HWC Heads North!

DAY 1, Wed. Aug. 26, 2015

New Westminster BC. to River View Motel, Whitehorse YU.

Myself, Shirley, HWC along with all our junk (including kitchen sink) got a ride from my friend Tonya to YVR (Vancouver Airport). My flight with Air North blasted off at 11:00am. Unfortunately the oversized baggage staff had to cut open Shirley's cardboard sarcophagus for an inspection. I got a bit irate which brought a security automaton. Apparently the scanner is not big enough to handle bike boxes. What a pain in the ass. Had I known about this security protocol, I would have saved some packing tape. Luckily we were early...

Sketch 1: Grasshopper (one of my real cats) is seen here asking HWC (toy cat that becomes real when travelling) Why we are heading North. Shirley (my Surley Long Haul Trucker touring bike) is inside the bike box and is confused by HWC's "Sushi" response.

Sketch 2: Later that day, at YVR, we hit a bump in the road...

Air North are great to deal with. Nice friendly small airline but my flight sucked as I was sandwiched in the middle seat between two other guys. All the good seats were taken by the time I visited "online check in"..."D'oh!"

A little over two hours later, we touched down in the northern capital. We were greeted by cool temps, light rain and wind. Yay.

Got set up at home base and reassembled Shirley (she was very happy about that). It's a crappy motel but was cheap and my view of the Yukon River waterfront was cool. Unfortunately, the management prefers that bikes are to be kept in storage, not in the room. Absurd. I've been to over 30 motels across Canada and never had an issue keeping Shirley in the room. 
Bummed around town on foot in the rain. I already know the place a bit as I visited my sister Julie years ago. It was much colder and whiter then. Brrrr,  HWC ain't no Polalarcat!
Got local beers and terrible Dominos pizza while watching "Survivorman" and "Mantracker". Ha ha, how fitting...

Kizzmitt (my other real cat) assisted in packing the essentials back in North Vancouver.

The cat has landed.

The weather wasn't too bad to start off, but it didn't take long for the grey skies to invade. I got a taxi for the short $20.00 ride down to the town. This airport rests on top of an escarpment or at least a big hill overlooking the city. Kinda cool. The cab's windshield was full of cracks, turns out that's a Whitehorse thing.

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