My family are here! Yay for family. There is something a little incongruous about being with mum, dad and Jenna all of a sudden. It feels science fiction. It is as though I have teleported them all here, or I have successfully managed to exist in two simultaneous realities. Anyhow they are here, in the flesh and I have photographic evidence. They were all a little tired and jet lagged on Monday, so I took them to the river near-by (in Lynn valley) for a swim. Mum and Jenna managed to find some poodles to play with. Another highlight was finding [View Full Entry]

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Sorry for the double posting today, but I have the day off to do stuff like update this blog, email people, clean the house, go for a run etc. I spose I should do a few sensible things too, like pay a few bills, pay my credit card, chase up my status on the electoral role and blah blah blah. We are going to Barb and Brian’s place for dinner tonight, which should be nice. Jono and I realised the other day that our time in Canada is almost half over (and half begun, I guess if you are a glass [View Full Entry]

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An out of order post that I forgot to post for JULY 1: 140 years ago to this day (July 1), Canada was established as a self-governing country. What this meant for us, is a day off, so we hastily packed, bought a road map and hit the highway to take the first of hopefully many road trips in our new car. We decided that we wanted to climb some rock, of course, but the forecast for Squamish was decidedly wet, and we wanted to broaden our horizons a little. We decided we would hit the highway and head up [View Full Entry]

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I am taking another quick moment to update this blog. It is just going to be staccato bursts at the moment. Life has gotten so busy again, mainly just with work and organizing this climbing film festival and climbing. Does busy-ness follow me? Or do I create it and tow it along behind me? Whatever the case, it does not really feel like a “holiday” anymore! But I am not complaining, I like to be busy… I think… to a point… Anyway, the days since I have last written have been filled with organizing film festival logistics, serving customers (for [View Full Entry]

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Big news item number one: WE ARE GETTING MARRIED!!! I could not really write anything else till I got that one off my chest! Big news item number two: Well, it is not nearly as big, but we bought a car, which is exciting because it opens up many more travel opportunities. Not having a car is proving quite difficult in Canada, in terms of trying to access rock climbing areas and anywhere remote (or even remotely remote!) So, $800 bought us a Subaru Legacy wagon. Similar to Jono’s parent’s car, but the wagon version, and it has significantly more [View Full Entry]

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Waking up to a rainy day with a car out the front of the house is entirely different to waking up to a rainy day and looking mournfully/wistfully at a 10 year-old gortex jacket that does not really work any more. Actually, maybe I’ll put a new rain jacket on my MEC employee shopping list. But, anyway, my point is, we had a car and we planned to use every last one of our “free” kilometres that came with it. So the fact that it was raining on our third day on the island did not deter us. We just [View Full Entry]

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Day two, which was, despite the date at the top of this entry, Sunday the 3rd June: After a slightly frustrating start to the day looking for a particular trail in a particular national park, and finding only housing developments, we went back to bed and tried getting out the other side and starting again. It was a good move. We drove (yep, DROVE, woo-hoo) out to the other side of Comox Lake in search of that seam of basalt we spied the day before. Let me intersect a crucial piece of information here: I mentioned that we spent some [View Full Entry]

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Finally we pulled some strings, spent some savings, swapped some shifts and both got four days off together to head out to Vancouver Island. One of the things on my ‘must do’ list while in Canada was to visit my cousin Colin and his fiancé Julie (http://www.angusadventures.com/index.htm.) The two have recently just completed the first entirely human-powered circumnavigation of the globe. I first met Colin when he sailed in to Australia somewhere close to 15 years ago. His adventurous spirit had inspired my budding one, and left a big impression on me. Meeting up with him again [View Full Entry]

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Oh, the sweet justice. I am writing this on Monday, after having worked like I have never worked before all day Saturday and Sunday. I am relishing this day off, even more so because it is a day where most of those people that I was running around for are now working. Ahhhh… Jono is away for work, scoping out a new area that the company has never been to before, and will be back on Wednesday. We both had a day off together on Friday and went snow shoeing, which was awesome. Factors that made it awesome include: · [View Full Entry]

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We woke up this morning and found that the rain over night had washed away our half-baked plans to go snow shoeing up the Lynn valley. So, on a whim, we decided to put on our tourist hats and trek into China town to experience bubble tea, chicken claws, dried fish, plastic, hustle and bustle. While not really tempted by the shops selling flattened ducks, snakeskins, reindeer antlers, buffalo tongues and bears testicals, we did get lured into a restaurant for some lunch. The food, a mushroom and broccoli dish and a squid dish, was actually quite tasty, and the [View Full Entry]

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