Life of Dave

Life of Dave

Friday, June 30, 2017



Us at Buckingham Palace. (It looks so much bigger on TV.)

This flag means the Queen is in residence.

The Changing of the Guard looked more like the Changing of the Band. They
played a song by Rush after the change. I guess they must have gotten advance
notice that us Canadian were in the crowd.

To the untrained eye (i.e., mine) this looked like a modified Canadian flag. It's
associated with one of the bands.

Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Scotia Bank Half Marathon 2017

Finally got around to posting my finish at my second half marathon this past Sunday in Vancouver. After the Sun Run our weekend running group got a bee in their collective bonnet to run the Scotia Bank Half, and I couldn't come up with a legitimate excuse to say no.

It was a very cool training season, and ironically the day of the event set heat records in some areas. It was about 25 decrees Celsius when I crossed the finish line in 2:19:21. Not too bad considering the conditions I guess and the fact that I'm 5 years older than last time I did it, but it was still 2 minutes slower than my last attempt.

There are already murmurs within our group of doing our next Half in Victoria in October...at least the odds are it won't be hot...but don't I have to wait another 5 years? :-)

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Bear Sighting

Yesterday was our final group training session before next weekend's Scotia Bank Half Marathon in Vancouver. In recent weeks we've been training in the vicinity of False Creek and Stanley Park. A very picturesque venue to be sure, but since this week was a shorter run (only 12 km) we decided to switch locales to another favourite, Mount Seymour Demonstration Forest park.

At the 2 km marker, a rare straight stretch, we came across a cyclist signaling us by waving his arms above his head quite some distance ahead. A few seconds later the source of his concern ambled out of the underbrush; a black bear!

Our record of no wildlife sightings (except for chipmunks) has officially come to an end.


The image is a bit pixelated but it's the best my iPhone would accommodate based on the distance we were away from the bear. I couldn't confidently gauge the bear's size but I don't think it was full grown; which was another reason we kept our distance as Momma Bear was probably close by also.