We went on our first big road trip with the baby this weekend, to visit friends in Vancouver.
We had to stop a bunch of times on the way there, but only twice on the way back to feed and change him (which was great).
Personally, I absolutely hate driving in Vancouver. I’m generally really quite good with directions, having driven across the country a couple of times, having had to cover sports games in various places across Ontario and having lived in multiple big Canadian cities. Yet, in Vancouver I usually get lost, from accidentally leaving Canada without a passport and reindeer antlers on the car to getting lost in the backcountry of the lower mainland, I’ve done it. However, most of that was before I had GPS on my phone, so this time it went off without a hitch.
We took our “nice” car which in addition to being distinctly Cariboo (from cow poo to dust as discussed in a previous column) now has a broken side mirror resulting from cows scratching an itch on it sometime overnight. Meanwhile, it seemed like every car we saw was a luxury car from Porsches, to BMWs and more. I’m not sure we could have stuck out more if I had ridden in on a tame coyote.
Meanwhile, our friends, who moved to Vancouver just this winter, were house shopping. This was an exercise in depression; even just their current rent was $1,000/month more than I make every month, nevermind what a mortgage would cost.
Now, you may think this may have left me questioning my self-worth a little, leave me feeling a bit depressed or perhaps jealous but you’d be wrong. Obviously, I’m way above any of that.
When I was a kid, one of my best friends; he’d been teaching chess since he was in his early teens, was phenomenal at pretty much all sports, did just a hair better in school and had a hot girlfriend.
This led me to do a lot of self-reflection, on what I am better at, what I have that others don’t have and made me consider that it’s only a snapshot in time.
Now, more than a decade later, I’m happily married with a great baby living in one of the most beautiful places on earth. Meanwhile, my smarter, more athletic friend with the hot girlfriend has sunk all the way down to being a doctor…
Please excuse me while I close Facebook and go outside to offer myself to the mosquitoes. Or, at least I would if I didn’t have to go and change a diaper first.