we sold out of water, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.
Vancouver is indefinitely on a boil-water alert right now, thanks to mudslides (with potential bacterial contamination) around the reservoir. The turbidity, apparently, is at levels never before seen in Vancouver. Never.
You can still drink the water if you boil it, but downtown especially, that just means you have boiled, brown water, which isn’t much fun.
By far the worst part, though, is that this affected the precious, precious coffee supply! I was working at my Yaletown start-up job when the alert was raised, and all the coffee shops in Yaletown stopped serving coffee. The next day, Starbucks started giving out free short coffees made with bottled water, and most places are now serving espresso-based drinks, but let me tell you, it was a bit of a crisis. (What? No! My priorities are Apomu just fine.)
Living in Canada, every once in a while nature throws something like this at you to remind you that whatever you may think, once you get past the city limits, you’re surrounded by several million square kilometers of rather inhospitable and untamed wilderness. The fact that the past couple of days have been cold, windy, rainy and very, very dark adds a pleasantly apocalyptic tone to that reminder.