Amy’s Visit, Vancouver/Deep Cove/Gabriola Island

Earlier this spring my good friend Amy visited Van on the way to and from a stint on Gabriola Island to paint.   She brought back some amazing paintings as well as pictures (see the trees above) but you’ll have to wait until her next show to see the art.  In the meantime, you can check out her online gallery (www.fragmentsofsoul.com) . She gets all of the credit for these photos too.  I love this one she snapped of her cats hanging out on her luggage before she left Calgary:

On her first weekend in Vancouver Amy, Sarah and I went to Deep Cove, a little East of North Van.   It’s a charming quiet getaway from Vancouver.  We weren’t equipped for it, but the next time I’d like to rent a kayak and head up Indian Arm (a fjord of the Burrard Inlet).

Shots from the harbour in Deep Cove:

After the somewhat chilly walk we warmed up at Honey, a cafe famous for their honey glazed doughnuts.  They were a bit rich for me, but a lot of people rave about these “sweet balls of dough”.  Other yelp comments included “I ate two of these bad boys, with no regrets (my waist line will say otherwise though) “ and “While this dough is heavy, it still melts in your mouth. I'm drooling as I reminisce".

As if Honey’s weren’t enough, we decided to go all out for delicious Thai that night and are grinning after being stuffed with coconut milk concoctions.

After a good time in Van Amy went out to the island for a few weeks to take in the beautiful landscapes and trees which inspired Emily Carr.  She was extremely productive, creating tons of new work.  Looking forward to seeing it soon Amy!

On her way back Amy’s visit overlapped with one from Kiran.  We had lots of laughs over brunch and a walk down Commercial Drive (or simply “the Drive” if you are a cool Vancouverite ).  It’s a funky area of town with tons of good bars, live music, and fabulous brunch places.  It’s also great for spotting hipsters, which I have a tough time defining, but Wikipedia does a pretty good job.

  

Other Drive highlights: candy store, ubiquitous Vancouver rubber boots, and yarn bombing:

Speaking of yarn bombing, some pretty cool stuff turns up if you search it under google images including these gems:

All in all a fun visit with Amy, although I wish the rain had held off!   

Easter, Vancouver Island

Well, it looks like I might have time for a few extra blog entries in the coming weeks/months…At Flowerbowl a week and a half ago (Vancouver ultimate tournament) I managed to injure my knee pretty badly.  It’s still not clear what exactly is damaged (possibly a torn meniscus, knee capsule and/or a partial knee cap dislocation, but mostly likely a partially torn ACL), but only an MRI can really clear that up and we all know how impossible those are to get in the Canadian health care system.   So, while I wait for things to get better or to stay the same I’ll fill you in on some recent trips.

Over Easter we had a family get-together on Vancouver Island to paint my Mom’s basement.  I had never done any substantial painting before this and learned that I’m not particularly good at it (cutting or rolling) but thankfully it’s just the basement which hopefully will be poorly lit most of the time anyway.   We took frequent beer breaks which was fun but probably didn’t contribute to a quality painting product… J    We also subjected Rod to the Sharma’s terribly mainstream taste in the music for several days straight.  Hopefully there was no permanent ear/soul damage.     Too bad the weather so was so nice, including some gorgeous sunsets from the backyard (see title pic).

Dev tapin’ it up to save the poor door frame from my erratic paint strokes.

Sweet hat don’t you think?

Supervising the guys

Group shot of the painting crew (unfair that some people had a chance to shower already [Kiran!] and some of us didn’t…)

 A walk down to Maple Bay for a change in scenery and a break from paint fumes.

At the end of the weekend we took a short break to visit Roberts Memorial Park near Cedar.  Absolutely lovely views

Winter Wanderings, Greater Vancouver

Spring (maybe even summer) has finally arrived in Vancouver with ultimate/hiking/BBQ-on-the-beach season in full swing.   Before it’s too late I wanted to post a few pictures from some of my winter snow-shoe trips in the Greater Vancouver area.  I took a few, but most of the photo credits go to Rod and to fellow avy-course participant Jodi. 

Here are a few from a beautiful day up at Cypress snow-shoeing Mount Hollyburn.   There were lots of people on the trail, but I loved seeing the dogs heading downhill and slip-sliding out of control yet lovin’ every second of it.

Vancouver hiding beneath the clouds:

Clear view of the lions (the two medium sized bumps).  I hope to hike them one of these days when the snow melts.

A whiskey-jack (officially the gray jay).  At Whistler these birds are fun to watch since some of them have learned to perch on ski poles.

And some shots from a short-but-sweet snowshoe up Mount Seymour to catch the sunset.  

And finally some from an avalanche course Rod and I did, also at Seymour.  I felt a lot better about recognizing potentially dangerous terrain after taking the course, and it was good to get a lot of practice working with transponders.  It was actually pretty fun looking for buried backpacks in the snow with transponders in them...hopefully I’ll never have to be in the situation that the transponder is attached to a person instead.

Heading into avalanche terrain...

These dogs were awesome.  I wished I had a pair to help pull me up the mountain too!

Our fearless leader wielding a mini-saw to create a snow-pit.   This part got a little complex...not sure if I could repeat it by myself if I had to.  Pretty neat looking at all the layers though and seeing how weak some really are.  Bang it a few times with a shovel and you can make an entire slab collapse.  Yikes!

Snow pits mean lots of shovel action.

After establishing that one snow column we dug out was pretty stable with a Rutschblock test , we decided to make it fail! (I’m second from the left)

Our last exercise was a multiple-burial scenario.  We had a team of 4 with one leader, two people looking for buried transponders and myself to poke around to look for “jeans-guy”.   You know jeans-guy, he’s the one who shows up at whatever event unprepared, makes poor decisions, and then gets himself buried in an avalanche with no transponder!

Using a probe in search of jeans-guy at his last known location.

I was unsuccessful, but the others found the buried backpacks with the real transponders and we then formed a probe line in a pretty smooth operation and eventually uncovered the pack.