Vancouver Municipal Election and Misc Van Pics

Well, ultimate season is finally over and the rain clouds have come down and parked themselves over Vancouver, so hopefully I’ll have some more time to catch up and post pics of all wonderful hikes I did over the summer.   To start though because it’s still fresh is a tangent on the Vancouver municipal election which happened last week.   It was the first time in six years that I was able to vote in a municipal election which made me sit up and take more notice than usual of local politics.   

I got surprisingly little propaganda from the various candidates and parties (parties at the municipal level were new to me too – a Vancouver speciality).  It must be all the tree-huggers that live here and want to save paper.  But what I did get was a most entertaining “Vancouver Voter’s Guide” with the pictures, contact information and short blurbs from each candidate for mayor, councillor, park commissioner and school trustee.  I think that because Vancouver is a little more on the alternative side, it brings out more interesting characters running for public office than your average city.  

Some of my favourites:

• Did you know that aliases are allowed in this voter’s guide?  E.g. (I am NOT making this up) Darrell “Saxmaniac” Zimmerman (running for mayor) and Amy “Evil Genius” Fox (running for councillor with a phantom-of-the-opera type mask). 
• 
•  I actually really enjoyed the Evil Genius’ statement which included such policies as:  “Cars that plow through crowded crosswalks will be sold for parts!”, “Replace helicopter flyovers with nice, quiet zeppelins!”, and “Rename streets after people who weren’t rich English landowners.”   Her contact email is listed as: amy@trickyvixen.com  ……not the most professional email address I’ve ever seen. 
• Wendythirteen (no first name) had straight-to-the-point all-caps statements such as “I AM YOUR PROTEST VOTE”, “I’M HERE TO STIR THE POT” and “I WOULD WORK HARD”.  Her website if you are interested is hellhole.ca 
•  Amongst the various parties there is “De-growth Vancouver” which caught my attention.

In the end the vote wasn’t very close and Gregor Robertson and his Vision Vancouver team did a clean sweep with all candidates getting in.  I think I can live with Vision and their municipal policies, plus Mayor Gregor is pretty easy on the eyes too ;)

 While on the topic of Vancouver why not post a few pics from the cherry blossoms earlier this spring as well as ones from a great visit with Becky and Kylie.

 

The elegant Burrard St. bridge behind a colourful overpriced water taxi.

Holy black barnacles Batman!

  The requisite Canada Place shot.

Stanley Park totems

 Granville Island totem.

 

Lighthouse Park

 

Great fancy dinner at the Boathouse – thanks soooo much Becky!  Kylie is looking pretty pleased with her crab legs and I’m a half-crazed woman about to attack my seafood pasta con gusto.  Becky is the most calm showing the tools with which she will extract the sweet meat of every last one of her crab legs.

 

 

Monkido Adventure Park with the fam, Vancouver Island

Earlier in the summer all the Sharma kids got together on Vancouver Island for a weekend together.   Besides lots of laughs, BBQs and tossing the disc, we also tried out the Monkido Adventure Park, which I’d highly recommend.  It’s a rope course in the trees that is sure to challenge your balance and get your heart racing as you almost topple over.  

It’s pretty popular so we had to hang out for a bit enjoying the sunshine and hamming it up for the camera.

Finally it was our turn for the safety procedure and giving ourselves all wedgies trying to squeeze ourselves into the harnesses.

The course itself is a long combination of nets, ropes, beams (secured and swaying) and zip lines. 

 

 

 

Taking a breather inside a barrel.

 

 

Probably one of the tougher parts of the course.  Dev has an intense look of concentration in the first and just looks plain confused on where to go next in the second pic.

 

I’m a littled balanced-challenged in this shot…

 But all three of us made it to the end in one piece :)

 

We also checked out the Blue Grouse winery (they have some delicious whites). 

 

 

 And here we are brown-bagging it home

Other pics from a walk we did (Dev got pretty excited skipping rocks) 

 

 Yes Dev, you have found the perfect skipping rock of all time.

Now he tries his luck with a 10 pound boulder...

  

Which way's the beach?

 

A perfect end to the weekend with a Hefeweizen in the backyard in the sun:

Zephyr Retreat, Whistler

Just some photos for this post!  These are from a really fun retreat weekend with my women’s team a few months back at Whistler.  We stayed at a gorgeous new hostel there and got to know each other with a bunch of games.    We got divided up into countries for cooking and the games: Team China, Team France, Team Mexico, Team Italy and Team Canada (my team!).    Props go to Captain Nicole for capturing these on camera.   

A little warm-up margarita from team Mexico.  Pam on the left is representing Team Canada as a hairy-Canadian-lumberjack. 

