Where No Giesbrecht Has Gone Before

After a wintery mountaintop Christmas with friends, what better to continue the festivities but by spending New Year's Eve in Florida with family? Well, for most of New Year's Eve I was technically "on my way to" Florida, but I certainly made it there in time for the big countdown, and even some champagne!

I always kind of wonder why it's called "bright and early" when getting up early usually means it's still horrendously dark outside. So, I shall say that on December 31st, 2009 I got up very "dark" and early, did one last check of lights, heat and outlets, and called a taxi to take me to the airport.

I usually dislike flying. It's not the being 30,000 feet in the air thing that bothers me, it's more like the dipping and swooping and stomach-bothering that pilot finds occasionally is necessary, and on a lesser note, the sitting upright in a little chair with cold feet for such a terribly long time. But I'm learning to deal. Airport security also really gets on my nerves, as I'm sure 99% of travelers would also say. I knew, going in, that the USA's terrorist threat level had been escalated to "panic attack" over Christmas due to the Jockstrap Bomber, so I knew going in that I was now allowed not two, not one, but zero carry on bags, I would probably have to wait in 4-6 more lineups than usual, as well as get the full body pat down.


Do I have to?

I tried to mentally prepare myself for it all ahead of time, but you know what? I got through the whole gauntlet in about 20 minutes! Maybe it was the ungodly hour of the morning on New Year's Eve or the public's newly instilled fear of getting underwear-bombed, but there weren't really than many people around in the airport at all. Sure, I had to forego the carry ons, I had to wind around the extra barriers, got patted down, had my tampons pulled out of my purse and inspected and all that stuff, but there were never really huge lines of people anywhere and I got to my gate with time to spare. The longest line I saw the whole morning was at Tim Horton's (and of course I was a member of this line as well).


When you see one of these on the plane, you sort of wonder how old it really is.

And now we come to the flight! US Airways. Flown for no other reason than it was cheapest. Certainly not for their lack of any sort of entertainment system, their old and cranky flight attendants, or their watery-tasting ginger ale. But honestly I can't complain about the flight that much either. I had a whole three rows to myself (that's right everyone, stay away! I might have dynamite in my bra! (Well I DO, but that's another story :O) I got to lie down and nap, even snuck into the first class bathroom once. Hehehe.

Hello Phoenix!


In Phoenix I saw the sun. A rare sight in Vancouver this time of year, it was sweet.

I yearned to be outside and clambering around on those red rocks jutting out of the sand, but no can do. I had another plane to catch. Orlando, here we come!

On this flight, I still had an empty seat next to me. I read and slept again thanks to still no entertainment system (have we become that dependent?), drank the watery ginger ale again, and eventually landed in Orlando Florida, directly into the big bear hug of my little brother-in-law Kenny and, of course, my Schatz.

Homeland Security? Check.
Now it's time to take on the in-laws.

To tell you the truth, I was more nervous about staying at their house than I was about flying. It's just that they recently moved, the family isn't too comfortable out there and a little stressed out in general. Here I am thinking, oh dear, I know what the holidays can do to people who are stressed out to begin with, and here I am waltzing in and staying for a whole week just because it's New Year's and I'm Chris' "girlfriend" and I wanted to go to the Kennedy Space Center. (More - and I mean more - about that later!)

But you know what again? It was fantastic! Everyone seemed pretty relaxed. The house was beautifully decorated with Christmas stuff absolutely everywhere, Chris' parents were super nice to me, I got to cook a little, we did fun stuff with Chris' brother and sister all the time, even the dog was less hyperactive than he used to be.

After I arrived in the late afternoon on New Year's Eve we had dinner all together, played their new Wii Fit for a while, then watched the ball drop on TV, actually doing the countdown in "real New York time" which was pretty cool. The parents even popped open a bottle of champagne! Yes, please!

It was about 20 C when I arrived that afternoon. Good for January, anyway. I could get used to this, I thought. Unfortunately that was practically the last I'd see of double-digits for the rest of the week. OK, maybe we had an extra warm day somewhere, but it got seriously chilly starting on January 2nd and it did not let up until after we came back to Vancouver. For most of the time, it was actually WARMER in Vancouver that it was in Orlando. Some kind of snow bird I turned out to be!

So instead of going to the beach or waterslides or swimming in the beautiful pool they have in their backyard (!), we did a lot of hanging out around the house, watching movies and shopping. Shopping turned out to be pretty fun. Even for me. Being on vacation in a new place with new stores, having loads of time and a wad of designated American shopping cash in your wallet sort of makes it more fun than usual. Yeah in addition to the emergency pairs of extra long pants and warmer shoes that I ended purchasing, there were also the not-so-emergency pair of sunglasses, a handful of tops, flip flops, perfume, measuring cups, pizza pan, and various other "souvenirs".


Chris' little sister, being my personal shopping assistant.


Time on your hands? The week before I arrived, Chris had finally found his eternally desired missing Lego set on Ebay and I was granted the privilege of sorting the pieces while he built it.

Overall, we didn't have any desire to drop a week's salary at Disney World, but as a consolation we headed out one afternoon to one of Orlando's many large, elaborate mini-golf courses. This one was called Pirate's Cove. Due to the frigid temperatures, it was quite deserted and we had pretty much free reign of the place.


This was my ball. And palm trees. I liked seeing all the palm trees.


Are you cold, palm trees?


It's kind of funny how a lot of non-Disney-related places and buildings in Orlando are still sort of castle or theme park-esque. This is just some hotel, apparently.


Get in the hole!


A very pirate-y waterfall if I do say so.


Uh oh! Looks like these guys were caught playing extra holes!

AND THEN.

On one still chilly yet sunny day Chris and Kenny and I took our leave from the house and parents for a day, rented a little Volkswagen and ventured out to...


"Hello Jen, welcome to Kennedy Space Centre, we've been waiting for you for almost 15 years"


I KNOW!!

That's right, I finally made it to NASA. Anyone who's known me since Junior High will know that this is a bit of a big deal. Over the years there have been a few contributing factors to my little affinity for space travel: the star charts we made in school as kids, the nights spent camping out on clear nights, the telescope I got for Christmas, the Sci Fi books I read in university, and of course, there were Star Trek, Star Wars, Apollo 13... heck I even liked Total Recall because Arnold Schwarzenneger went to Mars.

And now I finally get to see where the real rocket ships and spacemen come from.


They made the entrance from the parking lot look like the International Space Station with solar panels and such. There was even an astronaut up there to welcome us.



After buying admission, we came into a sort of theme park-ish courtyard with food stands and gift shops and things. Deciding to take the Disney portion of it in later on, we headed straight for the bus tour of the real stuff. You can see a map of our adventures here.


You may recognize this as the Vehicle Assembly Building. The VAB is 160 meters (525 ft) tall, 218 meters (716 ft) long and 158 meters (518 ft) wide. The flag on it is 64 x 33.5 meters (209 x 110 ft) and used 6,000 gallons of paint. Basically, it's huge.

When my parents were there in the '70s (okay, okay, so Giesbrechts have been here before...) they actually got to go inside of it. But those were the days where you could smoke and take water on airplanes, so I don't know. Things are different now. Our bus didn't stop there, anyway.


When we drove by, though, one of the doors was open and we got to peer into the darkness and imagine what space ships were hiding inside.

Our first actual stop on the bus tour was to the LC-39 Observation Gantry. It's a 60-foot tall complex that you can climb and get a view of launch pads 39A and 39B which were used for the Apollo rockets and later for the space shuttles. Unfortunately, we were about a month too early to see the space shuttle up there.





Alright, let's get back on the bus! Time to see rockets!


Oh, hello again, giant awesome building which I'm not allowed to enter...

Although we did passed the giant VAB by once again, we did get a glimpse of the other side of it this time, as well as the Orbiter Processing Facilities, also known as the garage for the space shuttles. At one point, this thing joined us on our journey:


Why NASA needs a train is beyond me. It's on an island of all things. But when you think of how many nerdy guys probably work there, and how much nerdy guys like trains... it only makes sense.

