The inconvenience of island life

Some of you know the area that I live in, but for those who don’t – I’m located on Vancouver Island, which is just off the west coast of BC, Canada. It’s a fairly large island, and unless you’re near the water, it doesn’t really feel like an island at all.

Living on this island is great, as I’m sure Wooly Woman would agree with me. I love everything about this city and this island, except when it comes to traveling to the mainland by ferry. It’s a pain in the butt, and requires a lot more planning … not to mention more money!

This weekend was the worst I’ve ever seen the ferry service. Not only was it a long weekend (lots of travelers!), but we also had a pretty severe wind storm (over 100,000 households are still without power up the coast) … and that led to sporadic ferry service, long line-ups and lots of angry, frustrated travelers. What a nightmare. The foot passenger line-up was out the terminal door, and down the street a good 400-500 metres. (The car line-up was backed up for KILOMETRES … they couldn’t even fit all the cars into the terminal area, that’s how crazy it was … and it was apparently a 3-4 sailing wait to get across). People were getting really cranky, and when anyone tried to budge in line, all hell broke loose. Pushing, shoving, shouting matches, the works! I swear, if we had to stand in that line-up another 5 minutes, a massive brawl would have started.

When we eventually got on the ferry, the ride was sketchy. We went a lot slower than usual, and I felt really seasick. But even though the traveling was a nightmare, I had a great mini-vacation in Seattle. We went to see the Sonics/Pistons game, and that was really cool. We ended up bumping into my cousin and his GF at the outlet mall in Tulalip. They were going to the basketball game as well, so after the game we went out for dinner with them. That was a really nice surprise.

I bought a lot more than I had anticipated buying. It felt good to buy clothing to enter into a new phase of my life, and I feel a twinge of guilt, but not that much. Since it was a long weekend, we got really good sales … plus I signed up for the outlet mall’s VIP club (it was free), and got an extra 10-20% off all my purchases. In related news, I bought a J.Crew peacoat (regular $225) for $37, and two other nice J.Crew tops for $8 each!!! I’m going to list them on eBay sometime this week (probably on Sunday).