A Trip to Victoria for Work

In April I had the opportunity to take an overnight trip to Victoria for work. I'm on the board of directors for the Integrated Cadastral Information Society and we have our annual board meeting either in Victoria or in the lower mainland and this year was Victoria. I made my way over the night before since the meeting was first thing in the morning and it's not realistic to fly over first thing in the morning. This gave me a bit of time to do some touristy things in Victoria which included walking by the parliament buildings, exploring the bay and taking in the miniature museum. The highlight was a working scale model of a saw mill but Gulliver was a close second.

The meeting itself was uneventful except for when it was over and I had to walk back to my car. I had to circle the building a bit to find parking and ultimately didn't have a good reference of where I ended up. The only thing I could remember and happened to have evidence of was a seagull with a fish and chips tarter sauce container stuck on it's beak. I'm pretty sure it was at least temporarily stuck as he flew between buildings with it on. I never ultimately found the seagull again but I did manage to find my car after about an hour of searching. There were only so many car lots that it could be in. 

On my way out of town I wandered through Victoria's Chinatown. Having recently also been in Vancouver's version of Chinatown there is a significant difference. Victoria's is smaller but it's remained livable and there were several restaurants and shops that would be good places to regularly visit. I'm assuming it's not just Chinese residents anymore but it's nice that the historical elements have survived and are being preserved. Hopefully Vancouver is able to do the same. 

 

Easter

Ordinarily we go to Oliver each year for Easter but this year we had just gone to the island for a celebration of life and there was a lot going on with everyone's school so we decided we would stick around the house. Kerry made turkey and we had the traditional easter dinner but just with the family. The highlight was Kerry put on her new Easter Bunny costume. She had purchased one for her previous school and decided her new school needed the same. When purchased off of Amazon they are quite economical and the kids love seeing the Easter Bunny. She always has good stories about the kids that feel they know it's her. She doesn't have a voice when she is the Easter Bunny so they have no real way of knowing. This was Oliver's first interaction with the Easter Bunny and he was not exactly thrilled.
 

A Trip to UBC

After two years of hard work, Carter and his best friend Jeevin have successfully made it into UBC. I do not think I would have made it into UBC if I had tried. The requirements for UBC engineering are in the mid to high 90's over the course of grade 11 and 12 and Carter managed to do that in virtually all of his courses. He will be heading there in September so we decided we would head down for a visit of the campus and pick up a shirt and see where his residence may be. The commute from our house would have been 100 minutes each way so it doesn't make sense to commute.

I'm not exaggerating when I say that the UBC campus is likely one of the best looking campus' in North America. It's on a peninsula on the ocean and is surrounded by forests, mountains and ocean. The residence that he will likely get is not very old and everything is walking distance. If he wants to venture 'into town' it's just a bus ride away. It will be a big change not having Carter in the house during the school semesters but I know he's looking forward to it and this will be a very memorable part of his life. Congratulations Carter!

Visit from Uncle Andre

I don't know why but despite this being a fairly important event i don't seem to have any pictures. I'm hoping there might be some on Kerry's phone so if I remember I will come back and add some. I have another post about how I learned about my long lost uncle so I won't bore you with that story but the exiting part was that he was coming to Canada to visit for the first time. We had already met him in Amsterdam and we met up again at my Uncle Bob's celebration of life and as part of that trip to Victoria he was going to meet us in Surrey.

His plan was to go to Prince George and he was hoping for a local train but this is North America so that's not really an option. He ended up flying up for a few days where he saw my Grandmother's house, visited his Father's grave and checked out our lake property. It was April so not a great time to visit Prince George but they still managed to get down to the lake front.

Him and is wife arrived in Vancouver on Tuesday and I picked them up from the airport after work. We came home where Kerry had a nice dinner waiting for us.

The next day I had to work but I still had a plan to keep them entertained. In between meetings I took them to the Skytrain where they could see North America does have some ability to get around by rail and they went o Waterfront station in Vancouver. This allowed them to finally make it in to Vancouver since the airport is Richmond and we live in Surrey. They had a good time taking in the waterfront and then I picked them up and we checked out Whiterock Beach.

Perhaps the reason I didn't get pictures was because we had such good conversation. We talked for hours into the evening and I took them back to the airport the next day. I think they are glad they managed to get a visit in and they enjoyed their Canadian experience.

Carter's Last Basketball Game

As I look back on my failed attempts to get Carter into sports including soccer, judo and riding a bike, I'm glad I was successful at basketball. During COVID we installed a net because they had boarded over the hoops at the school. He had enough hours on his own that he was confident to try out in Grade 8 and he took it all the way through to Grade 12. Their last season had some success as they made the provincials but a single knockout tournament is a tough way to end the season. Only after the final buzzer goes off do they fully comprehend the end of five seasons. Hopefully he can find an intramural league in University.

Fan Fest 2026

My buddy Jeremy from University took participation at  Fanfest to another level this year. We have attended as participants a few times and last year he wore his Ghostbuster costume. This year he volunteered at the Ghostbuster booth. I'm sure there are other clubs but the most noticeable to me at the Ghostbuster and Star Wars booths. One day I plan to win the lottery and buy a 1959 Cadillac Miller-Meteor ambulance for him to restore and transform into Ecto 1 to complete his ensemble. There aren't very many so it I'm sure they aren't cheap and I suspect most are at some stage of transformation.

The other reason I like to go is to check out the R2D2 builds. We are several years into our own build and it's nice to check out one that's already done, both for inspiration and to figure out specific details. We're working on the foot right now and I needed to know which parts were aluminum as well as how the hoses came together. The best part of the day was realizing that I had already over engineered our hoses and they were going to look better than the ones I was looking at. There is no 'accurate' version of R2 but we are aiming for it to pass as looking screen accurate.

Patullo Bridge Closure

Construction on the replacement for the Patullo Bridge has been underway for several years and was finally reaching the point where they were closing the old bridge. They had technically closed it to traffic for several days and it was open for bikes but they indicated they would leave it open for a few more days before permanently closing it and starting on the deconstruction. The final closure was February 17th but the weather looked better on the 15th so I got up early so I could get there before sunrise. I figured I'd get the best photos plus it might get busy later in the day.

Turns out I was right on both fronts. The lighting was perfect, the weather was perfect and it got so busy later in the day they had to have the police come for traffic control. When I got there, there was just a few people and there was a security car driving up and down indicating we shouldn't go on the road way. We of course ignored them and before I left they gave up trying. They eventually had to kick people off entirely because people were climbing up the bridge for pictures. 

I wouldn't say I was sentimental about this bridge but I do have quite a few memories. It was on my commute to work so I biked over it dozens of times each year which was a unique experience. There is only a single sidewalk and there isn't room for two bikes so I always joke that one person had to hang over the edge to let the other pass. The bridge also had a lot of flex such that when large trucks drove past you could feel it shake. It was originally only a single lane and was widened to two but big trucks always took up both lanes for safety. The new bridge is two lanes each way and can expand to three and has some very nice bike lanes.