Which brings us to our next stop on the bus tour, the Saturn V Center. This place is a giant tribute to the Apollo missions. You go in through these big Star Trek doors, you watch a tear-jerking movie, then you go into this room that has the actual old firing room computers on display, and in there they play another movie hosted by Jim Lovell himself(!) AND a radio re-enactment of a launch where they lit up all the buttons and screens and even made the windows rattle!


Oh what I wouldn't give to be down there with a slide rule and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses!

As we exited the firing room, we were smacked right in the face with the almighty Saturn V! The most enormous rocket ever built, think 7x what the space shuttle can do. And here one of them was hanging right above our heads! Allow me to walk you through the launch sequence:


This is stage one, also known as S-IC. It was filled with 5 million pounds of rocket fuel and liquid oxygen. It's the the reason for the countdown. After liftoff, it burned for 2.5 minutes, propelling the whole rocket 68 miles up in the air and then it was dropped back down into the ocean.


Goodbye S-IC! You'll have to imagine a sort of ring enclosure around the engines called an interstage also falling away, all dramatic-like and burning orange, like this:




Stage two is called S-II, it has five MORE rockets in it, and it burns for 6 more minutes, getting the ship up to more than 15,000 miles an hour so it could get it's orbit on.


Stage three over here, the S-IVB. This one is "only" 51 feet tall and "only" has one giant rocket engine. They burned this one to actually establish an orbit and also the trajectory to the moon, then it got dropped too.

Alrighty! And this gives access to the best part, the Lunar Excursion Module, or LEM, aka the thing that lands on the moon. It's in there at the top, you can't see it in the picture. Above that is the Service Module with all the life-supporting goodies inside, then on top of that is the little triangular thing called the Command Module where the three itty bitty astronauts hang out. At the very very top is a mini-rocket actually called the Launch Escape System. It was meant to blast off if there was an emergency during launch and yank the human being-containing Command Module right off the whole rocket. They fling this little piece off into space after stage two.


This is what the LEM actually looks like, but you probably know that. Go Neil!


And this is an actual used-up Command Module. I'm in! Room for 2 more!

Just to continue with the summary, then, after the moon trajectory is good, the pilot will detach the Command and Service Module, swing it around and dock it with the LEM, extract it from its section of the rocket, and then fly the whole contraption to the moon. Once there, Neil and Buzz (or whoever it may be) will fly down to the surface in the LEM, get out, bounce around for a while, get back in, take a nap, then use the LEM's little rocket to blast off from the moon and back to meet the CSM and the pilot in orbit. Then, they all high-five each other, eject the LEM and burn the Service Module engine to direct themselves back to Earth. Once there, they get rid of the Service Module as well, and the three of them strap in to the Command Module for a speeding-bullet return into the ocean.

Yay!

We actually had lunch in this giant Saturn V Center with this giant rocket looming over our heads. It was pretty much overpriced amusement park food. I had the "moon burger". Apparently they don't use lettuce or tomato on the moon. Or pickles or onions or sauce or anything. Just meat and cheese. You know, maybe it was just because I was incredibly hungry (or because was eating a moon burger at NASA) but I actually quite enjoyed it!

In the Saturn V Center there were various other things on display, and it was pretty much all beyond cool.


The 1970's astronaut car of choice, a corvette. You will notice the corvette making two appearances in the movie Apollo 13, a red one driven my Jim Lovell in Houston and a "war bonnet yellow" corvette in the shot where Ken Mattingly watches the rocket launch.


"Are the flowers blooming in Houston?"


This is just one link in the track of the enormous crawler-transporter that transports the shuttles from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad. See Chris' feet on the side? Have you ever seen them look so small?


So small indeed!


Here's an old flight plan. I don't remember if it was for a moon landing or not (I can't read "astronaut") but if you zoom in you can see it was written in 1968.


Apparently they made casts of the Apollo 11 crew's hands so they could make their spacesuit gloves the right size. Chris and Kenny thought Neil Armstrong's hands were really small. But guys care about those kinds of things, I guess ;)


They had a bunch of prototype pressure suit designs there, too. This one was my favorite. There was even some kind of crank on the front to adjust the bicycle seat on the inside so that the wearer could properly look through the helmet.

Having spent a huge amount of time in the Saturn V complex, the guys finally convinced me that there was more to see and we made our way back onto the bus, leaving the '70s behind and entering the present day once again.

Next stop: The International Space Station Center.
So this is what they've been doing recently instead of bouncing around on the moon!






I think this was an actual real component of the space station that they brought back. It was entirely behind glass.


Well, how aboout that, eh?

In the area below, they had big mock-ups of the Space Station pieces that we could check out. The instruments and compartments were all behind glass, unfortunately.


Everyone's favorite: the space toilet!


The space shower. How much fun would THAT be?


The space bed. (I had this crazy dream that I was, like, flying...)


The space microwave. Also known to many as a regular microwave.

I don't know what it was about us three, maybe our peak physical condition or our obvious intellectual prowess, but all of a sudden one of the top NASA recruiters came up to us, told us we were perfect astronaut material and asked us if we wanted to take a test flight up to the space station for the next couple of hours.


T-minus 30 seconds to launch - get in there!


Let's do this!


Thank you for your support, America.


Kenny ended up studying the effects of microgravity on automatic doors.


Chris gave some much-needed upgrades to the space toilet.


And I introduced a new weightless cardio workout.
Fly-bo anyone?

Since we had to be back before closing and the shuttle wasn't scheduled to come back for another couple of months, they just stuck us into some old re-entry capsules they found.


Kenny was lucky got his own. Nice landing!


I was stuck burning through the atmosphere with this guy.


Spashdown! Another successful mission.


As you can see, we made such an incredible contribution to space flight we were immediately inducted into the Astronaut Hall of Fame.

After returning from our flight, we managed to rejoin the tour, and got to see some of our colleagues working on more space station components back on earth.






These fine rocket scientists here were holding a light bulb. How many rocket scientists does it take to... oh never mind.

After the ISS Center, the tour bus whisked us back to the Visitor Complex where our journey had begun. Time to get into theme park mode! After being jettisoned from the bus, we made a beeline for the Shuttle Launch Experience simulator. I didn't know how this was going to compare to our actual trip into space earlier that afternoon, but I figured we should still make our admission tickets worthwhile.

So we threw our bags, jackets, cameras and loose change, as instructed, into the lockers provided, and then proceeded up an extremely long ramp dotted with television screens providing information about what it felt like to get launched in a shuttle. Wow, I thought, this must normally be a really long wait. Lucky for us, once again it was freezing cold outside and Space Center visitors were sparse. We made it directly to the top and only waited for about 5 minutes before being escorted into what looked like a Star Trek transporter room. In there, a digital Charlie Bolden (former space shuttle commander) told us the story of the space shuttle and prepared us for the simulation. Then, our group was herded into the ready-room where we would prepare to enter the simulator, each person standing on their own special dot in the floor. A very non-astronaut-looking lady reminded us once again of the importance of keeping our loose change securely stowed, then our doors slid open and we filed neatly into our cockpit seats. Seatbelts, check! We tilt backwards! Scratchy radio voice confirms all systems are go! T-minus 5,4,3,2,1! We have liftoff! We shake like crazy! The backs of our seats push back at us and we pretend they're G forces! Things get smoother and we tilt forward and pretend we're weightless! The ceiling opens up and we see the earth and stars far below! Anthemic music plays! Exeunt.


Thank you for the experience, Shuttle Launch Experience.

The day was moving along at Kennedy Space Centre, but we weren't done yet! Seeing as we had a little time before we were due at the IMAX for a Tom Cruise-narrated special feature, we decided to pay a visit to the Early Space Exploration Museum. In there, we saw all sorts of great things from Russia, stuff from the Gemini and Mercury programs, even another old reconstructed mission control room.




Mhmmm! Just give me a cigarette and let me at that rotary phone!


In Soviet space, satellite orbits YOU.


