Deer Park

anticipation

We’ll be returning to SE Asia at the end of the summer. The idea is to ride west at the end of monsoon.

The bike has been re-built.

Gear is being replaced and upgraded.

Video is being figured out.

Paperwork is being done.

I’ve been route planning from Myanmar to Turkey. This part looks to be about a year long. Some things are coming along well, others slowly. India is proving to be difficult. There’s actually an exciting surprise element to the India ride which I’ll blog about down the road.

I route plan in Basecamp on a 26″ monitor. Here’s a screen grab of a route I’ve nearly finished which includes the Spiti Valley in northwestern India, close to the Chinese border

Close to the town of Leh on the above is this

It’s the April 20 pot festival again. I could smell it crossing Burrard Bridge

I went down after lunch before the crowds arrived.

I just pulled this off Vancouver Sun’s website from a few hours after I left, so it got crazy again. By 6:00 pm the English Bay area was gridlocked

I walked from home. A beautiful day, along Pacific then Beach

Down to the fair

A typical small booth. Nice girls, mildly high, and their produce. Weed and weed candy. Global News says there are 525 vendors

These girls had a kind of candy bar. it was selling well. I should have stuck around and found out why, because their booth kinda sucked

At the ‘small business’ level it was fun to see the strong branding, attention to customer service, people working hard at this emerging industry. They knew their product well and won your trust. These guys were my business pick of the day

Hash brownies! Yay! That stack is worth a fortune. Some people are making money today, lol

At the extreme of things you can do at the 4/20 fair is go to the dab stations. There are maybe 5 or 6. You have to be crazy to get this stoned. Anyway, I’m shocked at the huge pools of pre-shatter on that paper. They could knock out the whole fair. This booth was a fun highlight watch

So these two guys sign up. I’m looking at them with pity. They hit the shatter hard

With about a 60 second kick-in, that gives this kid on the right time to make the mistake of taking a second and third hit. Oh no, I thought.

There are cops around the perimeter keeping an eye on things

Here they’re rescuing a probable dab station victim. Baked and unresponsive

And of course, hippie chicks

This girl was painting that owl and moon picture

Uh oh, another baked one struggling

Local prices for basic weed, for anyone who’s interested

By 5:00 you won’t be able to get near that soundstage. Feeling clever about doing this early

The beach is a sort of recovery zone

Or you could go for a walk around the park

I was watching this proper looking lady buying some samosas from Sam the shatter man. I thought she was brave and cool

It was striking how underrepresented our Asian community was here. I should have asked one of the few there why that is.

Anyway, a predictably upbeat, cheerful day.

Edit: a hilarious evening photo from the CBC

So I thought I’d get a quick post in before a year elapsed without a peep.

I have a decision to make. I have to either upgrade my WordPress account to Business, or take it elsewhere. I’ve used 35GB of storage and that’s the limit on this plan. I can’t attach a random image now, which hurts, argh: no post should be without an image. The Business plan is quite expensive. $32/month. I’ve looked into the alternative, a website, but the hosting cost is about the same, plus there’s the start-up cost.

A website gives me greater creative flexibility. But do I need that now? I have some improvements to be done here. At some point I’ll have a ‘grand vision’ of what a traveller’s blog/website could look like, but I don’t have it now.

I don’t have a problem with the monthly cost. The problem is paying that for the next 30 years just to keep it alive, use it or not. How much value does it have as a record?

Thankfully there’s a blog-death rescue option. You can download your entire thing to blurb.com and make a half-dozen book-like hardcopies of it. Then, around 2040, the grandkids can look back, hopefully with open curiosity rather than scorn, at the primitive bike and gear. And how relatively free land-travel was back then.