Pittsburgh: Renewed

Pittsburgh is emerging as a healthcare, education, and creative hub. It helps that the city is also ridiculously affordable to live in compared to other cities in the region and even other millennial hubs (I don’t advise checking the rent for places in Portland before consulting a cardiologist). While I graduated from college in 2008, even seven years on it is a city I hardly recognize--in the best possible way. As time moves on, it makes me think of all of the incredible changes I observed as a kid, watching Vancouver morph from a regional hub into the amazing world city that it is today.

With that in mind, even though I live just beyond the exurbs of Pittsburgh, I am proud to show off the city to anyone who allows me. I had this chance when one of my best friends, Emily, visited from Chicago with her roommate. Emily had visited Pittsburgh a few times when I was in college and she was in grad school in northwest Ohio. She wasn’t entirely new to the city. After all, we had a very exciting evening walking back to my apartment as a deranged elderly man vigorously exposed himself a few years earlier.

Pittsburgh didn't need redemption in her eyes. But here we were, in Pittsburgh, again. In a way, I made it a self-designed nostalgia tour.

We met up in Shadyside at Harris Grill. The menu has evolved over the years, but Emily’s roommate noticed they had a throwback menu. Perfect. My favorite menu item there is the fried Twinkie. Their presentation of the Twinkie is a little controversial, but they took something already delicious and found a creative way to make it taste better. Besides, here is where my 21^st birthday celebration started and the captain of the crew team and her, then, fiancée wanted to ensure I had a memorable evening.

Ellsworth Ave, where Harris is located, has developed as the “alternative” to the more mainstream and upscale Walnut St just a few blocks away. We walked over to Walnut, past the stunning homes subdivided into apartments, to a handmade bazaar. As we looked over an immense amount of handmade jewelry, unusual stationary, and enough scarves for a million winters, Chris was at the Apple Store, trying in vain to get the biggest iPhone that exists (we would eventually find it, but not until tomorrow at one of the other three Apple Stores in Pittsburgh). Walnut St has definitely become more upscale in the past few years, that they allow the shabby Rite Aid to continue exist in its shabby state completely confuses me.

Walking up and down Walnut was like letting your eyes adjust to the dark once you turn off your bedside lamp. At first I was trying to remember the stores and the specific details, but after a few minutes I remembered a very unique store, Kawaii Gifts. I knew this would be a fruitful stop. If it is adorable and/or brightly colored, Kawaii has it. It is also on the lower level of a building and the only way to get to it is a narrow exterior stairway, I think it adds to the neatness of the spot.

What makes Emily a great person to host is that she’s pretty decisive. She wanted to see more vintage stores (after having hit up the selection of them on Ellsworth). We walked back to the cars and headed over to Squirrel Hill to stop into Avalon Exchange, via the Starbucks I spent a lot of quiet Sundays in. In fact, I realize college wasn’t as crazy as I sometimes remember. I spent a lot of Saturdays and Sundays going on long walks and drinking enormous amounts of coffee.

The day wearing on and evening plans set back home in Morgantown, we parted ways, but not before I was able to give advice on local craft beer options and independent tea shops. I’ve heard all sorts of amazing narratives of the history of Pittsburgh, but I have to believe this will be one of those magical times spoken about a hundred years from now: a great city fell, but then it got back on its feet.

Bookends

Frustration is a real issue when geocaching at times. It can be frustrating when you can’t find what you’re looking for. It can be frustrating when you can’t figure out how you’re supposed to extract and then sign the log. Geocaching is a hobby of problem solving, but sometimes you don’t realize you’re in the mood for certain problems until you’re teetering precariously on a hillside, placing a lot of faith in what muscle tone may exist in your ankles.

Let me introduce you to Cinders Petrie’s Hexahedron.

Named for a feisty old ferret, it made a lot of sense when we found the cache. It seemed like it should be easy, just a short walk up a hill from a park and ride on I-68. With a name like hexahedron, I thought it would just be a cube or some other six-faced object. We didn’t realize how devious Ms. Petrie must’ve been.

The container had a lot of places where a log could hide. 56, to be exact. Previous logs had indicated it took folks anywhere from about 5 to about 30 tries. I figured it couldn’t be that hard. I looked in 53 places. It became progressively more difficult as it was a chilly December morning and my fingers slowly lost fine sensation while my ankle was reminding me that I could stand to be in better shape.

