The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

JMB and “the old scientist” (as she always refers to her life partner on her blog) gave me the tour of Vancouver yesterday. It’s great to see a city with native guides.

We began by dropping Speranza off with Ferrari & Maserati of Vancouver so they could check out the “engine management system” errror message. Then we drove around, visiting various locations including Stanley Park. We met Cascadian for lunch on the terrace at Bridges Restaurant on Granville Island. The sun shone, the food and the margaritas were excellent and the marine traffic provided an engaging backdrop to a pleasant meal. This was a very classy blogmeet.

As Cascadian headed for his home and the data started to come in by email and telephone about Speranza’s issue, JMB, OS and I went out to Horseshoe Bay for a walk on the West Vancouver shore.

This is a beautiful city and seems like a very civilised place to live. I had visited before on business but it was good to have a chance to enjoy it at leisure. I am very grateful to my generous hosts for their hospitality. I am living happily on the road in hotels and b&bs, but there’s nothing like home comforts occasionally.

The news about Speranza is mostly good. The issue is exactly what I thought it was and she and I will be back on the road today. There is work to be done under warranty back in England but the Ferrari guys on both sides of the pond are comfortable with me continuing the tour. Her performance is entirely unimpaired. I was confident that this was the case, but it’s reassuring to have it confirmed by the experts and I will continue the tour even more relaxed (if that is possible) than I was before.

The only bad news is that I may need to get her back to England earlier than I planned in order to have the work done under warranty. Discussions continue with my shippers about that. I really don’t want to cut the tour short if I can avoid it so will have to give this some serious thought.