Another Pin » vancouver

The Game.

holly — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 02:25:46 +0000

I’m sorry world, Vancouver is closed. For everything. You can stop calling, we’re not answering the phone for the next few hours. Hell, we’re not even willingly getting up to go to the bathroom unless it’s really, really important. The game is on.

The game. It’s really the only thing that matters right now. It’s the reason everyone who could went into work an hour early so they could be home in time. It’s the reason everyone on the train is glued to their smartphones, is trying to figure out how to finally use the radio setting on their iPod, and if they don’t have either of those, they’re looking over the shoulder of someone who does. And if you have to ask what game, consider this an internet smack upside your head. Stanley Cup Finals, Baby!!!

Vancouver is a hardcore hockey town. Seriously. But yet we’ve never succeeded in bringing Lord Stanley’s cup to our Olympic city. We’ve been close… 1994 versus the NY Rangers (*turn and spit*). I was in elementary school, and my most vivid memory of that was school literally stopping for a week and being replaced with pep rallies, fan-sign making in arts and crafts, and wearing nothing but orange, yellow and black until the end. Yep, that’s how long ago it was, back like two logos ago. Even kids without facial hair were trying to grow playoff beards. Today is the start of a series that is gripping the city in a similar way. Standing at Waterfront station this morning, one of the busiest downtown commuter hubs in the city, 1 in 3 commuters, from businesswomen to bike messengers to seeing eye dogs had on Canucks’ jerseys. The puck dropped at five, and the honking started at 4:30. The excitement was just bubbling over so much that people were compelled to hit the horn. And you know how it goes with honking, it’s like sneezing, once one person does it, everyone automatically follows suit. Even those Vancouverites not watching the game (what’s wrong with you? What, not from Vancouver? Then become a Vancouverite for the day or go home, silly tourist!) will know the score, because the second someone scores the screaming or the booing coming from every car, home, sidewalk, airplane, magic carpet is loud enough to reach you wherever you are.

I love this. The energy crackles in the air, the crowds randomly gather at street corners wherever a TV is on in a window, and everyone’s friends with everyone else. It’s really similar to the vibe felt during the Olympics (hockey again, big surprise), but with fewer international visitors, and it’s magical. There is something amazing about collective excitement that just can’t be beat. The feeling is so nice, a tiny part of me wants it to stay for as long as possible, but a much bigger part of me wants it to end in 4. If that happens, Vancouver is going to need a month off to recover, and no one is going to mind one bit.

Go Canucks!!!

And then she fell – experiencing Vancouver’s ski culture – a beginner’s perspective

holly — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 20:09:06 +0000

It’s where the first ever gold medal was won by a Canadian athlete on home soil almost a year ago. It’s got great snow, great runs, great facilities and it’s only half an hour from my driveway. Cypress Mountain had been, until recently, an enigma to me – I knew where it was but had never gone up there. There was no reason to, because, after all, I am not a skier. I am the exact opposite of a skier, actually. If it is possible to be the negative of a skier, that’s me. I don’t even like being cold. The only time I previously wore skis was in grade 6 and it ended with me and my sprained ankle being loaded onto a sled and taken away by first aid ski-doo. And that was flat-land cross country. So you can imagine the trepidation I felt agreeing to try snowboarding. But when you have these amazing facilities on your doorstep, it’s stupid not to experience them, right?

When I told my Grandmother my plans she asked sweetly if I was “going snowboarding or snow falling?” That was not a good sign. But I’m always up for a challenge, and with good friends, a brave face and a “good luck” A&W hashbrown in my stomach, I was ready to go. The first thing that greets you at the lodge are the giant lime green Olympic rings which, I swear, are just there to make you feel invincible. There’s something about seeing them there that suddenly takes over your body and makes you believe that you too are an Olympic caliber athlete. Clearly this mountain would not accept any less. And clearly I am totally delusional. I’m a big believer in that when you look like you know what you’re doing, it helps your performance (see delusional comment above), and once we were all kitted out in our rental gear I honestly thought this couldn’t be nearly as difficult as I’d previously thought.

