Why here?

I often wonder how a non-native gets here, wherever “here” may be.

Today, complying with the Prince Rupert municipal ordinance that states “no two days filled with sunshine shall occur consecutively”, laundry day happened.

Given no laundry facility in my hotel, I sought out the services of the King Koin laundromat.  Depleting my pockets of all coins Canadian, I set the machines to work.  The resident owner began the conversation and the setting was reminiscent of My Beautiful Laundrette, a 1985 Oscar nominee.  He has lived in 15 countries in his 52 years, including Russia, China, Oceanside CA USA, Malaysia, Cuba and so on, leading to his present day Canadian home.  He offered his views on how bad communism can be and then advised me to use the cold water setting to get bonus washing time.  As I suppose was the case in many of his former domiciles, there’s no hot water here either. So adding to the adventure, I took his suggestion and received my bonus of 2 additional minutes.

The patronage varied throughout my 1 hour visit.  A dirty-laundry laden man arrived wearing a forlorn look as if he had come to Rupert to fish and had caught nothing.  Yep, that was true but he was not in the mood to share details.  Several British tourist couples came in, dropped their laundry with the owner and asked that it be completed today.  For $12.60 CDN per load, the owner was happy for the business.  A grandfather travelling with 2 grandchildren was equally as patient, while doing laundry, as the children were-not.

As you might have guessed by now, another cold, rainy and dismal day brings me to the end of this period in Prince Rupert while I’ve been waiting for my ship to come in, literally.  Its residents are friendly and helpful at every turn, even though faced with high unemployment at 15% and less-than-tropical weather.

Tonight, I’ll pack the bike to meet a ferry in the morning that’s insisting on an evil dockside check-in time of 5:30 a.m.   It looks to be about a 16 hour cruise, depositing me in Port Hardy at the northern end of Vancouver Island right about midnight.  Onward.