It Grows Hot

The record temperature for Vancouver for this time of year is 30 degrees celcius, which is a pretty interesting figure considering that today peaked at 29 degrees. For someone raised in the steamy green mangrove swamp of Brisbane, this is a pleasant summer's day, but the locals are crisping up like BC hash cookies in an oven. This is great for the bikini-clad young lovelies, but not so great for the legions of homeless people on the street corners downtown.

There's one scary old dude who deserves special mention, because he regularly rides my bus down Burrard Street in the hot afternoons. He's probably in his sixties, with a long matted beard, stained clothes and dark, splotchy skin. He usually sits in the back corner of the bus, and he smells like death. I know I should be more charitable about his situation, but my higher brain functions tend to shut down in the presence of his overwhelming stench. He smells like what I imagine a lich might smell like, if he had been peeing in his robes for a few hundred years.

One nice lady put her shopping bags aside and tried to talk to him recently, but it didn't really go very well. He'd been giving his crotch a right old scratching, using plenty of shoulder and sending a crusty cloud floating about. She asked him what was wrong, and he stopped his work and peered up at her. His eyes bulged out, and in a voice like grinding metal, he blurted out "Bugs... bugs... bugs!" The nice lady got off at the next stop.