We meet again, Saturn V! And you've brought your little friends!


Outside the museum, we were able to take a nice stroll through the rocket garden. I wonder if they sell rocket seeds at the gift store...

Gift store!!

Yes, we also had time from the gift store. In a valiant display of self control, I managed to pull myself away with only a few necessary souvenirs. An astronaut fridge magnet, a space shuttle rubber ducky (for my collection) a postcard for my parents, and my favorite of all, a travel mug that has the NASA symbol on it and says "Rocket Scientist". It is the new love of my life. (Sorry Schatz!) It sits proudly on my desk at work and I wash it carefully by hand every day before I go home.


Did I mention the self control? It was very difficult to leave this there.


And this.

*sigh*

OK, time's up at the gift shop, everybody. We gotta get good seats!

Our final destination was the IMAX, always a must-do, especially when it involves space documentaries. We picked the show about the International Space Station, saw how it was built, saw the astronauts' experiments, their space walks, how they eat popcorn in space, etc. etc. The best part was when they started throwing fruit and M&Ms at the camera and in 3D it was like they were floating right at us. It was great, and not least of all because it was narrated by Tom Cruise (whose voice always seems to sound slightly irritated to me, but ever so sexy).


Speaking of sexy...!

Filled to the brim with space information, experiences, souvenir goodies and moon burgers, we slowly made our way back to the parking lot at closing time, feeling rather out of this world.

However, we were quite quickly reminded of where we came from.


Hmmmm. I thought I smelled farmer's sausage on the tour bus!

Oh just kidding.

The rest of the time in Orlando, we really didn't do much. I remember watching a lot of fun movies at home, reading Chris' Mom's cookbooks, blogging about skiing and wishing that it was warm enough to go in here:


One day, beautiful pool... one day.

The Stockmans don't like it Orlando much and they're hoping to move a little further north sometime soon. Their house is quite nice, though, and in the short time they'd been in it, they'd made it pretty comfortable as far as I thought.


This is the front entrance and sitting/dining room area. Nobody uses it much but it's got a ridiculously high ceiling and a great ledge for Chris' mom's Christmas decorations.


In the back is the kitchen and family room (leading out to the backyard and pool!)


And this is a huge loft area upstairs, where we played Wii and had other such fun.

On the day before we left, all four of us "kids" had one last big date at the Cheesecake Factory. Dear America, you have such fabulous ideas sometimes.


The dear Stockman children. Perfect angels.


And me, the creepy in-law, spreading disobedience and corruption, one martini at a time! Mwa hahaha!

Oh boy.

Anyway, we have now reached the end of this blog post and our departure from Orlando. (Honestly, let me know if you read this far because I will give you some sort of medal.) There's really not much more to say, I guess, lucky for you. We woke up at some ungodly hour again, were whisked off to the airport by Mom and Dad where we waited and extra half hour because of ice (yes, ICE - in Florida. Ice in Vancouver? Nooo, why would there be?). Due, once again, to the cheap-ness of our airline choice, we had to sit apart from each other on the first entertainment-less flight to Phoenix, although the guy next to me was chatty enough and plenty entertaining. He was coming back from a few months in Puerto Rico, he showed me a bunch of butch jewelry he'd bought for his biker sister. Apparently he is the son of the man who played Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz. And he's seen a lot of aliens. I quite enjoyed our chat. On the second flight Chris and I managed to shuffle seats with some people and sit together, this provided me someone to sleep on, and sleep I did.

Arriving in Vancouver at some random hour in the afternoon, we claimed our bags and headed directly to the food court where we filled our faces with the first actual meal we'd had time for since before dawn (that is, Eastern Time dawn).

I guess I could say it was good to be home again, but I'm not so sure. Of course the very next week it shot right back up to the high 20s in Florida while Vancouver remained at an incessant 5 degrees plus rain. And of course only a month later a space shuttle was actually supposed to LAUNCH...

Plus I had to go back to work. That's a hard thing to do after almost 3 weeks of vacation. I guess I'll just have to find little things to make me happy again, you know, things like TV shows, weekends, cookies... After all, you gotta go back to contributing to society at some point. Even if you'd rather be in orbit.

Just Wrap Me in Spandex Already

Hello blog readers. I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas. I spent my holiday season this year in yet another out-of-the-ordinary way, but it was altogether quite awesome. For me, an “ordinary” Christmas is to fly home, visit family, grandparents and old friends and basically spend lots of time eating and sitting around on the living room floor doing puzzles.

Although, since I haven’t really done Christmas that way in the past 5 or 6 years, am I still allowed to call it ordinary? Anyway, once again this year due to work (and my failure to snap up the Christmas holidays when they were offered in JULY) I couldn’t get any time off in the coveted week between Xmas and New Year’s. So, as Chris had plans to take off to Orlando to see his family the minute his school days were complete, I was to be left by my lonesome once again in Vancouver.

Just as I was coming to terms with this arrangement, our friend Harmony stops by and casually mentions that she’s on her own for the holidays too, she plans on going downhill skiing in Revelstoke where her brother lives, and was wondering if I might… “YES” I blurted out before she even finished the sentence.

The cold, dark days dragged on and on, but the 24th finally arrived and we were off to the mountains! The drive was clear, extremely beautiful and thankfully uneventful!


Even pictures taken through the windshield came out ok.




And as seems to be our custom when Harmony and I venture out, we stop for some reason in some tiny one-horse town, this time in Merritt, BC for a tire checkup.

After being on the go for approximately 8 hours, we arrived in Revelstoke, BC with its 360° of giant, snowy mountains.


Our tiny Christmas home away from home.


The neighbors’ enjoyable snow phenomenon.


Their house was incredibly cozy. Even wood heated! But don’t worry little Charlie Brown tree, we won’t use you for the fire!


We discovered a few other family members when we arrived. This is Chester and Leeroy. (Yes, spelled with two “e”s. What of it?)


Leeroy was the life of the party, a kitten that they’d adopted only about a week before we got there.



And this was our cozy pull out bed, shared by Harmony and me, and more often that not, an energetic Leeroy as well.

Upon our arrival, we just whipped up some dinner and spend the rest of Christmas Eve with our hosts and their friends who kept stopping in. I literally fell asleep on the living room couch in mid-conversation at some point, only to be gently wakened as everyone was leaving. Mmmmm I love falling asleep.

The next day, being Christmas and all, first things first, I called my family in Manitoba before even getting out of bed, (not least of all because the wood-fire hadn’t been stoked yet!). Happily all family members were thrilled with their gifts, but unfortunately a giant snowstorm was preventing any and all travel in Southern Manitoba, and so the big family gathering was postponed. I voted to make it for July so I could come too, but no luck. Apparently they did it the following weekend.

Back in BC, Christmas day was clear and sunny, the heater had been started, and things were already underway in the living room. As I joined the festivities, Harmony suddenly pulled out this big, adorable, snowman-themed stocking overflowing with goodies, and it was for me! There were socks, fancy hand lotion, Italian soda, even tomato paste. Haha! All the good stocking stuff. I didn’t even have anything for her! What a sweetie.

Our next holiday stop was to… uhh… Harmony’s brother’s friend’s parents’ place. Basically, to me, they were random strangers. But they were incredibly welcoming and they served us a fabulous Christmas brunch from their living room with a fantastic lake and mountain view! It turns out most (all?) of the people there were actually from Ontario, so there was plenty to talk about and we stayed there well into the afternoon.

Coming back to our little house, we showered, changed and headed right out again for Christmas dinner! A little background: Harmony’s brother is a chef at a very popular little restaurant and bar in Revelstoke called “The Village Idiot”. A lot of the people who work there and around the area are also from (you guessed it... ) Ontario and were staying here for the holidays as well. It was giant, perfect Christmas turkey dinner with all the fixins and BYOB. I ended up with a glass of some kind of locally made “white merlot” which I quite enjoyed. Walking home that night on the quiet, frozen, small-town streets was also lovely and very nostalgic.

