Europe : London Maritime Museum - March 15th

I've never, well I suppose most people don't either, thought of myself as a flat. Despite the fact I rarely go anywhere. Despite the fact that, given my shut in lifestyle I have about as much street smarts as, well, a middle aged programmer who rarely goes out. 

But I am a flat, entirely. First step is admitting I have a problem. 

On our way to the bus station, and at NO time did I sense any of this, or even have a sense of anyone being very close to me, both the zippers in my bag were opened, and my rather nice down jacket was nicked. Shameful, I know. But, I suppose, bravo on the thiefs, I didn't feel a thing. And well, I suppose we are going to Italy, so, less to pack? It was a certain jet of anger, I suppose, and befuddlement. But I also was so very thankful I had not lost my wallet and/or phone, both which would require hours and hours of hassle and phone calls to set me to rights. 

It might be my stoic optimism is a source of my lack of street smarts. But I'm also not a fan of suffering unduly or for too long over mishaps, I save that for when things really go south. Writing that out I realize I might be more of a pessimist, really.

We took the long bus to the Maritime Museum, which is, as the kids say, absolutely my jam. Tall ships, naval battles, scurvy, saucy words like 'sextants' etcetera. The bus ride is a longish one, we travel through what I think might be the dodgier bits of London, using lack of power washing and graffitti as my measure. There are still vast amounts of historical buildings. I've taken to using Google Lens to figure out what that old looking church there is all about, or that funny looking residential area. So far it's been distrubingly accurate, but my curiousity must be satisfied. 

I'm like a mental pack rack, but also someone who will absolutely forget, eventually, that that church was consecrated in the mid 1800's, and it's common was used as a gallows. Or that residential area was name Victoria.. something or other, an alms housing concern that was established with the blessing of .. well, a Queen Victoria from the 1500's. 

In any case we make it to the Maritime Museum and it's pretty astounding. I didn't look up anything, just went in blind. But they had a some artifacts I didn't think even existed, like Admiral Nelson's uniform he was wearing when he was shot down in the Battle of Trafalgar. And quite a few other artifacts. Plaques galore, of course. A whole section detailing the Age of Sail in regards to exploration and trade, and not shying from the more sordid aspects, especiallyh with regards to slavery. The Nelson exhibit maye have been a bit more fawning, his god like hero status may have dimmed, but is certainly kept quite alive there.

Eventually Owl Jr sidles up to me and asks him to play a ship simulator with him, I'm only slightly disappointed when I learned it was a modern ship simulator. A set of five screens in which you navigate a rescue vessel. As we were waiting our turn, the five screens certainly gave a sensation of movement, perhaps too much so. The queasiness started to creep in and I was worried I've have to help him navigate with my eyes closed, taking shallow breaths. Never a good thing for a son to see, his father, motion sickness from a video game, in a public place. 

But, as with all things remotely videogame like smaller kids were drawn to it, and in their Oliver Twist street urchin way absolutely cut right through the queue. My son, wisely decided to give up our chance to steer the virtual ship rather than be THOSE two, a teenage son and his middle age father, asserting our rights and pushing the small children aside.

At least I lived another day without mortally embarrassing my kids.

We had lunch, and the only notable thing to say is I finally had fish and chips in England, and against all my beliefs, bought it from a pun heavy shop, by the name of Jack the Chipper. But it was quite excellent, prepared fresh, and festooned with all manner of English patriotism that you only usually see with new immigrants. Being the child of some myself, let me tell you the urge to assure everyone I belonged in the country to be a temptation hard to resist.

Last full day in London. We have not quite broke every bone in our feet walking, and we make our way to the Cutty Sark, the fastest tall ship of it's day, delivering cargo in a time when steam ships were taking over everything. 

It was the last gasping breath of age of sail. Steel reinforced frame under the wood hull. A worryingly small crew to handle such a massive ship. Here, as in many other museums, they do not shy from some of the ugly truths, like, say, the Opium Wars. It certainly makes for more colourful history, if grim.

And like everywhere we went, we had booked entrance well ahead of time, with time slots and what not, only to find a somewhat puzzled staff member, with no lineup at all, saying, yes, uhm, of course we could go in. Better to safe than sorry.

We have on our checklist to get to Harrods, a place of amusing opulence, and a food court from which we might be able to afford the free sample. We walk, we attempt to get our oyster card topped up, we try and get another bus. But buses are late and cancelled and it's generally complete havoc because today is the day of a Tube strike. Which, in what I would imagine to be a very English way, is advertised and scheduled on their website. 

