He didn’t keep us long,
though, as he was clearly too depressed to concentrate or have a meaningful
conversation so we were off for our rendezvous with the 5:15 AM Tsawwassen
ferry to Nanaimo.