Bring it on, Boxing Day!
We were up relatively early the next morning, scarfed down some serious bagels and headed straight to the ski hill. After picking up rentals and lift tickets (guilt-free, thanks to Christmas money from Mommy and Daddy!) we were off! Or I should say, “up!”



Here we are in the gondola, my dashing and daring hosts, Chris and Cathy. Oh, and the one in the middle with the small head, that’s Harmony.


And me. In the gondola of death.



Well, here I am at the top of the mountain. It’s like the trees have snow magnets in them or something. I thought they looked so cool.


And the view in the other direction. That is, down. Very. Far. Down.

Apparently we were really lucky with the weather that day. The temperature was “inverted”, which means although it was cold and cloudy down in the town and in the valley, the air at the top of the mountain was warm and it was bright and sunny too! Let’s stay up here all day!

Oh right, we came here here to ski.


Let’s start by putting these on…


And the goggles…


Wait for me, I’m coming!

Now some of my friends will tell you that when skiing I tend to be a very slow moving vehicle. So what if I’m careful, I like to take my time, make completely sure I don’t fall and break my neck, enjoy the view, things like that? Well, at Revelstoke… there’s really no going slow. Once you’re at the top, the only path is down and the only speed is fast.

They say they took me on the “easiest” black diamond run. But I made it! After 15 minutes of pure leg-burning, brain-screaming, sound barrier-breaking skiing, I made it to the base of a chairlift (which was only halfway down the mountain). I was so sweaty, exhausted and proud of myself! Go black diamond! My companions were like, right on, she survived, let’s go back up! (See, for them it was like a walk in the park) I was like, seriously? Without eating or drinking or taking a nap?

But we did it. We went straight back up, and did the run two or three more times before skiing all the way down to the bottom for lunch. Only at one point did I seriously fall down, or “bailed” I should say, in ski-lingo. It was at the steepest point of all, damn near 90 degrees as far as I could tell. I have no idea what happened but all of a sudden one ski and both my poles were gone and I was sliding on my back, head first down the mountain, trying not to develop into a giant snowball. Not fun. Somehow I came to a stop, though, and my companions were all there, gently looking down at little old me, asking if I was all right. I commanded my brain to wiggle all my limbs. They all responded. Thumbs up. But I’m definitely ready for lunch now.


Here we are, happy to eat. Most of the people that made us our lunch (and rented our skis, and helped us aboard the gondola etc.) by the way, were none other than the friendly Ontarians we’d partied with the night before. Oh yeah, we know all the right people.


The cafeteria itself was not too shabby, either.

After lunch, I was ready to go again. To the top! I exclaimed.
Harmony was very proud of my positive attitude, but it was getting close to closing time, and it didn’t look like it was going to be possible for me to take the slow, windy way all the way down on this final run and still have my skis returned by 4pm, we took the gondola to the ½ way mark and really made the most of the snow, the view and the sunset.


Thank you, pretty mountain!


I’ll miss you frosty trees.


Till next time, snowy peaks.



Adios, mountaintop sunset.

What an awesome day! Such and adventure and so gorgeous. Apparently that ski hill just opened a couple of years ago, and one of my hosts, Harmony’s brother Chris actually worked on the crew that built the gondola on the side of the mountain. Wow! The resort isn’t even completely finished yet, but you can tell that place is going to be really popular.

I don’t really remember much else after skiing. I think we made risotto that night at home, watched a movie. What I do remember is my leg and arm muscles slowly starting to feel like they were melting off my bones, and every time I closed my eyes, feeling like I was hurtling over a cliff. Good times.

The next day, to the joy of my skiing muscles, was hot springs. I had never been to a hot springs before! Yay for being half naked outside in the winter. After sleeping in somewhat and hanging around the house in the morning, we grabbed our bikinis, jumped in the car again and wound our way back into the mountains, on roads lined with puffy snow banks and icing-sugar coated trees. We even saw two moose! They were cool. Sorry, no pictures.

Our road came to an end at this big body of water and we drove right onto a ferry with a Christmas tree on top of it.



Apparently some time ago the province built this dam and flooded a big portion of this important mountain road. So they put a ferry there instead and made it free. Whatever works!

Down at the hotsprings on the other side of the lake, we came in, told them we were from Revelstoke and paid the “local” admission fee (oh yeah), and proceeded to get naked in this locker room. Not Japanese-naked, mind you. On a side note, this whole experience made me quite regret being cheapos and never going skiing and/or to an onsen while in Japan. Maybe Audrey’s Kyoto 2012 reunion will actually happen and we’ll get to do it then.

Ok well back to Canada-naked. With only bikinis and flip-flops to shield us from the sub zero BC air, we proceeded towards the heavenly 38-degree water pool.


That’s the one on the far right.

It’s the mid-temperature pool. It’s where Harmony and Cathy stayed the whole time. But not me. After hanging out in there for a decent amount of time, I decided I wanted to turn up the heat and paid a visit to the middle pool – the hot one. Ok so far so good, like a hot tub without the jets. Now what’s that other little pool on the left, you’re asking? You mean the one that if you zoom in on the picture of it you can see a think crust of ice forming around the ledge? That pool? Well I’m glad you asked. That’s the cold pool. It’s about as cold as you can make water without freezing it. Colder, for all I know, since there’s minerals dissolved in it and all. It’s for doing that Scandinavian cold-water dip thing that’s supposed to be so good for your body. I must have had some black diamond adrenaline left over in me because I got my body temperature nice and high in the hot pool and then I went for it. Walked right in, dipped down to my shoulders, hyperventilated for about ¾ of a second and walked right out again. It was incredible! Such a good feeling on your skin, too, going back into the warm water. Like pins and needles. Provided you don’t pass out on the way there. Which I didn’t. Before we left, I actually did the cold dip one more time. I felt so European.

Boy, does hot springing really work up an appetite! The girls were savvy to this, however, being experienced and all. In the car on the ferry they whipped out some major cheese and crackers and dip. It was excellent. Back in Revelstoke, we treated our hosts to a fine dinner at a local restaurant, Chris’ restaurant being too popular and busy to get a table that night even though it was my first choice! Oh well, I guess that means I’ll have to go back to The Village Idiot some other day.

The next morning we were off again. Weather was looking good although a little less clear and gorgeous as it was on the way there. We made good time even with a little double back to pick up a forgotten cell phone (I know what you’re thinking, but it wasn’t mine) and a nice stop for sit-down lunch at Boston Pizza. Or “Il Bostonio Pizzeria” as a certain friend has enjoyably named it. I ordered a whole medium pizza for myself so that I would have some food to eat that night. I am just so smart.

Back home in warm, snowless Vancouver as I reveled in the memories of an awesome, adventurous Christmas, I unpacked my suitcase but left it out and open on the bed. I had to leave it ready to get filled as I would be packing for my next journey – to Florida – in two days! Unfortunately, this meant two random, slow days of work in between, and sleeping on the couch as my partially packed suitcase inhabited the bed. Oh well. More holidays, here we come!

East Meets West... And All the Rest

After almost two years of casually bringing it up in conversation (and occasionally not-so-casually begging and pleading), we finally convinced Steph and Trevor to visit us in Vancouver!

The whole week before their arrival was spent tidying, laundering, booking, reserving and confirming. By Saturday we were ready! The funny thing is, I couldn’t even meet them at the airport because I was working that afternoon. Chris got to be the one who got to actually go to the airport and pick them up, and it was my job to scoot on down to the rental car place after work and pick up our wheels!


Yup, this beautiful Toyota Camry Hybrid was going to be ours for one whole week


Let the Vancouver vacation begin!

… by going to the Chinese mall. Oh, the spontaneity. Our plan was actually to just go home from the airport and have a fabulous BBQ dinner, but since we were sooo close already (and we had a CAR) we just had to swing by the Yaohan and T&T Supermarket. It was fun and a good welcome to Vancouver. In the words of Steph “Jen, I’m really questioning right now as to whether I’m still in Canada”.

Well, lucky for Steph, we eventually made it back to Canada safe and sound and did have a fabulous grilled salmon dinner courtesy of me, Chris and R2BQ II.

