LIVING A DREAM

The Practice of Writing: The critical use of an outline: Clear, short, and to the point.

The subject: Living a Dream.

The Outline:

1.       A Dream Come True: Visiting new friends and experience their city of Vancouver.

2.       Planning the days and times of our trip & purchasing airfare

3.       Preparing

4.       Flying

5.       Our Goal: See Vancouver and Whistler, and enjoy our Canadian Friends.

1.       THE DREAM: VISITING NEW FRIENDS AND EXPERIENCING VANCOUVER:

Have you ever had a dream come true, not a sleep dream, but an awake one that is more a hope, wish, or desire you didn’t think possible? Like, I wish I could travel some day to Paris, then years later you get to go to Paris. It’s this that I’m talking about when I say that going to Vancouver has been a small dream come true, especially since the 2010 Winter Olympics were televised from Vancouver, British Columbia.

Pre our retirement, Carol asked me” If money weren’t an object what would you like out of the rest of your life?” I said “I would retire in a minute, travel the world, and write important books.” But this was too dreamy, we couldn’t retire due the money thing, nor travel or write, but then retirement became financially feasible, traveling became cheap thru our missionary supportive work, and writing became my new job, time was now my allies.

Vancouver is filled with our new missionary support friends we met on the Kona base. So during a Skype conversation, they said “why don’t you guys come up for a visit…now, drop everything and come, we’ll go to Mission Fest with our other friends from Kona, see a Toby Mac concert, go to our church, and stay overnight at Whistler.” We looked at each other and said “Why not, let’s do It, it would be a dream come true.” New places to see, new friends to enjoy, and new experiences as trophies. 

2.       PLANNING & PURCHASING:

Planning the flight was left to me since I don’t work anymore. I checked airlines directly, as well as Orbit, Cheap Flights, and Priceline, Priceline won by about $6.00. Online tickets are a hassle, not worth the six bucks, but I was in it to deep to quit. Hours passed by like they would if you were getting stung by bees the whole time, but we got cheap flights (not the 40% discount Priceline advertizes for “Name your own Price,” it was more like 6%), but it was still cheaper than all the others. The tickets were $206.00 each, I bid $100.00, they said “that’s too low, bid again,” I bid $125.00, they said “that’s too low, bid again,” I said $150.00, they said “too low, bid again,” I said $200.00, they said “Congratulations, you have successfully bid your own price,” I said “Huh?”

We’re on an airline I’ve never heard of, West Jet, I check some comparisons, and they check it out as a three star coach style of plane. After forty-five minutes, we are still in the air, so far so good. They served free drinks, cookies, and snacks, plus we have one seat between us. Everything about the airline has been a dream come true: Quick and easy counter check-in, easy boarding, easy boarding, and a quick two hours and thirty minute flight; we are looking forward to an easy landing, if this doesn’t happen then the $6.00 I saved on “Naming my own price” will have not been worth my bartering, but we are trusting the Lord, which is always a dream come true.  

3.       PREPARING:

Carol and I don’t put much of an effort into prep work for traveling. We started packing for our winter, seven day trip an hour and a half before we left for the airport. No prepping a week before a trip for us, no two days before, not even the day before, just a couple of hours.  Why bother with all the early prep, it seems to me that is excess worry and a lack of trust in your own closet knowledge?  Doesn’t everyone know where their cloths are; don’t they know what to wear in the winter or summer?  How long does it take to rip cloths off a hanger and fold them into a suit case, the same goes for knowing where your suit case lives, you don’t need a GPS for this stuff, cloths and suitcases don’t have to made by hand for a trip, just find out where they live, bring them in the same room, and marry them. Anything over a couple of hours for prepping for traveling is a lack of faith in oneself.

We know people who can’t attend events on a Wednesday because they are going on a trip the following Monday, they say “We need to pack for trip.”

I think it’s a good idea of the Lord’s that He doesn’t tell us when He’s coming to take us to heaven, we would stop all Kingdom work days ahead to pack.”

Last minute packing is like having a butler, in a flash it’s done. 

We pack one bag each, one carry-on between us that has a computer, a handful of books, two bags of chips and couple of writing pins, boom, done. Throw them in the back of the car and head to the airport, we arrive one hour ahead of departure, we get a breakfast sandwich to split, sit down and eat in almost a Zen state, relaxed, rested, and worry free, plus we are able to digest our food because our stomachs aren’t churning from stress. All this because we’re not bone weary from days of packing, days of packing, how is that possible anyway, that would be a nightmare.

4.       FLYING:

Something to read, something to write, an empty seat between us to hold our stuff, easy, quick and comfortable, aside from Priceline, this whole trip is really a dream come true, if we can pull off two safe landings the whole Priceline $6.00 savings will be worth it, if not, the six bucks savings will be wasted. We’ll see. Oh, oh, here we go, flaps down, trays up, seats in the up-right position, we are coming in for our first landing $3.00 discount landing.  

5.       Our Goal: Seeing Vancouver and Whistler, and enjoying our Canadian friends.

It is now seven days later, we are at the Vancouver airport (which is the most beautiful airport on earth), and we are waiting to go home, our first $3.00 discount landing was worth it, now we are pulling our thoughts about our trip.

Wow, what an awesome trip, the Raible’s house was super awesome; they had a downstairs set-up made for me, our private seating, T.V. area, coffee maker, and great bed.

We walked a dike, shopped in a sea-side market, had the most amazing prime-rib lunch, took the Sky-Train, took the Sea-Train, surprised our other Canadian friends (so much fun, priceless really), walked Stanly Park’s  Sea-Wall (truly, truly, the most beautiful walk ever, Vancouver is the prettiest big city I’ve ever seen. We went to a Toby Mac concert that was the funnest ever, Wow!

We went to a great little church, went to Whistler for a couple of days and went to the very top of Whistlers than we took the Peak-2-Peak tram covering three suspensions miles across the Blackcomb peak, than down the chair lifts. The sun, the warmth, the crystal blue skies, wow, wow, wow, WOW!

Here are some pictures, courtesy of our photographer Ron Raible…