So we rest our tired feet and have a hot drink in a cafe. Finally get to the bus stop, it's delayed again. So we switch tacks, time to go home, but that bus is delayed. And, as the Walking Gods decreed, we walked the jaunty 40 minutes home. Thus bringing out walking total from 'oh this is pretty bad' to 'amputation can be done at home, no?' I must admit by the end my stoic optimism had flagged, if only a bit. 

Hey, at least I didn't have to lug a coat around.

Europe: London Evening. March 14th

So after the trauma of thinking I had lost half my family and would live a life destitutely and bravely raising my son by myself, we thought, why not more walking! So we walked to Borough Market, through a series of places crammed with history, and alternatively super new. Shockingly new. New as in it looks like a part of the Blade Runner 2049 set. 

We walk over the Tower Bridge, a bridge that seemed to have too much building in it, for my tastes. A bridge should be a road over something. Not a road over something, and two towers that are also buildings, and a see through walk way, and ornate carvings everywhere, and memorial plaques every 5 feet or so. But this is London as I understand it, just dizzying me with it's history, it's, for lack of a better word, ornateness. 

I'm not sure what this is saying but the world famous London Bridge actually is the most unassuming bridge of them all, looking like it came out of a real down and gritty movie shot in Detroit, 1977. Steel clad, low, just a road over a river. A proper bridge. But also, if I'm being honest, almost an eye sore, which feels bad to say but after experiencing the majesty of the Tower Bridge I guess I've become a bit of a bridge snob.

Borrough Market was charming and lovely. Lots of stalls of fusion food and selling things that look wonderous and enchanting on the table but I'm sure as soon as I bring it home and put it anywhere I'll wonder who bought that and why did they leave it there.

Then from there, the kids and I are beat. Beat down. Beat up. Feet just pulp, will to continue living in this world quickly going, let alone will to keep walking. But Mrs. Owl, the hiker of the family. And the If Something is Worth Doing Its Worth Doing Now person of the group, is decidedly miffed that we, her family, wish for some sort of reprieve, any reprieve, push us into the onrushing traffic just give us the sweet sweet mercy of Not Walking. 

Which, of course, there is only one thing for it. We'll, uh, walk a shorter route. To St Paul's Cathedral.

It's truly magnificent. The sheer size of it, the dome, the gravitas. The fact I had to take a tylenol for the crushing foot pain I was enjoying. No no, it really was quite grand. 

And from there we went for dinner with a second cousin we have here. It was lovely, she's the sort of bubbly personalities who can keep the conversation going at a brisk but not punishing pace. We caught up, although not completely, for we had to end our dinner early and see the world's longest running play, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap.

We bought up in the nosebleeds, statosphere. And I'm fairly certain St. Martin's theatre was made for the Mouse Trap, about 70 years ago, and never again checked for safety standards. Back when an asbestos blanket for your newborn was quite the rage, and shoe salesmen used x-ray machines willy nilly for fittings. Back when there were so few vehicular injuries, since most vehicular accidents simply ended in death to all invovled. That's the era this theatre was built in. 

Or at least I hope that's the reason that the raking of the rows of seats were angina-inducing extreme. I felt like I was in a Dr. Seuss book where the audience seems to crane and arch over the stage. One got a sense of forever falling. The only thing keeping me in was a seat that felt like it was supposed to be made about a foot deeper. To add to the peril, the entire seat also seemed to be tilting forward, as if it wanted nothing to do with me and soon to be life paralysing fall.

I didn't fall. The play was great, with only a few anachronistic jabs at humour that made sense 70 years ago and not at any other time. But actors and delivery were fantastic, it was very Agatha Christie, and we left, threaded through the seemingly impossibly busy street and took a double decker home.

Now, traffic doesn't go terribly fast in London. It's just always going, everywhere, all at once. Against traffic signals that seem to be hidden, at best. It's also a city of brazen jay walkers, and bikers and e scooters and everyone is just in a terrible hurry. Being on the top, perhap the perspective is different but the bus driver (and every bus we've been in) seems to move with the aggression and speed of a ten year old hatchback driven by a teenager still convinced of their immortality. And there is something in the perspective, but some ofthe traffic gaps the bus weaved in,and some of the pedestrians darting in front of and past the bus had me thinking we'd destroyed at least 3 cars and killed enough pedestrians to certainly call for an inquiry, at least.

But we made it back, safe and sound, braced for the next day. 

