Last night I told a story at Raincity Chronicles, Vancouver’s answer to The Moth. I was last on the docket, and humbled by the great storytellers I shared the stage with. I was also really impressed by the organizing, wrangling and general finessing by Raincity organizers Karen and Lizzy. I’ve been an organizer, speaker or attendee many times, so I know how much work it takes to get all the little details right.
On a whim, I used the Voice Memo app on my iPhone to record my story. It worked out surprisingly well, considering that it was sitting on the arm of a seat in the middle of the venue. The auditorium at the Museum of Vancouver has a kind of clinical lecture hall feel, but it has superb acoustics.
My friend Rachael snapped a photo of me, so I combined the audio track with the photo and posted the story to YouTube. It’s audio only, and the sound isn’t great, but feel free to give it a listen.
The Written Version
As I sometimes do when giving talks (particularly those outside my comfort zone), I wrote out the story first. We were supposed to tell a story five to seven minutes in length, and my first version of this story was 1500 words, about 500 too long.
For some reason, knowing that I’d have a strict time limit made me extra-judicious in editing. I was reminded of a lot of trusty rules of rewriting–start as close to the end as possible, end as quickly as possible and, most painfully, you almost always have to cut out the bits you love the most.
Here’s the written version of the story.
Julie’s Black Tongue
The day my wife almost died began with a boat trip. We arrive at our jungle camp in Costa Rica, after a morning of river-rafting. We’ve been backpacking through the country, and are staying over night deep in the Costa Rican wilderness.
We arrive at this clearing that’s been cut into the jungle at the river’s edge, revealing rustic huts on platforms. It’s the off-season for tourists so, with the exception of our guide, a Costa Rican native Indian named Paco, we’re the only people staying there.
The ripping sound was barely audible, like a whisper in my ear. It’s as if my pants were saying, “I’m going to seriously complicate your afternoon.”
I’d just passed through airport security. Having slipped on my shoes back on, I looked around for a free chair where I could sit down and tie them. There were none. It’s a Barefoot genetic deficiency–none of the men in my family are good at tying our shoes standing up.
As I usually do, I hunkered down to lace up my shoes. That’s when the back of my trousers split–there’s no other way to say it–from belt to crotch.
I should interject, here, that I’ve actually lost weight in the past couple of months. So this was not a Darren’s-fat-ass problem, but rather a suit-pants-structural-integrity problem. That suit was neither cheap nor old, so I’ll be having a sharp word or two with my tailor.
My first thought was of my underwear. The trousers are charcoal-coloured, so the contrast could have been worse.
My next thought was that I was facing ten hours of travel across the continent, and my luggage had been checked through to Vancouver. This was bad.
My next thought was “Pants splitting? Seriously?” This is the stuff of Tom and Jerry. It’s up there among the great 20th century comedy cliches, right next to “stick finger in electrical outlet” and “football to groin”.
I finished tying my shoes, stood up, and put my back to the nearest wall. I subtly explored the damage, which was severe. I untucked my dress shirt and shifted my satchel to hang over my back. This, for the moment, protected me from any more immediate humiliation.
I made a quick, furtive lap around the retail outlets in my immediate vicinity. I wandered into the Harley Davidson store, checked out the generic duty free shop and poked around the Puma store.
Do you know what they don’t sell in airports? Pants.
Then I had my best idea of the week. I hustled over to the local Hudson News and Gifts, and bought myself a sewing kit. Then I retreated to the closest men’s room.
I spent the next 25 minutes doing the world’s worst sewing job on my trousers. Using what I believe is known as a basting stitch, I first sewed the outside, and then went back over it on the inside. This is the result (click for high-resolution repair action):
It wasn’t pretty, but you’d have look quite carefully at my butt to spot it. I silently thanked Carla, the Head of Wardrobe in my theatre school. She taught me the basics of sewing in first year university.
The worst part, as you might imagine, was spending that much time standing in my underwear in a busy airport bathroom stall. I’m surprised that I didn’t get propositioned or arrested.
To my relief, my poor stitching withstood two flights, a layover and a taxi ride home.
William Gibson once wrote that jet lag is the result of soul not being able to travel at airplane speeds, and you need a few days to recover it after you arrive. I feel the same way about my dignity.
Can I blame the Transportation Security Administration for this? They made me take off my shoes in the first place.
We’ve been a member of the Vancouver car co-op, now named ‘Modo’, for about a year. Aside from the new prominence of their branding on cars (I signed up to use their cars, not advertise the service), I’ve been a happy car co-op member.
