Nanaimo, foggy winter morning
Nanaimo, BC
If you arrive in Departure Bay on the 6:30 am ferry from Horseshoe Bay, and the fog is so thick that you can hardly see from ship to shore, and you walk along the waterfront, past the marinas and chandelries and seedy nautical-themed alehouses and you take a moment to admire the gleam of a freshly burnished screw on a small tug in dry dock and you say “good morning” to everyone you pass because it’s still early enough that we’re all neighbours, and you stop to admire a surfacing eider duck and you spend a few minutes kicking yourself for not bringing your camera to photograph the hoarfrost glowing in the muted light and you pause to help a binner who has fallen off his bike on the frost, and watch people shrug at their bad luck as they wait fog bound at the seaplane terminal with the planes all tied up in the morning quiet pierced only by fog horns near and far and you get along to downtown and up into Perkins Coffee where the regulars are debating heating systems and the Canucks and the real estate market and you order a double espresso and a walnut biscotti and sit down to write, then it will take you 46 minutes.
Photo by ai.dan
If you are sitting in a coffeeshop in Port Townsend enjoying your first hot cup with a splash of cream scrolling through your Bloglines and click over to Parking Lot to slowly read and savor such lovely words creating a rich image of a beautiful morning and really picture Chris helping the bike rider and read to the end feeling a momentary desire for a walnut biscotti then it will take you 3 minutes and fourteen seconds unless you follow the link to ai.dan’s flickr page then it will likely take more time than you might be wanting to spend surfing around the net on a Saturday morning.
Add twenty seconds if you read the first response and another seven or eight for this one.
Thanks Thomas…and now, in a few minutes off to drive through the grey afternoon to join mates and friends at the Bowen Island Juggling Club where, for 2 hours, we will practice dropping plates and scarves and balls and clubs and rings and stitches because not of us juggle with gravity, some juggle with wool. And you can follow at the fun at http://www.bowenjuggles.wordpress.com
And if you were ready for bed, but realised that Chris had a lot of new postings and then you start to read and you get a big smile on your face because of the beautiful words and the nice idea, then you will get later to bed than what was you intention, expecially when you want to write a comment and if you follow the links then it will even get later; on a Tuesday evening in Belgium. I didn’t watch for the minutes…