USA - Canada - Mexico 2016 - Day 2

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Wednesday, 7 September 2016 - Vancouver

While Canadians may be very welcoming and friendly, the weather has not been. Cloudy and threatening rain when we woke up this morning. While on the subject of waking up; the long flight, time zone changes and lack of sleep caught up with us this morning. I say morning as most of the night as, after an initial short sleep, we both awoke and were unable to go back to sleep. Finally we did and then woke up at 9:45 - 10:00am. Missed breakfast of course. The bad day actually started earlier. As part of my no sleep routine, I read. Rather than carry books, I use electronic books from the library. At 4 o'clock this morning, I shut down in the hope of going to sleep and the computer had a major nervous breakdown, bringing up a screen claiming to be Microsoft gathering data on the crash. Looked like the dreaded Blue Screen of death but with a :( face on it. I'm always fearful of using open networks but sometimes you have no choice. Turned out, as far as any of my software can tell anyway, it doesn't appear to be a virus. Whatever it was after 3 years of use that caused my Adobe Digital reader to crash corrupted it completely and it not only wouldn't reload, it wouldn't repair or run after being removed and reinstalled. Took a lot of work this afternoon to get it back up and running. Maybe it just hates the early morning work.

We decided to spend the day playing at being tourists looking around the harbour area and caught the train in. Interesting train system here. The one we caught was electric, runs every 3 minutes, cheap fares and I still haven't worked out or researched who drives them or how they operate as we certainly couldn't see an operator.

The train took us to Gastown on the harbour, the oldest part of Vancouver. Lovely place, even with the low cloud cover. Found a nice little place for coffee and breakfast/lunch, took a walk through a Chinese Garden. Although we didn't go through the authentic part. Everything in it was brought from China, even the pebbles, and all the buildings are built using the traditional customs and methods. In the hope that the weather will be better when we return, the gardens and the lookout will have to wait.

Went for a walk around the harbour however it started to rain so out with the umbrellas and we headed back up into the main business area. Checked out the sights, a few shops, etc with the rain only light so no real problems. Came time to head back and as we headed for the train we were just walking along and Therese commented how great a day it had been enjoying the atmosphere and suddenly she was down on the ground having slipped on a wet metal cover. We are currently hoping it is just a sprained wrist but if no improvement in the morning, we may have to seek some medical attention/advice.

In case anyone, most likely a non-motorcyclist, wonders why or how so much luggage was in the Brisbane Terminal photo and where was it going to fit on the bike, you have no idea how much room is required to pack 2 full face helmets, winter riding jackets, gloves, boots, GPS and mount, and assorted other items.

Hoping for an earlier night tonight, a good night's sleep and a wrist that feels better in the morning as we are meeting up with John and Terry in the morning to prepare and load the bike ready to hit the road in the following couple of days.