 

 Team Canada served up some burgers for dinner, but France outdid us all with crepes for dessert.  Isn’t Lydia cute as button in her beret?

 

 More of the very sexy Team France:

Italian stallions:

Among the many games: balloon juggling.  Lee seems to be doing well and then lays out to keep them alive.

 

Harder than it looks: move an Oreo from your forehead into your mouth without using your hands.  

  

After all was said and done we finished 3^rd, France 2^nd and Team China took the win.  What a great night!  More pics from my outdoor summer activities to follow soon…

Silver chocolate medals

A jubilant Team China in quasi-traditional dress.

Vancouver Ultimate

 Since arriving in Vancouver, outside of work I’ve been pretty busy taking in the West Coast ultimate scene.   With mild temperatures and no snow on the ground, it’s possible to play all-year, from winter artificial turf and hat leagues, to spring try-outs and summer league, and competitive team practices.   It’s about time to share some stories and shots from this year!  The first shot is from my women’s team Zephyr at the Solstice tournament in Eugene, Oregon.  It’s quite the drive, but the competition is great with Traffic, Riot and Fury attending.  These are some of North America’s top women’s teams and heck, Fury even won World’s last year!  So getting creamed 13-2 wasn’t too humiliating…although a few more points would have been nice :)   So far the summer has been a ton of fun getting to know and playing with these athletic women.  I’m keeping my fingers crossed that we’ll keep everyone until the end of the season, although people inevitably drop out due to injuries and pregnancies – yes, always a factor in women’s ultimate.  

Anyways, the picture above shows what a lot of women's teams do before each game of a tournament to call the first 7 women onto the field (never seen an open, i.e. men’s team do it; someone usually barks out some names and the guys wander on).  We ladies typically line up and form a sort of tunnel (or castle, or viaduct….we change its name all the time; let me know if you have any suggestions).  The seven people called get to run through the tunnel which is what is happening in the photo and I’m pretty excited to get on the line; the photographer actually won a photo contest with this shot in the team-spirit category. 

Here some other shots from the tournament, including Lee making a great grab, a traditional team photo, and a PG-13 version ;)

 

Going backwards in time now, in the winter I played with an easy-going team called the “Tree Huckers”  (with an oh-so-Vancouver-eco-friendly name).  In addition to the Tree Huckers I played Winter Hat league, where you register as an individual and get thrown get together with other people and a mix of skill levels.   It’s the perfect way to meet people when you’re new in town and to get you out of the house on those rainy Vancouver weekends.   I had the privilege of the captaining our rag-tag bunch and by the end  I had a serious crush on my team; people seemed to have been somewhat modest in assessing their skill levels and we were pretty stacked with fun, skilled players and athletic, gung-ho beginners which is a great combination and we ended up going undefeated the entire season! 

Each team got assigned a province as their team name, and we drew the home territory of BC.  Most teams changed their names (among them “Last Saskatchewan Pirates” , “On-scario” and “PIMP (Party in My Pants)”, the team formerly known as Manitoba), but we were just too lazy and instead took a baking-bent to the name deciding that BC = Bring Cookies, which someone brought to every game.  Making that name even more appropriate was a mistakenly-heard cheer from one teammate. One early morning I yelled “BC on three!” for our group-cheer, which someone mistakenly took as “Obesity”.  So we were then Team Obesity, which was commemorated in our end-of-season team BBQ cake. For those ulti players out there, check out the sweet rabbit wall (the secret of our team success) done up in green gummy bears with full end-zone, brick and side-line cones.  This was a work of ultimate art!

And here is a relaxed team BC after a win:

 

I’m smiling way too much to be playing any serious defence…I must have seen a turnover in the making and am happy about it.

The trendy Vancouver winter look: shorts with a tuque, also favoured by some downtown bike couriers in Calgary winters

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Sometimes league can get a little messy…..

But teammate Doug is in good form with no imminent collisions except with the ground.

I love Tom’s look of determination – he is running down that disc no matter what.

And to finish it off, I mined the VUL (Vancouver Ultimate League) sites for my favourite, wackiest and just groaner bad-pun summer league team names of 2011:

•  WASABI
• Canhucks 2011
•  Dream Big like a Dolphin
• Alarming Disc-colouration
• Screaming Beavers
•  Love Handlers 
• So Flicking Awesome
• Chronic Injury
• Butterfingers featuring Mauricio
• Rookie Monster (lower level div. 6 team)
• Ugly Hucklings
• Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go

OK, one last thing.  It has nothing to do with Vancouver ultimate, but here is the probably the best frisbee clip from a movie ever.  It was sent to me by email with the subject heading "If you were to become a vigilante, this is how I would imagine you would take out your enemies".  Enjoy!