Finally!

Here in November, it's snowy and very pretty. Back in Vancouver, it was early September and . . . steamy. Not meteorologically, perhaps, but horologically. To wit: the steam clock!

See the white wisps up around the top of the clock? Well, that's the clever use of a steam vent that the good burghers of Vancouver thought of, and Hub 1.0 -- pictured here with me -- just absolutely had to look see how it worked.

While we were admiring the clock -- which we visited twice to be sure to hear all its on-the-hour toots (which are silenced during the night, so we didn't hear it when we first showed up at -- yes, you guessed it! -- 9:00 a.m.), a street character engaged us in touristy conversation. He was quite nattily dressed for a homeless guy, and he had some good suggestions of where we should go and what we should do. We happily tipped him for his advice and headed off toward Chinatown. At that point, Hub 1.0 went off on his own for a further ramble.

The guys on the beach. Our flight wasn't until the evening, so we thought we'd go to the anthropology museum on the university campus. Upon arrival, we discovered we were literally two days late -- it had just closed for renovations. But that was okay -- we found a lovely bistro for lunch and then explored the coastline of this bay (inlet?) during the afternoon. After that, we returned the rental car and flew home.

Wow! It feels like just ten weeks ago that we did all that. (Actually, that's not even true -- it feels like a LOT longer than that. Something about all the legal work I did in October makes that trip seem like ages ago. Just think; when we started that trip, none of us had a clue who Sarah Palin was!)