Man has been living at Vancouver Airport since Aug. 17

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — It's like the movie "The Terminal," only it's real. A man has been living in the Vancouver airport since Aug. 17 — at the airport's invitation.

"I can't leave. I'm stuck here," Jaeger Mah explained to an airport volunteer who invited him to a party outside the airport Nov. 3.

Since the party happens to fall on the last of Mah's 80 days at the airport, he added, "Perhaps I could come after midnight."

Mah, 29, embarked on his unusual sojourn as the winner of a contest sponsored by the airport to mark its 80th year. The airport invited anyone willing to living there to submit a video application, and five of the 160 entries were posted online for a public vote. Mah, an entrepreneur with a video company and a background in entertainment marketing, dubbed himself "the Anderson Cooper of YVR" and won with 4,128 votes out of thousands cast.

The gig doesn't involve anything close to the discomfort suffered by passengers who've tried to nap in airport seating during a layover. Mah spends his nights at the airport hotel — though he admits to occasional naps in secret terminal spots — and he's got no complaints about the food, either. He's figured out which VIP lounges will feed him and which have the best snacks.

"I'm not sleeping on the benches," Mah says, "but I'm meeting some incredible people."

As he strolls through the terminals in a Hawaiian shirt, shorts and worn hiking boots, it's clear he's become a fixture. Employees wave or shout hello. One stops him at the bottom of the escalators by the domestic baggage carousels and asks why he didn't show up for samosa snacks one day.

"I forgot," he says sheepishly with a boyish grin. All is forgiven.

Airport spokeswoman Rebecca Catley says the goal of the project is to show people what happens behind the check-in counters and security screenings at a big airport.

"A lot of people don't realize what goes on at an airport," she says. "We get a lot of requests for behind-the-scenes tours. We can't do that from a security perspective."

That's where Mah comes in. Armed with a digital video camera, he documents the airport's stories and posts them online. "My process consists of Facebook, tweets and blogs," he said. "You're constantly engaging with your fans. You have to give them what they want to see. I'm pimping myself out big time."

For his 14-hour days as contest winner and late nights spent editing video, he is being paid a per diem rate and a $15,000 fee.

"I want to devote my life to telling stories," he says. "You could call it some kind of journalism."

Mah's adventure brings to mind the 2004 film "The Terminal" where Tom Hanks' character found himself stranded at New York's JFK airport, denied entry to the U.S. but unable to return to his revolution-bound country. The film may have been inspired by the real-life drama of Mehran Karimi Nasseri, an Iranian expat who could not gain entry to other countries and spent years at France's Charles de Gaulle International Airport.

Unlike either Hanks' character or Nasseri, Mah's stay has a definite end date. Still, he says, there were nay-sayers.

"People said 'Don't do it,'" he chuckles. "My dad said, 'If you want to do it, do it.'"

When The Associated Press caught up with Mah on Day 64, he was touring the airport's wildlife control operations. Standing at the edge of a runway with planes taking off, wildlife officer Nick de Jongh taught Mah about the various guns and noisemakers used to scare birds away from planes.

Hoisting a pump-action shotgun to his shoulder, Mah fired off a round. And grinned.

As the wildlife truck rolled past landing jets, Mah got a tweet from a follower who saw pictures of him in the old airport sheriff's cells he described as like being at Alcatraz.

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Nelson, Canada, in living color

Reporting from Nelson, Canada—

Up in the northwest forest where Washington, Idaho and British Columbia converge, there's a lazy little international border crossing called Nelway, about the size of a gas station.

"Where are you headed?" a Canadian border patrol agent asked when my family rolled up a few months ago, heading north from Washington.

"Nelson," I told him as he began his search of our car.

"It's OK," said the officer, unenthusiastically. "Kinda hippie-ish. Very laid-back."

Not a problem, sir. The town of Nelson, semi-Victorian, substantially bohemian, sportier and more artsy than your average hamlet of 9,700 souls, sits in the Selkirk Mountains of British Columbia, about 30 miles north of the U.S. border. Picture a college town that has misplaced its university.

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FOR THE RECORD:
Nelson, Canada: In the Oct. 16 Travel section, an article about Nelson, Canada, misspelled the last name of Nelson resident Ernest Hekkanen as Hekkaman.

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It has dramatic leaves in fall, skiing in winter, swimming and boating in summer, hiking and mountain biking much of the year. Thousands of American draft resisters and back-to-the-landers chose this area as a haven 40 years ago, and hundreds are said to remain, but it gets barely a trickle of U.S. tourists.