Thank God not one of the four of us really had any previous snowboard experience, so we started off the day in the only logical fashion: with a lesson. It was pretty much us and 100 elementary school kids all learning to swoosh and splat together. We were the taller ones not wearing neon. It was only when I landed on my knees the first time that my imperviousness started to wane when I discovered that I couldn’t get up gracefully. It was more like a giraffe trying to drink – ass in the air, knees splayed at odd angles, inner thighs screaming as they attempted to keep the board from flying out from under you and sending you right back to the snow. I’m pretty good at laughing at myself when I tank at something, which turned out to be an invaluable skill. Two hours later we had mastered the learning hill (six feet of fun with a bench at the top) and I was getting the hang of this snowboarding thing. There’s still something horribly unnatural to not having your body face in the direction you’re going, and knowing if you try to turn that way, you either stop or fall, but whatever, I was psyched and ready to move up to the big girl hills.

By big girl hills, I mean the mile long bunny hill. I’m not that stupid. To get up there it meant taking my first chair lift, and that was nearly as exciting as the run itself. It was when we were about halfway up that I remembered that my lesson had not included chairlift instructions. My boyfriend, who’s lesson had included that important skill, tried his best to talk me through it, but it still ended with me making an ungraceful splat and then trying desperately to crawl out of the way of the incredibly talented 8 year olds who were in the chair behind. My record for the day ended up at 0 for 4.

Holy crap, this thing looked steep from the top. Visions of that first aid ski-doo ride started flashing through my head, but I came to snowboard, dammit, I could make it down this hill no problems. Sometimes being young and stupid works to my advantage. Face sideways, perfect form… oh shit! I’m going too fast and have no idea how to stop… and I was on my ass in the snow. I’d made it about fifteen feet. Now I had been awesome at getting up back on the flats, but when you throw in a 50 degree angle it’s a whole new ball game. Ten minutes of trying everything I had in my arsenal, including squirming, panting, praying to the Gods of snowboarding and making snow angels (that last part was just to make me feel better. It was an ugly snow angel with my feet attached together) I had to resort to taking one foot out of the bindings, standing, and buckling myself back in. Standing back up is the hardest part of snowboarding, hands down. Take two. All told, it took me fifteen minutes to get down that hill, complete with two spectacular face plants and a lot of snow stuck in interesting inner places in my gear. Thankfully, falling didn’t hurt nearly as much as getting up did.

By now I was exhausted. But the only way to learn something is repetition, so it was back to the chair splat, I mean chair lift. By the end of the day I was noticeably better, my record was only three falls on the way down, and I was very, very good at taking off and re-fastening my bindings. I’d only cried once, out of sheer frustration when I fell right at the top of the hill (read: inches before I’d actually started going down it) and had been unable to get up while a kid the size of my right thigh swooshed past me with ease, but that actually turned into my best run of the day, so it had been worth something. I cannot tell you how much I appreciated flat ground, my running shoes and a hot tea, though.

All told, snowboarding was really fun. Now I understand why people from all over the world flock to Vancouver just for the mountains, as you can easily head up after a long day at the office and still get a few good runs in before closing. And it’s conveniently close if you have to be heli-lifted to hospital, so that’s comforting. I’m not sure if it’s my sport… yet, I’ll need more practice and the ability to get up and stop without falling (both skills which I’m nowhere near mastering), but I’m not giving up. Just taking an extended break

Swords, hair removal and firemen – City Chase 2010 recap!

holly — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:04 +0000

Another year down, another day of fun and mayhem on the streets of Vancouver, and now we have 365 days to recover for next year’s City Chase! My legs have that kinda sore “you had a good workout” buzz, my feet are tired, I have turf burns on my knees and am missing a patch of hair from my right arm, and it was totally worthit. It always is. For those of you who didn’t read my blog from last year, shame on you. Because of that I now have to explain again what the City Chase is (everyone always asks), so here’s the reader’s digest version: you and a teammate join 300-plus other teams, are given a clue sheet with a whole bunch of locations/tasks on it, and you have a maximum of 6 hours to get to and complete 10 of these challenges before racing back to the finish line. How you do this and what order you do these challenges in is totally up to you, the only rule really is that you can only travel by foot or public transportation. Now that’s out of the way, here’s the annual awesome blow-by-blow recap of how we, Team Llamaface! completed the 2010 Vancouver City Chase.

If you saw a whole bunch of people in red jerseys, some with capes and one guy in a banana costume running around on Saturday, particularly around the start/finish line at Granville Square, that was us. As one tourist commented, “I don’t think it’s the Gay Pride parade, but I’m not sure” which, of course, made us all cheer and high five her as we ran past. It started right at 10am, when they told us to run to the Olympic torch. We were off! Adrenaline was pumping, excitement was swelling, and we still had no idea what the hell we were going to have to do. At the torch we finally got our clue sheets and set about deciphering where we needed to go. From advanced hints sent out via Facebook and Twitter on Friday night we knew that there was going to be something at Portside Park, so we decided to hop a bus right there and figure everything else out on the way.

