Si in Vancouver, Canada
Simon Lockington

After a 23 journey from Melbourne to Sydney to LA to Vancouver, I'm finally at the hotel and have showered the travel crust off me and am feeling a little bit more alive...

The reason for this trip is to attend a large broadcasting trade show in Las Vegas. Don, the guy I'm travelling with wanted to come to Vancouver for an event and I decided to cruise along simply cause I haven't been to Vancouver and everyone is always talking about how great it is. We leave for Las Vegas on Sunday night.

The flight over was pretty good. Unfortunately they're doing some kind of extensions to the runway at Melbourne airport which means there's now not enough room for a fully laden Jumbo to take off. So what they do is put enough gas in the thing to get to Sydney where they fill it up properly. Unfortunately it means a real pain in the ass to the passengers cause if you're flying to the States, you have to take all your crap (hand luggage, books etc) off, carry it round in Sydney then take it back on when you're ready to leave. This is once you've got through the 'random' security checks. When lining up to board the plane, I thought I was being smart and joined the shortest queue. However when I got to the front of the queue, they were taking everyone from the queue I was in and 'randomly' screening them. This included disassembling my bags, patting me down, swiping me with some chemical swiper, taking my shoes off and prodding them (I felt sorry for that girl). Meanwhile everyone in the 'long' line was cruising past grinning at me. Random my ass.

HELEN
Since I started travelling pretty regularly, I've been longing to sit next to someone interesting to chat about interesting stuff. Today I ended up sitting next to the wife of someone interesting. Helen is the wife of a Jet Engine specialist who was sitting in business class. I would have loved to have been sitting next to him, but I had Helen instead.

Helen was cool, she would have had to have been in her mid-sixties and she loved to talk.

"My name's Helen, what's yours?" was the line she gave everyone in our row. When I said my name was Simon she beamed that she had a son named Simon, which I think then made me the surrogate son for the rest of the flight.

Being Helen's surrogate son wasn't a bad deal. She looked out the window at the jet engines on the wing and exclaimed "They're General Electric engines, I rather prefer Rolls-Royce or Pratt and Whitney turbines myself", which amused me no end.

Helen also took it upon herself to look after myself (being the surrogate son) and a middle aged dude (Chris) who was on his first international flight. When she found out Chris was on his first flight she proceeded to outline the way things work with travelling for him and gave him directions on what to do at LAX. Once Chris was sorted out she made us take some asprin, "It's to thin out your blood so you don't get blood clots".

After dinner she made sure our drinks were being topped up by flagging down the cabin crew as they walked past "If they won't upgrade me to sit with my husband, we'll have our own business class right here boys" was her way of thinking. After the third round of alcohol I started pretending to be asleep so as to not drink any more... Surprisingly even with Helen's alcohol encouragement, I didn't sleep very well.

TO VANCOUVER
US Customs didn't play the traditional announcement regarding "Declare your didgeridoos to the customs officers" which they reserve for Qantas flights over the loud speakers which was a little disappointing.

Flying on any American Airline illustrates just how good we have it with our airlines back home. The lounges suck and the staff just don't give a crap. However Alaska Airlines at least had air hostesses that smiled at you before you got off the plane (unlike American Airlines who only smile when you leave).

I had a decent sleep on the 3 and a half hour flight to Vancouver, except I got a cold a couple of days before leaving Melbourne and my ears wouldn't unblock during the descent which was pretty damn uncomfortable.

It's good to see Canadian customs are consistent as they gave me the same level of grilling that I got when I went to Toronto last month ("Why are you here", "Why are you only here for two days?", "Why are you going to Las Vegas?", "What colour boxer shorts are you wearing?", that kind of thing).

STARGATE
I'm staying at the Vancouver Hilton. The reason I'm here is that Don, the guy I'm travelling with to Las Vegas, is a REAL Stargate fan (sci-fi TV series). There's some kind of Stargate convention on here at the Hilton which he wanted to go to, so I said I'd tag along and go do some tours while he goes and does his nerd business.

We've only been here an hour or so and already there is a disturbing amount of nerdness about the place. Dudes are dressing up in Stargate outfits and are all just a little too enthusiastic for my liking.

We went to a ‘karaoke’ evening where three of the Stargate stars got up and did some songs. The first dude was crap, I can do better than him after three beers, but the nerds hung off his every word. The other two people weren’t too shabby though.