Europe: London Tower London, and Cruel and Unusual Punishment - March 14th

Second day, lessons about the structural integrity of the feet versus the unbending iron of concrete pavement has not been learned, or at least conveniently forgotten. It was time to visit the Tower of London. No tourist cliche would be unturned for us, it seems.

Here are the things I knew abot the Tower. Ravens, something something, crumbling of the Kingdom; Ann Bolynn, it's not exactly a tower?

It's clearly, much, much more. Not the least of which that they house the Crown Jewels. The line up for that was approaching Disney ride levels in the Summer. Definitely becomes a sunk cost fallacy story at some point, and a 'we can't be all this stupid to wait to see some rocks'. Ladies and gentlemen, we are all, actually, that stupid. 

They are amazing jewels, to be sure, amazing amoun of history. But also the history it glosses over, like how exactly, did they get that great big stone from India, or the African star. On some level it is a bit of 'spoils of war, so tough cupcakes', but it'd be nice if they acknowledge that aspect, at some point. 

Power, is of course, taken by force. The meme going about concerning pirates and kings comes to mind. When they mention the Norman king who came over and conquered England, and now, poof, his and his line are now legitimate. Then the shell and pomp and legitimacy of royalty, all the machinery comes into play to keep the status quo, until they are overthrown.

We go into the Prisoners Tower and, certainly amongst the religious and royal prisoners, you see how fickle justice is, where power lays suddenly determines if having Catholic sympathies gets you shut up in a tower to die from dysentery in a decade or so. 

And in that tower, you see all these inscriptions about God and religion and I'm a little struck by how all pervasive Christianity was at the time, to the point of persecution and torture and a poorly aim strike from a hangman's ax. 

I mean, sure, it would be nice to believe in something THAT much.

Our guide was fantastic, Scott Kelly. He was Scottish and, well, I'm never an expert on accents and wasnt sure if his was a Northern English or Scottish but pretty soon he goes into side tirades about the inaccuracies of Braveheart and clears that all up for me. 

He was a rousing, blast of enthusiasm, well practiced side jokes that didn't sound like he was delivering them for the 129th time, an enormous voice not out of place if it was yelling me to "get down, enemy contact, enemy contact". And this bit was cleared up when he told us us Beefeaters, or Tower Wardens, are picked from the UK Armed services with at least 22 years service. 

The 20+ years of service caught my attention, being a programmer of as many years. And yes, being a soldierr and being a keyboard jockey are in no way similar, but a recognizing a kindred spirit in someone who has stuck through their job/calling/craft for this long cannot be ignored.

At some point Owl Jr. goes into the Fusiliers building, and I tell Mrs Owl and Owlet I'll follow him.

Go in, have a look around, neat, Napoleon's eagle, cool, rad, ok, we are out, and now Mrs Owl and Owlet are gone. Gone. They were just on the steps moments ago.

A fun wrinkle to this story is that Mrs. Owl does NOT have a data plan in Europe, only I did, so... no way to touch base. 

Owl Jr is now a bit worried, and I have a small knot in the stomach.

Owlet had heard I was following Owl Jr. They wee JUST here. So we wait on the steps. 

A few minutes pass, certainly enough for them to say, go to the washroom and return. Ok, not panicking. Walk out to the front, maybe they went to the entrance waiting for us? This is the tower of London, so the walk is not nothing. Cobbled streets, so many tourists. Nope. Not there. Knot could now easil tie up a very strong man.

Return back to Owl Jr. Ok, still got a son. Go out to the base of the steps of the White Tower, where we were going next, maybe they walked there and waiit for us at the beginning of THAT tour. No, go back to Owl Jr. Knot could be used in a tractor pull contest. Motorized.

Now it's been about 20 minutes and the knots have grown considerable. Maybe enough to moor a fair sized dreadnaught head and stern.

Hit our family slack channel, send Mrs. Owl a panicked message. Maybe she'll get on wifi and get this slack message. Wait. Owl Jr. has gone from worried to distressed, I've gotten images of raising him on my own, and my fumbling attempts to replace his mother. 

25ish minutes later. Ping. Slack. They had went through the enttire tour of the White Tower, and were nearby.

Never has a notification been more welcome.

And that's the rough story of how me and Mrs. Owl now both have europe wide unlimited data for the trip.

Europe : Day of walking - March 13th

Our first day is a day of walking. To be differentiated from our other enormous walking days by the fact that this time, we do this to ourselves with the fog of blissful ignorance. 

Of course we can walk and see Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Trafalgar Square, Battle of Britain Monument, Green Park, Horse Guard Parade, Buckingham Palace, and the Imperial War Museum. Easy. Look how close so many of the are on the map.

