Blogs from British Columbia, Canada, North America

After a good night's sleep, we woke up fairly late, got dressed and headed out the door, on our way to the nearest WalMart. I figured out how to get there by bus, bus 406 and 407, and sure enough, after quite a ride we got there. The shopping center where the WalMart was located, was quite something, with dozens of restaurants, stores, and other places, beside a very unusual WalMart at one end. We actually had to ask someone how to get inside! You had to go down the entrance to the parking garage and around to the door, then up an escalator. Check out the photo. It was a fairly large WalMart with a lot of oriental foods. Manoli had heard that Vancouver was 65 percent oriental, so I guess that makes sense. Also, ... read more

Today was our disembarkation day, meaning we leave the ship. We have reservations with VRBO for a nice house on the south side of Vancouver. The schedule they gave us last night said we can leave the ship at 8:45am, so we were up early and ready to go. Manoli decided to take all our luggage with us, so we wouldn't have to wait once we got off the ship. We sailed through Canadian Customs and made our way outside. Manoli had decided we'd take an Uber, but couldn't find one on her phone, so we caught a taxi. It was quite a trip, near the airport and about a 30 minute drive. It cost us $48 or so, Canadian, which is only $34 American. The VRBO was pretty nice, run by a family with 2 ... read more

Left the Ft. Fraser campground at 7:45 today, topped off the tank, (About $4.60 per gal), and continued on the Yellowhead Highway to the Cassier Highway. I was very disappointed last night that the campground laundry was closed since our laundry is starting to pile up. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so I resorted to washing our underwear by hand in the sink. We had them hanging all over the camper, very attractive. I'm not optimistic about finding one in the next couple of campgrounds on the Cassier, but in the meantime we'll have clean undies. Ray said that we should be able to get four wearings out of each, front, back and inside out...I think NOT! After leaving Fraser it did not take us long to get back to the rolling hills and some ... read more

Vancouver is a great city and very similar to San Francisco. There were lovely green spaces in every city we visited but Vancouver really has some terrific parks and gardens and some amazing mushrooms after the rain started. The VanDusen Botanical Garden was worth several hours of exploring, and the nearby Bloedel Conservatory within Queen Elizabeth Park had some great birds in a small space. If you have fewer than three days, though, you'll have to miss all that and focus on Gas Town, with its famous Steam Clock, and Chinatown, with delicious Chinese food and the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, with its rotating exhibits and Emily Carr paintings. You need to make time for Granville Island Public Market, at least... read more

Day 2 - Sunday Ok, so, one of the reasons why I don't usually experience the nightlife when I travel for an iF3 competition is because you have to sleep sometime. 12 hours on your feet working the event and then 12 hours out partying at night would equal zero hours of sleep... and that would be brutal. That's almost what happened to me in Egypt two years ago. I was sleeping in the Uber, sleeping on the plane, sleeping every chance I got after a couple of late nights in Cairo. It was tough, and this time even more so. Chelly and I were up until about 3am. When we woke, it was time to get everyone fed, packed, and checked out of the AirBnB. So we ate our Indian leftovers for breakfast (Indian meal ... read more

Me & The iF3 I first found out about the International Functional Fitness Federation (iF3) in 2017 when they launched their organization dedicated to bringing the sport of Functional Fitness to the Olympic level, and held their first World Championships. There was a fundraiser and I pitched in. I didn't win the fan-wheel bike, but I was happy to help spread the word, and a seed was planted. In 2018, I decided to approach them about making a documentary. My friend James Fitzgerald at OPEX Fitness connected me to Gretchen Kittelberger, founder of the iF3, and we started talking. In 2019, the USA team brought me to Malmo, Sweden as their videographer and my documentary work for the iF3 began. I turned the footage from that trip into Reach For The Rings, my feature documentary about ... read more