The victory dance was abbreviated by the cool air. Once the log was signed we hurried back to the car. Down the hill, through the spilled contents of someone’s purse, and across the parking lot. We cranked up the heat and continued on to our next errand.

Since moving back in with my husband in December 2013, we’ve been paring down. When we had two separate households we duplicated a lot of items and did so in as cheap a manner as possible, knowing that the magical time would come where we could donate one of them and then slowly replace our cheaper items with nicer, less college-y items (once my loans are paid off and I get a new or newer car!). In 2014 we donated over $1000 in good condition household items and clothing to Goodwill (never donate to Goodwill what you wouldn’t give to a friend!).

Feeling as if our home sighed with the relief of having just a little bit less junk in it, we continued on to the Mountain State Brewing Company for Team Bingo and, my favorite, their own root beer brew. Never big on real beer, a good root beer never fails to satisfy. There were some large teams at Team Bingo so we never managed to win a round, though after stuffing ourselves we decided on a different prize.

We headed south of town on old Route 73. Before I-79, Route 73 was the most efficient way to get between Morgantown and Fairmont because U.S. Route 19 bows way out to wind through some settlements. 73 largely travels through unsettled areas, a golf course, past a long-abandoned roadside park, and eventually spits out on the east side of Fairmont. It is how one gets to the Uffington trail head of the Mon Trail South, the rail trail that follows the Monongahela River south of Morgantown.

The goal was to walk two miles and avenge a Did Not Find log from a geocache along the way. While we had plenty of time to talk over pizza during bingo, nature always has a way of directing our minds. The conversation was at least as lively. These are the opportunities we have to get to know ourselves and our loved ones the best. Oh, and we did find the geocache, The W080°00.000 Incident IV.

A Day from the Past

How this day unfolded was not intentional, but it ended up being an opportunity to revisit three different periods of my life. I suppose one of the benefits to not sticking around the same place forever is that the people and places that are familiar and remind you of that place have this way of always being significant in that context, regardless of how much they change.

In the morning, I set out to find three geocaches near the Cameron Branch of the Burnaby Public Library (one of them was inside the library!). When I was really young and my parents wanted a vacation, they’d let me stay with my grandmother for anywhere from a weekend to a week or so. One of my favorite things to do with my grandma when I was a kid was to feed the ducks at the small pond off of Cameron St, about a 15 minute walk from her apartment building. I think when I was about 8 or 9 they ended up filling in the pond, but when I’m lucky enough to come across one of the old pictures of the pond, it always makes me smile. While we had driven past the area numerous times on the trip, it was nice to get out and walk between the caches near the Rec Center and just think about these old times and take in some of the new developments in the area, such as some really neat dragons.

One of the dragons near the Cameron Rec CenterI strongly recommend the How dewey find it? 2 – Cameron Branch and 10-10-10 Here Be Dragons! geocaches, they really highlight some of the best features of the Cameron Recreation Complex and if you’ve ever spent time there, it’s bound to bring back some memories.

Later on, I met up with Jason. Jason and I attended grades 1 through 7 together, there was only one year that we were not in the exact same class. So we have strong memories of each other from when we were really young. It is so remarkable how little has changed about who we are as individuals, even though so much has obviously changed. We’re adults, forging paths for ourselves in the world now. In elementary school neither of us had very many friends, so we are effectively each other’s time capsules. Though he has done far better keeping up with the news of our classmates than I have, so it really does take a delicious spaghetti dinner, at the New Westminster location of the Old Spaghetti Factory, to scratch the surface of what has become a nearly-annual tradition. More than anything, it is just nice to remember that while we struggled in elementary school, we made it, and we’re proof of that.

A short SkyTrain ride back toward where I was staying, I met up with Mairi. She was my first and best friend during my freshman year of college, which was absolutely the most challenging. What was funniest is that while we met at Lougheed Mall, which was a common place for us to go in college, she had not been there in years, either. We had decided to meet at the Starbucks.

Prior to meeting up, my dad asked me if I knew where the Starbucks was. I said that it was near the McDonald’s and I was adamant about this. My dad was less confident and was trying to explain where it was. It turns out that the McDonald’s is long gone. What was once a McDonald’s is now an urban clothing store, but when I explained the story to Mairi she said, “If you had said it was by the McDonald’s, I would’ve known exactly where you meant!” So the mall had changed since 2004-2005, but our knowledge of the mall had not, even though my dad’s knowledge had because he can see the mall from his apartment and probably visits it on a monthly basis.

