The Last Reservation & A Ferry Crash!

Laura and I had a very interesting long weekend.

It started early last Tuesday when we were dismayed to find out that all the Vancouver Island ferry reservations for Horseshoe Bay (Vancouver) to Swartz Bay (Naniamo) were already booked for Thursday, June 30th except for 8:30am which meant that we had to get up really early to make the reservation.

Our trip to Vancouver Island (1 1/2 hours) was to do both business and personal business in both Naniamo and Victoria (2 hours drive between the two) and to spend the weekend with Helen, Laura’s mother in Victoria.

So we went ahead with the 8:30am reservation and caught the 8:30am ferry on Thursday morning and a good thing.

The incoming 10am ferry lost power and with only the steering and no engines to reverse power, the captain of the 7,000 ton ferry miraculously avoided serious damage by missing the dock and headed the ferry into a pleasure boat marina crushing about two dozen small pleasure boats along with the dock to slow the ferry down which eventually ran aground about 100 ft. from shore.

There were no serious injuries but the 544 passengers and their vehicles were stuck on the ferry for the entire day and the departing passengers and cars were stuck in long line ups for the entire day and they didn’t clear things up until later that night with additional 12 midnight and 1am sailings.

So the moral of the story, everything happens in perfect order.

Thursday was invested in some personal business in Naniamo and meetings to introduce myself for Professional Speaking with;

* Graham Carter who is both the Naniamo Regional Sales Manager for Freedom 55 Financial and the Naniamo Regional President of Advocis

* Rohini Kapoor who is the Victoria Regional Sales Manager for Freedom 55 Financial

Both introductory meetings went very well and I’m looking forward to following up on the opportunity to speak a both Freedom 55 Financial & Advocis Fall Meetings. I trust that these meetings will lead to other introductions to other regional meetings for Freedom 55 Financial & Advocis.

This trip was a reflection of what the future will likely look like with a combination of traveling to do professional speaking while doing telephone coaching calls with our clients while on the road.

The rest of the weekend, from Thursday night on was spent visiting with Helen, getting some much needed sleep and rest in the quiet of Victoria, a 16 km. bicycle ride on Victoria’s fabulous bicycle trails, a looking/shopping trip to downtown Victoria and dinner at The Oak Bat Marina Restaurant with Laura and Helen on Saturday night.

We traveled back to Vancouver on Sunday morning and Laura and I bicycled the Stanley Park Sea Wall in the afternoon.

Whew! What a contrast between what has now become a very crowded Vancouver with the reported population being 2.4 million with an increase of another 1 million in the next 10 years compared to sleepy Vancouver Island.

Things that make you want to go Hmmm! A peaceful and quality living existence on Vancouver Island compared to the ever intensifying city of Vancouver.

I invested Sunday evening writing my Blog and July 1st E-Newsletter and getting ready for the week.

Happy 4th of July!