VanAussie Daily

We’re going home + Powell River & Vancouver Island Circle Trip

Author: Jared

With the boys now at home and occupying most of my spare time and pretty much 100% of Nat’s time, we’ve realised a couple of things:

1. Having twins with no family support around is rather tough
2. With kids, you can kiss any sort of reliable spare time good by
3. With young babies, getting out of the house takes lots of planning, and longer trips are pretty much out of the question for the time being
4. Those folks who reminisce about the “new baby smell” have glossed over the more pungent memories of sour milk and poop.

SO with the above and a few other things in mind, we’ve decided to head back to Tassie next April (2011). It wasn’t a decision that we took lightly, but in the end it wasn’t that hard – the support and having the kids grow up around their grandparents (free babysitting!) pretty much made up our minds plus the cheaper cost of living available in Tassie. I’ll also be taking my job home with me, so that’s another plus, as there won’t be that horrible job searching part.

In light of all this, there won’t be many exciting trip stories to tell, just burping and pooping stories which you’ll find on the boys blog, plus tidbits from my life around Vancouver. So I’ve decided that to make this blog a more complete memory of our time here in Vancouver, I’m going to go back through all the trips that we’ve done previously and stick them in here for posterity. I hope you enjoy the ride and they inspire some of you to get out and about. My particular favourites are the trips to Oregon, Tofino on Vancouver Island and Nahatlatch, which is in the Fraser Canyon (kinda), about 5 hours east of Vancouver, but we’ve actually been to a surprising amount of places in our time here… enjoy!

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Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Powell River – Courtenay/Comox – Nanaimo – Vancouver round trip

Looking at that title, that seems like a hell of a lot of places to visit and a fair bit of distance to travel, but we did it all in the space of a weekend not long after we got to Vanco Read the rest of this entry »

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August 25th, 2010  |  Posted in In and around BC, Previous trips (memory lane), Twins, scenery, travel  |  1 Comment »

Mr Rooter

Author: Jared

Sometimes Canadians crack me up…

I’m sure the character in the pic is absolutely stoked to be Mr Rooter

Then again this company is probably owned by an Aussie having his own little joke on Canajuns.

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August 20th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver  |  1 Comment »

Whistler & Crankworx

Author: Jared

So last Saturday I was lucky enough to get out of the house and head up to Whistler to do some downhill mountain biking (mtb) and to watch one of the biggest events (Slopestyle) at the two week long mtb festival that is Crankworx.

Crankworx is for mountain biking what the Glastonbury Festival is to the music industry – a massive celebration of the sport which can get quite messy… And Whistler is mountain biking’s equivalent of Mecca anyway, with thousands of riders making pilgrimages there every summer.

Luckily I live just down the street (1.5 to 2 hours drive, depending on traffic) in Vancouver, but unluckily I think this will have been the only day I can get up there this year! Still, I made the most of it, for sure.

We spent the morning riding the hill, getting in three full runs from top to bottom plus a few extra bits and pieces. Man, I love Whistler. The variety is huge, with trails built for every skill set, and you can even get away from the crowds on the biggest weekend for MTB up there. If you hit anything with confidence, you’ll be fine, as all the trails are well built and to a standard sort of set of rules. It’s really confidence building.

Let me just state right now that I love the trail Freight Train. A series of large flowing tabletop jumps linked together by bermed corners, where could you go wrong?

Didn’t manage to get any pictures of actual riding apart from this wall ride, and the picture really doesn’t do the feature justice…

It came to about 4 or so when we went switched out our bikes for cameras, and I’d been riding with Aidan Ward, who’s a professional photographer, so it wasn’t a simple matter of grab the camera and go, no no bucko, it was a decision based on memory cards, matching lenses with bodies and who’d be carrying all the extra gear. But if it’s all in the name of getting sweet shots, who’s complaining?

I’ll leave the shots to do the talking in a moment, but I love Crankworx Slopestyle dearly. Where else do you get guys doing insane tricks off insane stunts with 10′s of thousands of spectators yelling them on, all in the right ventricle of world mountain biking’s heart?

The guys were all throwing down massif runs, but this year it was so damn dry that lots of folks were also hitting the ground hard. Still, those who held it together were totally impressive, with winner Cam Zink’s run being awesome! I was disappointed for Darren Berrecloth, as I think he had one of the best runs of the day, but bit it hard on the last jump… Maybe next year.

Anyhoo, here’s some choice shots:

Photo were shot by Aidan Ward, Tim H and myself.