After all the excitement, I left Don to socialise with his fellow Stargaters and went off to have dinner as I was starving. The restaurant was packed with Stargaters and I had to laugh at some of the conversations going on. “Are your work colleagues supportive of you and Stargate? Mine aren’t…”, “Our Stargate Club President organised this road trip for us.”, “Are you going to the Star Trek convention in August?” etc. It felt like I was sitting in the middle of some kind of cult religion get together. Very amusing though.

VANCOUVER TOUR
Having slept like a lamb I got in the lift next morning to go and get breakfast when the lift stopped and in walked some more Stargaters. One of which was playing with a ‘Transformer’ toy. You know, one of those toys that is an aeroplane and turns into a robot. This dude had to be mid-thirties…

I had pre-organised with the bellman to organise me a tour around Vancouver city which was due to pick me up at 9:30. Don had a busy day of Stargate stuff including visiting the set which he was very (maybe a little too) excited about.

My tour bus driver was great, he joined me in taking the piss out of the Stargaters. Once he found out I was a New Zealander he said “Yeah well most of those crazy guys are Australian anyway”. I had a GOOD laugh about that one.

Vancouver is a coastal city and one of the largest container ports in the world, ringing the harbour are large mountains (apparently full of bears and mountain lions).

The tour was excellent, we explored Stanley Park and went all around the harbour. Vancouver harbour is huge and apparently is nearly always smooth due to the geography and weather patterns of the area. As such, Vancouver has one of the largest float plane fleets in the world. Planes are landing and taking off in the harbour in amongst the ships and ferries. It’s very cool.

I had been promised by the driver that I would see some racoons in Stanley Park which I was kinda excited about, I haven’t seen a racoon. However, just like Australians and their Kangaroos, when I turned up, there wasn’t a racoon to be seen, “I don’t understand it, they’re normally all over the place” he said. I didn’t bother to tell him that’s a line I hear all the time from Australians talking about Kangaroos (after 14 months in Australia, I’ve yet to see a live one that wasn’t in a zoo).

We stopped for lunch on Granville Island which used to be a heavy industrial area but is now converted to a social area with lots of restaurants, cafes, theatres and small breweries. It’s worked out well, it’s a very busy place, but it’s not yet been able to totally get rid of the heavy industry just yet. Café patrons sit in the nice bright sun sipping lattes while 40 tonne concrete mixers thunder past from the cement works next door.

Vancouver is one of the Television and Movie production capitals of the world. The X-Files started off here, obviously Stargate is here, Smallville, Legends of the Fall, The Never Ending Story to name a few.

With the tour over, the bus dropped me back at the Hilton and I was soon immersed back in Stargate. This time however, the number of nerds had multiplied and there were lines stretching all over the place to get autographs signed (at US$30 an autograph)…

STARGATE AUCTION
The organisers of this Stargate convention were holding an auction of various Stargate items to raise funds for the ‘Make a wish’ foundation. I went along to see observe the people in much the same way as someone might observe a herd of Wildebeest in a zoo. Some of these people bear a striking resemblance to wildebeest…

You could sense the excitement in the crowd, the nerds were gagging for it. First item up was four dinner plates which some guy paid US$325 for! I was about to take the piss out of this guy with Don when he suddenly bid US$300 for a signed Stargate cap! Then some guy walked in dressed in what I thought was a Klingon uniform but it wasn’t (I was later admonished for my ignorance), that didn’t escape the fact the guy looked like a goose. Things were getting REAL strange.

What was kind of surprising though was the amount of female nerds here, and I’d have to say they were just as crazy, if not more so, than the males. After the auction, a couple of the male Stargate stars came out onto the stage to do a question and answer session. Here it was the women who went berserk, screaming and crying and hugging each other. Even Don was getting a bit too excited. I didn’t know who they were but they were pretty funny and well worth seeing.

Don later said he over heard someone ask the dude in the Klingon type outfit if he’d made the costume himself to which he replied “No my girlfriend made it”. By girlfriend, I think he meant his hand…

It’s now Sunday and we’re due to fly out to Las Vegas at 7:30pm where we have two days full of meetings with various companies then leave late Wednesday night to head back to Melbourne. Although I’ve been to Las Vegas before, I’m looking forward to getting back there again and having another look around.

No doubt I’ll have something to say from Vegas….

Si