The other day, though, I was talking to somebody considering their car-sharing options. Now that a third option, car2go, has come to town, they were complaining about the complexity of the car share pricing models.
There are sign-up fees, and then costs based on time, day of the week, distance traveled or a combination of all these. I thought it’d be a good idea to look at how we’ve used our co-op car, and compare the price paid with the other services.
To start, let’s examine how we currently use our Modo membership. I looked at three recent typical months–we used cars for a few hours, usually to drive to some Vancouver suburb. All amounts are before HST:
Trips
Distance
Time
Cost
Cost/km
Cost/hour
January
2
35 km
8 hours
$38.04
$1.09
$4.75
February
2
29 km
8 hours
$43.13
$1.48
$5.39
April
3
39 km
12.5 hours
$52.83
$1.35
$4.22
Each month’s cost includes a $6.00 administration fee and something called ‘Fuel Fluctuation Adjustment’, which seems to be a few cents per kilometre, based on the changing price of gas.
Average trip = 22 minutes
Now that we’ve got those numbers, let’s compare them with Modo’s competitors, Zipcar and car2go.
To further confuse matters, car2go works slightly differently than the other two car shares. Car2go works much more like a bike sharing program. You don’t have to drop off the car where you pick it up. So, it will be somewhat tricky to make exact comparisons.
I happened to run into a car2go field marketer yesterday, and she told me that the average trip on their service is 22 minutes. That sounds about right for us–some are ten minutes, while others are forty. Based on the data above, our average one-way trip is 7.3 km, which one could easily do in 22 minutes in the city.
I’ll spare you all the math (if you’re feeling masochistic, here are the pricing breakdowns for Modo, Zipcar and car2go). Here are the results when I apply the aforementioned three month’s worth of driving to the other car shares’ pricing models:
Modo
Zipcar
car2go
January
$38.04
$62.00
$30.80
February
$43.13
$62.00
$30.80
April
$52.83
$117.87
$46.20
Other cost considerations:
Modo is a co-operative, so you need to pay a refundable $500 as a ‘shares purchase’ when you join. Other family members can be added to your account for $250. There’s also a $20 registration fee.
Zipcar charges an annual fee of $65 and an application fee of $25.
Car2go charges a $35 application fee.
I should emphasize that this is strictly a price comparison. Each service has its own particular benefits, drawbacks, fleet size, geographic distribution and so forth. Please shop around.
Conclusions?
Despite car2go being seemingly cheaper, I don’t think we’d consider switching. We’ve been happy enough with Modo, and they’ve got a dozen vehicles within a block of our home. Even on this sunny Saturday morning, we were able to book a car just two hours before we needed it. I also like the variety of cars that Modo offers–sometimes we need a Nissan Cube and other times we want to drive a Mini Cooper. I also appreciate one under-promoted Modo perk: you can park their cars in any permit-only street parking in the city. This has been handy when driving to the Vancouver East Cultural Centre or Empire Field, where public parking is expensive or hard to find.
On the other hand, I did have to remove a banana peel from the backseat of the car we booked today.
But it wasn’t my intent to boost Modo with this analysis. I was really just interested in decoding the baroque pricing as the Vancouver car share market grows up.
To me, all the services are being overly transparent with their pricing. They should make all these details available, but then they should just offer some abstracted, straightforward pricing. Why doesn’t somebody offer a $29/month, a $49/month and a $99/month plan? The car shares all seem to be making it the consumer’s problem, which strikes me as the wrong approach.
Are you a car-share customer? Have you ever considered becoming one?
UPDATE: I snapped this photo of the parking lot where we usually pick up our cars. It’s interesting that the other two car shares appear to be annexing sections of it. The cars on the left are from Modo. You can spot the Zipcar spots by the metal signposts at the end of the row on the right. And I suspect that those newly-painted spots where the cones are now belong to car2go. Click to enlarge:
I had the notion in the Sahara desert. Julie and I were sitting on a sand dune at sunset, and I had the notion to collect some of the fine, red sand in a pill bottle.
I was probably inspired by this scene in The West Wing. President Bartlet visits the home of a former, recently-deceased president. In his retirement, the former president travelled the world, collecting dirt from battlefields where Americans fought and died.
I had no such high-minded ideas–I just thought I’d collect some sand.
Since then, I’ve tried to remember to gather sand from beaches and river beds whenever I’m travelling. I’ve been keeping the sand in random bottles and jars, but I recently bought some old miniature gin bottles from an antique store in Quebec City.
Today I transferred the sand into my new bottles. Here’s the result (click to enlarge):
Here, from left to right, are the sources of the sand:
A beach on Cortes Island.
