Vancouver

Just returned to a milder Bay Area after having spent almost a week in below-freezing weather in Vancouver, B.C. We were there to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday, and his grandson's christening. Vancouver's a nice city to visit, especially when you have relatives and friends there, but the middle of winter is not the time to go. At our time of life, the danger of slipping on icy sidewalks is something to be reckoned with, and driving on unfamiliar roads at night (never a pleasant experience in any event) becomes markedly less pleasant when road conditions are perverse. Powdery snowdrifts turn to slush and then to brittle ice, and your shoes tend to track all that stuff back indoors.

The security staff at Vancouver International airport, I regret to say, was notable for lacking professionalism in the performance of their duties, being extremely slow-moving while expending most of their limited energy chitchatting and bantering among themselves, and displaying not a whit of courtesy towards the passengers. I have been through many lousy U.S. airport security checkpoints (the one at Chicago O'Hare ranks close to the bottom in my estimation) but Vancouver was one of the worst I had experienced.

Well, so much for my gripes. It's great to be back home.