It was when my partner's fitbit marked 10,000 steps and it was only 11am that I knew we were in trouble.

The sights were really amazing, however. Big Ben is perhaps more amazing than I pictured in my mind. But there was (I assume) unseasonable amount of sun, and tower is festooned with plenty of shiny bits to reflect the sun (yes that is the proper architectural term). I suppose assuming London would be very much like home in the Pacific Northwest with the constant unassailable wall of drizzle and rain for 9 months helped to adjust expectations.

Westminster Abbey as an edifice that has been there for centuries, was pretty amazing, even if we only got to see it from outside.

But there is always the tempering it with history, or the history I'm aware of. So I see Westminster Abbey and think, "ahh, the seat of the new Protestant sect from Catholicism". A lapsed catholic and dabbler in history, I admit this is not a common thought.

Or I see Trafalgar Square, featuring Nelson's column,: addressing the era of history I have a particular interest in. But in there it has the Battle of Copenhagen, which, I think may have involved quite a bit of tossing mortars at civilians. There are libraries of atrocities being glossed over, which I suppose happens in all of history, but to see it so solid, and so magnificent, is something else entirely.

Nelsons Column is .. as so many of these monuments are, a testament to the might and wealth of a world spanning empire. When naval power was the sole means of trade, of war, of expansion. It's a bit sad to see how little anyone cares about it, even while it takes up just a massive amount of space in the heart of London.

And quite nearby is Canada House, the Canadian Embassy. It was surprising to see Canada have such a high place of honour in, well, anyplace. We're used to being the polite, diffident, if more or less ignored third cousin twice removed on any international stage. 

As a big fan of plaques, there were quite a few statues and monuments without any. I'm not sure if it's because they got lost over time and folks were like, 'oh everyone will remember who  THAT is'; or if just the sheer number of things needing plaques makes maintenance an impossible undertaking. A city drowning in history.

Our last stop was the Imperial war museum. There, it was plaque overload, even I had to skip not a few, but several plaques just to get through WWI. I'm sure I'll wake in a cold sweat weeks from now wondering how exactly they stretched war time civilian rations after Paschendale.

All in all, an enormous amount of walking, each step squelching through the sea of history, sometimes too much, sometimes so much they couldn't even bother to label it.

But can't wait for tomorrow.

Europe: London Arrival - March 12th

We made it. Door to door it was about 22 hours of travel. That is a lot of cramped, can't move, "You Call This Food What is This, Oh God I Hope My Neighbour Isn't Chatty" dread.

We have arrived.

I try and tell myself we are lucky to make it to Europe within in a day, when historically, well, it was impossible. But not 100 years ago it would involve a unlikely amount of canoeing, steamships, and a non zero expected mortality rate. 

This map doesn't even have an ICON for portaging.

But it's still over twenty hours of travel. There is a level of exhaustion where you just loop around to what seems like a full tank but is really just you tired, but delusional about your capabilities. Simple math, never terribly simple for me, becomes a bit of a chore. Directions become like backward haikus. I'm sure they say something meaningful, but really, at best, they only give me an impression of information. 

So it's with this level of cognition that we land in London, and take the tube to our hotel. Well, the impression of things being old hits you pretty hard. The tube stations are ground down and worn out and also, probably, filled with unlikely history that are completely opaque to me at the moment. There are also bits of the station that are beautiful and lovingly crafted decades ago. Even amongst the various bits that are in crumbling disrepair one gets the sense they could stil handle another Blitz, if it came to it.

In the trains themselves one feels the throughput of millions of people. Just an endless press of humanity weathering and ageing every surface, every plastic industrial high impact curve. These is what the transit system at home will look like in a few decades. 

We get to the place we are staying, a b&b. Well, I'd imagined it was a b&b before corporate buyouts and mergers and right sizing of every nook and cranny of hospitality. Where an old lady with a rather decided opinion on the way to make tea and an excellent assortment of cookies (sorry, biscuits) awaited us. 

Maybe my bed would have a hand made comforter that had won a village fair competition, my imagination, if not quite racing, certainly jogged at a considerable rate.

Sadly, Corporate had made it's mark here. The breakfast, admittedly, were great, but they were cooked by an actual cook, and fairly professionally. There was dreary sense of competence to the cooking. No odd quirks I was hoping for, like, perhaps, the table would be set with a small bowl of lard, for dipping. 

The bed was covered with the same sort of linen you see everywhere. Comfortable, but not overly so, and of the right blend of materials that could take quite a bit of repeat bleaching.