And thus begins our Vancouver vacation! I probably shouldn’t go into minute details about every part of our week-long adventure (however tempting that may be), so I’ll try to let the pictures do the talking… except for the first day… when Chris or I didn’t take any pictures.

So long story short, we took our two bikes, plus a couple of borrowed bikes, loaded all of it into the new Skytrain and headed out to Stanley Park for an excellent bike ride. Sound familiar? I did the same thing with Mom and Dad last December. http://chrisjenny.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html The scenery will be about the same, only it was summer so a heck of a lot warmer and more crowded. Maybe I can put up a few of Steph’s pictures later. That night we had Korean BBQ, which, again, we did not take pictures of but it would have looked pretty much exactly like it did the last time we were there:



Day 2 found us back in the car, bright and early, on our way to Whistler. Now, getting to Whistler entails driving up the Sea-to-Sky highway which is perhaps one of the most beautiful, frightening and car-sickness-inducing things that one can do. I think only Steph’s camera got pictures of the highway, but it’s hard to take pictures from the moving car anyway. You just have to imagine: mountain-cliff-highway-cliff-water… and on the other side of the water, more mountains.


I stole the front seat. How are you guys doing back there?

One very attractive pit-stop on this highway is Shannon Falls.


Steph was quite impressed


But how could you not be? Now let's play “Find the brother-in-law who snuck past the barrier and climbed up onto the actual waterfall”


Here Jen, this waterfall must be making you thirsty

Next, stop Whistler! This was our bed and breakfast. It was so cozy, tucked away in the woods with its pine beds, big comfy couches and a hot tub out on the patio. I can seriously imagine spending a wintery ski-weekend there, but having a summer getaway was pretty nice too.



After dropping off our bags, we headed straight for the mountain.


Up we go! And this is only gondola #1


Are we there yet? It was basically a long, hot ride in a scratched-up plastic bubble


Goodbye Whistler Village, see you later!


We made it! Welcome to Whistler Mountain


So pretty, and so high up!

But not high enough. We’ve got one more lift to go – then we hit the peak!


This was the best chairlift of all. No plastic bubble, riding up at an extremely steep angle, over top of real, actual glaciers to the peak of Whistler. Ask Chris how he felt when I started swinging my feet.


Hello, glacier!

At the peak of Whistler Mountain is where it starts to get really cool.



From up there, you can see for miles and miles around. We wandered for quite some time, and eventually found a little place to have our high-altitude picnic.


Greatest part of our picnic, the air-pressurized chip bag


We all found something to do up there. Trevor constructed rock-people…




While Steph and I played “mountain goats”. Yes, we are that cool.

And now, from Whistler to Blackcomb!

Blackcomb is the next giant mountain over, also part of the ski area, and just this summer they completed the “Peak 2 Peak”, a state-of-the-art enormous gondola that carries you from one mountain peak to the other.
You can see a live webcam of the mountain peaks here.
And also see its record-breaking technical stuff here.


Jump in everybody!


Here we go! Across a gigantic valley on tiny little wires…


It was such a gorgeous ride


Here we are on Blackcomb mountain!


Look at these two, seriously representing Altona

After sufficiently hiking around the peak of Blackcomb, did we go down? Oh no! We took the Peak 2 Peak back across to Whistler, then back again to Blackcomb. Why not? We had day passes :D Finally, as the mountain was threatening to close, we took a series of chairlifts back down the Blackcomb side. While riding down I was lucky enough at one point to see a ski jumper practicing by sliding down this big construction and landing in a big pool. Let us also take a moment to remember Steph’s yellow Loewen Insurance hat (as pictured above), which, while riding down, was carried away by a gust of mountain wind, never to be seen again.

Our mountain adventure was followed by dinner in Whistler Village, a comfy night in our B&B, then a superb gourmet breakfast.

Day 3 took us back down the Sea to Sky highway into Vancouver. I seem to recall that we made a spontaneous trip to White Rock that evening, and although we were planning on having Indian food in Vancouver, we ended up staying at White Rock for one of their always-beautiful sunsets and Greek dinner at Pelagos.


This was the view from our table


Steph and Trevor, digging in


This is the view from the beach afterwards, where we had coffee. Cellphone-wallpaper worthy if I do say so.


Steph liked it too

Day 4 and we’re back on the road. This time to Vancouver Island. We had to delay our departure by a few hours thanks to a very ill timed employment skills test I had to write, but we shall not speak of that again.

It’s ferry time!

I always like the ferry. I mean, I’ve never been on a cruise ship like these other two but it feels pretty big, and it’s so cool that there’s shops and a restaurant inside. Of course, you can always tell who’s a tourist and not a commuter because they’re outside hanging over the railings, no matter what the weather.


I’m always a tourist


Not quite Mexico, but having fun!


Oh so windy! Steph is making fun of me because I can't keep my eyes open.


Pretty little islands and things

Before long, we were in Victoria, checking in to our hotel, tying (unsuccessfully) to get ahold of my friend Jessica for dinner, and eventually just googling fish and chips places in the harbour and coming across this:


Upon first glance, it may look like just another shipping container, but don’t be deceived! It’s a totally amazing fish and chips shop!

In our further wanderings around the inner harbour, we came across the usual pretty Victoria sights.


May I present her royal fancyness, The Empress


Her majestic cousin, the BC Parliament Buildings




A fancy old building


And another fancy old building. Teehee! I feel so fancy and old!

After getting back to our hotel that night, we finally got a hold of Jessica. She’d not been having a very good day and had been out of touch, so Chris and I left the young ones to go swimming at the hotel, while we went and visited Jessica in her new house. We helped her with her internet and chatted with her and her roommate for a bit. We were itching to get back to the pool, though, so before long we were back at the hotel, splashing away. Jessica came by a little later and hung out some more.

We finished swimming but the fun wasn’t over! There were bathrobes and face masks and chips and beer to be had!


Oh! Look whose eyes are shut now!

Day 5 found us waking up in our fancy hotel room to complimentary coffee and tea.


Me, just enjoying a spot of tea in Victoria, reflecting on the fun had thus far

That morning, I forced everyone to eat at my favorite fancy organic breakfast place. Seeing as it was mid-morning on a weekday, we got the best table in the house. I’m also pretty sure everyone enjoyed their food. I remember Steph taking a picture of her plate, and I do recall Trevor agreeing that the “Costa Rican Rocket Fuel” coffee was excellent.

All fueled up, we were ready for the rest of the day! We returned to the hotel, picked up the car and headed north to Cathedral Grove. You will recall that Chris and I had been here before during last year’s camping trip to Tofino. This time, we got to spend a little more time in the old growth coastal rainforest, really taking it, learning about the trees and exploring.


What’s it like, waaay up there?





Steph was really looking forward to coming here.
… I think she ended up quite enjoying herself.


My highlight was the aqua-blue glacial lake that we stumbled upon. This was part of the park that we didn’t see last time.

Returning to the Camry, we realized that we had two choices: a) we take an easy drive into Nanaimo, find someplace to eat dinner and catch the ferry at 7pm or so. Or b) we drive like absolute maniacs directly to the ferry terminal to catch the 5pm ferry and eat dinner in West Vancouver.

Which one did we choose (and I use the term “we” very loosely)?

Let’s just say Chris was very proud of himself as he parked the car outside his favorite pizza place in West Van.

I'll admit, it was nice to be on that ferry because we got to ride in the sunset.




Now there's a real cruise ship

Day 6 already??

Where did the time go?
Well, this was another Vancouver day. I seem to recall breakfast at home and then, keeping in the spirit of old fancyness, a little visit to Queen Elizabeth Park.


How delightful!

Next was one meal that I’d really been waiting for – sushi! No trip to Vancouver is complete without a little taste of the Japanese goodness. Did you know that I never actually ate the “raw” sushi when we lived in Japan? There was just so much other crazy stuff to try, plus I could never make heads or tails of the traditional Japanese menus. But in Vancouver, my friend, the menus are in English and the sushi is top-notch.

