Deer Lake in Late October

Our weekly run location was Deer Lake yesterday. The weather was perfect, quite unseasonably warm for this close to Hallowe'en.

Tragically Hip-less-ness

We’re now ten days into Tragically Hip-less-ness.

So far so good I guess.

I did another road trip this week which involved about 6 hours of driving on Vancouver Island, from north to south. It was a perfect opportunity to load up the CD player for some “Hip” audio therapy, blasted at fairly high volume. Of the CDs I brought with me I played them all through twice at least before swapping discs. Almost at the end on one song, “Thompson Girl”, I remember snapping back into reality thinking that I’d actually forgotten for a couple or three minutes that Gord was no longer with us. I think that's a good sign in terms of starting to recover from the shock.

And in terms of lasting legacy, if I were him I'd want people to be able to lose themselves in my music at least once in a while.

Empire Landmark Hotel

Shauna came across an interesting garage sale-style event while web surfing yesterday. Somehow I'd not heard of it before despite it being an on-going event for a week already.

The Empire Landmark Hotel on Robson Street is the second structure in Vancouver to feature a revolving restaurant in its penthouse. Unfortunately we've now missed our chance to dine there as the site will be redeveloped with two condo high-rise towers in the near future. In other words, that site's gonna get a big surprising real soon, implosion style.

Interestingly, there was a TV news report earlier this week profiling a huge sale that was slated to occur all week of everything related to the hotel. We only heard about it on the sale's last day, but decided it was a good rainy day outing, and a last chance to see one of Vancouver's "Landmark" buildings.

Empire Landmark Hotel

Need a bar for your basement? Make'em an offer! What's the worst they
could say? 

Ever had the desire to host your own episode of "Iron Chef"? Again, make'em
an offer!

Coincidentally, a walk-through such as this excursion turned out to be is exactly what I do for my job. I conduct property condition assessments, mostly for transactional due diligence, which generally involve a tour of a building from its roof to its basement, viewing interior finishes, heating/cooling systems, electrical systems, fire/life safety items, windows (for potential signs of leakage), etc. As such on this day, at least once I had to refrain from pressing the shutter for anything but an item of interest to me, not for the needs of report preparation.

Need any chairs for your next house party? Christmas party? Wedding?
Bar mitzvah? 

Despite the somewhat haphazard appearance of the linens room, we did
actually pick up a couple of new pillows for 2 bucks each.

"Two fifty for a flat screen

A big smokin' deal to be clear

Happy hour, happy hour

Happy hour is here!"

(Intended to be sung to the tune of "Little Bones" by I think you-know-who)

If you painted each one a different colour you could complement your new
basement bar with a Rubik's Cube-themed refrigeration system.

Twenty-fourth floor views of the "Shangri-La" and the tower of "he whose
name shall not be spoken", high altitude competitors both clawing at the sky.

Twenty-fourth floor view of the West End and English Bay.

Twenty-something-ieth floor in the direction of Coal Harbour and Stanley
Park

Monster mushrooms

I think I may have stumbled upon a local, fast-growing, organic housing solution for Greater Vancouver. If it keeps raining like it has lately, who knows how big these things will grow!

Long Time Running

It's been a tragic week for us "Hip" fans. As I sit here wearing my Tragically Hip 2016 concert t-shirt, having watched and listened to TV and radio tributes all weekend, I guess all that remains is to wait to see if Ry Cooder actually will sing his eulogy.

I think the ultimate take-away from the whole experience is to admire how unselfishly a personal tragedy was diverted towards an urgent national issue. Gord emphasized more than a couple of times the "down here" versus "up there" mentality that exists. I think he's right. Living mostly along the 49th parallel we have it pretty good, with all necessities close at hand, and available employment and income, by and large. Isn't it about time we try to bridge the cultural gap?

Thanks Gord, of course for all the great music over three decades, but also for the big kick-in-the-pants to include and value the North in Canada's multi-cultural mission statement. Perhaps we could call it a "13 Mission Cap" for the 10 provinces and 3 territories included under the Canadian umbrella.

New Sidewalk

We finally took the plunge and hired a contractor to upgrade our damaged sidewalk. It had been damaged during repairs to the drainage system, and was also settling to some degree.

Before

The demolition stage.

No going back now... Our pig, Floyd, is overseeing construction.

A big improvement.

We decided to re-purpose some large concrete pavers that my bother-in-law gave us. I really should have pressure-washed them prior to installation, but the summer kinda got away from me. As is, they don't quite match the new material due to a slight green tint, but I'll remedy that in the spring.

The Weather Outside is Frightful

It seems hard to believe it was only one week ago today that we participated in Victoria's marathon/half-marathon/8K event by jogging 8K in the warm morning sunshine. As I write this (Sunday) there is brilliant sunshine outside (I should be out in it), but last week, Wednesday in particular was pretty nasty. I remember sitting at my desk looking out the window at about 8:30 a.m. impressed by the how dark it was outside. It seemed to have been lighter out there when I'd arrived at 7:50.

