VanAussie Daily

Stadium roof

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

They’ve been talking about replacing the roof on BC Place stadium for years and years – you know, the one that looked like it had a mushroom growing on top of it, as the roof was a giant white inflatable thing. The one where they held the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics and a bunch of other sporting and cultural events pretty much every week of the year. This one:

After the Olympics they actually finally got their act together and deflated the roof, starting a long period of renovations for the stadium. So long that they’ve actually made a temporary outdoor stadium about 20 minutes east of downtown on the site if one of Vancouver’s original football grounds, Empire Field, to house the Canadian Football League (CFL) team that usually plays in BC Place.

The old roof must have been hideous to maintain and had to have fans running 24/7 to make sure it stayed inflated. Exiting a big event was a nightmare as you had to go through revolving doors to make sure the pressure inside the stadium stayed up, so it took ages to get through them when battling crowds of other folks. Bring on the new roof I say!

I was thinking they’d just rip the roof off and stick on a reasonably flat roof that opens at the middle, buy then they erected one of these poles.

It was freaking huge! These things are so tall. Not sure if you can tell from the picture or not, but the stadium is pretty tall to the top rim, and these look like they at least double the height.

Then they added more

And more

So many that it eventually prompted me to check out what the finished product should look like:

Crazy! Of course, Vancouver being Vancouver, they had to step up and do some sort of amazing design. It’s going to be really interesting to watch this come together. Try seem to have most of the poles up now, and they’re all wired to the central unit (which I’m led to believe will be the scoreboard) with cable that is thicker than that used in the Peak2Peak in Whistler. I wonder what the next step is?

Actually, here’s an artists impression of the finished roof… impressive!

More info can be found here, including a couple of interesting video renderings:

http://www.bcplacestadium.com/

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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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Mountainbiking Cypress Mountain

Tuesday, July 20th, 2010

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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Brush with greatness

Friday, May 28th, 2010

I was mooching around the Safeway supermarket near BC Womens hospital the other day, having managed to get to the hospital cafeteria about 5 minutes too late as per usual. I mean, who closes a cafeteria at 6.30pm?! I’m just getting over lunch by that stage!

Anyhoo, I was cruising the aisles, when I spot a guy toting two very full baskets around with his 5 year old (or so, I’m no expert) daughter in tow. His daughter was having the time of her life… why? He’d only just before clipped two GIANT helium balloons to the shoulder straps of her summer dress, so that when she walked/ran the balloons bounced and jigged along behind her, kinda like her own private Macy Day Parade. Everyone in the store was watching out of the corners of their eyes as he spots another giant balloon and switches it for one of the ones clipped to his daughters dress.

You could see that he was getting great enjoyment out of it, but he was keeping it to himself, acting to his daughter like this is just what you do when shopping in Safeway, right?

Anyhoo, I then noticed there was something a little familiar about him… It was Daniel Sedin, one of the famed Sedin twins of the Vancouver Canucks ice hockey team! So very cool to see him. Yes, I am a big hockey fan, but it’s also just great seeing folks like that just cruising the stores.

I was quite suprised, as I expected him to be taller too – he’s 6’1″, so only an inch and a half taller than me. For the record, he also buys a lot of juice and yoghurt

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North Shore Mountain Biking

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

We took the opportunity last week when a lot of my good mates were in town to go for a “bucks” ride on the North Shore of Vancouver, Seymour Mountain to be specific. Man, it was great fun!

Those who didn’t have bikes rented Kona Stinkies from Cove Bike Shop, and we managed to fit 5 bikes in the back of my truck while still having a full complement of people in the seats (perhaps more than full… ). I was stoked about that, but Rusty had to take it pretty slow up the hill with that much weight on board…

While it decided to rain on our parade as soon as we reached the top, it tends to stay reasonably dry to a point underneath the trees, so it was only a little damp. We headed down towards Ned’s and then chose our own adventure from there.

Looking down the trail

A buddy of mine hitting up a ramp partway down

Hanging out in the forest, talking up our riding skillz, waiting for the straggler... who actually ended up walking most of the way down the hill. Whoops!

Some of us were lucky enough to go for a second run… cheers to the gents who opted to stay at the bottom and eat Timbits!