Unfortunately, the Janzes were not very impressed, or perhaps we can just assume that their taste for raw tuna and seaweed will take a bit longer than one afternoon to develop. For the record, they both did actually try the raw fish, and I believe Trevor even tackled more than one kind! You guys get “A” for affort.

Next, in keeping with our fish theme, but yet nowhere to be found on our little vacation itinerary, is our spontaneous and awesome trip to the Vancouver Aquarium! I’d actually been here once before, back in 1995 while on the music trip with school (and a little part of me dies inside when I think of how that was almost 15 years ago!)

Good times at the Aquarium.


We caught the dolphin show


Saw a parrot


We visited their new baby beluga whale


Here’s the baby playing with its mother and/or half sister. I don’t quite remember exactly how the mating went on, but it was a little wonky.


That’s right, it’s Nemo! How could you not make a movie out of this little guy?

Later that evening we finally ended up having Indian food, another Vancouver must-do. Bringing back memories of Ajanta as it always does (but never quite measuring up, of course) we had a delightful dinner scarfing down curry and naan, tandoori chicken and lassis. Steph and Trevor enjoyed this infinitely more than the sushi lunch.

That evening, with our bellies stuffed, we finally cruised down to our favorite beach for a little stroll as the sun went down. Oh, how I would love to do that every day. If only the houses in this part of the city weren’t gazillions of dollars.



Day 7 and our last day together. Must we part so soon?

Since they had a late afternoon flight, we managed to squeeze in one more Vancouver adventure before they left. IKEA! It came highly recommended by Mom and Dad, and seeing as Steph and Trevor had just purchased an adorable little house in adorable little Rosenfeld, we just had to go! Unfortunately there wasn’t much room in their luggage for furniture and shelving and things, but they picked up a few handy souvenirs, plus we were able to have a fantastically cheap and yummy lunch before they left.

And then… the time came. We piled into the car one last time and drove down to the airport. We topped off our Vancouver experience with some lattes from Starbucks and off Steph and Trevor went back to Winnipeg for what is sure to be a delightful winter ;)


Bye bye, we’ll miss you!


Next time we see each other, it might just be in Rosenfeld!

When It Rains...

... you get to play in the mud!

It was August long weekend, a huge heat wave had settled upon Vancouver and all the beautiful air-conditioning-less Vancouverites were flocking to the natural, sandy Pacific beaches. What did I do? Jump on a plane to flat, beach-less Winnipeg where it was 10 degrees, of course! To go camping… in a tent…

It was a great trip, actually. Reason for going was that that my cousin Aaron was getting married, and to the benefit of all of us sacrificing our long weekend for this wedding, he decided to have it at the lake! Yay! Can’t really blame him that it was freezing cold.

So I left straight away after work on the Thursday. Chris picked me up in a zipcar and chauffeured me directly to the airport. When I got to the gate, I squeezed into a chair in the midst of this big Filipino family with kids crawling all over the place. A few minutes later this guy in a nice suit comes in and squeezes into the spot next to me. I managed a sideways glance and briefly thought to myself, “hmmm this guy looks like a dark-skinned Gary Doer”, then went back to studying my boarding pass. A little later, a couple more important-acting-yet-Manitoba-type people roll their suitcases through the children and start chatting with my bench-mate about “premier’s meetings” and things and I realize that it must be Gary Doer after all! I guess he’d just got a lot of sun... (although I have my doubts that it was in Winnipeg!) Later on auntie Ev told me I should have said “Hey Doerksen!” but I didn’t ;)

The flight was quite nice, I watched X-men Origins on Air Canada’s luxurious seat-back entertainment system, and before I knew it, I was riding those little escalators down to the baggage claim to meet my sister and brother-in-law in the Winnipeg airport. They took me home (and little did I know that would be the last time I saw their apartment!) and we pretty much went straight to bed since it was midnight in Manitoba. The next day we loaded the car and headed out in the rain for Riding Mountain National Park!


Allow me to take my place in the back seat amongst the suitcases.


Hey Steph!


This is Trevor, demonstrating the skill required to navigate southern Manitoba with a GPS. See, he’s so good he can do it with his eyes closed!

Arriving at the lake, we found the family’s cluster of campsites and proceeded to set up our own little tent in the drizzle. Oh! Was it was cold! I even had to pull out my stinky old fleece-lined raincoat that I stuffed in the bottom of my backpack “just in case”.

The big plan was to have the wedding that evening on the shore of the lake, and then go back to the lodge and have drinks and snacks. It was a good plan! Unfortunately, the weather didn’t get the memo. And so, since it was raining and cold, we had a sort of makeshift ceremony in the reception room of the lodge, waited an hour or so, then the drinks and music got started.


This is the only shot I got of the wedding. The handsome one is the Giesbrecht, of course.

All in all, I just had fun sitting around with my family, catching up, drinking lemon water from the bar and playing with my ipod because the lodge had wi-fi. That’s one think I didn’t expect on my Manitoba camping trip!

Moving on to the rest of the weekend, we did a lot of cooking and eating – possibly the most important part of any camping trip.


Dad is very proud of his “camping kitchen”


Me and Dad in a tag team crepe-making venture


Steph, really enjoying my crepes


Of course, Grandma can’t help but take part in the cooking.


It It was so nice to see her again!


Camping’s a little different now than when we were kids, but just as fun :)
(This one’s for you, Harmony! Long live Oscar!)

Since it was too cold to swim or hang out by the lake, the between-meals activities for Steph and Trevor and Dad and I consisted of mountain biking all over the place! Clear Lake is pretty huge and over the course of the weekend, we biked quite far in either direction around the lake, found a lot of beautiful spots, and got sufficiently and wonderfully muddy in the process.


Hey, is that my hat!?


At one point, the bike trail narrowed into this little sandbar with water on both sides, and I just had to put my feet in! It was a highly technical process. Step 1: lay mom’s crappy bike down in the sand as close to the water as possible. Step 2: carefully take off shoes and socks and place them on the bike. Step 3: roll up pants and disturb some fishies!


Occasionally, we even got to bike and eat at the same time. Yay for saskatoons!


On one evening, Dad and I got to do some biking of the motorized variety. Thanks uncle Ken!


There weren't enough bikes for everyone so some of us simply hung out.

The chilly long weekend coming to a close, I had one more day before my flight back to Vancouver so I decided to squish myself into my parents’ truck and ride along home to Altona with them. It was nice to visit. I managed to find some books in my closet that I’d been searching for, play with my old telescope a bit, have lunch with my other Grandma, help Mom and Dad unpack the camping gear and go for a little bike ride around town to see what’s new.


“Helping” my ingenious dad unload his homemade camper from the truck


What’s new indeed! Turns out they’d built a new fountain and sculpture garden next to the park where the dilapidated mini-golf used to be. Yup, this place gets Jen’s stamp of approval.


Jen + sculptures = friends

And finally, some scenes you just don’t see in Vancouver:





I returned to Vancouver on Tuesday night and the heat wave was pretty much over. No time for the beach anyway, since I was back to work bright and early on Wednesday. I smell some more holidays coming up, though! Yup, soon I’m going to get to pick my sister up from the airport! Can’t wait!

I Will Have My Day Trip

Moving right along with summer, let’s take a trip to White Rock.

It happened a little later than expected, actually. You see, Chris had this big plan to pick a day that we both had off, (preferably the solstice) rent a little car and make a trip down to White Rock where we would spend the day cruising around, shopping, drinking coffee, and most importantly spending the exceptionally long summer evening strolling down the beach and watching the sunset.

Unfortunately on the solstice it rained, and it was cloudy and retardedly chilly for the next couple of weeks, and we worked a lot, and well, it was just starting to get annoying in general. So at one point we just picked a day off and said rain or shine, we’re having our day trip!

It wasn’t the greatest weather in the world, but fine for driving and shopping and drinking coffee. In the evening when we got to the pier for our little walk, the sun was starting to peek out in the west!


Hello pier!