Chasepoint #1 – 8 Legs or None

One team member had to reach into a big bowl of mealworms and wood chips and find a marble. The colour of the marble determined what your teammate had to do. I’m better with creepy crawly things than my teammate Eric, so we figured he would draw the marble, because whatever I had to do was undoubtedly going to be worse. Yep, it was. We drew the “mystery box”, which meant that I had to draw a number from a bowl and whatever number I drew was the number of Madagasgar hissing cockroaches I had to dig out of a box and put into a bowl. I’ve actually held one of these things before (long story) and knew they were dry and harmless, so I just jumped in and was done before Eric had the chance to take my photo. Nine to go.

Chasepoint #2 – Chasepoint #1

This isn’t as confusing as it looks, the Chasepoint was actually titled “Chasepoint #1″ but it was the second one we did that day, so it was our Chasepoint #2. A clue we had received via Facebook a few days before the race (but we expected this, because this is the only Chasepoint they actually have every year) said that if we raised CAD$50.00 for Right to Play we would get a Chasepoint stamp that we could pick up at one of two places on the course. Portside park was one of those two places, so fifteen minutes after the race started we had two of ten checked off. Sweet. Eight to go.

Chasepoint #3 – BOWLERAMA

The course this year was probably the most logically laid out of all seven years they have had a Vancouver City Chase, as 90% of the points followed the Canada Line Skytrain line, which is exactly what I had hoped for. The plan was to hop on the train, go to the farthest away point and work our way back, since the finish line was right beside Waterfront Station. This also gave us more time in transit to plan the rest of our route, so we headed to Richmond. The idea was to find the Richmond Lawn Bowling Club, which we, thanks to our phone-a-friend online at home, had the exact address to. Well, we get there, are standing at that exact spot, and find… nothing. It was a housing development. After wandering around for twenty frustrating minutes, including asking a whole bunch of people, including other lost Chase teams, we decided to cut our losses and abort. So we hopped back onto the train, pissed that we had spent all that time on the train for nothing. Damn.

Chasepoint #3 (revised) Fling it Good

I work at Oakridge Mall, so when the clue said to get to the frisbee golf course at Queen Elizabeth Park, I was on my home turf. We got off at the Oakridge stop (it was hard, but I resisted the urge to run into my office and say hi to my co-workers) and were soon there. One team member had to try to get a frisbee into the goal in under four shots. If they succeeded it was all good, but if it was four shots that meant the non-throwing team member had to have a strip of their arm hair waxed off. Six or more shots they would loose an eyebrow. Eric is a much better frisbee-er than I am, not to mention he’s go the arm hair of a shetland, so it was very clear right from the start he was going to throw. The feeling of helplessly watching the fate of your body hair fly through the air was nerve, wracking let me tell you! But a good first shot got him close and he was nearly done in three, but a missed “put” meant I was getting my arm waxed. Poop. That hurt. How invented this process? Medieval torturers? Thankfully you still can’t really see the missing patch of hair, but the wax didn’t all come off my arm, and when I tried to peel it off all it did was make my hands sticky, so I had to complete the rest of the race with a two-inch square of orange wax on my arm. Seven to go.

Chasepoint #4 – The Wanderers

This one was conveniently located right beside the frisbee golf, so for once we didn’t have to worry about bus schedules or how far we had to walk. Using high-tech orienteering gear (little beeper tags) and a map we had to navigate a portion of the park and clock in at 12 hidden checkpoints in order. If we got the order wrong there was a penalty. This one we made up some good time on, even passing some teams who were already on the course ahead of us. I might not know my left from my right most days, but I can sure read a map Four down, six to go.