Just below the town lies the west arm of photogenic Kootenay Lake. Just above town rises Toad Mountain, where the discovery of silver prompted the founding of Nelson about 125 years ago. Nelson's stone and brick Victorians, once the province of off-duty miners and loggers, now house or neighbor eccentric shops, galleries and restaurants. The Sacred Ride (on Baker Street) peddles bikes. Downward Dog (Front Street) offers pet supplies. The Funky Monkey (Front Street) grills burgers. ROAM (Baker Street) promises gear for rivers, oceans and mountains.

Summer may be the busiest season, but "fall is the most beautiful time," said Virginia Wassick, who, with her husband, Duncan, runs the three-room Grand Lakefront Bed & Breakfast in a rambling old house near the lake's edge. In September and October, Wassick said, the guests "come and stay a week or two and sit on the deck, look at the colors and read books. I love the September-October people. They're so laid-back."

Nelson — about 150 miles north of Spokane, Wash., more than 400 miles east of Vancouver, Canada — is too little and isolated to stand as a major destination by itself. But you can fly into Spokane or Castlegar, British Columbia (about 25 miles south of Nelson), and spend a few days driving a 135-mile loop from Nelson past the mountains, lakes, rivers, meadows and towns of Kaslo, New Denver, Silverton and Slocan. Or follow the 280-mile International Selkirk Loop (www.selkirkloop.org), which includes handsome chunks of Idaho and Washington.

For us, Nelson was a three-day respite at the northernmost point of a 1,200-mile road trip that began in Seattle and ended in Portland, Ore. We window-shopped on Baker Street; bought many "Magic Treehouse" volumes in Otter Books for our 7-year-old daughter, Grace; paced the little pier that juts into the lake; took a skiff for a buzz around on the water; and drove across the big orange bridge — which locals call "BOB" because, remember, it's a Big Orange Bridge — toward the postcard views at Pulpit Rock overlook and Kokanee Creek Provincial Park.

With more time, we would have soaked at Ainsworth Hot Springs (about 30 miles northeast) and caught the free ferry at nearby Balfour (a 35-minute ride across the lake to Kootenay Bay). But we did ride an antique streetcar along the Waterfront Pathway to Lakeside Park, where you'll find an organic concession stand (summer only) and busy playground. Downtown, we shared a good but pricey brunch at BiBO, followed by a great (and pricier) dinner at the All Seasons Cafe, Nelson's top restaurant. Uptown, I took a ride on old BNSF railroad track that has been converted into a mountain-biking trail.

One day I drank hemp ale. Another, I ate a hemp cookie. But there were no purchases at the hemp boutique on Ward Street, so no hemp hat trick.

We stayed at the Prestige Resort, a pricey hotel at the water's edge that should be the greatest place in town, given its location. Instead, it felt like an opportunity squandered — a dull, dark building best suited to the housing of Dunder-Mifflin business travelers. Next time we'll look more closely at the New Grand Hotel (more character, lower rates) or a local B&B.

This being Canada, the town has a hockey team and a curling club, both busy from fall through late winter or early spring. The Whitewater Ski Resort, about 20 minutes outside Nelson, is a small operation (three chairlifts, 1,184 skiable acres, no lodgings) that gets big powder — an average of 40 feet of snow per winter. The resort's Fresh Tracks Cafe is a favorite among B.C. foodies, many of whom revere the "Whitewater Cooks" cookbook by former resort chef Shelley Adams.

"I just moved here to retire," Aza Samchuck told me one afternoon as he sat astride a bicycle and watched teenagers leap from a piling into the chilly water. He is 35, Samchuck said, but because he's done well in his profession, he can arrange a few lucrative days of out-of-town work per month, then hang loose in Nelson the rest of the time. Of course, I had to ask his profession.

"I tattoo people," he said.

For a less bohemian, more Victorian Nelson, head to Vernon and Ward streets, where you can nurse a drink inside the stone-faced Hume Hotel (1898) and gaze north to the old ivy-cloaked courthouse (1902) or east to the Touchstones Nelson Museum of Art and History (1902 again). Nearby on Victoria Street, there's the restored Capitol Theatre (1927) and the old jail, now Selkirk College's Kootenay School of the Arts. Near Latimer and Ward streets, there's the big, old red-brick fire hall (1913) and the old brewery (1899), now home to the new Nelson Brewing Co., which specializes in organic ales.

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