We’re so lucky to have a world class riding area just across the bridge from us here in downtown. Need to take more advantage of it!

(Thanks to Oli for all pics bar the first one!)

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Skiing Mount Seymour

Tuesday, March 16th, 2010

Note, All images are now clickable… click them to make them bigger and bask in their glory*!

One of the great things about living in Vancouver is that we have three ski mountains on the North Shore. That’s about 20 – 30 minutes drive away. Doing the speed limit. Which nobody in Vancouver seems to do.

When the snow is good, they’re a fantastic spot to get away to for a day on the weekend. You can pick your mountain and your spot, and typically the lines won’t be too bad. For example, we hit up Mount Seymour this weekend as the North Shore mountains had about 1.5m of snow in the week leading up. Yep, that’s right, 150cm. That just about made up for the very average winter they were having to that point. While the lines for the main lift were quite long, there’s a lift over the back called Brockton Chair, and we skied that for most of the day, and very, very rarely had to wait in line.

Yes, the mountains are smaller than, say, Whistler, but Whistler is twice the price, more than two hours away, and a serious day trip. It’s quite fun skiing a small chair too, if it’s going quick enough, as you never cool down on the chair, and you can pick out all sorts of interesting runs on the way back up again.

The snow was great btw

Here’s some happy snaps:

On the way up Brockton Chair, Mount Seymour

Brockton Chair, Mount Seymour

Mt Baker from the top of Brocton Chair Mount Seymour March 2010

And a quick panorama from the top, just to give you a feel for things – make sure you click it!

Panorama of Brocton Chair, Mount Seymour, March 2010

*Glory results of individual photos may vary…

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Paralympics – Sledge Hockey

Saturday, March 13th, 2010

We got to go see a Paralympic event today – Sledge Hockey!

This is basically the equivalent to ice hockey, but where the people playing are seated on metal framed sleds with two inline ice skates underneath. They get around by using two small hockey sticks which have some sort of grippy surface at one end (tungston?) at one end, and hockey stick ends on the other. Basically they have to ski as hard as they can to get around, then switch to he hockey stick when they actually want to hit the puck. Here’s a pic of one:

It’s a pretty amazing sport, which involves some fairly brutal hits, but also some ponderous moves, as they can’t get around on the ice very quickly, and if they lose the puck out the back end when moving it down the ice, it takes them a while to turn around and get it again.

The time these guys spend on the ice is amazing too – I think it might be longer than regular NHL, but one guy did 41 minutes out of 60 in 7 shifts. That’s a lot of high energy time on the ice!

We saw Norway vs Sweden, and it was a great game. Really close, with the score even at the end of regular time, then even again at the end of 5 minutes of sudden death. It went to shootout (best of three, one on one), and that was even right through till the last attempts on goal – here’s a swedish guy celebrating a goal:

Norway won the day though, with the Norwegian goalie keeping the last shot out (being a goalie in sledge hockey would be a really freakin’ tough job, as they are nowhere near as manouverable as regular goalies, yet have the same size net). This led to  game of “stacks on” of course, although I felt bad for the Swedish team – Norway is one of the top teams in the world, and Sweden fought their way through the qualifiers to get here.

Here’s a quick pano of Thunderbird Stadium too, where the match was held (click it!):

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Madness… Madness I tell you!

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

The atmosphere in Vancouver on Friday night was ELECTRIC! From our apartment in Yaletown, pretty close to the main drag, we could hear cheers and yells coming from all over the city. We were out on the balcony at one stage watching a small crowd of people milling around on the street corner opposite (we’re on the 16th floor), when I leaned over and noticed quite a large crowd of people on our corner, and then they ALL broke out into a very loud rendition of “Oh Canada”, the national anthem. I tell you what, these Canadians can put most groups of Aussies to shame when it comes to anthems… for one thing, most of them know the words to their anthem!

There’s been fireworks going off at 10.45 each night from the park just down the street from us, so we were eager to head out and get a different view of them. We headed to Granville Island, as there is a grassy hill there and it’s within a football field or so of the fireworks.

