Driving home from a pleasant lunch with my wife and a mutual friend along Hastings St. in Vancouver from the downtown east side to Burnaby wow what a depressing city Vancouver has become!
Around 4 PM so middle of rush hour. Began the Hastings route from Hastings and Abbott streets and continued through the grungiest parts of Hastings, which now stretches for a mile or so eastward. The buildings–very shabby. The people bent over with spinal deformities caused by illicit drugs. Really sad.
Traffic near the Pacific National Exhibition grounds was backed up and crawling along due to a cement pumping truck occupying one of the lanes on Hastings, eastbound, just north of the Cassiar connector. Right where Highway 1–choked with traffic as it usually is that time of day–feeds into Hastings with commuters coming off of the Ironworkers Bridge, while, simultaneously, commuters from Vancouver, heading in the same direction and coming from downtown, merge with the Highway 1 commuters.
Why put a concrete pumping truck on Hastings? Particularly at that time of day? When it could have been placed on a side street or in the alley behind the construction project?
Are people really as stupid as they seem?
I wanted to see what Hastings St was like these days. It had been years since I last drove along it. No better than before, and definitely worse. Everything seems to get worse.
When I finally arrived home I changed into my pajamas and fell asleep on the couch, exhausted.
Today I will dig in my garden and focus on plants and clean air. I’ll try to shut out the chaos of the world outside of my own little plot of land. Stay away from youtube. Work on my projects: the electrical improvements to the garage; digging out the creeping buttercup from places in the back lawn; deciding what to grow in the raised vegetable beds I’ve ordered. Maybe I’ll go over to Derek’s and set up his new security video system.
I’ll sit a while on the front steps with my cat and watch the world go by. Maybe work on the airstream project a little. I ordered some small drill bits from Amazon (grr, hate Amazon, but that was the only place I could find them). These tiny drill bits are what I need to drill out the rivets that hold the panels of aluminum to the inside walls of the airstream. Each panel needs to be removed and cleaned and repainted and put back, therefore each rivet needs to be removed and re-added (as a pop rivet). While the panels are removed I will clean the inside of the wall, removing mould and adding sealant and insulation.
The floor must also be replaced.
There’s plenty to do and no reason, really to leave my small domain, except to shop for groceries and supplies.