A Typical Road-Trip

Yesterday (yes the timestamp is correct, I am blogging at 4:49AM; seems I sleep when the boys do at 9PM but can't wake up again until morning) we went for a drive. Well, I insisted (Kate demurred) because being cooped up at home with only a daily walk down to the ducks (in a nearby pond) is a little much for me. So we set of in the car heading East. I looked through the mapbook and found Golden Ears Park (named for the mountains that, I guess, look like golden ears; more info here). It was too far to go to in one drive so we stopped at a little city park in Maple Ridge for a bit, too. That was probably the highlight, because Golden Ears was a long drive further and ended up being gigantic (meaning: we had to drive even further to get to anything).

We gave Mike Lake a try (it's the first 'attraction' once you get into the park).We went down a gravel road for a bit but then it got narrower and narrower and darker as well (as the trees closed in). Needless to say, my city-slicker wife thought that it was a haven for bears and that the road MUST be one-way (it wasn't, you just have to drive slowly and carefully). I've spent a fair bit of time in the bush, so it was not problem for me but even I was disappointed when I saw the 'lake'. It was not exactly the thing of postcards. Oh well, head home.

We checked out a custom home subdivision going up near the park on the way back. The houses were large, pretty damn similar for being custom-built, had tiny yards and started at $400,000! Good God! For 400k I cold get a nice place in the city and not need to drive 3km to get milk! And good luck getting pizza delivered out there. Well, Seoul has some things right, when they 'make' a city they have everything there: apartments, restaurants, supermarkets, schools, businesses...everything. You could spend your whole life in one spot, if you wanted, maybe even one building. Here everything is spread out like crazy. The problem of having so/too much land (factoid: Canada is 101 TIMES larger than South Korea with only 34 million people compared to 48 million: making Korea about 175 TIMES denser, no pun intended).

On the way back it seems all those curvey park roads got Spencer's gut in a knot and he puked 만두국/man-doo-gook (dumpling soup) all over the car. We stopped to clean it out and two 'courteous' Maple Ridge teenagers (read: farm hicks) walked by and said: "Mmmm...chunky!" Thanks a lot, pricks. These boys of mine could not be more different. Spencer pukes at the drop of a hat, is scared of large bodies of water and learned to talk later than Winston who can tell you what sound a sheep, duck, dog and cat makes, almost throws himself into any standing water and you can hardly make him throw up.

I've been thinking of making Hometown: Vancouver but I think I won't bother, for a few reasons. One is that I'll have to code all the counters, comment thingy and other applets I have in this blog. Two: what if I move again (now that I've been out of the country I may leave again) or want to add to my Korean hijinx? Three, I think all of my posts will have a bit of Korea in them (being married to one and all) so it seems more appropriate to have one named after a place in Korea rather than Canada. So, stay tuned to this station for more fascinating facts and scintillating stories!