Yesterday in Vancouver, after my class, there were extremely high winds. 100 mph, apparently. Skytrains were going slow, but I managed to get a bus (full of German schoolchildren) out to Horseshoe Bay to the ferry terminal just before the 7oclock ferry. Sitting upstairs in the departure area, and suddenly they announce that there will be no more ferries to Nanaimo.

After an abortive attempt to get my money back, since I had somehow lost my ticket, I headed off to the one motel in town. There were a number of people in the lobby, including one that I recognized as being attached to the German school party.

He got up to the counter, about 5 would-be motel-stayers ahead of me, and tried to persuade the proprietor to give them all the rooms that were left, for 28 kids. Without changing expression in the slightest, the proprietor told him there was only one room left. Although this man desperately wanted to make his problem the motel-owner's problem, Mr. German Schoolteacher ended up leaving with a brochure for the Holiday Inn in West Vancouver. The motel man then gave out five or six more keys to all the rest of us waiting. I don't know if I've ever been so happy to know that someone was telling lies......

The room was very clean, and the water was hot. I had a bed, and in the morning the winds had died down and I took the 6:30 am ferry. I even made it to work on time. If the school party had managed to book the whole motel, I would have been forced to go back into Vancouver, and I wouldn't have made the 6:30 ferry...