Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

So, I got a text late last night from my good friend, fellow Vancouverite, and fellow kiwi, Bruce to get up and see the snow falling. And falling it was! This was the first time that the snow had fallen down in the city so far this winter, so for Julia and I it was very exciting. We wrapped ourselves up like bugs in rugs, and went down to the water to take it all in.

A few random pics from the Weekend

The snow has started to fall, the temperatures are plummeting, we knew it would happen eventually, but it always seems to catch you off guard..... looking forward to sub zero temperatures for most of this week.
We were in town going to a movie over the weekend, we decided to go to a cinema near Chinatown, so we snapped off a few pics on the way, enjoy.

Sunshine Coast Cycle Tour

We've survived our first overnight cycle tour together! Up the Sunshine Coast to Sechelt and back. We had been trying to do this trip for a few months, but had ironically been put off by weekend after weekend of bad weather. The weather in and around Vancouver has gone decidedly downhill since we arrived, and now it's pretty much, without any exageration, constantly cloudy. The forecast for the weekend was in keeping with that - "rain sat am, light rain sat pm, showers sun am, and cloud with occasional rain sun pm". I read somewhere (the Kathmandu catalogue I believe - very knowledgable!) that the eskimos have like 100 different words for the snow, dealing with it so much, well Vancouverites are like that with rain. So, we finally came to the realisation that if we were going to do the trip before May 2009, we would have to brave the weather. Plus it was Lance's birthday...

Just in case you think I'm exaggerating, a colleague on the following monday excitedly asked how the trip was, saying how pleased she was that we got such "spectacular weather", and in the same breath told me about a small plane tragically crashing just near Sechelt (where we were), due to heavy fog! Seriously - these people need to get out of the country more!

Anyway - depsite the weather, we had a great time! We took the bus up to Horseshoe Bay, and the ferry over to Langdale. The clouds are bizarre, apparently due to the 'dew point' and the peculiar landscape of sea hitting towering mountains (can anyone explain this to me?) - so they just hang there, no matter how warm it is, or being right at sea level. We rode through Gibsons, a very cute seaside town home to an old Canadian TV show Beachcombers", more cute towns Robert's creek and through Sechelt (not so cute) and stayed at a lovely little BnB with, most importantly after a solid afternoon's riding, a seriously grunty spa!



It was good riding, we followed a lot of coastal back roads, it was relatively flat, lots of gorgeous scenery, and hey Lance was carrying all our gear (despite it being his birthday)! He was still a lot faster than me sadly...

Enjoy the photo essay below... (I apologise for my seriously dorky appearance - it was cold!)

Loading the bikes onto the first bus Saturday morning

Julia riding onto the ferry



Lance on the ferry

Lance at one of the many bays


Lance taking a photo of me while riding at about 50km/hr down a hill no hands....

Local artwork

The view of Mt Baker (USA) from Robert's creek. Apparently you only ever see it once in a blue moon.



Me resting at any and every available opportunity


Our great B&B! - included hot tub, fire place, bath robes and slippers, breakfast....



in Gibsons...

The home run to the ferry!

So close....



Lance loading bikes on the bus home



and riding in the door or our apartment building, mission accomplished!

Ice hockey and Poop Cakes

So we had our first taste of real, all Canadian culture on Wednesday night when we attended our first ice hockey game. Ice hockey is Canada's official sport and despite that only 4 of 20 something NHL (National Hockey League) teams are Canadian, there are more Canadians playing in the league than Americans.
On Wednesday it was the Vancouver Giants vs the Tri City Americans (who ever they are?) - in the WHL (Western Hockey League) which is one down from the big boys in the National Hockey League. It was a lot of fun - alot more violent than any sport should be, although I have to admit I was disappointed that there were no fights (contrary to the Giant's rep). But the Giants did win, in a nail biter down to the final two minutes, victory...



The highlight of the night had to be the play breaks - particularly the Tim Horton Tim Bit mini league game of 5 year olds playing icehockey in their shirts which came down to their knees. 'Playing' is probably a bit generous - they'd get the puck, then fall over it, and everyone would come in for D and fall over them - it was soooo cute! Kicking myself that I didn't get a photo/video of them. There were lots of other fun things too including blimps, chicken races on the ice, mascots, t-shirt cannons, fried food etc.