And of course, it's London, specifically in an area we can easily walk to the attractions, so our room was ... not Kowloon , The Slum City of Hong Kong small? But small enough that finding one chair in the 3 bedroom suite seemed like a bit TOO much furniture.

But we made it, we made it thorugh the 20 whatever hours, we didnt get overly lost, and, actually, the biscuits were quite good.

Europe: Prologue

Twenty odd years after the trendy, "lets go to Europe after graduation", my partner and are making the big trek Over the Pond, Across the Drink, to the Old Country, well, for some people, not for us (but still, it's maybe not OUR Old Country, but it is very old.) It won't be the back packing journey where you can sleep wherever you want and just see where the wind takes you. Not with kids. There will be no hostels or drinking off brand liqour outside the club that won't let you in. At least, we aren't the type of parents that take our kids through hostels. That's the sort of parents who do crossfit, then have their kids do crossfit, and probably say namaste more than is reasonable.

I expect to see churches and schools older than my home country (Canada), heck I expect to see corner stores, sports teams that are older.

There is the slight worry that when I tell folks there that we are Canadian they'll assume I'm just an American trying to come off well, but I guess as long as I don't crush a budweiser on my forehead and refer to every automobile as a 'truck' it'll be fine?

It's London first. A truly great world city. It'll be difficult to not be overwhelmed by all the history and culture, also, being a huge fan of plaques, I suspect our walking progress will be severely curtailed. To decide on what amazing old thing to look at and read about will be the biggest challenge, for sure. And at least there will be no off-brand liqour.

Camping: Lake Resort

This summer we planned to hang with our family friends at a private camping area. In BC, private camping generally means a parcel of land packed with as many camping spots as possible, geared towards young people who view camping as generally: drinking outdoors and sleeping at unreasonable hours. 

As a middle aged dad with as much enthusiasm for the outdoors as an albino with a compromised immune system I more or less subscribe to the same definition, but I object to the hours.

We made the great trek down a highway populuated by inpatient vacationers and semi drivers with a dulled sense of mortality. The road is too narrow, the drivers too fast, and I'm driving to a spot where I have to setup my own shelter, and cook with a cooking set that could generously be called rustic (but in reality screams "anything more than mac and cheese with this setup is gonna be an ordeal"). Voluntarily. 

And there is gonna be a lake, the standing water resevoir that makes me think of leeches .. eel, possibly, that aquatic plant life that isn't quite seaweed, isn't quite algae but gives anyone bred for the indoors the heebie jeebies.

It is a relatively unpleasant trip to a vaguely unpleasant destination, but in the spirit of 'giving the kids some memories', and the fact my wife is the sort who actually enjoys the outdoors, well.

At hour 2, we hit an impasse. There has been an accident. So now we either go back or attempt to pay what inflation and Covid have turned hotel fees into (a second mortgage), or go all the way home.

Weirdly, all the hotels are booked, I guess folks have alot more disposable income than I thought would be reasonable.

I foolishly allow myself to consider maybe we'll just go home and call the whole thing off, we gave it the good ol' college try. Time to sleep indoors, away from the mosquitos, sketchy cooking setups, unnameable aquatic plants.

Did I mention my wife really enjoys the outdoors? And not in the 'just here for the Gram'. But a disconcerting appreciation for nature in all it's stinging, slimy, somewhat uncomfortable glory.

We get up the next day at 5am. And do the drive again. Get to the turn off. It's 2 km of abandoned logging road. Not even sure if it was used for logging. Maybe for packmules? Was this a gold-panning spot in days of yore? That's the only reasonably explanation. The path, a mixture of 'juust too large rocks' and dust and gravel has that wonderful quality that makes one really appreciate life. I'm not sure if it's the steep grading, or the lack of any barriers tumbling down the mountainside. Or the fact that there is really only space for one car only. This is certanly making memories for the kids. Trauma is a kind of memory, sure. 

We finally make it to the spot. It's cramped, but not as cramped as it could have been, which is a small mercy.  The campsite, although very small, has twists and turns in the path that make it suprisingly easy to get lost in. 

We have a pretty good time, the kids swim in the lake. We have.. well, I cook as best as I can given the setup, my buddy has wisely pre-prepped his food and makes amazing tacos for everyone. Our kids are understandably awkward with their kids at first then hit their stride a few hours in. We get to be Outdoors, make Memories. All it took was two more trips than I thought it would take, and a bit of terrifying off-roading in our sedan.