Being the lazy sort, I'll steal some of Bjorn's fine reporting in this long posting about our self-indulgent one-day trip to Port Hardy, at the northern tip of Vancouver Island...

Bjorn: It goes to show what one can do with 24 hours (well, especially if one has an airplane and a friend). My usual 24 hours are filled with sleeping, eating, a bit of bicycling, and a lot of sitting in front of a computer typing emails.

In fact it was 24 hours and 30 minutes (from takeoff to landing at Boeing field), but that included my 30-minute conference call, which delayed us at Chilliwack where we'd stopped for some pie. But that was some 22 hours into the day, so I'm getting ahead of myself...

Dave and I had this grand plan last winter that this summer we would go to the big EAA fly-in at Oshkosh. A full week of adventure - first a couple days to fly out there, then days to visit, then a couple days of flying back - it was going to be a grand trip. But chip, chip, chip - work intruded, life intruded - and that plan fell apart. So we decided to take a mini-trip voyage instead: up to Port Hardy at the north tip of Vancouver Island and go diving. One day up, one day of diving, one day back.

The best laid plans, and all that. Satomi was grumbling about me taking off for a week anyway (her parents aren't here this summer) and it was going to be very difficult for me to justify the lost work time anyway. In fact even the mini-trip -- just an afternoon of flying, a day of diving and another morning of flying back -- was coming at an awkward time. I rushed to get things done (at least in a stable state) on Monday morning so we could leave in the afternoon. But Superboy (Bjorn's early-70s Cessna Cardinal) was being persnickety...

Unfortunately, Superboy's electrical system had malfunctioned on the last trip, [the "last trip" being the day before this one] so I quickly rolled the airplane into the shop and awaited their verdict. The brand-new alternator had failed and it would take until tomorrow [that would be Tuesday] to get the replacement...

I worked more on Tuesday morning, trying to get customer support issues taken care of, and a press release reviewed, with the expectation that Wednesday might not be a work day after all. I did have a somewhat important conference call scheduled for Wednesday afternoon, though...

Tuesday morning came and went. Tuesday noon came and went. Tuesday early afternoon came and went. Finally, at 3:45pm, I had a working airplane [in Portland, Oregon, it should be pointed out...] and headed north to Seattle to pick up Dave. Clearly our plans to go diving were kaput, but we decided to go for the journey anyway...

...because, after all, it was always supposed to be The Journey. Even if it was now truncated to just one day.

I had a bag packed and my cooler full of snacks and drinks. On a whim I also disassembled my kayak, stuffed it into its bag and tossed it in the truck. (When I told Bjorn on the phone that I was thinking of bringing the kayak there was something of a pause on the line -- apparently he wasn't aware that it would fold up.)

I met Bjorn and Superboy at Galvin Flight Service in Seattle, where corporate jets come and go and the for-hire pilots and instructors wear crisp white shirts and talk about turbine engines. There was no charge for parking and while I waited in the lobby I read an article about drinking $4000 bottles of wine with the Hong Kong elites in an issue of "Wine Spectator" that was lying on the table.

We departed Boeing Field (BFI) at 5:15 in the afternoon. It was still hot, and with the full load of stuff in the back we climbed out rather slowly, passing over Elliott Bay and toward our first stop, Victoria, B.C...

The only reason for stopping at Victoria was to clear customs, which involved nothing more than Bjorn making a phone call. The customs people let us through without even coming out to see the plane (which they were all probably quite familiar with anyway, since Bjorn flies up there often).

Bjorn: For the next leg, I considered being American and not filing a flight plan, but then I thought, "we'll be out of radar contact for most of the trip, over remote landscape, perhaps a flight plan is a good idea". As we flew over the beautiful, but remote, northern half of Vancouver Island, I was pretty darn thankful that I had filed a plan - we didn't see a single other airplane the whole trip - there was literally nobody up there.

It was Beautiful. Amazing. Wonderful. It's hard for me to describe it well enough. Hills, mountains, trees, water, lakes, ocean, sand beaches, driftwood, cliffs, islands, micro-islands, big islands, ... Perhaps the best explanation is "fjords". This is the North American version of Norwegian fjords. And beautiful.

Ditto. I've never been much more north than Nanaimo (except for one trip as a kid to Campbell River, nothing of which I remember) and it was striking how empty Vancouver Island is, given its proximity to Vancouver and Seattle. Lots of logging activity, but also lots of pretty mountains, lots of quiet-looking inlets. "Fjords" is the right word. And the small islands between Vancouver Island and the mainland are spectacular. You could lose yourself for months in there with a sailboat (hmmm).

Bjorn: We arrived at 8:30pm and called around to find a place to stay. Everything was full. Eventually we found a B&B, but it turned out to be quite a disappointment - a ranch house in a suburb with an extra bedroom, and a $20 cab ride from town to boot. But we soldiered on, took the cab, had dinner at "the pub" and then a walked around downtown.