We actually expected Granville Island to be going nuts, same as downtown was at the time, so we walked down and took the Seabus from Yaletown to the Island rather than getting in the car. Made sense anyhoo, till they charged us $7 each for a return trip… still, can’t begrudge them being out at all hours of the night on the water.

Rocking up to the dock, the vibe was way different. Lots of folks were lined up to get into Atlantic House (a restaurant that the maritime provinces had gotten together to rebrand and kit out with their stuff for promotional means), and there were some randoms wandering around, but it seemed like the party was over. We headed over to the French quarter to see what was happening there, but there was only a smattering of crowd left and a couple of fights waiting to happen. Apparently a French heavy metal band had finished playing a little while beforehand…

Sauntering out of there before my Team Canada jersey got us into trouble, we found a bar and annoyed friends till Fireworks time, headed up the hill and took in the sights. It’s funny, the fireworks have been pretty much exactly the same each night, so you know when the good bits are coming up.

Following the fireworks we headed back into town on the Seabus, and if possible, town had gotten even more nuts. They finish up at Livecity Yaletown after the fireworks, so thousands of folks from there had headed into the centre of the city… we decided to head into the center of town to check it out too, just for shits ‘n’ giggles…

The downtown streets of Granville and Robson were PACKED with people for about 10 city blocks. There was nothing actually happening, no center of attention, folks just felt like they needed to celebrate, particularly seeing as Canada had won some medals that day.

It was pretty funny cruising around town listening to all the different chants by people from all over the world, who have all come to Vancouver for the Olympics. “Olay olay olay” was a popular one, but by far the most wide spread ones were “Oh Canada” and the more intelligent version “Can-Uh-Duh! Can-Uh-Duh! Can-Uh-Duh!”, which almost gives Aussie Aussie Aussie a run for its money.

We left the area well past 12 and there was no sign of it abating… might as well celebrate while you can!

(Good pics courtesy of Aidan Ward, average pics courtesy of my iPhone)

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Hockey: Belarus vs Sweden

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

It’s always best to make sure that when you’re off to an event, you make sure beforehand that you know which venue it’s at. In Vancouver during the Winter Olympics, they’re playing hockey at Canada Hockey Place downtown, which is about 10 blocks from where I live, and they’re also playing it at Thunderbird Stadium, which is out at UBC and about 20 minutes drive from here.

I had tickets to go see Belarus vs Sweden on Friday, checked the schedule online, and saw that it was out at Thunderbird Stadium. Made arrangements to meet Aidan at the Skytrain, got out of work a little late, and shoot up to UBC. Park up right on 12pm, and have a short walk to the Stadium. When we get there, everything is suspiciously quiet… maybe everyone is inside already? Nope. I check my Vancouver 2010 iPhone app (it’s free, so a great deal!) and yep, it’s on downtown. Crap!

Walk back to the car, drive downtown as fast as we can (legally) travel, park up, walk to the security check point, which is actually the same one they’ve been using for BC place, so about 5 blocks from here and still a good walk from the stadium. It’s the end of the first period by this point, and it’s 2-0 Sweden at this stage.

Rock into the security lineup, and there is no lineup. Strange feelings of deja vu… Still, we mosey in, then there are a bunch of blue jacketed volunteers all ushering us through the empty security stalls, we breeze through there, then get to the other side. What now?

“Just wait there and we’ll call the shuttle for you.”

What? Sure!

So we hang out, and sure enough, the “shuttle” comes along… it’s a golf cart!

Short blast down the road later, we’re inside the stadium, in our seats and watching the hockey with the second period just starting. Not too bad considering where we were at the start of the first period!

The atmosphere in the stadium was great. LOTS of Team Canada jerseys (I had my new one on!), so there must have been a majority Canadians there, but everyone got on the bandwagon, particularly when it came to cheering for the underdog – Belarus in this case. Considering that the Sedin twins, Daniel and Henrik, who are the current darlings of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, were playing for Sweden I found this a bit surprising, but hell, everyone goes for the underdogs!

You would never get this in an NHL game!

On the way back, we found out that Vancouver has renamed the Athletes Village in honour of the Boxing Kangaroo flag hung up there. That’s the Athletes Village in the far background, and if the camera was better you’d be able to see the BK flag

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