Sometimes it All Comes Together

Things have been going well for Van­cou­ver. Last night, our beloved Canucks man­aged to beat the Dal­las Stars, and won the first set of play­offs in the final 7^th game. It was make or break, and they made it. The cel­e­brat­ing on Rob­son Street was so loud and long that I sus­pect a lot of peo­ple are head­ing into work sleepy-eyed this morning.

Yes­ter­day was a picture-perfect day, with mild breezes, sun and a few scat­tered clouds. Before the game started at BC Place, I met up with Mark, a Com­puter Sci­en­tist vis­it­ing from LA, whom I’d met through my arti­cle in the LA Times. While we tried to chat over a few brews, the groans and cheers of the crowd would punc­tu­ate the evening (I got home before the rev­els started). As the game-winning goal was made by Trevor Lin­den we heard the cheers from the whole city from our bal­cony in False Creek. A slew of hang­overs was prob­a­bly made just bit worse by the return of rain today.

Tomor­row night is the Blog­ger Meetup, and I sus­pect that our cel­e­bra­tions will con­tinue, although some­what tem­pered by the fact that it’s not over; the Canucks now have to go on to face the Ana­heim Ducks, and will be doing so that evening just as we’re sit­ting down. (I’m sure we’ll know the play by play, either from TVs or the Wi Fi con­nec­tion).

The Canada­Line
Today I came across this video via Pacific Metrop­o­lis, who track this sort of thing, that details the new mass tran­sit sys­tem that is cur­rently the rea­son that they are tear­ing up much of down­town and Cam­bie Street (as well as the air­port, I sup­pose, but I haven’t seen that myself). As it shows, It will make Rich­mond and the Air­port about a half an hour from Downtown’s Water­front Sta­tion, which is the con­nec­tion to North Van­cou­ver (and ulti­mately by motor coach, Whistler) via Seabus and the other towns to the east via the Sky­train system.

It’s a typ­i­cal, cheesy cor­po­rate video, with some truly awful stock music and overly plas­tic nar­ra­tion, but you can get the gen­eral idea:

Frankly, if this is what the taxes that we’re fil­ing (due in 6 days and count­ing) are going toward, I’m more than OK with it. Yeah, I know, I know, there are lots of folks here who aren’t thrilled with the Canada­line, and fought against it (and I sus­pect that it really wasn’t pretty the way it was pushed through). I say, let’s make the most of it. Finally, peo­ple will be able to get from the Air­port to Burn­aby (and even Sur­rey) with­out burn­ing an ounce of gaso­line. And with <a href=“http://www.vancouvergasprices.com/retail_price_chart.aspx” target=_blank”>local prices at the pump around 1.18 per liter, as well as the usual Global Warm­ing argu­ments, being ahead of the curve on mass tran­sit can’t be a com­pletely bad thing.

I remem­ber the videos and praise for the Big Dig back in Boston, but I always hated the idea of a road for more cars, built under the city. So much money and so much engi­neer­ing (and cor­rup­tion) merely to build a high­way? What were they thinking?