When it comes to the ferries I’m of two minds. Maybe more.
I hate travelling by ferry on weekends. I really hate travelling by ferry on long weekends.
At least I think I do because I haven’t done it for so long I kind of forget what it’s like.
I feel kind of smug knowing I live where everyone else seems to want to be on the May long.
There’s no stress. No worries and if something comes up in Vancouver that weekend, I dismiss it as if it was on the moon. Some aren’t so lucky.
We all have stories of family and friends who fought all Friday evening to get up to Pender Harbour for May Day only to turn around on Sunday to beat the rush back again. Or someone else who joined the rush back on Monday and endured eight hours in Langdale while the neo-Deadheads in the next car attempted to break their record for a continuous drum jam. There are very few ways to get around the hassle of ferry travel.
A friend of mine (I won’t mention his name) was organized, for once. He had a reservation and left in plenty of time to make it. But he was delayed by some Saturday morning highway construction and Tony missed his reservation. He spent the next couple of hours in Horseshoe Bay consoling himself with a hearty Troll’s breakfast — and missed the parade.
I recall coming up on weekends when I still lived in Vancouver. Parked on the Upper Levels for hours, brain baking in the summer’s late afternoon heat. There was no escape without air-conditioning and no water or shade. You couldn’t even wander from your car just in case the line finally moved.As I lapsed in and out of heat stroke delirium, I honestly wondered how there weren’t elderly expiring on the roadside.
So I’ve done more than my share of hard time in the ferry lineups. It’s why I don’t do it anymore.
But as much as I feel sorry for friends and family mired in the Friday rush out of the city, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Well, maybe the corporate stinges at BC Ferries could put on a few extra sailings but I like our bottlenecked ferry system.
It’s really the only thing that holds the seething mass of suburbia at bay. If Howe Sound were bridged, life as we know it on Coast would end — Egmont would become like Hope and Madeira Park like Chilliwack. Or something like that, anyways.
Those who say a bridge to the lower mainland would be the cat’s pajamas should really be asking themselves this: