A Visit to the River - Part II (Sort of)

On Friday we headed to the River Rock Casino and when I told Carter we were going to the river again on Saturday it took me a minute to figure out why he was so excited. Our destination was to a friends house who was hosting a summer BBQ for people at work. We missed the one last year due to our vacation schedule so this year she made sure to schedule it on a date that we can make it and I'm very glad she did. She has property on one of the rivers that flows through North Vancouver and it's an absolutely amazing spot.

Callie had great fun throwing pine cones into the river and playing on the swing. Carter enjoyed picking up sticks and attempting to arrange the boule balls into constellations. (His sister taught him that. I had nothing to do with it.)

Unfortunately we were a bit behind on our packing for our vacation so we couldn't stay for as long as we liked. As it turns out we probably should have stayed longer. We ended up picking up a screw in our tire on the way home. Our neighbours were walking by and noticed. We're lucky they told us as it gave us a chance to plan a trip to Canadian Tire the next morning to get it repaired. Our plans to leave at 6:00a were shot and we ended up leaving around 10:30a. That would have been plenty of recovery and packing time. We'll know better next year.

Reg's 65th Birthday

I had an unnerving case of Dejavu on Friday as we headed to the River Rock Casino for Reg's 65th birthday. Corey, Carmen, Ronnie, Kerry and myself all pitched in for a one night stay for Barb and Reg. When I walked in the room I felt like I'd been there before but couldn't remember when, which was a bit worrying. Then I realized that we'd done the same thing for Reg's 60th. Apparently 5 years is long enough for me to only vaguely recall events.

The whole family met in the room before dinner where the kids took full advantage of the free house keeping and trashed the room like rock stars. The picture on the left is of Callie and her cousin Kristen who is almost two. They both have the same birthday and are starting to look very similar. Callie's new cousin is due September 6th so there is a slight chance that she could end up on Carter's Birthday.  I'm calling the papers if that happens. I'm sure the local news would love a fluff piece with pictures of cute kids.

Uncle Ronnie and Uncle Corey were busy corrupting Carter before heading down to dinner. I'm not certain I should let them take Carter on any unsupervised fishing trips.

Dinner was an amazing buffet paid for by Barb and Reg. The adults were a bit pricey but the kids only had to pay one dollar for each year old. (Barb didn't even lie about their ages it was so cheap.) The menu included shrimp and crab legs, roast, sushi and a dessert table as long as a bus.

The Casino also has an amazing pool with a full sized water slide. Callie wasn't quite ready for it but Kerry managed to convince Carter to go with her. Unfortunately he may be traumatized for a few years as she couldn't keep his head above water when she landed. Kristen had much better luck with Uncle Corey.

I can't wait to do it all again in 5 years time.

Happy Canada Day!

Happy Canada Day! For almost every year since we moved to Surrey we've spent Canada Day in Cloverdale. This is one of the largest Canada Day events in Western Canada and has lot's of food and entertainment. The entertainment typically ends with some ancient Canadian band (This year was 'Trooper'.) and then fireworks. With the kids at such a young age we don't usually stick around for the fireworks but we do get in lot's of food and this year mascots.

For some reason we had a bit of a role reversal with the kids. Typically Callie is quite shy and doesn't engage these types of characters very much. Carter on the other hand will start telling them his life story. This time though Callie was hugging mascots left and right and Carter had to be coaxed up to each one. Callie loved hugging the Orca and Carter did manage a high five with the Eagle. (Ducky got in a high five as well.)

My favorite mascot of the day had to be Surrey's tree. You would have to pay me a lot of money to dress up as a tree. This costume had very short feet so he wasn't very mobile and I had to stay back as I had this terrible urge to roll him down the hill.

Canada day was a lot of fun with a lot's of good food. (Kettle Corn, Fudge, Lemonade, Cotton Candy, burgers, Jamaican Food and more. The food was pricey on it's own and I'm pretty sure both Callie and Carter will notice the rides next year so we'll have to bring some extra cash.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! Rather than getting gifts I prefer to go on a field trip for Father's day. (Though I did get socks, cards, a paper weight from Carter and a friendship bracelet from Callie that she planned for and made all on her own.) This year we headed to the Space Center. Callie is fascinated by the stars and constellations and has been looking forward to this day for weeks.
From the outside the Space Center would appear to be a world class facility. I went a few years ago with Kerry's grade six class and it seemed like a great place to take your kids. There was a flight simulator similar to Star Tours at Disneyland, the planetarium and the place was packed.

A lot has changed in six years however. It's June and you would expect this to be peak season for tourists however the place was virtually deserted and there have been several unfortunate changes. They were only showing one movie, the gift shop closed two years ago, we saw no evidence that the flight simulator was working, they've switched portions of the facility into the Vancouver Museum and another portion was being rented out to a church. (I'm curious about a church that sets up shop in a facility that looks like a flying saucer.) Vancouver has had some trouble keeping facilities like this open recently with the closing of the petting zoo at Stanley park. We just don't seem to draw in enough people and Vancouver is spending all it's money on bike lanes. I do hope they're able to keep this facility open but to draw more people they're going to have to make some changes.

Despite the changes Callie and Carter still had a great time. We got to see a presentation on rockets and since there were only 8 of us in the room Carter got to go on stage and help. We also went to see a planetarium presentation in honour of Galileo's 400th birthday. (Or maybe the 400th anniversary of the telecscope.) This was what Callie was looking forward to the most because it showed stars. They use the strange contraption to the right to project the stars and another to show the movie. She really enjoyed the show and we might have to back to see the upcoming show called "The Constellation Makers".

On The Move

If you asked Kerry why I chose to move the shed she would probably say I did it so I could say I did. She may be partially correct however there are several more legitimate reasons.
1) It was sitting on top of a retaining wall that has long rotted out.  I'm not replacing the retaining wall now but in the fall or spring it will need to be done.
2) It frees up a great area beside our house where we can potentially put a pond.
3) It had sunk into the ground and was starting to rot.
4) So that I can say I did it.

I did consider getting people to come over and help me move it but that would have required a lot of beer and it would probably have cost too much. I also didn't really know how much it weighed so I'm not sure how many people it would have taken. Once I got it as light as I could I think it was still around 750 lbs which would have been at least 6 or 8 people. I ended up raising it up on two 2x4 skids and used a come-along winch. I drove an aluminum fence post into the ground a few meters ahead, connected the winch to some steel cable and started to pull. About 1 inch per pull and about 8 feet before I had to reset the post.

Callie and Carter weren't quite strong enough to move it but  they still helped by pulling on the winch for the first few pulls before there was any tension on the cable. This was quite exciting for them.

It's now tucked safely away in it's new home.  I put it up on new concrete pier blocks with a gravel base and we should be able to get at least another 5 years out of it. Right now it's quite ugly but a new paint job and some landscaping should spruce it up nicely.

Oliver Half Iron-man

For the past week when people asked me what I was doing on the weekend I would tell them I was going to Oliver for the Half Iron man. After waiting just long enough for them to assume that meant I was participating I would break it to them that I was going to drink wine and sit on my in-laws deck to watch the event. The half Iron-man is exactly what it sounds like. The same as a full except all the distances are cut in half. That still means a triathlon with a 2 km swim, 93 km bike and 21 km run. All of this needs to be completed in less then 8 hours. I could probably do the 93km bike in that time but I would drown about halfway through the swim and probably use up about 2 hours of my time getting to that point.

The reason we decided to go was that my in-laws have retired there and their house is situated perfectly to view all three legs. You can see the swimmers in Tuk-El-Nuit, the bikers across the lake via binoculars, (or noculars as Carter refers to them) and the run goes right in front of them 4 times. It ended up being the first really warm day there with temperatures in the 30's and we had a lot of sympathy for the participants as we ducked inside to the air conditioning periodically to ensure we kept our strength up for the entire event.

One other reason for attending was that Kerry has a colleague at work who participates with her husband. She's in the 45+ age group and had a very respectable time of under 7 hours. I just may have to learn to swim properly so I can at least try out a mini-triathalon. Or we can just continue to go up each year and drink wine on the deck.

Bike to Work Week

Last week was Bike to Work week. I've always been a supporter of such a thing but I've always had good "reasons" that I couldn't participate. For several years I lived relatively close to work but I didn't have a bike in operational order. Then I moved out to Surrey and worked downtown. That would have been close to 70 km round trip which isn't exactly a comfortable distance. For the past several years though I've worked in Burnaby and the round trip was only about 45 km. My excuse for that trip though was that there wasn't a good route that would keep me out of traffic.

This year I decided I would at least give it a shot. The lower mainland has been doing a lot in recent years to improve biking routes and after a bit of research I found out that there were bike routes I could take that would keep me out of traffic almost the entire way. The first day was a bit of a nightmare because some of the routes weren't exactly the most direct however by day two I'd mastered my route and it turns out there are dedicated bike lanes or back streets designated for bikes for 80%. The other 20% has bike lanes beside traffic that are clearly marked. The most harrowing part is probably the Pattullo bridge but only because it seems like the bridge could collapse at any moment. The sidewalk you ride on is separated from traffic with a one foot curb and plenty wide to ride on.
By weeks end I'd traveled 225km rain or shine. On Wednesday it was definitely more rain then shine. It took 2 hrs in the drier to dry my shoes. Despite that minor set back I've now decided I'll bike to work at least two days a week. When you include the 45 minute trip each way on transit and the hour I would spend at the gym anyways I'm actually saving time.