13 days left: DRIVING and PARKING

Okay, take 2. Hello and welcome to the Tod Maffin and Fusion, whatever we're calling these videos. We are 13 days away, and in today's video we are going to talk about driving and accessible parking and parking in downtown.

And this is Buddy What's-His-Name, and I'm the other fella.

My other brother, Darryl. Yes. All right, so, but before we do that, again, a reminder: make sure that you have your red lanyard or a Canada flag lanyard like this. It's not for admission into anything. It's just so everyone can identify each other. And, and if you're talking about this on social media, use the hashtag #NanaimoInfusion. And please come Saturday morning at 10:00 a.m. at Mafeo Sutton Park. If you're on the email list, you will get all this information. Saturday at 10:00 a.m., we're having a big family photo. Okay, we are here to talk about driving. Getting around. Jocelyn's gonna talk more about it than I am because she's the driver of the family. Um, but let's talk— before we get into like downtown and parking, let's talk about the highways, which are not— in Take 1 we discussed that they're not really like highways like Americans think they are. These are not like 12-lane things. This is a 4-lane road with stop signs, stoplights, an express country road.

Yeah, it— the— it runs sort of north-south almost all the way up to Campbell River, and at the major communities that you hit, go, you know, go through, there'll be like 2 or 3 lights on this highway. Um, so, you know, it's, it's a cultural experience.

Yeah. Okay, so downtown, so you do not need to have a car if you're going to stay in the downtown area. It's very walkable, especially if you're staying at the Courtyard Marriott or any, or the Painted Turtle. Any of those are downtown. There's lots of other places as well, the Coast and so on. Um, that's all very walkable. If you want to get sort of around the other, like the mid-island, which most people are going to do, you'll need some sort of transportation. Your own car is ideal.

There's Tofino Bus or what's the other one? Island Bus. They're owned by the same company and they're shuttle buses that you can book ahead of time. And there's also BC Transit, which is our bus company.

Like our city transit.

Very wheelchair accessible.

We do not have— we have rideshare, but it's not Uber or Lyft. We have U-Ride, which is the letter U and then ride. And then we have taxis and things like that.

And the public transit bus goes from Parksville, which is north of Nanaimo, and all the way south to Duncan, but only certain times of day, so you'd want to look up BC Transit for Nanaimo.

Like, for instance, if you're going to go to Goats on a Roof in Coombs, that is a half an hour drive from Nanaimo.

Yeah, and there's— I don't think there's a— well, there might be a bus that'll go there, but again, That's all on the website for Nanaimo Transit.

Downtown is very walkable. You can walk right from downtown to the water. From the water you can walk to Maffeo Sutton Park where you're going to be Saturday at 10 AM. And that is super easy, super accessible. So let's talk about downtown. Downtown's kind of chewed up right now because of construction.

Yes, so our downtown is not huge and you You will know it's downtown because it's all up on a rock. Like, it's very— it sticks up. And it is right next to Maffeo Sutton Park and the harbor. And so it's about like 3 streets by 5 streets. And one of the main streets is Commercial Street, and it is a construction site for about 4 blocks, which has affected some of the traffic.

But all the stores are open, all the restaurants are open. Yes. You're not losing out on anything. It's really important to know.

That a lot of those stores and restaurants, in addition to the tariffs and all that stuff, they're dealing with the construction. So if, if you don't mind braving a little bit of gravel here and there, everything's walled off with like fences, so it's safe. Just go have a look. There's some like art stores and restaurants. It's pretty cool. Anyway, so there are 3 parkades downtown. Apparently that's a Canadian word, or I don't know.

Oh yeah, parkade apparently is that.

Parkade.

Yeah, I didn't know that.

So tell us in the comments if you are not Canadian if you'd ever heard that word. So these parking structures are, there's one called Bastion Parkade which is right by the overpass for the highway, right? It should hopefully be self-evident. It's a really large parking structure and it has free parking for up to 2 hours Monday to Friday, 8 to 5, and then evenings and weekends all around downtown you get free 2-hour parking anyway. So if you have a— if you have an accessible parking placard, if you have the sticker or the placard and you're from not Canada, the odds are they're considered reciprocal like the US and Canada. You can just use your accessible parking placard from the US in Canada, unless it's tags like your accessible parking, like DP tags, I think.

Like license plates.

Like license plate. Those, to my knowledge, are not accepted in Canada. So, wah-wah. But You also do get free off-street parking in city parking lots if you're disabled parking, if you're in, if you need accessible parking.

So, and, and there are other parkades downtown as well, city-owned. They're fairly easy to spot. They'll be on maps and so on. The, I will, if you're on the email list, which you should get on by going to nanaimoinfusion.ca, I am sending out emails leading up to this thing, of course, and one of those emails will contain a city parking map.

If you brought bikes, Nanaimo is very bikeable. Um, for example, if you're staying out at the Living Forest Campground, you could easily bike into downtown, no sweat. It is not a huge city, um, like within the kind of main part of downtown, and it's, it's a lot of great cycling. Um, and then you Where was I going with that? The— there's also the harbor, um, like boardwalk wraps around downtown and sort of meets it at Maffeo Sutton, and you can keep on walking. So there's lots of great cycling and walking, and I don't know, whatever your wheeled vehicle of choice is.

Your best approach is going to be is if you're coming and you want to wander around downtown, which you should, or even the Old City Quarter for that matter, which is just up the street. Yeah, it's also walkable.

You're gonna have to exercise your thighs because—

so you just, you park, park and just walk around. You're not gonna have to park, walk, move your car, move your car, none of that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Um, anything else we should talk about that is sort of related to this? Parking, driving? Oh, uh, yesterday's video we were talking about getting here and we talked about the Washington State to Victoria ferries, which we have never taken, so we were a little light on the details. If that's an interest to you and you want to go from Washington State to Victoria, which is south of us, and then drive up here. Go to that video and, and ignore everything we say and read the comments, because the comments have people who know, have done that before.

Extremely important to note that all of the ferries we talked about and the ones Todd just mentioned are all ones you really should book ahead of time. Yeah, the BC Ferries, it's optional, but if you don't show up really, really far in advance, it's you know, you're gonna have trouble. The other ferries from Washington, I think you have to book.

And remember that the— at least BC Ferries only go every 2 hours. So if there's a 2-sailing wait, that means you will be sitting in a parking lot for 6 hours.

Yeah, it's all bloody day.

And that's 11 hours when you convert it to Canadian. So it's a long fucking time.

I mean, you could always ditch your car, get the helijet or something, but That might be a little more bougie than you're looking for.

All right. Anything else? Um, I think we covered it.

Not now.

I think, no, I think we got it all. What are we up to? 8 minutes. Yeah.

Okay.

So tomorrow and every night until this damn thing is over with. Um, remember April 25th, April 27th, it's in Nanaimo. Make sure that you have, uh, gotten your— these are at like dollar stores and you can get them like anywhere. Um, You don't need to have anything at the bottom of this, although some guy in the Discord today made something you can download and put at the bottom of it. It's like a little— it's like a little pass. You do not need a pass. There's no admission, there's no reserving, there's no ticketing.

Just if someone's trying to sell you a ticket, that's a problem. Don't do that. Yeah, just show up at the park at 10 AM on Saturday, Maffeo Sutton Park. By the way, tons of parking for that park.

Oh yeah, it's annoying about that. Yeah, tons of parking. And, uh, the MLA is going to be there handing out pins. The mayor is going to be there to say some words. Um, there's food trucks, there's markets, there's a zipline that goes over the lagoon.

It's pretty cool. Yeah.

All right, so tomorrow we will be back for— with another video.

Yeah. Bye-bye.