Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

This morning. God. This morning. Was an ass o’clock. Kind. Of. Morning. I woke up at FIVE (which is not a reasonable hour for humans to be awake), and got ready to leave. I wanted to get going early since the car had to be back in Vancouver by noon and I had no idea what crossing the border was going to be like. Alex woke up for one last goodbye hug, and waved until I was out of sight.

I had barely any sleep, so playing my news podcast was a terrible idea for keeping me awake. I ended up wide eyed and jittery, sort of half scream-singing Taylor Swift at 6:30 in the morning, white-knuckling the steering wheel. Turns out that did the trick, and I’m sure anybody that caught sight of it had a good laugh! I got through the border after a few hours (only one line was open) and stopped to grab some lunch and fuel up the car before dropping it off.

I also realized this week (I.e. Kat told me…) that today was the last day I could vote out of district. So what did I do? I went and voted but was a real weenie about it. I sort of slinked in the room and the polling booth lady was like ‘are you old enough to vote?’ And I was like ‘yes absolutely please help me what do I do.’ ALL THAT EMBARRASSING STUFF ASIDE I had already registered and was in and out of there in no time- sticker included.

Luckily I was heading to downtown Vancouver afterwards, because earlier this week one of the seams in my backpack split open a little bit. We can just pretend like that has nothing to do with the sheer amount of stuff I jammed into it and everything to do with manufacturers defects. MEC was nice enough to replace it, and also up it to the next size. I was delusional to think 47L would be enough. It’s been a struggle. So I walked out of there with a fresh new black 65L backpack.

I spent the rest of the afternoon making my way slowly over to Kitsilano where my cousin Avery lives. She and her roommate Maggie are (thank goodness) putting me up for the next few days. She was still in class so I stopped in an amazing smelling coffee shop and did some research for the next leg of my trip, which was a little nerve wracking! It’s happening.

I met up with Avery at her apartment and we were so excited to see each other! We had a cup of tea and caught up on everything we’d missed the last month or so and then went out to dinner at Heirloom. We had delicious vegetarian health food (my body was so happy after all the deep fried road trip food), and then rushed off to see Hustlers the movie in a small homey theatre.

I am beyond happy to be back in Canada (and with Avery!) for a few days before I head out. It’s getting real folks.

Sav