"And the streets were covered in beer, beer, and more beer..."

My (original) task: Have a fun, eventful, chock-happy (whtvr that means) day in Vancouver while playing tourist. (And sidenote... Can I claim to be playing tourist if I knew more than the guy at the info booth and it's in my country of citizenship?)

My (updated) task: Survive getting sick from not sleeping AT ALL between Monday night and Tuesday morning, keep myself from getting depressed, and try to knock out as much of "playing tourist" as possible before finally succumbing to the need to sleep.

Right off the bat - It SUCKED!

Last night, (techlly this morning) I finised writing the blog recapping all of Monday and the strange, but fun, adventure I had getting here. Whoo boo... It got better.

Now, the problem with being a visitor in a city you've never actually really been to is that it's a little harder to navigate because you don't know the secrets of the city. No matter how much you research and how much you plan and how much time you spend on Goggle Earth and StreetView, you're bound to get lost eventually. You just can't help it. Now, if you're travelling with someone else, then that's good, because as they say, "two brains are better than one." Or is it none? Anyways... But if you're travelling like me, alone, a little lonely, and so far away from anyone that could even remotely help you, it's hard. Really hard.

Originally, my plan was to sleep here at the group of benches I'm sitting at right now and (hopefully) be awake by 6 so that I could make the most of a full day of fun. But, there were not one, but two problems: Insomnia and Adrenaline. It's kinda like a party drink (I can't really think of another analogy). Mix em' together, and they are brutal, and they will ravage you.

So, from 12AM to 5AM, it wasn't too eventful, but holy crap, did it just drag on and on. I'd spend a little time on my laptop, a little exploring the airport, and so on. Around 3 or so, I had breakfast. Well, techlly dinner. A Boston Creme donut and a Hot Chocolate from... *drum roll* Tim Hortons! And it was delish'! But, I regretted it about twenty minutes later, because now I had just added sugar to my two-part problem. Oops.

It was around 5AM or so when the boredom really just crashed down on me. I got fed up with sitting around, so I grabbed my backpack (my suitcases were put in luggage storage Monday night) and walked to the SkyTrain station. Before I really knew it, I was at Broadway-City Hall Station, and so I hopped off and decided to catch the 99 B-Line to the University of British Columbia. But, as the bus kept rolling down the road, I got more and more annoyed that the sun was still not rising. Like, I knew sunrise wasn't till 7:30AM or so, but at least give me a little dusk or something. It's like you don't know the sun is gonna rise, and then bam!, it's 7:30AM and bam!, there's the sun. So, I just stayed on the bus and rode it all the way back to where I originally got on it at Broadway-City Hall station. (Btw, I never did end up going to UBC. I'm kinda sad sitting here thinking about it now, but since I've already pulled my bags out of storage, I can't really leave the airport now. Well, I could, but you know what I mean.) When I arrived back here at the airport, I went to the Air Canada counter trying to find out about the possibility of changing my ticket to Whitehorse for today instead of tomorrow (Wednesday morning). It was possible... Sadly, this possibility was also very, very expensive. $158 to be exact. And considering the tickets were $182/176, not really a worthwhile expense. I think I was rather depressed this morning. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't leave this town that was boring me into little pieces. And I still was struggling with this bloody TransLink technology. Remember how I said last night I was really impressed with how high-tech it was or something like that. Yeah... sratch that. It's freakin' annoying yo.

So, as I started walking around the airport some more, I had to start thinking. No matter what I do, I'm here in Vancouver for another day, which was completely my choice to begin with. So, do I make it a fun day or a sucky day? Guess what I picked.

This part of the day I'm not going to go into any details of. Rather, I will upload all the pic's that I took over the course of the day. So, if you're reading this on Blogspot, you're gonna have to be my buddie on Facebook to see the pics. And if you are my buddie on Facebook already, send some comments and lemme know what you think or what you wanna know about something. However, I will address the one part of the day which inspired the title for today's blog. "And the streets were covered in beer, beer, and more beer..." Now, I mean that in a very literal sense. See... here's what happened. I'd just checked out General Motors Place (home of the Vancouver Canucks), and as I continued to walk up the street, I kept noticing a more and more distinct smell of something that I just couldn't quite pinpoint. About a block away, it popped in my head, "It's BEER!" And then I looked up the street a bit, and holy crap... There was beer freakin everywhere. Check the pics. They do not lie. At all.

So, all in all, I'd say it was a good day of playing tourist. Granted, I was suffering from the "knocks" all day. (It's my term for one of my symptoms of sleep deprivation. Ask if you wanna. It's not dirty or anything btw.) I didn't get to go everywhere I wanted to. And I kinda regret spending $13 just to go up to the top of Harbour Centre at the Vancouver Lookout, but that was an amazing view, so I guess that was a pro as well. All I really hope for is that I'll be able to get some sleep tonight. At least a little. But then on the other side of that is that I'm afraid of of sleeping in. That's why I'm trying to make friends with my fellow airport sleepers here so that we'll look out for each other, but there's no certainty in any of it. Plus, if I do fall asleep, my body is fully aware that it has major sleep to catch up on. I mean, going off of it just being past 7PM right now and I've been up since 5AM Monday (well, actually, 4:45AM), I've been up 37 hours straight. That no be good at all... Nuh uh.