I had not seen Mairi in about five years but as soon as we started talking it was like no time had passed at all. In fact, it felt like we could just have easily been back in 2004 and heading back to our dorm at Simon Fraser University later that night. It was so exciting to learn that she’s getting married, is successful at a wonderful job, and is generally rocking at life. While I could have probably ascertained some of this via Facebook or through some other online media, it was much better to hear it over coffee at one of our old haunts.

But with the ending of the day, so does the portal to the past. 2014 returns tomorrow.

Blind Dates and Bridgeport

The best weekends are those spent with all kinds of friends, even better is when the begin on adventures that change their lives and better still is when they remove large items from my home so new projects and concepts may be embarked upon. With a little bit of fuel from Tudors Biscuit World, this Saturday held a lot of promise.

Indeed, before Chris even had a chance to get back to the house with our biscuits, Courtney and her dad rolled up in his truck to remove a queen sized bed that had been taking up space in our basement far too long. She wanted a new bed and I had a like new bed that was causing my camping and hiking gear to be strewn about the house in the most annoying way. Now I would have room for shelves! Chris did make it back in time to help get everything loaded into the truck, for the 90 minute ride up to Dunbar, PA we wanted to be triple sure there would be no problems.

Already having my day made by having one of the rooms in my basement back, we prepared to send Jenn off on a quasi-blind date. She’d texted and Facebooked the guy a little bit, but Chris was the master matchmaker. On one hand, we recognized there was a chance she’d bolt and come running back within an hour or so, we also had plans of our own.

We headed south toward Bridgeport to find some geocaches. The weather seemed like it could go either way, such is life in the autumn in West Virginia, though we were not expecting a hailstorm. That was a surprise. Thankfully, Bridgeport is also an excellent shopping destination so as we waited out the ridiculous weather, we continued (but failed) in our quest to find a one-gallon jug and bought printer ink. We’re so exciting. Meanwhile, we thought of how Jenn’s date must be going, as they were hiking at Coopers Rock State Forest and we couldn’t imagine that a hailstorm up there on a first date would fall under the category of a “good time.”

Eventually the weather broke and the fun commenced. We found a total of 10 caches and got, what we felt, was a good tour of the Bridgeport area. The highlights include:

• A quaint old graveyard by an old country church we had never heard of before
• The largest bus stop cache we’d ever seen, with a trackable perfect to take on my upcoming trip to Canada
• Finally checking out the North Central West Virginia Airport (and its cache), which is just outside of Bridgeport even though its IATA code is CKB (for Clarksburg)
• At The End Of My Rope, My First Cache, a unique cache in central Bridgeport that, at the time of this post, has accumulated 31 favorite points
• The home of Michael L. Benedum, now a civic center next to a park and municipal swimming pool in central Bridgeport

I also finally had a chance to try out Meagher’s Irish Pub for lunch. This joint is in the new Charles Pointe development off of Benedum Dr just north of Bridgeport. I had heard wonderful things about the food and it lived up to the hype, at least the meal I had sure did. Having grown up in British Columbia and with many Britons for friends, I sometimes get uncontrollable cravings for real fish and chips. Meagher’s satisfies this need. I strongly recommend stopping in for a bite if you’re down this way (Exit 124 off of I-79 in WV). Besides, it’s a nice diversion from all of the chains and fast food you’ll find off of Emily Drive.

Pittsburgh, as a Tourist

Once in a while, it is nice to play hooky (after filing all of the proper paperwork for the day off with your employer) and be a tourist. Hitting the state parks and hiking around home in West Virginia never feels very touristy because, while we often encounter folks from faraway places, the tourists we run into are usually pretty into their own experience and blend in very well. Alternatively, many have local tour guides, enabling them to cut through the noise to get to the best of what the area has to offer. But when you commit to visiting Pittsburgh and playing tourist the experience is different, these are actual tourists with no local hosts and they aren’t all the quiet, introspective outdoorsy types.

I’m not sure at which point we switched from, “oh, we live in the Pittsburgh exurbs” to “let’s be tourists.” We often do enjoy the drive up to Washington, PA on old U.S. Route 19. Good grief, do I ever love eating at the Waffle House on Racetrack Road in Washington. I think the exact moment was when Chris took a wrong turn onto the Smithfield Street Bridge while seeking a specific entrance to Station Square and it had been so long since I’d been downtown that I didn’t realize they’d modified the traffic pattern somewhat that I was about as useful as a tourist (even though I resided in the City of Pittsburgh for several years!). First rule of driving in Pittsburgh: there are no rules.

