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A Road Trip

Today we set off on the longest road trip of this holiday, 250 miles to Vancouver. Being responsible drivers we took note of all the warning signs on the road. On balance we decided we would not pull into the special motorway area in order to fit snow chains as it was 25c outside but we were intrigued by a number of truck stops where all trucks have to perform a brake check, this occurs before every long down hill section. All the trucks pull into the area but we could see no sign of any checking, are Canadian lorry brakes any worse than British ones?
Just in case our next hire vehicle is a huge truck I thought I had better check out the details. It only seems to apply to British Columbia, trucks must stop in the layby where a sign says “trucks, stop here check brakes, steep hill ahead”. The Motor Vehicle Regulation says that truckers facing these signs must “inspect brake systems” but a legal practice web site which represents truckers says that no one seems to know what inspection the driver is supposed to do! So they get out, have a pee, walk round the truck and carry on only to go through the same nonsense half an hour later.

It seemed every trucks brakes were fine as we did not come across any accidents but for 50 miles there were multiple road works in progress. Apparently last year there were some significant floods which washed away bridges and embankments.

Throughout our holiday we have been surprised that we have not seen any interesting or exciting cars. The only decent sports cars seem to be Porsche who have cornered the market in middle aged men’s "boy racers", we have not seen anything as exciting as a Caterham. Then we pulled into our hotel in Vancouver next to a Rolls Royce, a Ferrari and a very flash Range Rover. The concierge was too polite to ask us to move our rather dirty Hyundai off his forecourt but I was concerned enough to quickly check on my phone that I had not got the decimal point in the wrong place on the Booking.com price.

Fortunately whilst the hotel is expensive it is not eye wateringly so, (our room on the 18th floor is pictured). Like all good millionaires staying in a flash city centre hotel we did our washing in the plush bathroom before heading out to explore the city.

We did visit the Vancouver Art Gallery which had three exhibitions. The first featured Canadian women artists, there were some good paintings but none were happy or cheerful, a bit glum. The next exhibition featured 20 items which define the progress of Artificial Intelligence, it was very thought provoking, we both found the robot face in conversation very disturbing (see picture) and the system which tracked you though the gallery was entertaining, we tried to break it but failed. The third exhibition was so exciting I can’t, an hour later, remember what it was about so clearly it failed or was beyond my small brain.