Sequitur

Shortly before 2300 on Wednesday the 16th of June Edi and I took the launch from Sequitur to the float of the Yacht Club Peruano in La Punta, Callao, Peru. We were met by a night attendant who helped us with our luggage, loading the pieces into a couple of carts he had ready and escorting us up the pier, pushing one of the carts. After we had settled in at the guard post, the guard opened the gate and motioned for the taxi to come into the compound and closed the gate behind it.

We loaded our luggage into the trunk and got into the taxi. The driver told us to lock our doors and keep our windows up. A few blocks away from the security of the Yacht Club compound and away the obvious police and private guard presence of La Punta, we were passing through a neighbourhood that quickly illustrated why we had been told to keep our windows up. After a couple of kilometres of rough neighbourhood, we passed into a safer-looking area, and in less than half-an-hour we arrived at the airport.

The departures area was controlled-access, with a security roadblock filtering cars through. Nonetheless, we still felt uneasy unloading our luggage and manoeuvring it into the check-in area. At the counter we were processed and then told to wait three-quarters of an hour until the cut-off time to see if our stand-by reservations would yield seats. We sat and watched as more and more people entered the terminal, and we tried to will them away from our flight's check-in.

Thankfully, we were finally confirmed; it was approaching 0100 and it would have been awkward heading back to La Punta and getting a launch back out to Sequitur on her mooring and bringing her back to life from her hibernation. Our connection in Toronto went smoothly and we arrived in Vancouver in the late afternoon, picked-up a rental car and drove to our new Vancouver home, a loft in a new restoration of a century-old industrial building.

We squeezed into the loft, threading our way along the alleys we had left between the piles of furniture and stacks of boxes and bins. We had had very little time to unpack and arrange when we moved it in last November upon taking possession. Now we were tired and hungry from our twenty hours of travelling, and the place was a mess. We moved some things around, unpacked, made comfortable the bedroom and bathroom and while Edi hacked out a clearing in which to dine, I drove over to i-Sushi to pick-up an order of our five favourite rolls. With the wonderful sushi and a chilled bottle of Cava, we unwound and celebrated our return to Vancouver.

We had booked the rental car for four days, so we focused that time on making full use of it, with trips to the big boxes, such as Home Depot, Ikea, Wal-Mart and Costco, plus visits to our favourite Greek deli, Chinese vegetable shop and other far-flung places. We bought storage shelves, lighting fixtures, building material and paint, and I played electrician and carpenter while Edi played painter and decorator. Also, with all the stacks of boxes and bins seeming to be constantly in the wrong place for the next step or process, we both played mover many times; it seems many items needed to be moved a dozen times and more.


It would have been convenient to use our large balcony as a sorting area, but the pigeon proofing installed by the builder was ineffective. A new nest had been built and the balcony was covered in guano, in places up to 5 centimetres deep. There were also the skeletal remains of a pigeon in the center of the balcony. We were waiting for the people from Pest Control, who had installed the pigeon proofing, to come and do a clean-up and sanitization, and until then, it was not a healthy place.

Also, our furniture that was destined for the patio was downstairs in the storage locker, blocking the space needed for bins we wanted to store there, which were blocking the space in the loft preventing us from hanging the art, which was wrapped in padded covers and blocking access to cupboards, which were filled with still-packed boxes that needed sorting on the balcony. And so it went.

Through the sorting and discarding and arranging and building and modifying, we did manage to get our internet, cable television and telephone hooked-up. The loft had been pre-wired by Telus during the construction/restoration phase, and everything including the high-speed modem and wireless router were pre-installed, waiting only for activation. With this pre-wiring, Telus was offering telephone, multi-channel high-definition TV and high-speed internet all totally free for one year, with no hook-up charges and with no contract and no commitment. We shopped around to see what the other companies were offering, and the best alternative we found was Shaw, with an offer of three months free, and they would need to do an installation. We went with Telus, who were even able to recover my old telephone number, which after over twenty years I had given-up last August when we moved aboard Sequitur.


We also managed to cook and eat some deliciously civilized meals, made easy by the very close and easy access to three major supermarkets all brimming with eclectic selections and obviously competing with each other for the loyalty of the growing population of this upscale new neighbourhood.


While I was unpacking the few cases that were left over from my former three thousand bottle wine cellar, I ran into a set of tasting samples of vintage Armagnac from the 1960s and 70s. These were leftover from my wine importing days, and had been used to sort-out which vintages to import. Edi and I continue to enjoy a sip of old Armagnac after dinner, the 1961, '64 and '65 being particularly fine.

Rather gradually we made the loft comfortable, but it took longer than we had anticipated, and we are not yet finished. We were worn-out, and had not realized how tired we were. For several months we had been near-constantly busy, and had not taken more than a few hours at a time to relax since we were forced to do so by Mexican Customs in early April as they held us hostage with FedEx packages.

We are flying to New Brunswick next week, primarily to visit my parents, my brother and sister and the rest of the family in the Moncton area. While there we will also drive to Saint John to attend the Annual Convention of the Royal Canadian Numismatic Association, where I still have some responsibilities as the Immediate Past President. Hopefully our two weeks in the east will give us an opportunity to relax a bit, and we will return to Vancouver fresh and ready to begin organizing the gathering of parts to take back to Peru for Sequitur's refit.