Hello sky!

Aside: I don't know if anyone remembers, but this is the very same pier that we happened to see in a Bollywood movie that time we were having dinner at our favorite Indian resturant, in none other than Kyoto, Japan!

By far the most fantastic part of our day was dinner. After our bit of pier-walking and train-viewing at White Rock Beach, we hopped into our little Pontiac and drove along to Crescent Beach, most notably to Pelagos, which we have officially named “Greek Restaurant with Best Real Estate Ever”.

Probably due to the drippy weather, and it being a weekday, the outdoor, beachside patio at Pelagos was virtually empty. The thing is, it never quite rained at all, the furniture was totally dry, and they even had those patio-heating lampstands between each table. Fine by us, let’s get a seat with a view!


Yes, and this was the view from our table.

Allow me to point out that there isn’t even a road between the restaurant and the beach. Just an unpaved walkway. Oh so peaceful.



Seeing as it was apparently still raining somewhere in the sky, but the sun was setting a healthy orange and red in the west, we were also treated to a rainbow in the east! What a treat!


And last but not least, let’s put up a picture of my attractive date.

We would have taken a picture of the massive platter of Greek food that we’d ordered, but it was gone before the cameras even had a chance – sorry!

After dinner, taking advantage of the still-relatively-long day, we took one more stroll, watching every bit of the sunset as we walked from one end of the beach and back again.




Pretty handy with a cell phone camera, huh?

Grill, Feast and be Merry

Long live summer! Oh, how I wish I were still a school kid and had the whole summer off! … but not be quite as bored… and maybe have more money… and a car…

Hmmm. Become a teacher, you say? Well, my career path is still a work in progress, but we won’t get into that right now.
At present, let's just like to continue with summertime stories. So, beginning where the last blog entry left off, with May long weekend just being over and my mid-week birthday passing quickly by, we come to the weekend yet again, this one we’ll refer to as May long weekend II: the first camping trip of the season.

In our attempt to relive the fabulous May long weekend of 2008, Harmony and I thought we return to the ever so quaint and rustic Cat Lake. And seeing as Chris happened not to be in Europe this year, he came along too! Well…. actually, since I had to work Saturday morning, we pretty much just cajoled him into going with Harmony on Friday so she could get a site without being alone with the bears. I took the Greyhound after work (and arrived fully intact) to join them for the remainder of the fantastically hot lake-floating, dock-sitting, steak-grilling, smore-devouring weekend. Don’t think we got any pictures this time, sorry. But Cat Lake still looks the same.

OK, now let’s just skip over June which involved a lot of work and crappy weather... which takes us to Canada Day!
This Canada day was sweet, right up there with the time we actually went to Ottawa and hung out on Parliament Hill. The first order of the day (or any holiday or weekend at our place for that matter) was, of course, sleeping in followed by a large and absurdly good breakfast. Then to the bus, and we were off to the far reaches of Richmond BC, more specifically to Steveston Village, for their annual Salmon Festival. I won’t get into the obvious chaos of trying to travel that far - to such a large event - on buses - on a stat holiday - but suffice it to say at some point between lunch and dinner we found ourselves at the charming fishing village of Steveston, and waiting in line for salmon grilled on a jynormous barbecue.


Ok here we are! Excuse me, has anyone seen a huge salmon barbecue? Anyone?


Smile, Schatz! Happy Canada Day… wait.. What’s that behind you? I think it might be…


The salmon barbecue! Yay!

I guess they were just using wood to cook the salmon. These guys just kept throwing logs on the fire.


As we were waiting in line we got to watch these handsome guys doing the cooking.


And finally, after getting our plates and picking out a sunny spot on the grass, it was time to enjoy.

After lunch we wandered around the festival some more.


I had a candy apple in front of a large inflatable native-art-fish.


I also tried to break into a Bank of Canada safe in an old post office. Good times.

As we were wandering near the belt-sander races, I believe, Chris got a call from one of our friends who happens to work for Vancouver’s annual Bard on the Beach Shakespeare festival. She had free tickets for us for tonight’s show! Right on! And yes, even if you’re in Steveston and the show is in Vanier Park and it’s a holiday and you have to take the bus and you have to stop at the mall and buy new pants on the way there because the show is outdoors at night and you have no time to stop at home and when you get there you have to send your Schatz to wait in the rush seating line while you go and pick up hamburgers for dinner and scarf them down in the 10 minutes before the show starts, you don’t turn down free tickets :)


Lights out in the courtyard of the Bard tents after the show.

The show was great. I ended up seeing one of the comedies again this year, Comedy of Errors, and of course it was oh so funny. After the show and it being Canada Day, we were hoping to catch some fireworks in the bay, but without luck. Turns out this year they were doing the Canada Day fireworks on the other side of downtown, that is, on the other side of all those tall buildings we were looking at. We couldn’t see a thing. We heard the fireworks, anyway, but it’s not quite the same. Chris was a little disappointed. You’d think you could shoot fireworks a little higher than an office building, but who knows?
Moving right along now with our beach theme, only a couple of days later Chris and I managed to arrange a little get together with my lifelong best cousin Rachel and her charming husband Grant, who live oh so close yet so far away in Abbotsford. The deal was that that they would drive their car all the way up here to the city and Chris and I would prepare a delicious little beach barbecue dinner for them in return. A little bit of Frisbee, wading in the water, some hummus, a couple of shishkebabs and to top it off, gelato at a completely different but just as gorgeous beach; these are the ingredients of an awesome evening.

And this is where I would paste the adorable picture of Rachel wearing her lawn char-with-backpack-straps. It was the only picture I managed to take that evening, but alas it seems to have been the victim of one of my recent cell phone memory clearing parties.

But do not fear. I have plenty of other summer pictures and stories just waiting for their turn on the blog, so check back soon!

Sun, Snow and Serenity

Let me first say that I am having quite a difficult time at the moment, sitting here and writing in this blog. You see, it’s 11am, it’s sunny, 23 degrees and rising, it’s my day off and there are 3 different beaches within an hour’s bus ride that are calling my name. Oh, summertime how I love you.

But I promised my mommy that I would write a few stories in here and put up a few pictures so I’m going to do what I can before noon….

Firstly, let us welcome summer in Vancouver! To kick off the occasion, my old buddy Erin came up from the depths of the Lower Mainland to spend the long-weekend Sunday with us, hiking the afternoon away on the very-warm-yet-somehow-very-snow-covered north shore, then replenishing all those calories by settling in for some massive Korean barbecue, and to top it off, going down to the beach with our desserts and watching the sunset.

Erin was the one with the camera that day, so all the good pictures of the valley, the food and the beach ended up on her blog, so check it out.

I managed to capture a few moments on my cell phone, though:


Let’s take the “experienced hikers only” route! Or maybe not…


A “cool” experience, hiking on mountain snow when it’s 20+ degrees out.


Remnants of the old growth forests. Do you think the people were giant back then too?


Oh, I think I see one!

After the long weekend, we all begrudgingly returned to work and school, but there was another little bit of fun stored up for us, because Chris’ brother was coming up from Florida for a visit! He’d actually been in the country for a couple of weeks already, staying with friends and such, but now it was our turn to have him :) And of course Chris was more excited than anyone. I was mostly working but got to hang out with them in the evenings, watching movies, shopping, going out to eat and all sorts of things. Oh man, and when those two get together – watch out! I mean, Chris is normally a pretty subdued guy, but I don’t think he used his “inside voice” for the entire 4 days ;)

Then, of course, to add to the excitement, the very day Kenny left town, my birthday snuck up with no warning at all! Upon this realization I quickly went and booked the afternoon off, took myself out for lunch, went shopping and hung out at the beach until dinnertime.


The birthday babe!


The tide was out so far that afternoon that people were playing football way out into the bay.


Say hello to my 27-year-old feet. Yikes.

And seeing as I have the best Schatz that ever lived and breathed, of course there was a mountain of carefully wrapped presents on the table and when I got home that night.


