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.

Creatures in the Compost

This weekend involved a lot of destruction. Every year my gardening projects seem to get a lot bigger then I expect. Things started simple enough. Move the garden to a sunnier location which happened to have nothing in it. Once that was done though we had to clean up the side yard beside the garden. That involved clearing out a bunch of unwanted dirt. The best place for that was the location of the old garden as I'd dug out a lot of soil and it was a big hole. To do that I had to set the concrete bases for the shed Unfortunately the compost heap was in the way so it had to be emptied and moved over by about a foot.

Now I'm ready to move the compost heap to it's final location, fill the shed hole with dirt and then filter cloth and stones and finally move the shed. I manged to get the compost heap back in place but I had to add a bit of "creature defense" while I was at it. Let's just say that some animals enjoy the warmth of a warm compost heap and seem to move in every winter. I'm hoping the wire mesh will keep them at bay. I still have to build a lid for the birds.

We did manage to get all the flower baskets planted and the side garden in place. At least this portion of the yard is finished. (For this year anyways. I have longer term plans to redo everything in this area with some proper pathways, raised planters and a bit of stone work.) 

The vegetable garden is coming up nicely. I think everything has spouted and if we can get some warm weather it should really take off. It got up to 20 degrees on Sunday and you could almost see the beans growing. They came up about an inch over the course of just a few hours.

Next weekend I just have to figure out how to move a 6x8 cedar shed across the yard.

Callie's First Dance Recital

On Saturday I got to attend Callie's first dance recital and I'll be honest, I wasn't really looking forward to it. Sitting through four hours of kids hopping around stage so that I could see Callie for approximately 3 minutes was not my idea of fun. I did end up being presently surprised however. The entire event was themed around Alice in Wonderland and it wasn't just little kids. The teachers as well as some other semi-professional dancers were also involved. The music was also a very good mix with quite a few current chart songs which made it enjoyable as well. Overall I felt the event was very well done.

Callie started a bit slow mainly because the girl beside her stopped right in front of her at the beginning and it threw her off for a few steps. After that she did really great and you could tell which steps she liked the most. I went with Kerry and my mom and they both bought her flowers along with one of her friends mom. I was very impressed about how Callie did in front of such a big crowed. I don't think they can see much up there with the bright lights but she seemed to really enjoy being on stage. My favourite part was probably when all the dancers were on stage for the final scene and they moved to Katy Perry's "Firework". Callie was jumping higher then everyone.
If all these things are as good as this I won't mind watching her for years to come. (Once a year of course.)

You can view the Callie's Dance Recital Performance on YouTube.

Vegetable Garden Complete

This year I hope to get a much better crop from our garden. Last year the deck was in this spot and we've had the garden in the south west corner. With the 15 foot cedars behind our house this meant it only really got sun in the morning. Not very good for a vegetable garden. Now that the deck is gone I was able to move it to a prime location. It should get sun almost all day and it will be easy to water now that it's closer to the house. It also frees up a spot for me to move the shed to. It's in the way of a retaining wall that needs replacing. (There's always a project waiting to be done.)

Construction was relatively straight forward. About $30.00 worth of 2x10's and some left over stain from the deck. Most of the soil came from the old garden or the compost pile. I had a pile of wood shavings from the planer that ordinarily I would compost but I figured I would just add it as the bottom layer. It's only about half an inch with another 8 inches of soil on top so it should have plenty of time to breakdown before it gets tilled up next year. The kids of course couldn't pass up a new way of getting dirty.

The concrete feet came with the house and I've used them for numerous purposes. Here they make a nice sturdy clean path. (Good thing considering the kids like to check out the seedlings every day.) It would have been good to get it planted about a week earlier. We had nice cool weather with just a light rain the week before while this week has been hot and sunny and it's been difficult to keep things damp.  Hoping for potatoes, beans, lettuce, carrots, basil, chives, dill, radishes, tomatoes, broccoli, onions and strawberries. You can really pack a lot of food into a small space.