Friday, November 04, 2005
Remembrance Day
Starting around the end of October, just about everybody wears little red poppies for Remembrance Day which is on November 11. Remembrance Day is observance for those who have died in wars past. The significance of the poppies, and why November 11, is here .
Random observations
You don't cash your check and go to the bathroom/restroom; you cash your cheque and go to the washroom. :)
Vancouver is just full of A&W restaurants. Yes! Remember A&W root beer, and the stands used to be all around? In Vancouver, they still are.
There are about 10 times as many Starbucks coffee shops here than there are even in Southern California, where we've established a reputation for our grandé triple-whip half-caff lattés, or whatever.
Half to three-quarters of the buses on the public transit system are electric, not petrol-powered; there is a network of cables above the streets for them to operate on. I've read that the exhaust from one gas-powered bus can be worse than the amount that would have been emitted had each of the passengers taken a separate car. Judging by the gunk you have to breathe when one passes by, I believe it. It's so refreshing here when one of the electric buses passes and you smell... nothing. They're quieter, too!
Vancouver is just full of A&W restaurants. Yes! Remember A&W root beer, and the stands used to be all around? In Vancouver, they still are.
There are about 10 times as many Starbucks coffee shops here than there are even in Southern California, where we've established a reputation for our grandé triple-whip half-caff lattés, or whatever.
Half to three-quarters of the buses on the public transit system are electric, not petrol-powered; there is a network of cables above the streets for them to operate on. I've read that the exhaust from one gas-powered bus can be worse than the amount that would have been emitted had each of the passengers taken a separate car. Judging by the gunk you have to breathe when one passes by, I believe it. It's so refreshing here when one of the electric buses passes and you smell... nothing. They're quieter, too!
Posting difficulty, and driving observations
For some reason I seem to be having a lot of trouble getting my phone pics to post. They just don't go through most of the time. Since a lot of our travel has been by car here in the Vancouver area, and Nickie doesn't feel comfortable driving in the new country (I don't blame her, really; it's different, which I will elaborate on), it's not so easy to whip out the camera at a stoplight and still keep my eye out for my green light. The phone is much easier for snapping a quick shot. So the pics of Vancouver and the surrounding area will be delayed until I can get the phone pics posted.
Which brings me to the subject of "driving in Vancouver vs. Los Angeles."
L.A. - distances expressed in miles, speeds in miles per hour, as in the rest of the U.S.
Van - distances expressed in kilometers, speeds in kilometers per hour, as in the rest of Canada; a mile is roughly 1.8 kilometers, by my guesstimate
L.A. - street lights show steady green, steady yellow, steady red
Van - steady green, flashing green for several seconds, steady yellow, steady red
L.A. - when a freeway lane forks for an exit, or merges with another lane, the solid white lines simply widen or narrow around the affected lanes (like a block-letter "Y").
Van - white dashes mark the boundary of the original lane; has fooled me numerous times into almost missing an exit
L.A. - Freeway traffic - like lengthy parking lots; need I say more, really?
Van - Can be very trafficky also but still seemed a darned sight better here. Even though Canadians feel Vancouver's public transit is poor, that's only because they have superior transit everywhere else. Sheesh. If they had to deal with L.A., there'd have been *massive* political upheaval by now!
L.A. - Hurried, impatient drivers: everybody, to the point that people habitually use offramps or bike lanes or even the shoulder as places to duck out of their lane, rush ahead of the people in front of them, and merge back in again a few car lengths ahead. Does them little good time-wise and slows right-lane traffic to a crawl. I've gotten to the point where I refuse to let such people back in the lane; after all, what makes their time so much more valuable than everyone else's that they have the right to slow us all down so they can try to save 1 second of drive time? Hope they get a ticket while sitting on the shoulder waiting to merge.
Van - On the highways, there are plenty of impatient drivers. Some of them will tailgate if you're going the speed limit and they want to go faster. However, they will generally let you over if you need to switch lanes or make a legitimate merge. If they drive on the shoulder, it's because traffic is in the way and that really is their exit. Honestly, I was shocked when they didn't try to squeeze back in front of us. In the downtown core, people are less patient and you'll hear more honking of horns and the like, but it's still nowhere near as bad as it could be.
L.A. - Aggressive, nasty drivers: Everywhere. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, with the route I had to drive to work (through downtown), I had near misses to what could have easily been fatal accidents, on an almost daily basis. Someone would pull some insane move that almost causes a pileup, and we'd all thank fate or whatever god we believe in that we missed it again today.
Van - Sometimes people cut each other off and such (mostly downtown), but I haven't seen any of these crazy incidents here. Big city or no, it's just less frantic here.
Which brings me to the subject of "driving in Vancouver vs. Los Angeles."
L.A. - distances expressed in miles, speeds in miles per hour, as in the rest of the U.S.
Van - distances expressed in kilometers, speeds in kilometers per hour, as in the rest of Canada; a mile is roughly 1.8 kilometers, by my guesstimate
L.A. - street lights show steady green, steady yellow, steady red
Van - steady green, flashing green for several seconds, steady yellow, steady red
L.A. - when a freeway lane forks for an exit, or merges with another lane, the solid white lines simply widen or narrow around the affected lanes (like a block-letter "Y").
Van - white dashes mark the boundary of the original lane; has fooled me numerous times into almost missing an exit
L.A. - Freeway traffic - like lengthy parking lots; need I say more, really?
Van - Can be very trafficky also but still seemed a darned sight better here. Even though Canadians feel Vancouver's public transit is poor, that's only because they have superior transit everywhere else. Sheesh. If they had to deal with L.A., there'd have been *massive* political upheaval by now!
L.A. - Hurried, impatient drivers: everybody, to the point that people habitually use offramps or bike lanes or even the shoulder as places to duck out of their lane, rush ahead of the people in front of them, and merge back in again a few car lengths ahead. Does them little good time-wise and slows right-lane traffic to a crawl. I've gotten to the point where I refuse to let such people back in the lane; after all, what makes their time so much more valuable than everyone else's that they have the right to slow us all down so they can try to save 1 second of drive time? Hope they get a ticket while sitting on the shoulder waiting to merge.
Van - On the highways, there are plenty of impatient drivers. Some of them will tailgate if you're going the speed limit and they want to go faster. However, they will generally let you over if you need to switch lanes or make a legitimate merge. If they drive on the shoulder, it's because traffic is in the way and that really is their exit. Honestly, I was shocked when they didn't try to squeeze back in front of us. In the downtown core, people are less patient and you'll hear more honking of horns and the like, but it's still nowhere near as bad as it could be.
L.A. - Aggressive, nasty drivers: Everywhere. As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, with the route I had to drive to work (through downtown), I had near misses to what could have easily been fatal accidents, on an almost daily basis. Someone would pull some insane move that almost causes a pileup, and we'd all thank fate or whatever god we believe in that we missed it again today.
Van - Sometimes people cut each other off and such (mostly downtown), but I haven't seen any of these crazy incidents here. Big city or no, it's just less frantic here.
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