VanAussie Daily

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

Wednesday, August 25th, 2010

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 (more…)

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

Mr Rooter

Friday, August 20th, 2010

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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Posted in Downtown Vancouver | 1 Comment »

Whistler & Crankworx

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

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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Posted in In and around BC, Sport | No Comments »

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

Friday, August 13th, 2010

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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Posted in scenery, travel | 1 Comment »

Dr Sun Yat-Sen gardens

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

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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Posted in Downtown Vancouver, scenery, Twins | No Comments »