The adventures of a Chinese guy, his sports car, and an instant pot

I’ll be making the big road trip back home soon. I need to start before October 1st, since winter tires are mandatory by then in BC. I went to my brothers friends place, and we did the usual fluid changes after purchasing the supplies from a store called Lordco. If there is one thing that can convince me to stay in Vancouver, that would be Lordco. That store is massive!

Second oil change in about a month. Looking forward to my road trip back home!

I love how much public parks, sites and attractions to be explored in this beautiful city. My brother told me I should go check out a place called Horseshoe Bay. Luckily, since we are at the tail end of peak tourist season, parking was easy to be found, and we didn’t have to fight much of a crowd to see the various attractions. I think my Mom enjoyed the scenery. It also helped that it was super sunny today, making things much more enjoyable.

Oh, what’s this? Cypress Provincial Park is right beside us… Perhaps I should make a hill climb up there again with the sun! I actually saw so much more since it wasn’t rainy or foggy today.

One of the best parts of this road trip so far is that I am able to explore everything on my own terms, with my own vehicle. I don’t need to rely on friends or families to drive me, and be my tour guide, since all I need is a cell phone connection with a data plan. I know, I can always rent a car at my destination, but it isn’t the same as having your own car that you actually enjoy driving, instead of driving some (potentially) abused American budget sedan. If things work out, I truly hope to make this a regular occurrence in the future. Hell, I might drive to Vancouver again next year and actually drive out to Victoria! Let me see if I can convince my youngest brother to join me by then. That way I can get an extra co-driver.

Went by Ambleside Park in West Vancouver today. Since I am from Ontario, I don’t get to see (or smell) saltwater much. Walking up and down the boardwalk of Ambleside Park was quite pleasant. I just wish the weather was a bit more pleasant. It was quite gray and gloomy the whole time.

Afterwards, I pulled out my phone, and looked up the GPS app for any other interesting touristy attractions. Hmm, Cypress Provincial Park looks intersting. The moment I saw the path I had to take, I immediately had a wide smile on my face. Want to guess why?

The higher I drove, the more fog I saw. And then it started raining very hard. Fortunately, that did not deter my enjoyment of the drive up or down the mountain.

The baby was supposed to be due today. It doesn’t look like he’s in any rush to get out though. So after a few days of resting at my brothers place, I decided to go to another short road trip.

I drove to the top of Whistler mountain today. Unfortunately, it rained sporadically the whole way up, while it was sunny most of the day down in Vancouver City. The drive itself was truly breathtaking. I think I actually forgot to blink, since my senses were so overwhelmed, resulting in my eyes turning dry and red by the time I got home. I can’t imagine having a more perfect vehicle to make this drive with either! The twists and turns was no challenge, and I was able to drive at full speed the whole time. In fact, I was overtaking quite a few slower vehicles around the turns, since they were so slow, impeding my enjoyment of the drive itself! My brother told me that radar detectors are legal in British Columbia. Perhaps I should source one here. Regardless, I absolutely intend to make the almost 2 hour trip to the top again in the future before I return home. Hopefully I can “Initial D” it downhill next time?

Warning – geek rant below. The guys over at the Traefik developer team decided to release ver 2.0 recently. Unbeknown to me, the .toml config file is not compatible from 1.7 to 2.0. So half the services on my server just went down with no warning. It took me a while of troubleshooting before I discovered what triggered this issue. This is the last thing I want to do in the middle of my vacation! I manually rolled back the docker version, and I will update the .toml file when I get back home in a few weeks. I bloody hate computers…

My sister in law asked me to apply some window film on their house windows for added privacy. I decided to do what I usually do when I was in Toronto, and that was to just drive straight to ND Graphics to pick it up. I looked up their local branch, and made the 20 minute drive to their office. Big mistake. Where as the Toronto location was the size of a football field, their Vancouver location was the size of a small Tim Hortons. They stocked nothing, and had to order everything from Calgary or Toronto! I was told this was quite the norm for living in Vancouver.

I know I can order this stuff from their website, or from Amazon! The reason why I wanted to go visit them in real life was so I can see different films in person to make a more informed decision!

In this day in age, a laptop or tablet computer is an essential traveling companion. The biggest nightmare for any seasoned traveler would have to be a malfunctioning laptop.

That just happened to me. My laptop charger suddenly stopped charging. Luckily I did pack some basic tools, such as mini screwdrivers, and multimeters, but I still lacked the proper connector that was broken. A quick Google search yielded a local electronics store about 10 minutes away called Lee’s electronics. Wow, walking in was like walking into Supremetronic back in the 90s in Toronto. I had a very interesting conversation with the owner of the establishment. He actually knew about the Toronto electronics scene, and all the hot spots I shop at!

Yes, I was able to McGyver a fix. I will have a proper fix when I get back home shortly. Hopefully this will last me until then.

Drove to Stanley Park today. That park is massive! Unfortunately, it was raining quite heavily, so could not really walk out. I ended up driving around the park path twice. It was beautiful. My brother told me that I should bike along the path next time. I absolutely intend to one day when the weather co-operates. Perhaps I should install a tow hook and bike hitch on my car. Biggest advantage, I can use it as an excuse to hide my license plate as I drive on the 407/ETR.

I also drove to Richmond, BC, to Aberdeen Centre. I went during the weekday, so traffic wasn’t so bad. I forgot how beautiful the indoor water fountain is!

The problem with owning a 100+ year old home is, dealing with the retrofits over the year. My brother was having some difficulty with some lights and sockets not working in his house. Troubleshooting under really old wood, spider web, dust, was a lot of fun!

Just checking things in my server at home, and I received this.

I did NOT expect this. I thought being able to remote everything over IPMI would be so damn helpful when I am on vacation. This time it only helps me feel even more useless, since I KNOW how to fix it, I CAN’T, since I am unable to be there physically to perform surgery.

Worse case scenario, I’d get my brother in Toronto to do the appropriate fixes while I am instructing him over the phone.