On Tuesday we visited "Fright Nights" at Playland. It was Halloween on Friday and everyone gets into it bigtime here - my work have a potluck lunch on Friday and people dress up in costumes (mighty mouse won this year) and bring food like spinach dip in airplane sick bags, or cakes baked in kitty litter trays with "poop" icing and pooper scoopers to serve ( I think Lance's work was much more sensible).
I'm not so much into that but Fright Night was good fun! It's at nighttime at Playland, Vancouver's amusement park, with some very fun rides, including one of the oldest wooden rollercoasters in North America (which was scarily rickety - and you got serious air time on it!) and they do the whole thing up with Halloween decorations, evil-looking gargoyles, graves and skulls galore, (no small feat!), have dozens of scary house attractions, a Halloween maze complete with escaped psych patients and Frankenstein and then people in costume running around scaring innocent bystanders all night.

Bears, Backflips & Snow

So it's thanksgiving weekend over here this weekend!!! Love 3 day weekends. We went up to Whistler for the Saturday and Sunday. Being the shoulder season hotels are quite cheap, so we got a 5 star one for $99. It's sooo good being able to ride all day, then ride the 1 block from the chairlift to your hotel and then get in the hot tub!

One of the highlights would have been coming across 3 bears on one of the trails! As it's getting colder over here and there are no berries around, the bears are coming lower down the mountain. We came out of some trees into a bit of a clearing and there were 3 smallish bears, the trail kinda went round them and at the closest point they would have been 5 or so metres away! Apparently one bear came right down into Whistler village last week and took a chunk out of some drunk tourist at 2am! However, these bears looked like they couldn't really care less about us though (a good thing!) pity we didn't have our camera handy though!! Doh! Jul also came across another quite large bear riding by herself, about 10 m away, and we saw a few from the chairlift! Very exciting!
On the Saturday night I went up to a place called the Air Dome, it's an indoor jump park with a foam pit where you can learn how to do tricks without munting yourself. I personally don't really have any tricks at all on a bike, so this was heaps of fun.

Me trying to backflip...

Me fighting for my life in a sea of foam...
I basically just tried (un-successfully ) to do backflips for about 2 hours... which sounds like quite a long time, but it's not really. The roll in and jump takes about 10 seconds, then getting yourself out of the foam pit take about 2 minutes, and then standing in line for your next go takes about 15 minutes, so I think I did about 8 jumps. After landing on my head 8 times in a row my neck was a bit sore so it was time to call it a day. I was the only person there on a big downhill bike which made it quite a lot harder too.

Jul also came along and took some pics...



Here's a video so you get more of an idea

So the next day we met up with a local girl Tanya (who has spent 3 months in NZ) who we were going to do some riding with. We took the gondola all the way to the top and went to ride in the snow! Great fun! And not something you do in NZ every day. We also had an impromptu snowball fight when another kiwi saw my silver fern on the side of my helmet and figured I was fair game for a snowball fight. Everybody quickly jumped off their bikes and for the next ten minutes it was all on!

Me and Jul in the Gondola

The snowball fight...(bad photo, but you get the idea..)
Me in the snow...Starting our descent...
Me sliding down the mountain..
Me and Jul at the peak

Here's another quick vid - this time me in the snow...

Heres a few more pics...

Our new riding buddy Tanya... (she can pull some sweet no-footers!!)
A good shot of my helmet...and the snow
snow... and slush...

Jul decided she was way too hardcore for just normal Whistler riding and wanted to go without front suspension for the whole weekend, so she rode with her fork locked out.... on purpose...honest... (j - I blame lance actually! he should have noticed...and in my defence I haven't ridden for about 6 months, had never ridden this bike before and the only thing I knew about riding in Whistler was that it was really, really rough.... which it was!)

So that was that. Whistler Bike Park is now closed until next summer! Luckily we have Monday to recover...