Have you ever gone on an endeavor by boat? If the answer is yes, you could easily attest to the fact that specific elements can easily make boating a challenge. Assume you are launching a boat on a lake, calm right? Take this relatively easy situation and tack on several elements, such as wind, other boats zooming past with wakeboarders on the back, and the inboard deciding to not start the minute you launch next to the rocks. You proceed to face a moment of disbelief and you say to yourself “It started just fine last weekend, why not now?!” You proceed to float into the rocks along the shore whilst cursing and carrying on. In other words, a frequent experience in my life. Almost every time, on any bigger trip, we carry this family saying: “The trip isn’t complete until there is a thing” You may ask, what is this ‘thing’? For a clearer definition, the ‘thing’ is something that happens on any family trip that is an inconvenience or a “temporary setback” as we call it. However, every trip follows this pattern of having a ‘thing’. The ‘thing’ might be small, or it might be very substantial, but once the ‘thing’ happens on the trip we can all breathe a sigh of relief and realize that there won’t be any other major event that happens on the trip, relatively speaking. It’s been the same every trip, once the ‘thing’ happens, nothing bad happens for the remainder of the trip
For example, when I was flying solo to Smithers in early August during the summer, all seemed to be normal. Since I had a connecting flight through Vancouver (YVR), I had to fly Victoria to Vancouver, and then Vancouver to Smithers. The first leg went as expected, which is Air Canada’s second shortest route in the network, at just 65km. Aboard a dash 8-400 in the old Air Canada livery, which I do prefer over the new 2016 minimalistic version, I left on time, made it to Vancouver early, (yay!), and savored Tim Hortons from the domestic terminal located in Concourse C. I also had the exact same cabin crew on both flights, which came as quite a surprise to me. I board the flight for the next leg, another Dash 8-400 as expected, as I force the person settled on the aisle to get up for me to claim my window seat. Soon enough, we were pushing back. As soon as the doors close and we start the taxi, I have a mini heartattack when I realize: “Where did my passport go?”. For the record, there were a lot more profanities as I was searching the floor for the god given thing. Finally, I find my passport on the floor underneath my bag, but still a little nerve-wracking. The Smithers Airport is rather empty if you will. The flight I was on was the only scheduled flight into the airport for the entire day. The airport is small as you would expect for a small-town airport. I think I was in the parking lot 30 seconds after disembarking the aircraft. Back to the main point, this was the ‘thing’ that happened on that trip, and I am still relieved that I ended up finding my passport in the end.
Let’s rewind further to the Smithers trip a year earlier, in August 2022, where I drove with everyone else for thirteen hours instead of flying. The drive up was uneventful, but the return home was a different story. On the drive south to Victoria, you come across a smaller town 50 kilometres south of Smithers in the first 30 minutes of the drive. This place is called Houston, BC, not to be confused with Houston, Texas. As we are towing our 55-foot monstrosity through this town on the main highway, we are following this smaller beater car through the traffic light on the west side of town at the 7/11, they decided at the last minute that they needed their gas station coffee (or something along those lines). If you have ever been in a vehicle towing a trailer, you know that you can’t exactly stop very easily, as the trailer almost pushes you forward and makes the truck skid from the load. As this person slams on the brakes, my dad thankfully has a quick reaction time and hits the emergency brakes on the trailer as well as the main brakes on the truck. This is the moment when you see black smoke off the tires in the rearview mirror. Fun times, and I still look back on it.