Merry Christmas! (and Mt. Seymour snow-shoeing)

 A belated Merry Christmas and happy holidays to everyone out there!  I’m back home in Calgary for some nice R&R with the family and nothing more on the agenda other than eating, drinking, playing board games, and socializing.   For the board game aficionados out there, “Stone Age” is a good one (kind of a cross between Settlers of Catan and Puerto Rico) that I recently discovered, although I’d recommend not playing against my brother since he wins any strategy game every single time….

Other than enjoying friend and family potlucks in Calgary and Vancouver, I’ve been trying to get out and make the most of an unusually sunny West Coast winter.  I tried my hand at skate skiing (a form of cross-country skiing) which is pretty intense if it’s your first time and your balance is perhaps sub-par like mine; it’s the best workout I’ve had in a long while!  Last weekend I went snow-shoeing for the first time in years and irrevocably fell in love with the West Coast.   It was cloudy in Vancouver, but a short drive away and a few hundred metres of elevation gain hiking and you can find yourself far above the clouds.  We had a day of complete sunshine hiking up and down Mount Seymour and Dog Mountain, tromping around in new powder and sliding on our butts down tricky sections.   Plus my companions brought homemade gingerbread and Baileys and hot chocolate which didn’t hurt either ;).  

 

 

The clouds opened up just enough to catch a glimpse of downtown…

And then everything closed up once again for another breathtaking view.

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: