Homeless in Vancouver: A quixotic race with my shadow this autumn morning

My shadow made much better time than I did on the trip to breakfast this morning (September 9).

This was only natural. We were riding westward during the sunrise and my shadow benefited far more from having the morning sun at its back than I did from the slightly downhill nature of the route.

In truth, it wasn’t even a race—I trailed for almost the entire eight blocks.

Rise and shine!—or not, as the case may be

When we arrived in the 1400 block of West Broadway, I turned my back on my shadow in envious disgust—I was nearly out of breath but it wasn’t even a shade winded!

The sight that I saw looking east is hard to describe but only because I could barely see what I was looking at for all the glare.

One thing was clear. Here in the second week of September, the sun, while certainly big enough and bright enough, already had noticeably less heat in its light than just a few weeks ago. That was easy to see this morning.

Beyond the encroaching fact of autumn, though, there was little else of interest visible through the glare at 7:25 a.m.

There were the two lone people boarding an eastbound 99 B-Line bus. There was my bike and trailer locked to a “No Parking” sign. And there was the homeless guy sleeping in the shade behind the screen of his loaded Costco shopping cart, underneath the overhang of the still-shuttered Jordans store.

Oh, and there was the one other homeless guy standing on the street taking photographs—that was me. But I would’ve needed eyes in the back of my head, or to have been standing on the other side of the alley, where my shadow was stretching and yawning, to see me.