Day 20: Birds, Elephants, Fish, and OH! CANADA!

That picture (which I love) was actually from yesterday. But if I started off with a picture of how today actually began, no one would ever come back. Because nobody needs to see the dead bird that had apparently been wedged in the grill of my car for who knows how long. It took El Jefe a pair of gloves, under-the-hood access, and nearly 5 minutes to remove it, all the while marveling that I had no idea when it got there nor how.

I swear I don’t remember hitting a bird.

Anyway, the day started at another find from the duck tour: Elephant Car Wash. Where Elvis used to wash his car, it seems.

Debirded and scrubbed clean, it was off to Pike Place Market.

Something you may not think about taking long road trips: Days bleed together. You start to lose track of what day of the week it is, and the meanings of those days blur and shift until you’re shocked when things are closed on Sunday yet you could have sworn it was Tuesday.

We went to the market on a Saturday.

Um…

Oh, great sea of humanity.

At least most of the sea in the market had their pants on. Ahem.

I love Seattle.

Upon seeing the naked cyclists, my child called to me over her shoulder in a scandalized whisper. “I shouldn’t be seeing this…but I can’t look away!”

Fortunately, they were far enough away that it wasn’t quite as indecent as it could have been. For the most part…er…parts.

Anyhoo…we popped into a nearby antique shop where Earl found a treasure. It was billed on the tag as a “Never-Before-Seen Japanese Pixie Elf.” I have my doubts, but to her, it is fragile and beautiful and precious. She was afraid to even hold it at first, and she was honored to hand over some of her souvenir money for it.

The pixie elf was the only thing that left with us, thank goodness. There was some truly bizarre and creepy stuff lurking in that shop. I’ll only traumatize you with one shot because, well, I like you. Also, isn’t this one enough?

From the antique shop, it was a quick lunch featuring crab and shrimp tater tots (OMYUM!), then back into the fishy fishness of the market, where there were too many people for fish to be flung. Perhaps if people obeyed the signs?

Oh wait. Then we wouldn’t have been there. Carry on.

And carry on we did. Right on to the border!

We done went international, y’all!

Canada hated me from the start. I started sneezing just inside the border, my rotten whatever-chest-thing I had going backwards from my chest up to my nose in one fell cough. If that wasn’t enough, shortly after we were cleared by the smiling Canadian border patrol officer, we were greeted with a tunnel under a river.

I hate tunnels. I really hate tunnels that go under bodies of water.

Most of the drive up to Vancouver was spent trying to figure out how to make my car show me my speed in kph instead of mph. We could change the distance measures. We could change the mileage calculations. But the speedometer was stubborn. If I hadn’t had the cold, the math might have been more doable. As it stood, though, the entire time we were in Canada, I didn’t have the foggiest idea how fast I was really going. I just had to trust that everyone around us was going the speed limit.

Less than ideal, but I didn’t get pulled over, so {shrug}.

Vancouver was no less dreary than Seattle, but Vancouver’s dreariness made me sadder. Maybe it was the cold. Maybe it was because this was kind of the pinnacle of the trip, all together again and far far from home, and it was cloudy. But I think it was because, from the moment we crossed the border, as much as Canada hated me, I loved it.

Despite the gloom.

We checked in, and I pronounced that I was done. I sent El Jefe and Earl out to explore around the hotel on foot while I continued my Coldeeze and Good Samaritan routine until I reeked of zinc and cinnamon. I meditated, I prayed, I Reikied, I had room service.

I called it a day.