For a long time we had been wanting to try out a Duck Tour, these are the tours of cities on the amphibious vehicles, so there is an in-water and out-of-water component of the tour. The tour was a really good time. The tour only covered the downtown core and the stadiums on the North Shore but our guide was great and was certainly able to entertain us sufficiently in the time provided, which seemed to be a little over an hour. The only part of the tour that wasn’t quite as I expected was the water component, I figured it might be used to cross the Allegheny instead of using one of the bridges, but instead the water component is just fooling around in the Ohio, between the Point and the West End Bridge. Not any real tour points there, just the unique factor of being in the water. We would both recommend the tour though, it was informative and fun!

Another big attraction about Pittsburgh for us yokels to the far south are the malls! When I lived in Pittsburgh, I loved South Hills Village and now I also have a pretty healthy relationship with Ross Park Mall. It was great to be able to hold the new iPhones and pick out the ones we want (even if we still have to order them!) at the Apple Store. We also are madly in love with the L.L. Bean Store. Perusing the L.L. Bean basically reassures me that even when we do decide to go for some crazy hikes in February (because we will want to), they’ve got the gear so I don’t need to freeze.

But then around this point the tourist thing must’ve worn off because we had some time before we had settled on meeting friends on the North Side for dinner and I suggested we escape to North Park, which would be an attraction like those I describe in the first paragraph. North Park is wonderful, but it’s not a place you’re going to find unless you’re looking for it or looking very specifically for something like it. Since our last visit, a little over a year earlier, a small café had opened in the boat house. On this day, there was some problem with their kitchen but they were still serving drinks from the bar. However, not two or three moments after our drinks made it to our picturesque seats did my phone ring.

The view from our table at the North Park boathouse

Brian is a best friend to both Chris and I, but like most of my close friends, we don’t talk on the phone. We text and Tweet substantially, plus hang out a lot, but there is not a lot of calling, particularly out of the blue. This suggested to us that something was up. Unfortunately, something was up. On her way to a weekend camping with her family, his sister, Anna, was rear-ended while sitting in congested traffic in Pittsburgh. The server at the café was wonderful, she gave us to-go cups for our drinks and cashed us out in a hurry and we were on our way to help Brian’s sister.

When we got out to Carnegie and found Anna, the news was mixed. She was more or less fine physically and the car was still drivable. But this was her very first crash and her car is less than a year old at this point. Worse yet, she’s 2.5 hours from home and still about 2 hours from where she’s going. The three of us sit out in the parking lot of a drug store and catch up, talk, and hang out until Brian makes it up from Morgantown. Despite being shaken up, Anna gets right back on the horse and makes the drive out to the lake in Ohio.

Running a little late, we re-descend on the city and meet up with my friend from college, Jasmine, and her fiancée, Pete, at the James Street Gastropub. The food was delicious and the beer list spectacular (two things I was promised in advance). Catching up with Jasmine was wonderful, it was great to feel like I went a few years back in time to college but it was also nice to meet her fiancée. I look forward to attending their wedding in March!

When we parted ways, on another floor of the establishment a jazz band was in full swing and with the windows open the music was filling the street. It ended the wonderful day on a wonderful note.

Cotton Candy High

There isn’t much better or more important in life than having awesome friends. I can’t say I bring a strong numbers game in this area, but I think I bring a strong quality game. So the weekend before last, my best friend from college, Jenn, along with her sister Amanda, picked me up from my place in Morgantown and took me home to Beaver County, Pennsylvania with them (both of them now live in Maryland, sort of flanking the greater DC area to the north and east, respectively). It did not take long to end up in the middle of a musical, fantasies about the upcoming midnight snacks at Sheetz, and what has come to be “normal girl stuff” for us. Frankly, I was aiming for a laid back weekend with my second family and best friend. That’s it. And it was good.

All morning on Saturday we ran errands around Beaver County. I had previously only known one way to get from Beaver Falls, which is down by the river, up to the rest of the county. I learned at least two other ways. When Jenn and I finally had a break, we decided to head to Brady’s Run Regional Park for a break. We had intended to find a geocache or two (this cache has so many of them!) but when we couldn’t figure out how to get to the first one, we settled for playing on some decrepit playground equipment and a stroll to the dam on the small impoundment. Afterward, we made it a priority to stop by the Chippewa location of the Brighton Hot Dog Shoppe for their chili cheese fries and hot dog. Even though we were going to a Pirates game later, PNC Park has so much more to offer other than just hot dogs so we felt we were still striking a very good, reasonable balance.

