The two of us, dipping in and out of various forms of employment, sampling a handful of adrenaline here and there, hitting up the cheap burger nights and driving a hunk of a Honda to and fro on the splintering mountain asphalt of the Sea to Sky corridor, are about to say "adieu" to BC. "Ciao", "sayonara", "auf wiedersehen!" But BC, I love you.
It doesn't matter that a tub of nice yogurt costs an hours wage, or that CBC interviews the highly normal (read horridly boring) parents of BC's own
Carly Rae Jepson, Canadian Idol winner of 2007, for TEN whole minutes during the morning commute. And it doesn't matter that the resort town of Whistler sports the biggest collection of classic Ray Bans this side of Seattle, in fact, the mountain itself could be resculpted in hip sunglasses. (OK, I admit, mine included). BC, I love you.
Because we're in the middle of a vacation, somebody's vacation, and if you put yourself in the right mind frame, if you forget about your Swiss ESL students who will, you can be sure, ask you if you can use a separable phrasal verb in the passive voice, or why you don't yet know who Usain Bolt is, AND it's an Olympic year. If you forget about your duties for a minute, you're smack dab in the middle of your own holiday. And you didn't have to go anywhere at all.
Walk down a road to a glacier lake and go for a swim. Hike along a throbbing, white and green river, eat poison-red thimble berries and roast sausages on the shore. Go to a deep pine forest and find a couple of rocks to boulder on, bike down mountain-sides surely better suited to goats. Thrill yourself by looking down from the bungee jump suspension bridge, go to the golf-course and look for bears.
There's lots of other stuff to do of course. Things you can shell out cash for, paragliding, rafting, ziplining, pub crawling. But the pleasure of finding your own program, paddle boarding into the lilly pads and tanning on the pond.
That's what the summer in BC is made for.
