What Welcome Isn't ...

When we travel and there is a significant time change, we always come a day early to get into the 'zone.' The older we get the harder this is to do, I guess that's one of the things that comes with age. After having breakfast with our hosts, Joe and I set out to explore a bit of Whitehorse. We wanted to pick up some souvenirs and wander around a bit.

Once we got out, given that snow has already fallen here, there was gravel everywhere. It had been spread after the last snowfall. Some of it was sharp and dug into my tires, making pushing difficult and bumpy. So we quickly redesigned the day and went to a small indoor mall downtown. It was great. They had a wonderful place to pick up local artwork and other small mementos of the trip. We were there for quite a while. Though it was packed with stuff, it also had wide aisles. I wondered if that was for wheelchair accessibility or to make room for people in big parkas, universal access is universal access though and I didn't care. I could get around.

The same was true for most stores in the mall except one where the entrance was tight. But they moved stuff and I was able to get in and move around. Finally we ended up at a coffee shop kind of place called 'baked'. It happened to be lunchtime and we happened to be hungry. In we went.

I found a table, Again there was room to move but this time the blockage was because of either packages or bags or strollers which people moved without a thought and certainly without rancor. I found a table and Joe brought tea and amazing orange and carrot soup, which was spicy and rich and vegan to top it off.

The thing that interested me was that this was a very cool kind of coffee shop with a very cool kind of clientele but it didn't have the \too cool for the likes of you' atmosphere. From the clerks to the patrons everyone was welcoming. Now, what I mean by welcoming was that they helped if asked, moved stuff if asked in a 'sure, okay' way. They didn't stare, didn't react to my difference, didn't make exaggerated moves to give me room I didn't need. It was like they'd all had intensive training in the fact that people are people are people and that the training stuck.

We had a nice lunch. We had a nice chat with a woman who sat next to us. We'd started the conversation by asking a touristy question and then fell into a friendly chat about where we were all from. It was just a nice regular kind of thing you do in places like where we were.

I like Whitehorse.

A lot.