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August 18th, 2010  |  Posted in In and around BC, Sport  |  No Comments »

Just added a new blog to the CanAussie.com network :)

Author: Jared

I’m excited, as I’ve just linked up a new blog to the CanAussie.com network of blogs. This one is by Grant and Gen, some friends of ours from Tassie, and they’re off on a big trip around the world, stopping by in Canada for a few months this winter to help change diapers… I mean, to experience the winter season and probably do a ski season at one of the resorts close to Vancouver.

They are current in South America and have just visted a glacier that is growing at a rate of 2 meters a day. How cool is that?! It’s not often you hear about a glacier that is actually growing, and from the pictures it certainly looks a lot fresher than the ones we’ve got here in Canada, at least in the southern regions.

Check out their blog, book mark it, and, if you’re like me, live vicariously through their travels!

http://grantandgen.canaussie.com/

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August 13th, 2010  |  Posted in scenery, travel  |  1 Comment »

Dr Sun Yat-Sen gardens

Author: Jared

One of the things about being home with newborn (or in our case, newly arrived home, as they were born 11 weeks ago but only came home last week) is that it’s hard to get out of the house. We managed to get out of the house the other day for the twins very first adventure out in the real world, and we took them to the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Gardens, which happen to be just up the street from us and quite a nice walk.

These gardens are one of the little not-so secrets of Vancouver. There is a free section of these walled gardens, then there is the main part itself, which you have to pay cash to get into. Needless to say that I’ve only ever been into the free section but for me this part is great to get away from the city a little and just check out gardens from another culture. There are turtles (tortoises) and GIANT goldfish (carp?) flitting in between the lilys which flower if you’re there at the right time of the year. A pagoda occupies the center of the gardens, but there are various gravelled strolls throughout the garden where you can check out the abundance of flora… just watch out for the tourists…

Roaming the garden paths

Token shot of the boys

Ohh, look at the cute little goldfish...

AAAAGH, the Zombie Carp are swarming!

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August 11th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Twins, scenery  |  No Comments »

Celebration of Light

Author: Jared

One of the great things about Vancouver is that there is always some great public events going on all round the city. Pick your time and place and something is probably honing on, more so during Summer.

Every year he city runs a fireworks competition. That’s right, a fireworks competition where sets run for about 20 minutes and happen 4 times over 2 weeks. Woo hoo! The competition is called The Celebration of Light, and is between 4 different countries where each country gets a whole set to itself and is judged for it’s quality by a couple of judging folk.

The other night we went to go see the first of the four, which was the USA. I only had my phone with me, so I’ll tell you about it then treat you to some average photos and maybe a video if you’re lucky.

The USA show was actually pretty cool. They tried to get real artsy and really get it into sync with the music, which were some older well known American tunes, some slowish with a swing feel, and some getting going a little.

The competitors get a massive barge which is anchored out in English Bay, just off First Beach. Folks will start setting up camp all around the edges of the bay at 4 or 5pm, even though the fireworks don’t actually start till after sunset which is after 9pm at the moment. Of course we’re a little more casual and have worked out that you can still get great spots on the beach if you ride in around about sunset. Also that means you get to ride out dodging pedestrians afterwards, which is always fun

Anyway, so the US team made great use of the barge including firing floating fireworks into the water at one stage, and also had a few very impressive moments in the sky. I’m always a huge believer that they could halve the overall time spent shooting fireworks and just cram them all into the first ten minutes. That would be a very impressive show! The US was trying to be stylish though, so when they had a slow swing style song playing they got into the swirly, slow fireworks. A loud cheer from the crowd went up when they shot off some amazing fireworks that lifted off like real slow comets then descended again, then ascended and did that a few more times. It was pretty damn impressive.

The next ones are Spain on this Saturday (24th July), then Mexico on the following Wednesday (28th July), then China on the Saturday (31 July). Make sure you get down there!

Here’s a couple of pics… actually, nah, they’re a bit trash. Just picture a couple of fantastic shots with the faintest orange red glow of sunset in the background, hundreds of boats out on the bay with fairy lights on, planes circling above, and fireworks captured perfectly in an almost 3 dimensional photograph over about 10 seconds as I held the lense open with my bare hands. It’s amazing what you can do with an iPhone, isn’t it?!

Here’s a video instead, for your viewing pleasure. It’s not quite as good as the picture I described above, but it’s the finale of the US show, which was pretty amazing!