Later on all of Jenn’s sisters, mother, and myself joined up in Beaver. Despite visiting Jenn’s folks in Chippewa several times over the past several years and just, generally, being in the area I had never been to central Beaver so I was really surprised to see how nice and developed their central business district is. The Starbucks proved to be popular with our whole group, but I also managed to pick up a souvenir for my husband here at a really neat shop Jenn’s mom suggested we visit. There is a rooster on his family crest so he really likes them, the first thing I spotted when I walked in was not one but three large rooster cookie jars. Done. The only thing left was figuring out how to fit five women and a large glass rooster into Jenn’s Nissan Versa Note. Don’t worry. We made it work, with no help from my constant joking around.

This fountain is dedicated to all of the children in Beaver

I was just excited. I was going to a ball game. I hadn’t been to a ball game since the last time Jenn handed me a ticket and said “we’re going to a Pirate’s game!” To clarify, that was our senior year of college and it was the party favor at our spring formal dance (which Jenn basically single-handedly organized, she was a very good person to know on campus).

PNC Park is a wonderful place. Compared to similar venues I’ve visited it seems cleaner, easier to navigate, offers more food choices, and is just nicer. After establishing where our seats were, Jenn and I very urgently acquired pierogies that were just smothered in butter and sour cream. It was amazing. This is exactly why it was completely fine to have hot dogs earlier, because you can get pierogies at PNC Park! But for as good as the food was and as much as the pierogie races still rock my world (Saurkraut Sal won, just in case anyone was wondering), the Pirates lost to the Cubs. I was not too bothered by the end of the game, for a losing game it seemed to go on forever and Jenn’s youngest sister and I had just gobbled up a very large bag of cotton candy which was artificially propping up my deliriously tired self for the impending Lynyrd Skynyrd concert.

I was super pumped about the Lynyrd Skynyrd concert after the game and it was clear a lot of other people were too. Despite the game running long, the park remained packed. I know the venue isn’t exactly what they’re used to playing so I didn’t have the highest hopes about sound quality or being able to see them from right field, but I still had a ridiculously good time watching them. Though good grief, time has not treated most of them as kindly as it has to the Eagles, Jackson Browne, and the like. Most of the band members actually did look like reanimated corpses of Robert E. Lee (it has actually been brought to my attention that many of the band members attended a Lee High School) that could really tear it up on a guitar. It was also pretty amazing to be in a situation where it was totally appropriate to yell “Freebird!” and in fact even expect that if you did it enough you might actually get what you asked for. I was also extremely impressed with the duration of the concert, it wasn’t three songs and gone it was a legitimate concert. This is a band, in partnership with PNC Park, who were committed to providing a great fan experience and that sometimes seems so rare!

Jenn’s dad is a pro at PNC Park and once everything was over, guided us out of the park so quickly and even as we got out onto the streets the situation seemed intense but well-controlled. Jenn’s dad also works in this part of Pittsburgh so he had the best parking advice, the garage we chose has an exit that effectively puts you directly onto the HOV lanes of I-279, and with a carload of us we definitely qualified. Traffic was truly a non-issue and we hit the Pennsylvania Turnpike in Cranberry to go over to Beaver before I knew it, though part of that may have been my inability to keep my eyes open. The cotton candy had worn off.

Nittany Dawn and Weekends of Fun

My favorite shift to work on the ambulance at Penn State is the day shift. It often begins like this.

Sunrise on a Monday morning in Happy Valley

The sun rising over Tussey Mountain and shining onto Mount Nittany, as seen from the top of the Eisenhower Parking Deck (conveniently located next to the Student Health Center, where the ambulances live). If that isn’t enough to inspire your day, the Berkey Creamery is a stone’s throw away. While the Creamery is known best for its ice cream, I am very fond of its French vanilla coffee. All of this was accomplished in the first hour of my shift on Monday, which alone made the sting of having to return to State College from a wonderful weekend in Morgantown with Chris just a little more gentle.

The trip back to State College would have been uneventful except for the fact it is that wonderful time of year when the deer become particularly stupid. I don’t understand why anyone needs a gun to hunt, if I weren’t careful I’d have had enough venison to last me for years of tasty stews from what the Cavalier would’ve caught. Though seriously, we don’t joke about that… too much. After striking a deer on I-64 near St. Albans, WV in 2009 at 70mph (in said Cavalier), I can attest that it is a terrifying experience.

