Kelowna Vacation, Day 1/2

I feel old and cranky tonight. It’ll be better tomorrow, I think…

I came tonight to Kelowna, BC. In the Okanagan, wine country and ski country. Seemed like a good choice… modeling myself from Tofino, I decided again to stay in a hostel. It really is nicer than staying by yourself, even if I’m cranky at the moment. And I figured I could do some snowshoeing and some wine touring… all good… get out of town. I feel like it’s a last trip I’m going to be able to do for a while… probably not, but that’s the feeling I have. So I felt I really need to take the three-day weekend opportunity.

So I got in tonight, quick baggage, quick car rental – there was no one checking you out of the lot, could you imagine that in the US? – that immediate feeling of less bullshit and better people up here. It was good…

Kelowna, at least in the dark, sorta reminds me of Santa Cruz – a main drag, everything on it. It also reminds me of a Western town – a town, and not much around it. I don’t know if that’s true, but there’s isolated places in the west, where there’s the town and then there’s nothing for a long, long way. I at least have that feeling about Kelowna. We’ll see if it’s true.

Anyway, I cruised the main drag en route to my hostel. Found the hostel. Managed to hit the panic button on my car and set off the alarm instead of opening the trunk; delightful. Don’t like my Dodge Avenger. It seems wimpy, and has the irritating habit of leaving the lights on if you click the “unlock” button and you then have to open up the car door, turn the lights on and off to get them to go off.

I get to my hostel. You have to know the code to get in, but of course, if you haven’t been there, how can you know the code? There’s no doorbell. So I knock and someone comes to open it up. The girl at the desk speaks marginal English. I’m totally appreciative that she is a foreigner and her English is much better than my any other language, but it’s still trying. Then she rings me up, but rings me through credit rather than debit, so then she’s supposed to charge me 3%. I’d like to point out she didn’t run the machine right, but hey… so she takes me to my room, opens the door, stops; turns on the light; turns off the light and closes the door. There’s someone in it – 2 someones, actually… they messed up their bookings. The room is halfway between the main floor and the floor below, so it’s got about a 6’4” ceiling – Mark would definitely be hitting his head. Good thing I’m not claustrophobic. So as I stand on the landing waiting for the girl to come back, a guy kicks a beer cup down the steps, which ricochets off the wall right by me and down the steps to the lower floor.

Did I mention the hostel is having a keg party tonight to celebrate their 10-year anniversary?

I know, I’m old and cranky, but it’s not a great first impression.

I go up the steps, and now there are four employees trying to figure out what to do with me. I decide, finally, to stay; but the people in my room aren’t here, and they don’t want to move their stuff, so I volunteer to go have dinner and come back.

I hit Choices Market, first … kinda like a Whole Foods type place, not quite as hardcore. This makes me happy: in the Clif Bar section, a “maple nut” bar. Maybe we have this in the states, but if so, I haven’t seen it. I get a couple for tomorrow, and some goat milk yogurt… yum. I ask the checkout girl where I can go for dinner and she recommends “Kali O’Brien’s.” Okay. I head there. Kelly O’Brien’s. And she says the Pachos are really good. Folks, the pachos are fries with cheddar cheese and green onions. Good, but really, not worth getting excited over. Ah well. Still, men in kilts are always a plus, and all the staff are. J

I get back to the hostel about 9. The people in my room still aren’t in, but the staff moves their stuff anyway and is very nice to me and hasn’t even mentioned the 3% they were supposed to charge me. It’s $4.50, so I think if they bring it up, I’ll suggest they let it go, but I’m thinking they’ve already figured that out.

The room is all blues and purple, with dolphins on one wall, butterflies on another, a flower vine up a third and clouds all over the ceiling. Entertaining. I’ve been painting the interior of my house – did my bedroom a watery blue, and the guest room a sunny yellow. I was trying to figure out what to do with my office, but was considering the possibility of doing something like our youth group room and putting random quotes on the wall and that sort of thing. With sharpie marker? Or paint? If I do it, of course, I can choose what I want. Hmm. There’s not that much wall space, is a downside. It’s rather teenager-ish. But it would be me.

So I’m in now, in my private room, and I can hear the boombox through the floor above me… not bad, but it’s not going to be an early night. I hope it will not be a long, late night. I’m not sure what to do if it is… tomorrow is Saturday, after all, and at least there will be no keg, but it might not be much better.

It looks like tomorrow will be wine day, because some of the wineries are closed on Sundays. So Sunday will be snow day. Tomorrow hopefully will also involve some trails.

On the upside, the hostel does free pancakes every morning. A fortified way to start the day…