Stephen Rees's blog

I was looking forward to a change of pace for a Sunday morning. Normally we get up – instead of lolling around drinking cappuccinos and playing on our iPads – and go to the Kits Farmers’ Market. That is a lot more fun than Safeway. But even so gets a bit predictable. So I was ever so pleased to get this email on July 6

You might want to bear in mind that last paragraph: the one in bold.

You see, I went on line to Eventbrite and booked two spots – one for me and one for my partner. The webpage I did that from allowed to choose a time and indicated how many people had already booked at that time. In fact since I was on line as soon as I got the email it looked like I was the first to make any booking. I chose 10 am as the first available.

This morning there was another Greenpeace email that said I could, if I wanted to, join the press tour. But I am not press, nor is my partner. And the press tour was later and we had to be back home for something else at lunchtime.

We used transit: early morning Sunday there was not going be any issues – and the #16 gets close enough to SeaBus to make it almost but not quite seamless. This was also the first time I got to ride the new SeaBus: I really appreciate the lower windows. There will be pictures on flickr later.

So we got to the Burrard Dry Dock Pier in plenty of time. They were briefing the volunteers – and we found somewhere to sit in the shade until the 10:00 opening. But that time came and went – and there was now a long line up of people – most of whom had not bothered to book on line. There were not separate lines for those with and without tickets. And when it looked like things might start, all the people who had friends in the line joined them. So we were now at the back of a long line up in the sun. And eventually someone from the ship addressed the assembled throng. It was now 10:15 – and he was saying that they were still getting ready “thank you for your patience and it will only be ten to twenty minutes more”. Except that we were clearly not going to be in the first tour – and we could look forward to a very long wait in the sun before we could get on board.

At this point, we simply walked away.

This is not the only thing I got wrong. Take a look at this chalk board

Did you spot the % sign? Since the 1 is much larger than the oo my brain thought that said “one dollar and no cents” not “one hundred percent”

When we got back to Waterfront, I was puzzled why, if only one out of three escalators was working, why the one that was, was going down. There are plenty of installations on SkyTrain where there is only one escalator – and that always goes up. I was even more surprised to find that the #16 would not be picking up on Pender in front of SFU. A stop that I have used frequently. Even the Transit app on my phone did not seem to know that this stop is taken out of use on cruise ship days. Which must make some sense but at midday at a stop some distance from the terminal where the ships dock it was not immediately apparent to me.

But like I said, sometimes the world operates in ways that seem odd to me. I paid attention to the words like “valued” “vital role” “first to know” – just like I missed the % and saw $. Just like I expected the bus stop to be working and Transit app to let me know ahead of time. Just like I thought it might be easy to upload something from the SeaBus using its prominently advertised FREE WIFI. Which is why I spent 15 minutes waiting for this screen to be replaced by the one that would let me in to Create Guest Account