Vancouver—Online and Offline

Wandering a cool city and wondering about connectivity

I’m in Vancouver, sitting on the boat in Fisherman’s Wharf, adjacent to Granville Island. Since the only part of Vancouver we’d heard of was Granville Island, we feel very lucky to have stumbled onto Fisherman’s Wharf marina, run by the False Creek Harbour Authority. The daily rent is reasonable, and the facilities are just fine. The look of the place is just what you’d expect from a working fishing harbor, and you can buy excellent fresh fish that comes directly from the fishing boats each day.

This picture of the marina and skyline would make a great jigsaw puzzle, wouldn’t it?

Yesterday’s 12,000 step walk began with us heading over to Steveton’s chandlery (marine store) where we found just what we wanted—a fuel filter and an extra set of oarlocks for our dinghy; we had a spare set of oars with no oarlocks, so that had to change. We then walked a few blocks to the local grocery store, No Frills, just to check it out; it is well stocked with paper products as well as the usual groceries and produce—it is going to be perfect for provisioning. There is a Safeway sort of nearby, but we prefer to pull our collapsible wheeled canvas shopping cart to a closer location, so this store solves both problems. We then walked on (and on) to see the neighborhood of Kitsilano, eat a great vegetarian lunch at The Naam (thanks Alicia!). We wandered home along the Seawall Walk, past their longest-in-Canada swimming pool and the beach volleyball beach court; we also saw folks playing a very cool new sport, Chi Ball.

Finding nearby places has been easy, as the shops are just a couple of blocks inland from the wharf so we use the paper handout map the office gave us along with our door codes and wifi password. The wifi info was key as my phone only gets 5GB of high-speed data each month while I’m in Canada. That has led me to get creative by taking screenshots of Google Map directions on my phone while I am using our boat’s wifi hotspot, so I don’t get frustrated while trying to find places on land.

False Creek Anchorage by Science World and Chinatown and so much more

You may not know this—I didn’t—but the Google Maps apps will still work to show you were you are on the map with no wifi connection at all, but you can’t use it to direct you to a specific place. In other words, you have to use the map like…an old-fashioned map. Having no wifi connection on my phone also means I can’t Google any interesting place I pass by on a walk, or check my email, or look at my social media while I am off the boat. I am forced to actually be here now, no matter where I am, which has been fascinating and revealing.

This morning I read a post on one of my regular Substacks, the often enlightening Read More Books by

Jeremy Anderberg

, and immediately said to myself “the universe is speaking to me, this is what I’m going to write about today.”

Check out Jeremy’s post (and subscribe, if you like intellectual discussions about classic literature, along with fun book recommendations by Jeremy and his wife and kids). I have not read Christine Rosen’s The Extinction of Experience, but I am definitely going to—what struck me in reading his description of the book’s thesis is that she is talking about the very thing I’d been enjoying in the last month while traveling, which is being in the moment much more, and on my phone much less.

One of the commonest critiques of our handheld social media dominance is that we never fully experience being in a garden or a cafe or a theater because we are so busy documenting the place for our friends (and followers). I don’t think of myself as a person who lives on her phone, but I have noticed that not being able to easily Google more facts about where I am going, or where I am, has me thinking about it more, diving more deeply into the being there, as it were. Don’t get me wrong, I still like being able to learn about places we are going to travel to; it is especially important to know about the conditions in an anchorage before we get to our destination.

But when your phone is in your pocket or sling bag there is a definite tendency to take it out, and having done so, to take a snapshot, and then why not post it to Instagram and share the moment? It is harmless enough, and fun to hear from your buddies about their experiences there, and to get their virtual high fives at the top of the mountain you just climbed. But does that act of sharing lessen your own perception of the moment you are in? I don’t know for sure but my own experience leads me to believe it might. I guess like many things, it is simply gaining more awareness of one’s behavior that is the key takeaway. I just took out my phone again…do I really need it, or am I just acting out of habit?

One of the drawbacks of being a freelancer is the idea that you’re always at work and that you should reply to that email that popped up from your client right now, instead of waiting until tomorrow morning, when you normally check your email. It seems so easy—quickly read the email, and get right back to them. But often it is difficult to understand the client’s question without going back to a previous email (sometimes another thread entirely) where you discussed rates or scheduling, so that instead of simply responding with a quick “Sure, that’ll be great,” you end up spending quite a few minutes typing on your phone instead of looking around you and being where you are. I solved part of that problem long ago by disabling any phone notifications on my email—if I am waiting for an email, I simply check it periodically. I don’t have audible notifications for texts, but since those are almost never from clients, it doesn’t cause as much of a distraction; I can always ignore a text if I’m busy and it’s just a casual hi.

Now that I’ve listed a freelancing “con,” I have to add a “pro”: reading exciting new work by clients whose work you admire. Recently, I read a work-in-progress by

David W. Reed

about trees he has known and loved. Reading it was such a wonderful antidote to this moment in the world—not just the news, but the current situation we find ourselves in as humans, with our world on fire both literally and figuratively, and the endless waves of tragic news, about floods, human suffering, wars, and terror.

David’s lovely prose about trees was an inspiration as well, both the visual and poetic description and the insightful ideas based on his wealth of experience—for those who don’t know, David was a successful landscape architect for many years. I’ll tell you more about his book in the months to come; it is still at an early stage of editing. For now, you can buy his memoir about bicycling with two friends across the U.S. back in the 1970s. And why don’t you follow his Substack while you’re thinking of it?

I’m also looking forward to working on a new book written by Gayle Carline, a long-time friend and client; she is working on a sequel to her Murder on the Hoof, a mystery set in the world of horse shows, a world she knows first-hand from years of showing Snoopy (he’s so smart, he wrote From the Horse’s Mouth, check it out here; it’s free on KU) and then when Snoopy retired, her newish horse, the handsome Dhani. And I’m doing a content edit later this summer for John Mullen, author of a period Old West series about the daring Nell who becomes a Marshall and then a Pinkerton Agent; it is set in Bodie, California, located in one of my favorite corners of the Golden State.

Can you see why I love my job and my life?

hasta pronto!