climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker — advocate for a stable global climate, reduced nuclear weapon risks, and safe human-AI interaction
Generally musings of the day, usually accompanied by a photograph
We are now departing from Thunder Bay – leaving me about 22 hours from Ottawa. While the journey west felt a bit like a measured and disciplined march towards an objective, the ride east has the feeling of a disorderly retreat. That said, I have read and eaten significantly more while heading in this direction.
Ottawa will probably be a shock after Vancouver, but I am looking forward to being able to sleep horizontally and eat something moderately healthy.
I am now 24 hours into the return journey, heading for Winnipeg. There will be no significant stopover there this time, so it is just another stop.
From a carbon perspective, it has been good to see that the bus is still operating close to capacity, well after the end of the peak holiday period. All the ones I have been on have been more than 2/3 full during the long intercity segments.
The return journey feels a bit like repaying student loans – the cost that comes after the benefit, and which is paid with the excitement and enjoyment behind. That said, perhaps I learned something from the trip out, and the return trip will be less straining.
Ottawa does include things to look forward to: friends and a new job, particularly.
I learned a few things taking the bus from Ottawa to Vancouver. Firstly, dealing with stopovers and bus changes is probably the most annoying part of the whole experience. It is wise to carry as little carry-on baggage as possible. Indeed, a few Greyhound coaches have such small overhead compartments, they leave you with no choice but to stack bags around your legs. Given that my bag of photo gear simply must ride on top, that means absolutely minimizing all other baggage.
Secondly, bringing changes of clothes is pointless. There isn’t much refreshment to be had from putting clean clothes onto a dirty body, and the Greyound human logistics chain doesn’t offer anywhere you would want to change. Between dirty bus station bathrooms and lurching bus toilets, I will just endure for three days in my woolen longjohns and cargo trousers.
Thirdly, the bus experience is not really compatible with reading, at least for me. I read more in the first two hours than during the rest of the trip. As such, I am cutting back in-bus reading material to one small book and a magazine, and probably even that is more than required.
Fourthly, I found bringing food to be more trouble than it is worth. You don’t need to eat much, since you aren’t moving and don’t need to heat yourself much (the buses are warm). Subsisting off Gatorade and truck stop food may not be glamorous, but it is probably the best approach.
Fifthly, music is critical. If you have an iPod, get a device that lets it run on AAA batteries. Then, bring at least 12 with you per journey. Those available on the route are absurdly overpriced, and often of very poor quality.
Sixthly, at least in the winter, don’t expect the journey to be scenic. During my spans of non-darkness, all I saw was endless snowy boreal forest one day and endless prairies the next. If possible, schedule your trip so it is daylight when you cross the Rockies. If you really care about scenery (and don’t mind the higher carbon emissions), consider taking the train.
On this journey, I won’t have the stopover in Winnipeg that offered a welcome chance to see my cousin and have a shower on the way out. It will basically be one long, often-interrupted run from Vancouver to Calgary to Regina to Winnipeg to Ottawa. Please wish me luck.
The last few days of Vancouver downtime have been really enjoyable. It is impossible to disentangle the extent to which the enjoyment is the product of broader and deeper networks of friends here, and the extent to which it arises from characteristics essential to the city.
Tristan is on his way back to Ontario via train. While it seems to be a significantly more carbon-intensive way to travel, it is undeniably infinitely more interesting looking than the bus. He has already provided good photographic evidence of that. In my experience, the bus trip offers virtually nothing worth photographing during short winter days. Perhaps one day we will have low-carbon trains, and thus a way of going cross-country that is both environmentally responsible and tolerably pleasant and interesting.
I have been reading an excellent book and play: Tom Stoppard’s wonderful Arcadia (combining amusing talk of sex and science) and Bill Streever’s Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places. The latter offers an astonishing contrast between stories of success and failure in extreme cold: caterpillars that freeze every winter and take ten years to achieve metamorphosis, versus the final journal entries of doomed expeditions, documenting how the men died one at a time.
Less than four more days, and I will be back on the bus.
The degree to which Vancouver is preferable to Ottawa can hardly be overstated. This ocean city is beautiful, green, and almost infinitely more dynamic than the snowbound bureaucracy out east. Whereas it is a challenge to find anywhere novel to go in Ottawa, Vancouver has a multitude of interesting areas, with the bonus that you don’t need to shiver in your long underwear while waiting for a bus to take you there, even in late December.
It was well worth enduring the bus journey for. It’s a shame there isn’t much here, in the way of environmental policy jobs.
The video above should demonstrate why I normally leave the videography to my far more talented brother Mica. Still, I hope it will convey some sense of what it was like to cross Canada by Greyhound Bus, a few days before Christmas in 2009.
I hope everyone enjoys the holidays.
[Update: 13 January 2010] A video from the second half of the trip is now online.
This last section is happening in what may be Greyhound’s oldest bus. The overhead storage space is too small for almost all bags, so there is zero leg room for everyone with carry-on bags piled everywhere.
Still, the end is in sight. One more long and nearly moonless night, and I will be in Vancouver. It is a shame there won’t be much of a mountain view from Revelstoke, due to darkness and bad weather. All my daylight hours were boreal forest or prairie views.
The unscheduled smoke breaks of the driver who took us to Swift Current have left us half an hour behind schedule. Hopefully, I will still catch the right Calgary to Vancouver bus. If so, I will arrive around 8:30am Tuesday.
I am feeling pretty comfortably embedded in things, entering the final stretch.
Regina has the nicest bus station I have seen on the trip so far. It has an enclosed area for the vehicles themselves, and a high-vaulted waiting area for passengers.
I had two seats to myself from Winnipeg to here, so I got some decent sleep for the first time on the trip. Good enough to dream and feel like some road vanished, at least.
The next leg is to Calgary. Soon, I will be decidedly in Western Canada.