Periods of heavy rain occurred later, but I didn't realized the extent of the downpour until later that day as I reviewed Twitter. Turns out there were areas of flash flooding in Vancouver and enough hail to look as if we'd had the season's first snow already in White Rock.

Broadway at Cambie on Oct. 11.

Hail in White Rock on Oct. 11 (Internet screenshot).

Air Travel to Vancouver Island

Lately it seems like another week, another trip to Victoria. I think I've been there five times in the last month and a half. All the work-related trips (three out of five) have been via float plane, and I've managed to get some good views from the air of the places we bicycled (i.e., the Galloping Goose trail system).

The red line indicates the Brentwood Bay to Mill Bay ferry route.

On our side trip last month we detoured west from the Lochside Trail to explore a restored former train trestle, the Kinsol Trestle, near Shawnigan Lake. It involved a small ferry trip from Brentwood Bay to Mill Bay. We then cycled to the town of Mill Bay and a further 12 km past Shawnigan Lake to Kinsol Trestle. It was well worth the ride as it turns out the Kinsol is the largest such wood structure in the Commonwealth of countries! I'd had no idea.

Fort Rodd in the red circled area.

Another place we explored recently, in 2016, was Fort Rodd historic site, across the bay from Victoria. That time we were on a motorcycle daytrip. It was interesting this morning that the natural sunlight lit up the point of land where the fort is located just like a flashlight had been aimed at it.

The Seal and the Rainbow

(Note: Posted out of order. This event occurred the week prior to the Victoria 8K.)

A job assignment yesterday took me via float plane to Victoria. A picture-perfect day it was too, a clear sunny Autumn day. Since I had forgotten my camera in the office, I was committed to using my iPhone to take job site photos, and thus wasn’t intending to take many photos en route to prolong battery life. But who am I kidding? I always take photos on a clear day when traveling by plane, especially via low-altitude craft.

The Lion's Gate bridge at about 8:10 a.m.

The Lion’s Gate bridge is always a photographic temptation, and I succumbed to a near sunrise photo op. Then after leaving the English Bay area, somewhere over the Strait of Juan de Fuca, we encountered some low clouds and I witnessed a peculiar phenomenon that I think was the result of a weird refraction of light through the plane windows from the low angle of the rising sun. A rainbow halo appeared completely encircling the shadow of the float plane on the clouds. I’ve never seen anything like it. Fortunately I had a camera (iPhone) handy.

The other cool thing about the trip occurred on the return leg. I was sitting in the sun on the deck of the float plane terminal when I saw a woman talking to a tour boat operator whose boat was tied up almost right next to me. 

They kept talking and looking into the water. A couple more people walked by, stopped, and also looked into the water. When I got up to investigate I realized they were looking at a seal swimming below the surface, looking up at us, but more specifically looking up at the boat operator. He explained that he often throws fish scraps into the water, left over from his excursions. The seal was swimming around like a trained dog waiting for a treat.

I almost forgot to mention that the plane on the way over to Victoria was all decked out to commemorate Canada's sesqui-centennial. 

Victoria 8K

We just completed our first out-of-town running event, an 8 km jog in Victoria (it was part of the Marathon and Half Marathon event).

I managed to regain my slightly sub-one hour/10K pace with a 47:27 finish. We went with our small informal running group and met up before the run for appies at Chris and Jenn's air B&B, then again for brunch after the event. The weather was perfect; it was sunny and quite warm with even the partially full moon still hanging in the western sky. There had been a really cold wind the day before, funneling through the downtown core. We had thought we'd not brought warm enough clothes at that point.

We managed to do the whole trip car-less. It was door-to-door via transit buses and walk-ons on a BC ferry; about 5 hours each way. Which is interesting as driving probably wouldn't have shaved off much time when you consider how early one needs to arrive in advance at the terminal for a car crossing. Coming home we cut it a bit close by disembarking from the Victoria bus and walking directly to the ticket kiosk mere minutes prior to the ferry sailing.

And plus...I could sleep on the bus and the ferry! And boy, did I need the rest! It's been crazy-busy the last month: the East Van 10K, the 3-day Galloping Goose bicycle trip with Jeff followed immediately by a 7 a.m. Tuesday flight to Kelowna for work, the next weekend jogging 10K with our running group followed by the rest of the day moving furniture while Shauna was away in Winnipeg...on and on. Actually I was even in Victoria earlier this same week, on Monday, for a building review; flew in via Harbour Air.

Shauna tells me I even slept through what she described as a "marching band" below our hotel window the night before the running event. And I normally require almost complete silence to get to sleep and stay asleep.

Our room with a view. We were right across the lane from "Rebar" restaurant,
which, coincidentally, is where we dined.

Harvest Moon

I couldn't get Neil Young's song out of my head today. I figure the only thing to combat such an earworm is to photograph it.

Some clouds crossed its rising path; gave it a Saturn-y ring effect.