Bjorn is being polite.. I was supposed to make plans, but given the uncertainty of getting there I hadn't bothered to check for rooms. We flew into the airport -- and this a disadvantage of flying in a plane with wheels instead of floats, as Bjorn will readily admit -- to find ourselves some eight miles from town, with the rental car places already closed. I had a short list of B&Bs and hotels that I'd brought along. The first two calls were duds (full up), but one of the B&Bs gave me another number to try, which turned out to be the little rambler in a boring suburb. (What we didn't realize, though, was that the best beach in the area was right outside the back door.)

Downtown Port Hardy is, um, five blocks long and, um, doesn't offer much of anything...

On a summer evening at the height of tourist season there were a few bored-looking teans hanging around the light poles, one open mini-mart (25% of its total shelf-space was snack chips). And the afore-mentioned pub, where we had dinner. We shared a short cab ride with two fishermen who were on their way to the pub after getting off their boat ("rapin' and pillagin', eh?"... I think they meant their profession, not their recreational preferences).

Although neither of us said so outright, I think we both had the idea that we would get up in the morning, get back to the airport and fly right out of there to find some nicer town for breakfast. But when the sun came up I got up first and took a walk down to the beach. Wow, it was pretty: There was some fog lingering over the still water, and there were small islands within paddling distance. Gosh, what a surprise.

...a wonderful sandy beach - the only one in Port Hardy, apparently - shallow and mild and sheltered. The morning fog, the low new light, the calm waters - it was all very nice.

It got better... While I was out on the first trip in the kayak I heard a splashing sound and a "whoosh" and saw the back of a whale just break the surface, with a spout of mist just drifting down. There was another splash -- there were at least two gray whales in the bay. They were elusive, but sometimes very close to the boat. At one point I was waiting to take a picture, hoping they would come up close to where they had just gone down, about 200 feet from my bow. I waited, and waited, then suddently there was a big "whooshing" noise behind me. I twisted around and there, not fifty feet behind me, were both whales, completely vertical and right next to each other -- actually touching each other -- spyhopping out of the water. I was so surprised I took a picture of my own leg, then the whales splashed into the water again.

Bjorn and I took turns with the kayak. Of all the times the whales appeared and disappeared, this is the best picture we could get (blame the digital camera shutter lag time):

Bjorn: And the highlight of the trip - two gray whales swimming around in the bay and swimming around the kayak. This picture does not do them justice. I had them surface blow within 10' of the kayak and these are BIG animals. Dave had them spy hop right behind him! It was absolutely amazing. I certainly felt very, very small in the kayak out there in the bay with these giant creatures swimming around. Very very small. And in awe.

Bjorn: Another cool thing that I saw from the kayak was fish. I looked down and could see the sandy ocean floor not too far down there. Hmm, I thought, that doesn't seem deep enough for big gray whales... Then I noticed that it wasn't sand below me, but huge schools of salmon. HUGE schools - so many that they looked like a sandy bottom. Eventually I could guess where the whales were about to surface because the fish would start jumping out of the water in front of this floating behemoth. Then the big gray would appear, with the hiss and puff, and the slowly slip back under the water.

At around noon we packed up the kayak, caught a lift back to the airport and spent some time admiring a Grumman Goose, one of four that are used by Pacific Coastal Airways to shuttle sportsmen to and from the many fishing lodges in the area. These are classic airplanes, with big radial engines and 1940s-era design. They gulp fuel and are almost totally obsoleted by newer turbo-prop amphibians. But what fun they must be to fly...

Bjorn: ...Up at the airport, Pacific Coastal Airways had two of their four Grumman Gooses (Geese?) at the terminal, so we sidled Superboy up and took a picture. The funny thing was that the Goose pilot came out and took a picture of Superboy too :-)

Bjorn: Our flight back down the west coast of Vancouver Island was even more beautiful and enjoyable than the flight up. We flew down at 1500', weaving in and out of the channels and islands, marveling at the beauty and the seemingly endless progression of big islands, small islands, inlets, lakes, passages, and the very limited people population...

As we got close to Vancouver (the city), we passed an increasing number of actual towns, with golf courses and housing developments and local airports. As we passed over one of these airports (at 1500 feet) we noticed that there were emergency vehicles driving along the runway. Then we saw a broken airplane lying cross-ways in the road off the end of the runway, it's right wing snapped in two. Gosh... a bad landing for that guy.

Bjorn: We stopped in Pitt Meadows for Dave to make a conference call, but it was delayed, so we hopped over to Chilliwack for pie. I picked up a birthday pie(bumbleberry) for Kirsten, because it's her birthday today.

...and a cherry pie for Satomi, which was scrumptious. Bjorn's timing was great. I dialed into into my meeting while we were just landing at Chilliwack, and spent thirty minutes on the phone while sitting on a bench in the shade, watching planes come and go. Nobody complained about the occasional engine noise.

We launched again, flew into the thick haze of the Seattle area and were back at BFI at 5:45, right on time for the customs appointment and just over 24 hours, round trip. What a great little adventure.