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Description

Not a spetacular photo but one with quite a story behind it - for me at least. Originally we had planned to hike in the mountains just north of Vancouver. On our campground there was a lovely older guy who offered to drive us to the trailhead. However, he was into conspiracy theories (and not just a little bit) and I was in a very bad mood that day and the thought of small talk, let alone on those topics, was absolutely repulsive to me. So I said I needed some time for myself and took the public transport while he drove my friend to the trailhead, where we planned to meet up again.

This is where things started to spiral into chaos. When I was on the final bus, the driver wasn't announcing the upcoming stations and there was no written info, either. So I tried to check the stations' names outside. In the worst case I would have to walk back one station is what I thought. Well, the station I was supposed to get out never came. Maybe they renamed it? I don't know. At some point I started thinking that, judging by how far we had traveled around the bay, we must be past the point of the station. However, I stayed on the bus thinking my memories of the map must be off. As we reached the final destination soon after I realised I was right... Now, I could have asked somebody for help (even earlier on the bus as well) but I was in such a bad mood I didn't want to talk to anybody so I decided to walk back to the trailhead. I couldn't miss it, right?

After I had started walking back my friend called and said the trail seems to be closed and she is going to find out what's going on. I told her I have to walk and it is going to take a while. 5 minutes later or so she called again and confirmed the trail was closed because of a wildfire... I believe I don't have to say that this news did not lead to euphoric thoughts. We decided she would wait at the trailhead and we would decide where to go from there. Well... I walked and walked and it felt too long. After ~45 minutes (iirc) she called again, wondering where I was. I told her I must be close or accidentally walked past it. She told me she would walk in my direction and we would stay in contact. This is when the connection broke off. I tried to call back...nothing. "This number is not in use." I will explain what happened later but it was the worst possible moment for this to happen because we weren't sure if I was past the trailhead or not at the time so there was the possibility of us walking into two different directions away from each other. I walked on for another 15 minutes and decided this was definitely too far and turned around. Quite a while later I saw my friend in the distance. I remember she started running once she spotted me. It was such a relieve for us both. As it turned out she had been walking into the wrong direction as well at first and had also turned around because she thought we would have had to meet very shortly after she had started walking... We decided to go to this nearby park, just have a stroll and lunch at the spot you see in the picture to release from the stress.

I don't know why, but this experience was super stressful. If you really think about it, the worst case scenario wasn't that bad. We were in an urban environment and at worst we wouldn't have been able to meet up and would have eventually made our way back to the campground each on our own. However, the fact that we didn't know where the other person was, what they were going through, the bad mood, chaos etc. had us worried sick for one another. It's strange sometimes. Just being cut off from each other can be really unnerving.

To come back to the mobile phone story (it's somewhat of a vent ): This was shortly before we left Canada. The phone company (Bell) was extremely bad at giving us reliable info on how to cancel the contract. Each time we called it was a different story... This way they talked my friend into having prepaid for the last month to not exceed the limit on the contract, which she would then have to pay from outside Canada, which is not possible. However, what they actually did was taking her last payment for the month, booking it as "prepaid", with the condition to terminate the contract when the money was used up, which happened during the call. Which is why I couldn't call her back, either. In contrast, I just told them to terminate my contract at the end of the month. Ok, I had to call them like 10 times for that and insist this is what I wanted and that I don't want other products etc. I mean, there was no way I was going to use up all 500 free minutes (+free calls on weekends and all evenings) to put my balance into the negative. Compare that to the prepaid which was used up after just a few calls (very expensive apparently). Fuck Bell, what a shitty company.

Sorry for the wall of text. Not sure if anybody will make it through.^^

Location: Lighthouse Park, West Vancover, British Columbia, Canada

Description

Not a spetacular photo but one with quite a story behind it - for me at least. Originally we had planned to hike in the mountains just north of Vancouver. On our campground there was a lovely older guy who offered to drive us to the trailhead. However, he was into conspiracy theories (and not just a little bit) and I was in a very bad mood that day and the thought of small talk, let alone on those topics, was absolutely repulsive to me. So I said I needed some time for myself and took the public transport while he drove my friend to the trailhead, where we planned to meet up again.

This is where things started to spiral into chaos. When I was on the final bus, the driver wasn't announcing the upcoming stations and there was no written info, either. So I tried to check the stations' names outside. In the worst case I would have to walk back one station is what I thought. Well, the station I was supposed to get out never came. Maybe they renamed it? I don't know. At some point I started thinking that, judging by how far we had traveled around the bay, we must be past the point of the station. However, I stayed on the bus thinking my memories of the map must be off. As we reached the final destination soon after I realised I was right... Now, I could have asked somebody for help (even earlier on the bus as well) but I was in such a bad mood I didn't want to talk to anybody so I decided to walk back to the trailhead. I couldn't miss it, right?

After I had started walking back my friend called and said the trail seems to be closed and she is going to find out what's going on. I told her I have to walk and it is going to take a while. 5 minutes later or so she called again and confirmed the trail was closed because of a wildfire... I believe I don't have to say that this news did not lead to euphoric thoughts. We decided she would wait at the trailhead and we would decide where to go from there. Well... I walked and walked and it felt too long. After ~45 minutes (iirc) she called again, wondering where I was. I told her I must be close or accidentally walked past it. She told me she would walk in my direction and we would stay in contact. This is when the connection broke off. I tried to call back...nothing. "This number is not in use." I will explain what happened later but it was the worst possible moment for this to happen because we weren't sure if I was past the trailhead or not at the time so there was the possibility of us walking into two different directions away from each other. I walked on for another 15 minutes and decided this was definitely too far and turned around. Quite a while later I saw my friend in the distance. I remember she started running once she spotted me. It was such a relieve for us both. As it turned out she had been walking into the wrong direction as well at first and had also turned around because she thought we would have had to meet very shortly after she had started walking... We decided to go to this nearby park, just have a stroll and lunch at the spot you see in the picture to release from the stress.

I don't know why, but this experience was super stressful. If you really think about it, the worst case scenario wasn't that bad. We were in an urban environment and at worst we wouldn't have been able to meet up and would have eventually made our way back to the campground each on our own. However, the fact that we didn't know where the other person was, what they were going through, the bad mood, chaos etc. had us worried sick for one another. It's strange sometimes. Just being cut off from each other can be really unnerving.

To come back to the mobile phone story (it's somewhat of a vent ): This was shortly before we left Canada. The phone company (Bell) was extremely bad at giving us reliable info on how to cancel the contract. Each time we called it was a different story... This way they talked my friend into having prepaid for the last month to not exceed the limit on the contract, which she would then have to pay from outside Canada, which is not possible. However, what they actually did was taking her last payment for the month, booking it as "prepaid", with the condition to terminate the contract when the money was used up, which happened during the call. Which is why I couldn't call her back, either. In contrast, I just told them to terminate my contract at the end of the month. Ok, I had to call them like 10 times for that and insist this is what I wanted and that I don't want other products etc. I mean, there was no way I was going to use up all 500 free minutes (+free calls on weekends and all evenings) to put my balance into the negative. Compare that to the prepaid which was used up after just a few calls (very expensive apparently). Fuck Bell, what a shitty company.

Sorry for the wall of text. Not sure if anybody will make it through.^^

Location: Lighthouse Park, West Vancover, British Columbia, Canada