Weather and Transportation

This morning the world was wrapped in a beauteous, soft-focus fog. Usually Vancouver fog is clammy and bone-chilling, but today it was rather warm. Those car headlights are not even half a block away; the houses across the street were noticeably fuzzy. This is not the thickest fog I've seen in Vancouver. I remember a ten-day fog that descended on the city many years ago, during which you could not see the house next door. You couldn't go to work; the city buses couldn't run. It was serene and dignified, and when it seemed to be letting up a bit you ran out to buy some more milk, then hunkered down for further welcome, enforced rest.

Well, today's fog didn't last but I couldn't give you details because on my bus up the mountain to work we rose suddenly above the cloudline and were in a perfect, sunny, cold fall morning. For the rest of the day, whenever I looked out the window I could see another cloud lifting off the city below, rising to dissolve against the blue mountains across the harbour. There is fog in Brooklyn; but there isn't this fog. However, Brooklyn has great lightning storms, which B.C. generally does not.

Some other differences:

• people here wait on the sidewalk to cross the street. If you step down into the gutter to prepare for a dash across the street, you are endangering yourself and others. The drivers will screech to a halt, in the belief that you are beginning your advance across the street.
  
  
• on the SkyTrain, people are not reluctant to take the inside seat.
  
  
• in Vancouver, you thank your bus driver.

I was actually sure I had heard people in Brooklyn thank their bus drivers; but Winnifred assures me I had just heard us thank our bus drivers while we were in Brooklyn. Apparently it's a B.C. habit I never kicked. Thank God there's one thing I don't have to relearn.