Including but not limited to a Roots bag and the Firefly DVD set,


A hilarious card…


… that he claims he did *not* steal,


and a bouquet of lilies, my favoritest-ever flowers.

Oh! And how could I forget? He took me here for dinner. This place is so popular and amazing but it doesn’t take reservations, so it ended up being a whole-evening affair and altogether great fun.
So aside from the fact that I’m now one step higher on the dreaded staircase to the big 3-0, it was as nice a birthday as I could ask for!

More summertime stories to follow, but for now I'm heading out!

Just 'Cuz

Today is a very special girl's birthday, someone I literally grew up with and made a fool of myself with all along the way (and continue to do so, occasionally!) I just couldn't find the right e-card for her, so she gets her very own blog entry instead!



HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Journey to the Land of Red, White and Cheesecake

Just to bring you up to speed, Chris left for Europe on Sept 9th, 2008 for Europe to do a series of internships, and came home on March 7th, 2009. It was a long six months, and both of us have done plenty of exciting things in the meantime that could probably have been blogged about. I had a roommate, I got a new job, and as for Europe… well, it’s just full of adventures, but I’m going to have to save those details for another time.

Upon Chris’ return, I took a week off work, got a rental car and we went on a little vacation down south to do some major relaxing in Seattle and Portland! Neither of us had been down there before and Portland came highly recommended.


Here we go! This is on the highway to Seattle. Despite being March already, it decided to snow AGAIN that morning here on the west coast. Luckily it stopped by the time we left and the roads were clear.


America, here we come!


Here we are in Seattle.


Our hotel was really cool, an old place that’s been redone in art deco style. I especially liked the super-deep bathtub.

That evening we strolled around Seattle downtown trying to figure out dinner, when we stumbled across none other than the Cheesecake Factory! Now, for some of you who may not know of a certain favorite TV show of ours, this may not be significant, but anyway we were excited and it was a really cool place.




Guess what they serve here?


Little do you know, Cheesecake Factory, we’ll see you again soon...

And moving right along, since Portland was actually our goal, we jumped into our little Ford Focus once again the next morning and headed out. Not before taking advantage of the sunny morning to visit the space needle and surroundings.


Who’s that old man next to my car?


The space needle is surrounded by all these massive modern pieces of art.


Find Jen!


There are also a Science Fiction museum AND a History of Rock and Roll museum down there, which I was sooo tempted to go to, but we had a driving schedule to adhere to. Next time, Seattle!

We arrived in Portland with daylight to spare and firstly checked into the most interesting hotel ever.


What? A school? ...Yes, a school!

It’s actually an old elementary school that has been renovated into a hotel. The classrooms are hotel rooms, the cafeteria is a restaurant, the offices are bars, the auditorium is a movie theatre and the teacher’s lounge is one giant hot tub!


Plus, there’s weird artwork everywhere, and a lot of pictures of how the school used to be. This is in the main entrance, next to the front desk. Gong!


Our room was just down here, in one of the classrooms that overlooked the ‘girls playcourt’.

Each room has huge windows and original heating vents, hanging lamps and ceiling fans, hardwood floors, and even a chalkboards that you can write on :)


Another cool hallway with skylights, this one led to the parking lot.


The cafeteria/restaurant where I had the best steak sandwich and salad with blue cheese dressing of my life. Apparently Oregon is big on micro brewed beer as well, and our little school/hotel was no exception either, they brewed their own somewhere on site, a whole bunch of different kinds too, and we tried most of them ;)

Most of our time in Portland was just spent exploring the downtown. And everyone was right, it’s a really cool city! The next full day (after sleeping in and having giant omelets for breakfast, of course) we simply drove downtown, parked and strolled around the entire day. A big chunk of our time was spent at Powell’s Books, the largest independent bookstore in the world. The place is just full of new and used books in every category under the sun. I must have bought 4 or 5 books there, it was really fun. Sorry, I didn’t take any pictures. I have no idea what time it was when we were done strolling and shopping gallivanting around Portland, but it was certainly past dinner time and we were pooped, so we just grabbed some food at the "cafeteria" (which is open until 1am!) and returned to our classroom for the night.

Oregon day 2 consisted of another ridiculously awesome breakfast at this French bakery near our hotel, and from there we took the 90-minute drive to the coast to visit the town of Seaside.


*Yay!* I’m on the beach in the middle of March! So what if I need my jacket and scarf, it’s SUNNY!

The town of Seaside is basically just this little collection of resorts and cottages interspersed with seafood restaurants, souvenir stands and ice-cream shops, all along this amazingly huge beach on the wide-open Pacific.









It was a really great, sunny day. We were only wearing sweaters and light jackets, and even took our jackets off in the afternoon. We just walked along the beach for who-knows-how-long picking up sand dollars and watching the huge waves, then we walked back again and had some world-famous clam chowder and fish and chips, and then massive ice-cream cones at this shop with a cow bench.


Yes! A cow bench!

The drive back to Portland was nice, and we even accomplished our goal of being here:


… by 8pm when they closed. Yes, despite being full of fish and chips and famous clam chowder, we simply had to eat here. We just didn’t believe it when we saw this place advertized in a local magazine and so we had to see for ourselves. The Döners were quite authentic, to be sure, although a little light on the yogurt sauce and overpriced. But we actually got to chat with the owner in German! So worth it.

Then, after our last night at the Kennedy School, it was time to hit the road again and go home. On the way, though, we made sure to pay a visit to the Mount St. Helens visitor’s center. It’s quite far from the actual mountain, but there’s a great view of it from the balcony. We could have driven another 1.5 hours to the outlook that gives you a view of the crater and everything but that would have been a little far out of the way. Inside there was a short movie and a nice little museum. We learned a lot!


A nice couple from Texas offered to take our picture with the mountain (well, it ended up being a nice picture of “us” anyway)


Here’s a shot of the snow-covered mountain.

Continuing on our way home, we had great views of the rest of Washington as well. This is Mount Rainer, which was staring at me through the passenger window most of the afternoon.



Passing through Seattle once again, it was time for dinner and we decided to stop in another section of the city called Bellevue, went to this really nice shopping center in search of food, and what did we find but another Cheesecake Factory! Well, why not? Let’s go for the real American experience while we’re here :)

Since we took our time on the trip home, we ended up arriving pretty late, and of course, having to unpack the car in the rain. Oh well, it just made sleeping in my own bed again all the better.

The next day we had to say farewell to the car *sniff sniff*, but Vancouver has plenty to offer, if not sunny weather, and we made the most of our last few days off before heading back to work again and normal, boring life. On the bright side, my Schatz is home again, and I'm still super happy about that :)

While I'm At It

Hey again!
Christmas being over, I went back to work for a whole three days but then New Year's just snuck up on me! Now I'm home again and a little bored, just playing on the computer, and I thought, why not write another special holiday blog entry?

I really just want to share with you where I went and what I did on Tuesday:


Yay the new Olympic speed skating oval!

Now, I was already there for the grand opening way back on December 13th, at which time I got to skate for a whole 10 minutes before they kicked us off the ice. But my camera wasn't working that day anyway, so I took the 45 minute bus ride after work on Tuesday and went back there (and paid the $8 admission!) to skate for a good two hours.

Apparently you can fit 3 hockey rinks inside the ice track, so just to give you an idea of how huge this place is, I thought I would tape myself skating just one lap so you can see how long it takes. And I'm not going slowly! (I even think it only ended up being 3/4 of a lap...)


Weeee!! I feel like such an Olympian!


This is a much less blurry shot of the building. The roof is some kind of fancy wood pattern and the one wall is totally glass. It's very cool.


And last but not least, this is the women's bathroom. That's all rubber skate-friendly flooring. Also check out the fancy modern sinks!

Getting there from downtown was easy, but getting home on the bus (at night in the freezing rain) was a little tiresome and complicated, so I don't know how often I'll be making the trip across the river to play on the frozen Olympic goodness, however it's pretty awesome so I don't think it would take too much convincing.

Now... I wonder when they'll be opening the new Olympic bobsled track? ;)