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Written by: Rod Boyle

Category: Blog

Published: 16 September 2022

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August 22nd, 23rd, 24th. Castlegar, Grand Forks, Up through Penticton, Oliver, Kelowna, Monday is the worst day off, there are no thrift or antique stores open. Unless you count Value Village, which is less "thrift" than expensive retail. The heat, a blast furnace through the windows, my window as AC is not working...I'm surviving the Summerland Corridor by taking advantage of every McDonalds I pass, buy a pomegranate smoothie, a coke zero, coffee, fortunately there's an abundance. By dusk I'm through Enderby, the freshly spread manure evincing a nostalgia for a childhood in Saskatchewan, the associated memories; the smell, not so good, not so bad, but the memories...

These days off I'm a full on trash panda, eating the worst of possible foods, this I've noticed - one can eat badly, or eat very well, for very little difference in expense - but you need to know where to go. 

I'm having little luck, hitting all the worst places...

First night, north of Revelstoke, in the sight of Snow Covered Peaks, cool evening air in through the window.

Morning, lugnuts now on Passenger rear are loose, 1 bolt sheared off, need to get more.

Revelstoke - I need a map, buy a mapbook to the Kootenays, then Golden, on my way to the Ice River - about 50 KM from Golden, the day spent sifting gravel, looking at stones, the bright blue of sodalite shows up in one, a irridescent green tourmaline crystal, tiny, in another. Otherwise a cool day getting filthy in a beautiful setting. 

I need a magnet to sort my concentrates, possibilities of platinum, other rare earths being discarded in pan after pan, it wouldn't be the first time...

From here to Kinibasket lake, been meaning to explore, the first 30 KM logging road empty, schists and large rusty quartz boulders that suggest the possibility of gold, there are hundreds of KM of shoreline to be explored here, to make any sort of headway I need a boat....

Gas on the highway, $1.99/litre, I'm getting gas here, there, the Rogers Pass eats it up. 

Back to 3-Valley Gap, the remembering of my mother driving in the winter, the car spinning, miraculously we didn't end up in the lake, childhood moving from Vancouver to Revelstoke - familiarity, memories forgotten restored. Past Twee roadside attractions, the Enchanted Forest, Go-Carts, Mini-Golf. Driving Ranges, all the things to keep the tourists happy.  

And at night Truckers pushing you from behind, this section of the highway is horrible, every trucker trying to make up for time lost climbing the Rogers Pass, this jeep, it's good, but the speed limit only, and this pressure, 1 lane, truckers on your ass, it's a nightmare. 

Finally, Wednesday, the route back to Vernon, Through Salmon Arm, Sicamous, a never ending array of dismal thrift Shops. All the shops I'd ever passed and never had a chance to stop at, or passed when they were closed. In Enderby a shop that specializes in rusty old hubcaps and lug-wrenches, no kidding, a lot of curiosity squandered here on nothing.

And all day I've stopped at new thrift shops, shops I'd never seen before, antique shops, and all I've seen is rubbish. 

But the two shops in Vernon - well, the one, I ask about an old watch and the proprietor, friendly pulls out a full box of them, old new-stock, a variety of watches, some garbage, some better, none I don't have or need. But it's nice he went to the effort. There's an older blonde lady, a clerk, his wife (??) that keeps pulling stools up in front of me and climbing them and lifting her skirts so I have a clean view of her ankles and then smiling brazenly at me. Awkward.

These days, dog-days of August, hot as hell, fucking bloody hell. 

And I walk across the street and this - this is it. 

This antique shop, 3 cabinets filled to the brim with Antique wristwatches, Omegas, Rolex, Tudors, various no-names of curious aesthetics, and fountain pens. 

One of 3 cabinets filled with fountain pens and old watches.

I'm going mad. 

I look at them all, there's some good ones for sure - but one, the Omega Speedmaster priced at $1500.00, it's caught my eye. 

I go outside, sit down and think about it. GO for a walk and check a few other thrift and pawn shops, then head back.

This trip - 3 days, I've spent $600 in gas, another $200 in food, what's another $1500 on a Speedmaster?

A lot. Winter is coming, soon, soon, sooner than I think.

I ask the proprietor of this shop about it. And - unlike the other shop owner, he's disinterested, doesn't know anything about it, doesn't offer to show it to me. 

And by not showing he's saved me $1500 bucks, because if I'd a held it in my hands I would have bought it.

I give it up, head on, stop in Lumby for Chinese and Western Cuisine, to escape the heat, freezer-burned fried rice, the CCP - Corn, Carrots, Peas, disgusting. How do you make Chinese and Western food more disgusting than it generally is? Somehow they've done it. 

And from here, onward, and home, the end of the weeks adventures. 

A better thrift shop with some cool old-ish ventriloquist dolls. Too expensive, too plastic...

An antique curling iron apparatus from an old hair salon. Which suggests to me a variety of kinky repurposing...I should have got a price...

Sunset over the Roger's Pass....