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July 22nd, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, scenery  |  No Comments »

Mountainbiking Cypress Mountain

Author: Jared

On the weekend I got the opportunity to go riding with my buddy Tim and a couple of Vancouver locals that I met on a local forum. Tim and I had been planning on riding Mt Fromme, which is sort of the middle mountain on the north shore of Vancouver, sitting below Grouse Mountain when I got in contact with this guy and he suggested we go shuttling on Cypress. Sure!

Early Saturday morning (at least 8.30) we met up at the base of the mountain, leaving two cars at the bottom and taking one to the top, planning on using one of the spare two as our second shuttle vehicle to take us to the top of the hill.

Now, I’ve only ridden Cypress once before, and that was 10 years ago on a cross country mountain bike with a few mates who’d rented their bikes for the day. As I stood in the carpark this time, next to my bike that’s more downhill than cross country oriented, I was trying to remember how tough it was last time and wondering whether I needed my chest and arm armour this time… I looked over at my new biking buddy, Isaac, who heads up to Cypress twice a week, and asked if he bothered with chest armour. “Nah”. He says that he usually just goes with his knee and shin covering ones.

Sure, I think, tossing my chest armour into the back of my truck. “how hard can it be?!”

I was kinda regretting that decision within about 20 minutes as the riding got steeper and steeper. Y’see, Isaac has been riding this stuff for years and is well on top of it. Me? Not quite prepared for just how steep and technical Cypress can be.

The upper section of Whistler Mountain is the yardstick Tim and I were using, and this was way harder than that! Isaac certainly did a good job showing us around though, as there was some awesome parts in there and it is great riding with a local.

Part way down the first run Isaac says something along the lines of “Yeah, people usually start riding Seymour mountain as there’s lots of nice easy but challenging trails, then they progress to Fromme which is more difficult but not as steep and technical as Cypress.” No problems then.

The second run was as good as the first and the shuttles are actually pretty quick so we spent most of the morning riding rather than shuttling, which you can do in some other places. I’m guessing that we were probably on the mountain for maybe three hours, and three hours of steep technical riding was enough for me that day!

Anyhoo, here’s a couple of shots:

This is from half way down the mountain, looking out over Horseshoe Bay area with Bowen Island in the background I think

The top of one of the trails partway down

Tim & Isaac checking out one of the technical parts.

Tim fixing a mechanical partway down. Note the steep drop off behind him.

Isaac stopped just round a tight switchback. Lotsa switchbacks on Cypress!

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July 20th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Hiking/Bushwalking, Sport  |  No Comments »

Another blog to check out

Author: Jared

As my blog has slowed down a little, I thought I’d recommend another blog to satiate your appetites a little, particularly if those appetites are calling for adventure shots of BC’s islands or events from Calgary’s Stampede.

I’m talking about Anna’s blog, which is all about her next adventure. Having spent over a year in China, she is now adventuring Canada whilst hanging out with a Canadian family. A great recipe for finding cool things to do

Check it out:

http://www.annasnextadventure.blogspot.com/

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July 12th, 2010  |  Posted in Different things in Canada, Hiking/Bushwalking, scenery  |  3 Comments »

Summer

Author: Jared

Ah, summer has finally hit Vancouver

Admittedly it is about a month late, but summer does tend to linger a while here. Well, in my mind at least I’ll keep on trying to wear shorts till December, but usually crack in about November or so and go back to jeans.

Anyway, here’s the current 7 day forecast, care of the local version of BOM:

When Vancouver hits this sort of swing you know that summer will be around for a while. Reliable blue sky days, temps close to 30 degrees, and the city just loves it!

We walked home from the skytrain along the seawall from the Yaletown station to our place near GM place and I think half the city was out on their bikes enjoying a trundle along in the sun, while the other half had decided that a picnic on the grass was a good idea. Not that it was crowded of course, there is more than enough seawall to go around.

Here’s a brief happy snap from the walk home, with Science World in the baground and the Athletes Village on the right:

Oh, and you know what made my day the other day? We were walking along the seawall to the left of the above shot, right in the heart of the city, and what did we see on the dock, fooling around and cleaning itself?

Okay, I tried to zoom in a little, but my phone only has a small lens…

Okay, it was a sea otter! One of the coolest animals known to man! They are absolute characters, and this one was fooling about, rolling around and having a grand old time. I was kinda excited… Shame we didn’t have the real camera though.

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July 8th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Musings, Weather  |  No Comments »