The highlight of the day on Sunday was catching up with my college friend, Courtney, at Mountain State Brewing Company in Morgantown. We chose Mountain State Brewing because the food is incredibly delicious but it turns out they play Team Bingo on Sunday afternoons. We had never heard of such a thing but had a great time playing four rounds through wonderful food and conversation. They’re famous for their beer and flatbread pizzas, but I must give a shout out for banana pudding and root beer.

This came on the heels of a Saturday that could’ve been three whole days given the activities accomplished. We hiked four miles on the Mon Trail South (and I cut my left middle finger open, woohoo!), went to the 2^nd birthday party for our friend’s daughter, consumed some of the best BBQ in the world (Two Brothers BBQ in Presto, PA), and did all kinds of shopping on the I-79 corridor between Pittsburgh and Morgantown. I made some excellent finds at the newly expanded Hobbytown USA at Robinson and the Tanger Outlets in Washington, PA.

Magnetic alphabet train cars arranged interestingly at the Robinson Hobbytown

Fond Farewell to a Friend

For all of the wonderful things transportation does for us, there is at least one situation where it feels more like a barrier than a liberator. Death.

There is still a large chunk of humanity who may travel but never have an address more than 50 miles from their birthplace. But as transportation systems have developed and mobility a reality for more people, fewer people have lived and died within 50 miles of where they were born. Some cities have thrived with this mobility and others are dying, consider the population movement from rust belt states to southwestern states. For me, I’ve spent more of my life 1500 miles or more away from “home” than at “home.”

When a loved one passes away people just want to be with their loved ones. Death has a very sudden way of making a lot of people feel like they take their personal relationships for granted. When families and friendships no longer span counties but states, countries, and oceans this togetherness is more difficult to accomplish.

Airlines will typically discount fares for those making last minute bookings to attend funerals (they typically request a copy of the death certificate or similar, so you can’t just play this to get cheap airfare), but the financial cost is only one of many. Time is often the greatest challenge, life in one place can rarely go on hold for loss of life in another, not to mention the time it takes to get from one place to another. And, fact is, the person that passed away probably wouldn’t want you to fuss over them so much anyway.

Where distance and transportation are limitations, technology helps fill some of the void. Cheap long distance calling and even Facebook can help forge a substitute for physical togetherness.  A close family friend passed away this past weekend. His Facebook page has since become a place for his friends and family to share their thoughts, feelings, and thanks: it allows everyone to eulogize someone they loved regardless of spatial location. It’s not physical togetherness, but I think it’s the next best thing—even if reading through it brings you to tears.

As for the family friend, Howard Doctor,  when I had brief stints of living in the Vancouver area in the mid-2000s, Howard was a wonderful friend. We routinely visited the Richmond Night Market, the amateur stand-up comedy night at the Holiday Inn on Broadway, and had evening teas with my grandmother. I last saw him about two weeks ago for breakfast. We went to the Denny’s on Broadway, which wasn’t unlike the Denny’s we used to frequently when he, my dad, and I lived in Orange, California. But in many ways, the story of his friendship is more my dad’s story than my own.

My very best once in a lifetime friend, Howard Charles Doctor passed away on January 6, 2013 of causes not yet determined. His passing was apparently in his sleep. I first met Howard sometime around 1974. We bonded instantly and were best friends all this time. While at times up to a year separated us between contacts, we could pick things up as if we had parted only a day before.

This was especially true when he moved to Orange County, California in the mid 1990s. I followed him there in 2001. Janet and I lived with Howard for 5 months.

In 2003 he returned to Vancouver to be close to his daughter and again we contacted each other maybe once a year until 2010 when I too returned to the Vancouver area. Our friendship picked up immediately and we had Saturday morning breakfast together every Saturday when he was not in China or visiting his folks.

We had breakfast just last Saturday at his regular haunt, Goldstone Bakery on Keefer Street. All seemed well when I dropped him off at his place at 2:30.

The thought never crossed my mind that would the last time I would ever see him.

The last months of his life Howard had found a fantastic place to work called Millson where he did all kinds of work advancing home theatre technology. He was finally making enough money so he ran out of month before he ran out of money. Where he was getting comfortable financially for the first time since he left California in 2003.

Howard Doctor – RIP