A couple of firsts

As previously noted, I have known Carl even longer than I knew Gloria.  So I went to his birthday party.  It was a bit of an adventure.

It was suggested that I check out the Hullo ferry.  The Hullo people tend to market their service as an adventure.  It's not really that kind of an adventure.  Basically, it's a bus.  I am confident in that assessment, because, after I got off the Hullo ferry in Vancouver, I took a bus out to UBC.  It's basically the same experience.

Admittedly, I was on the lower deck.  The "Comfort" class.  If you pay more, you can get the "Premium" class or the "Business" class.  If you do that, you get to bring an extra bag, you get a bigger, more comfortable seat, you get to board and disembark first, and you get to sit on the upper deck.

(The lower deck is not exactly crowded, but, if you are on a full transit, as one of mine was, you had best pay heed to their suggestion to stay in your seat for the trip.  The aisles are easy to move around in, when empty, but even a few extra people moving around tends to result in blockages.  I would really hate to see an emergency on board.)

The Hullo office and lounge on the Nanaimo side is quite nice.  It's got a washroom, it's got a snack bar, and it's got a bunch of very friendly staff waiting for the next departure.  There is a rather large parking lot on the Nanaimo side.  I was traveling mid-week, in early spring, and there was plenty of parking available.  I shouldn't have worried about it, although I did, and I went way too early.  But they have guest wifi available in the lounge area, so I was okay.

Of course, you don't embark from the lounge area, and nobody mentioned this.  You actually embark from a set of lineups that are outside the office.  Because I didn't know this, I was one of the last to board, because everybody else who does know this goes directly to the lineups and skips the lounge.

Of course, it doesn't really matter, because if you buy your ticket in advance, you choose your seat.  So I had assigned seating.  Apparently, I was charged for assigned seating.  I wasn't really given an option.

There appears to be massive confusion about what counts as luggage on the Hullo ferry.  I haven't seen such confusion over bringing massive suitcases onto a journey since the last time I was on a flight to Nigeria.  I suspect that an awful lot of people are traveling from Nanaimo to get a day of shopping in Vancouver and want large suitcases to bring back their purchases.  And apparently everybody wants to avoid the extra $25 you get charged for a checked suitcase.  Carry-on luggage is free, but what counts isn't exactly spelled out.  There is one place on the Website that mentions a twenty-two inch limit.  Even in the Nanaimo lounge there is no explanation of this, nor one of those racks that the airlines have so you can measure your bags.  Actually, in terms of the allocated space on board, you could bring a medium-sized purse, or a fairly small backpack, and that's about it.  Even a briefcase is a little bit much in the comfort class area.

The seats, even in comfort class, are starting to look a bit depressed, but are comfortable enough.  So, was the ride.  The day that I happened to travel was pretty much a flat calm, although some recent high tides had apparently pulled an awful lot of flotsam off the beaches, which may have accounted for some odd movements in the travel.  The captain was probably avoiding drifting logs.  Each trip is about an hour and twenty minutes.  The view, en route, is not exactly great, but it definitely could be improved if anybody would wash the salt spray off the windows.  Actually, when I went to embark on the ferry for the return trip, I noticed that they do, occasionally, wash the salt spray off the windows, both on the upper and lower decks.  With a hose.  On one side only.  The side that I was on was not cleaned for either of the voyages that I was on.

During the trip they run various ads on screens throughout the cabin.  The safety video also ran on these screens.  Every once in a while, there was an announcement that all systems were operating smoothly.  I would have had more confidence in this announcement had it not also been immediately followed by,(and sometimes preceded by) another announcement that the guest wifi on board was not available because of system upgrades.

It's too bad that the return trip has to be from Vancouver.  The Hullo infrastructure on the Vancouver side is pretty much non-existent.  Apparently, there is a VIP lounge in a nearby restaurant, but neither arriving in, or departing from, Vancouver did I have the time to go and explore and find out where it was.  The arrival and embarkation on the Vancouver side is attached to the new convention center.  The new convention center is rather an enormous complex, with multiple levels, and a whole bunch of attached infrastructure.  The Hullo ferries arrive at, and depart from, the Harbour Air seaplane dock.  If you are not an aficionado of the harbour area in Vancouver, you can be forgiven for not knowing where this is.  The Hullo departure area can be identified from the rather squiggly handwritten word 'Hullo' that has been added in Sharpie marker to the elevator buttons.  If you can find the area where the seaplane dock is, and if you can find the elevator.  Basically, when you arrive in Vancouver, you are two blocks from anything other than the new convention centre complex.

So I had to hoof it about five blocks up to the bus loop at the Bentall Centre complex.  God was good to me, in that one of the first buses at the stop I eventually decided on was an express bus out to UBC.  Mind you, then I was at the bus loop at UBC, and, because of various areas of construction, both the sidewalks between the bus loop and Regent College were closed.

I worked the room at the birthday party.  This was basically in Gloria's honour.  Gloria always insisted that I did very well at working a room, and was quite capable at it, regardless of the fact that this is definitely not my comfort area.  I met a few nice people, and a couple of people who I wasn't quite sure why they were there.  They seemed to be not quite sure why they were there, either.  I was able to talk, briefly, with both Carl and with Betsy.  I was also able to meet a couple of members of the family.  It's interesting that, given the time that I've known both Carl and Betsy, I, over the years, had multiple reports on the accomplishments of various of their kids and family.  But this is the first time I've actually met them.

I had to leave early in order to get back to the ferry for departure time.  This led to the second first of the day: I rode in an Uber.  One of the people that I had contacted, in regard to being at the birthday tea, indicated that they would get me back to the ferry on time, and apparently this was their solution.  It was fine.  I am still not going to sign up for Uber.