VanAussie Daily

Come and get it!

Author: Jared

When you’re leaving a place that you have called home for a couple of years, the inevitable happens- you have to shed all the valuable possessions, whittling down your stuff till you can fit it all back into the two bags you came over with. Either that or pay through the nose for shipping.

So, it is with great regret that I must give away one of my most prized possessions, one of the pertinent reminders of my homeland. It can be yours too if:

A. Your Australian enough.
B. You can pick it up in Vancouver.

What is it? My preciousssss…

Yes, that’s right folks, you are looking at a larger-than-life size corflute Coopers bottle sign, and it makes the perfect addition to any Aussie flat in Vancouver – show off your Aussie pride!

If you want it, “git yer Ocker on” in the comments – post up your favourite Aussie sayings or whatever… I’m willing to bet there won’t be much competition, but points will be awarded for creativity

Hell, even if you don’t want it or you’re not in Vancouver or don’t want the sign then feel free to post up anyway! Just let me know you’re not serious… I’ll even kick it off – see below

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October 5th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Musings, travel  |  6 Comments »

Stadium roof

Author: Jared

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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September 28th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Sport  |  No Comments »

Vancouver fire hydrants

Author: Jared

I said to Nat the other day that I’m pretty sure you could come up with a blog based entirely around Vancouver fire hydrants. I’m serious! Well, mostly, anyhoo.

They’re everywhere and some of them are in quite interesting spots and some look like little aliens come to take over our water supply.

You think I’m kidding?!

This guy likes the idea.

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September 13th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Musings  |  No Comments »

Confused

Author: Jared

Wow, how confused is this koala?!

It’s amazing what you find when shopping at a Chinese supermarket…

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September 10th, 2010  |  Posted in Downtown Vancouver, Food, Shopping  |  2 Comments »

:(

Author: Jared

For shame, for shame…

I don’t think I could have gotten any more out of it though.

Lucky I’ve got another one!

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August 31st, 2010  |  Posted in Food  |  2 Comments »

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), scenery, travel, Twins  |  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 »