I’m sitting on the bus out to my husband, Bob, or Dr. Bob, as his patients call him, and the boat. Bob always knew he wanted to practise medicine because he liked anatomy and money. Two dudes in the seat behind me are talking about their alternative band, Nutsak, and their New Year’s Eve gig in Seattle. It’s early December and they’re worried about Y2K, how when we fold over into 2000 it will be “game-freaking-over, man” because of a stupid computer coding error called the Millennium Bug. They fret this will spell the end of their fledgling Nutsak, their musical genius eclipsed by stupid coders, no time to make it big like Nirvana. I consider popping up over the seat and reminding them it didn’t go well at all for Kurt Cobain even without any technology glitches because he shot himself and now he’s dead but why bother because they would wonder what a chubby girl like me knows about grunge music anyway. I just sit there and their voices blend into the noisy chatter on the bus as we speed along to the town of Mission.

In my university department, my doctoral advisor has explained how in the early days, some programmers misunderstood the Gregorian calendar. It sounds a bit implausible but you never know. Everybody’s panicking wherever you go. Maybe pandemonium will ensue. If it does, I would rather be in our cozy city apartment than trapped on a shabby old boat with constant engine problems and threadbare sails. I always need to have a plan, know what I’m going to do next. I speculate it’s one of the reasons it’s so easy for me to do what other people want me to. But it’s harder and harder to live like this. I put on my headphones and listen to the radio on my CD Walkman. Prince is singing “1999.”

Bob wants me to stay for one night to at least experience what it’s like in the outstanding new marina where the boat is now moored. He’s hurt I haven’t made the effort to come out sooner. Three weeks ago he hired two professional sailors to move the boat from the Vancouver Marina to this place way out on the Fraser River in Mission. He wanted me to do it with him but fortunately I had exams which couldn’t be rescheduled. I was so relieved. He’s been working in Mission ever since the boat was delivered, with only two short trips in to Vancouver to see me. He says it’s my job to come to him. That I’ll love the new location. He says it will feel like an adventure book or action movie. He says that is his favourite thing about me, my eternal sense of adventure.

All this said, the thought of sleeping on his rundown boat fills me with dread. I like watching adventure movies with buttered popcorn and chocolate milk. I like reading adventure narratives, in a soft chair with a cookie and a cup of tea. I detest real life adventure. But here I am, on the bus out to him and the boat. Every change I’ve ever made has been either forced on me or I’ve forced it on myself as a way of pleasing others. I am a master of doing what other people want, including marriage, of hunkering down and trying to endure. The adventure is trying to survive all these undertakings.