James and Stacey drove 20+ hours from San Diego to visit for a few days. It's always great having one of your best friends from home come visit to see the mess you've made of the new city you're living in. They were here for only 5 days so we were pretty restricted to mostly touristy type stuff.
On Saturday, Kristie and I took James, Stacey, Matt, and Lucy to Woodland Park Zoo. It was a very good zoo. Compared to the San Diego Zoo, though, it seemed a little small. We covered basically the whole zoo in 2 to 3 hours. The exhibits we visited, though, were quite good. Got some good photos of a brown bear, and a
couple of gorillas. It was awesome being able to mix both old and new friends and have everyone get along quite well.
On Sunday, James, Stacey, Kristie, and I all drove up to Vancouver, Canada.
Man, did I ever mention that Washingtonians drive slower than your grandma? So I’m doing 81 on the freeway and this cop catches me on his radar from like half a freakin’ mile away on the opposite side of the freeway. I had no chance really. Completely unfair. Apparently the speed limit was 60 on that stretch of freeway. Don’t you just love how freeways can just jump speed limits like that from 70 to 60 MPH without much warning? And these cops will exploit that, let me tell you. It was also July 31st. Last day of the month. Quota time. So no talking my way out of this ticket, especially not with that California license plate on my car. And that’s how Jarold got his first ever speeding ticket. But I digress.
In Canada, someone thought it’d be hilarious to have not only the 1 and 99 freeways, but to also have 1a, 1b, 99a, and 99b freeways as well. That shortened our 2 and a half hour drive up to Vancouver to a mere 5 hours. But it’s all good. Whatever. We
got to Capilano Bridge and some nice girl gave us her tickets so we didn’t have to pay the $25CAD cover charge. You know, there’s something about walking across a hundred foot suspension bridge with 100 other people at the same time that spells safe.
I must warn you, no running or jumping on the suspension bridges. I guess it hurts the trees.
Apart from the suspension bridges, we didn’t really do anything touristy in Canada land. Just a lot of shopping, coffee drinking, and having a certain 19 year old buy alcohol for the sake of being able to.