William Street and its mossy environs, not another land at all as the west coast impresses me as considerably less alien than the east…Nova Scotia or even New York are way more exotic than the familiar accents and appearances here, even if the streets are much narrower.

On our second sunny day L and I walked to Donald’s for provisions through neighborhoods which seemed slightly miniaturized mashups of Berkeley, Queens and je ne sais quoi..

Then to Lord Nelson for the afternoon pick-up

and return to comics and cartoons.

Dinner in, both Christine and I entertaining cold-like symptoms [which will plague us the rest of the week] unto another day, Friday, wherein Linda, Luz, I. and I went,

with a detour downtown for Vitamin C, to Stanley Park and the Aquarium which proved

spendy, cacophonous and filled with visual delights,

some more ominous [octopus shot by L. Fleming]

than others.

Outside as sea lions [not shown] swam, there were

a father and son-out-of-school,

penguins disappointingly in hiding and exceedingly playful sea otters.

We left for the land’s edge

where a raft of unknown birds made mysterious mechanical noises while diving and feeding

until Luz drove us in to lunch at precisely 1:30 because, right on cue as we climbed out of the

car across the street from Noodle Arts, Bryan L. Moore, freshly flown in from Afghanistan via Fort Bragg, appeared curbside, a completely [!] unexpected [!!] surprise [!!!] plotted out by

the two of them only the previous Monday. At that point we were all, especially Bryan who’d missed breakfast in North Carolina, definitely down for vast amounts of noodles [not shown, but lengthily hand-pulled and Served with Scissors], a worthy sampling of Vancouver’s justly famed Chinese Cuisine.  The afternoon ended with a walk along the darkening three o’clock

shore to a nearly deserted playground where the soon-to-be five-year-old took the wheel

until BLM, declining the offer of an air mattress on the floor at William Street as being

a little too reminiscent of recent overseas accommodations, headed back to his hotel to settle in before we all set out to meet up at a justly famed local pizzeria, a plan necessitating some

readjustments as no reservations on a Friday night equaled hour-long waits. Ever resourceful, Christine found space available near the station while Luz texted Bryan to reroute to Campagnolo and a good time was had by all, the only regrets being that an excess of afternoon noodles left little room to explore a most interesting menu. Well fed nonetheless we parted outside and took our colds back to where Izel keeps numerous iterations of his lightning bolt T-shirt

ready for every occasion and photo-op.