A beach near Bocas Del Toro in Panama.
A beach in Pacific Rim National Park on Vancouver Island
A beach just outside the Old Town of Dubrovnik, Croatia
The shore of the Pedernales River in Texas
The shore of the L’Orbeau River in Lagrasse, France
The Sahara Desert
I need to find some little rubber or cork stoppers for them, and eventually a box or rack to hold them.
An odd thing to collect, I suppose, but cheaper than watches or, I don’t know, Hummel figurines.
I’m in Washington, DC for a few days. I spoke at (here are my slides) and attended NTC, a big non-profit and technology conference held at the hotel where Reagan was shot. I’m sticking around for a few days for some client meetings, so I’ve had some time to explore the city, which I’m visiting for the first time.
Fun fact: Dupont Circle is also home to L. Ron Hubbard House, the original “church” for the cult that is the Church of Scientology.
On Sunday, I took the subway down to near the US Capitol building, and walked the length of the National Mall. I made brief stops at the National Gallery and part of the Smithsonian. Remarkably, the museums on the Mall are all free, and open something like 363 days a year. I made it all the way down to the Lincoln Memorial, and then circled back to check out the Whitehouse. For a fan of The West Wing, it was excellent to experience all that pomp and history in one day.
I’ve always heard that the Vietnam Memorial was a powerful piece of public art, and I wasn’t misled. It’s incredibly simple–this V-shaped wall carved into the lawn. When you get near the centre, you’re encompassed by thousands and thousands of the names of the dead. It reminded me of the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague, where the walls of the Torah Ark are covered in the names of those who died in the Holocaust. It’s a simple but effective way to humanize events that we have difficulty conceiving of. The Vancouver AIDS memorial does somethings similar, on a smaller scale.
Capitol Bikeshare proved an excellent service. It’s easy to use, and with 110 stations around the city, it didn’t take long to locate one when I was done riding. The bike itself was pretty heavy, but it was in good shape and more than satisfactory for my needs. The bike-share seems primarily targeted at locals–the pricing discourages longer rides, but it was a good fit for a two-hour ride.
At first it was a little surprising that there were bike-shares in Washington and Montreal before bike-friendly Vancouver. But that may be an issue–a lot of would-be bike-share users already have bikes in Vancouver, and use them nearly year-round. The less clement weather back east means that you’re only using a bike for, say, two-thirds of the year. Despite it being about 5:00pm on a nice spring afternoon in Washington, I saw few other riders. But, then, I see lots of cyclists in Toronto when I visit, so I don’t know what gives. In any case, it looks like Montreal’s Bixi will bring bike-sharing to Vancouver later this year.
I barely scratched the surface of things to do in DC, but I suspect that work will bring me back before too long.
Earlier this summer I solicited suggestions for offbeat things to do in New York. I spent about ten days there (here’s my report), and Julie stayed for a month or so. She gathered suggestions from all corners–some offbeat, some commonplace–and assembled them into a spreadsheet.
Should you travel to the Big Apple in the near future, you may find the list useful:
The first time we visited New York, in 1999, we stood in line at the TKTS tickets booth in Times Square. It was August, and ridiculously humid, and we stood in the queue for over an hour. Ironically, I don’t even remember what show we ended up seeing (Julie reminded me that it was a pretty mediocre production of Forum) .
As Broadway fans may know, the TKTS booth promises discounted (typically half-price) tickets to same-day shows.
Happily, on more recent trips, we discovered an online resource that offers similar discounts. We paid US $4 for a month’s worth of access to the discount codes database at NYTix.com. They collect and publish a number of discount codes for a bunch of Broadway shows, which you then use when you buy your tickets. The discounts vary, but they’re sometimes as high as 50%.
I assume that lots of these discount codes are available elsewhere on the web. I’m just willing to pay the $4 to have somebody curate, organize and validate them for me. Considering that the TKTS ticket service charge is also $4, it’s money well spent.
The other handy travel trick we discovered is using daily deal sites like Groupon (that’s an affiliate link, by the way–I apparently get $10 in Groupon Bucks if you sign up) in your destination city. You subscribe a few weeks before you’re going to visit, and you get notified of deals that you might want to take advantage of. There’s typically a good portion that would appeal to tourists–restaurants, spas, tourist destinations and so forth. Such sites can also sometimes offer an offbeat activity in a new city. Maybe you’re up for, say, a private salsa dancing lesson while you’re visiting.
I subscribe to Groupon for Vancouver, too, and I’ve found a couple of things I’ve wanted to do. The very first day I bought half-price tickets to the Sustainability Expo, for example.
