Day two commute

We tried out the Larkspur ferry option for the school commute today. A pretty nice option though it's not really a time saver.

Day one at school

I had my first day at school today beginning with Sketching for Communication and ending with Photography for Graphic Designers. I'm pretty stoked about the sketching class, I really like the teacher and I feel like I'm getting back to my roots with that. The photography one will be pretty cool I think but the teacher is a bit less organized and motivational. But hey, who knows, it was the first day. I'm not the oldest student in any of my classes nor am I the only married one so that's a bit of a relief. I think I'm probably the only one who was wishing the school had a valet... but that's just a little thought I kept to myself. 

The drive home

Day one on the road we got as far as Portland, OR. The heavy rain and snow on the i5 was making it hard to see the road so we thought we'd call it a night. We stayed at the Marriot downtown which was pleasant and reasonably priced. We had dinner at Jake Crawfish nearby which was also something I'd do again.

The following day we set out again toward Eugene planning to visit King Estates vineyards. Unfortunately the amount on snow on the roads in town made us rethink a foyer onto smaller back roads and we instead made our way out to Florence on the 128 highway. We thought the weather would be milder closer to the water. It was true, though we had no idea that we had a mountain pass covered in snow and ice between us and the ocean. Once in Florence our "mild weather" was actually a hail storm. We moved from that into intermittent blizzards which meant we had horizontal snow and limited visibility most of the way to Eureka. Jessica took over the snow driving which I was very glad of since she's a snow-driving pro (she prefers to be referred to as a super star actually). We could have called it a night at Eureka at 9:30pm but we were temped to just givver and finish the night in our own beds so we just drove all the way here. We again found ourselves in a blizzard in Redwood National Park and were seeing blowing snow all the way to Sonoma County. Not the California I remember driving from before Christmas!

Now that we're here in Fairfax again, it's sunny and about 12 degrees in the day time and 8 at night - cold! But spring is starting and the hills are green. It's good to be back.

Farewell Victoria

I'm packed up, the car is sporting a new radiator hose (don't ask) and my friend Jessica and I are ready to conquer the great 101 back down to California. It looks like I'll be narrowly dodging the snow bullet the whole way. We'll update as we go along!

Back to school friend

I just bought all my art supplies for school online including my bendy guy. Who says you can't be productive from bed?

Looking forward to playing with all my new pencils next week.

Holidays coming to an end

I'm in my last week in Victoria before driving back down to Cali. I was at the Canadian Figure Skating Championships last week catching up with my old skating world. I packed in a lot of visits with friends  in between events, slept too little and put a lot of milage on my car. By Sunday night I was ill. I'm so lucky my mother had come over to watch the weekend events because she took good care of me and drove me back to Victoria. Now I've got three days to break a fever and be ready to drive home.

Deer on Saltspring

We were lucky enough to catch some young bucks engaged in a little fight. Here's some video I took with my camera (sorry - very low res!)

Saltspring Island and snow

My parents and I headed over to Saltspring Island yesterday for the Annual Bach on the Rock Christmas Oratorio. It was the first time I've seen my brother as the concert master though he's been doing these concerts over there for quite some time.  The concert was held at Artspring which is a cute little theatre and quite a new spiffy facility.

The after party was at the home of the conductor and if you are curious about what classical musicians do at after parties here's what happened. Someone printed out some Mozart and a spontaneous string quartet came together with Adrian playing violin. And then the opera singers launched into their favourites with Adrian on the Steinway and out in the moonless night snow fell all around. 

We awoke to snow on the ground today but the sun has been shining and we had a brilliant ferry ride back to Sidney.

Fairfax storm watch

Lots of people have asked me how our place is doing in the storms in the Bay area so here's the latest from the town website. www.townmanager.blogspot.com 

I've been in contact with the neighbours and it sounds like we've fared ok. 

Making contact

We checked out of the Kingfisher this morning and decided to hit up the next car wash we found. While waiting in line behind the rest of the population of Comox who had the same brilliant idea we had a knock at the driver's side window. We turned to see a little elderly man in patchwork trousers, plaid shirt and a trucker hat rapping urgently with his pipe on the glass. Joel lowered the window and as he did the man jutted his finder toward Joel and began 

"what the hell do you think you're doing here?" Waving his pipe at the rear of our car. We both sank a little lower in our seats expecting the fellow was irate to see California license plates in his town. 

"You're going to freeze to death!" he laughed to himself and started to light his pipe. 

Despite his enormous hearing aids in both ears he listened intently to Joel's explanation and then he launched into his own story about his converted Greyhound bus he used to drive down to Arizona every Winter. 

"But now I'm too old, even for that" 

Once his curiosity has been quenched he disappeared as he had come and Joel and I were left laughing at ourselves for being so taken aback by the harmless man who just wanted to know who we were. 

I also thought about my last encounter with people peering at my license plates.  There was a woman on the ferry who glowered at me muttering something to her husband I can only guess the content of. Why don't we all just walk up to people we're curious about and ask them for their story? I salute our new friend in Comox and hope I'll be that bold at 92.