Chasepoint #5 – Barefoot

This one required about 20 minutes of walking to go from Queen Elizabeth Park to Douglas Park, and we didn’t succeed in finding a bus, so our only option was to hoof it all the way. By now we were tired, but our successes at Queen ElizabethPark had us invigorated. We were in good shape. This challenge was to be tied to your partner, three-legged-race style, and dribble a ball with your foot in a slalom pattern between wine bottles. At each bottle you had to stop and pick up a glass of water and carry on a waiter’s tray, eventually making a pyramid 6 glasses high. This was frustrating, damp, and my waxy arm kept sticking to Eric, but we did it, no worries. As we were putting our shoes back on afterwards the announcement went out on the crew’s walkie-talkies that the first place team had crossed the finish line already. Damn. We were only half way there. I don’t know how they did it… they must have run the whole thing or something. Damn those uber athletic people! But we were still in pretty good shape compared to most of the other teams we encountered along the way. Five to go.

Chasepoint #6 – Blind Grams

Once again, this point was only a block away from the last, so we were there before we knew it and ready to rock. One of us had to be blindfolded and go out into a field and retrieve seven puzzle pieces, directed by their partner’s voice, and then once all pieces were gathered we could remove the blindfold and both put it together in the shape of a swan. We learned last year that Eric gives good directions (he actually does know his left from right, go figure), so I was blindfolded. Besides, nobody would believe us if we said he was the better listener ;P !!! Retrieving the pieces was cake, and putting it together only took a bit longer. Six down, four to go.

Chasepoint #7 Thumb-athalon

A quick five block walk brought us to the Rogers store at the corner of Oak adn 15th, where we both picked up blackberry smartphones. We sere seperated, and Eric got a clue sheet with 6 questions on it, which he texted to me. I had to run around the neighbourhood and find the answers, like what the cost of a shwarma plate was at the nearby flafal joint, or how much the transaction fee was at the ATM inside Esquires Coffee. The questions were the easy part, but for a tech newbie like me, figuring out how to text/send pics back to Eric took 90% of the time! All told, though, we powered through this and were soon on our way again. Three to go.

Chasepoint #8 Local Heroes

Another short five minute walk got us to the plaza behind City Square mall, and a whole bunch of firemen. Insert happy dance here. When I wasn’t staring at the firemen we had to don firemen’s hats and jackets, drag a weighted dummy around a course, knock over a cone by spraying a firehose, unroll a full-length firehose and then roll it back up and carry it over a marked line. This is actually the identaical chasepoint they had in East Vancouver last year, so Eric and I powered through this, already knowing exactly what to do. Which was good, because it gave me more time to stare at the firemen. Mmmm, firemen…. Two to go!

Chasepoint #9 – National Defense

This is where reading what the challenges are, not just if their location is convenient, is a good thing. We didn’t do this. I have a tendancy to never do this. Hence the fact that last year Eric had to eat canned smoked oysters adn make this awesome gag/puke sound. Still apologizing for that one. A few blocks’ walk got us to Jonathan Rogers Park, just off Broadway, and it was only when we rounded the corner that we realized this was a military obsticle course. Crap. This is the type of chasepoint that the really athletic people do. Like the Olympic Triatheletethat won in Montreal. He would have been all over this. We, on the other hand, actually went so far as to pull out the clue sheet, determine there really was nothing else remotely close to us and this fit so perfectly in our master plan, and resign ourselves to the fact that we had to do the freaking thing. At this point in the day anything more than a strong walk took effort, so, like prisoners walking the green mile, we reluctantly reported for duty, Sir. They smeared war paint on our faces and fitted us with 20-lb tactical vests and helmets, then our (incredibly nice – we lucked out) drill seargenthad us run up and down the embankment four times, then do 15 push ups and 15 sit ups. Then came the belly crawl, which tore up the insides of my knees and got a really big wad of dead grass stuck to the wax blob on my arm. Eric, exhausted and the last in line, cried “but I make video games!” as he put what effort he had left into the crawl. Hilarious. But we weren’t done. That would have been too easy. Run ten feet, drop to your belly, jump up and repeat the pattern 5 times. Then, holding hands withanother team, run the lengthof the football field and back, ending with a scramble over a picnic table. Suddenly I felt like a Survivor contestant, the slow one who gets dragged along by their teammates when they’re all tied together for a challenge. Not good, but we were done. One to go!

Chasepoint #10 – En Garde

After a few minutes to recover, it was back onto the Canada Line to Waterfront station and our last challenge of the day. We had specifically worked it so that this point was our last: it was close to the finish line, we knew where it was without assistance, and I was not going home until I’d done the swordfighting chasepoint. This is the third year they have had fencing/swordplay, and the first two I had missed because it just wasn’t logical to go all the way there on the route I was running. This year, however, they had given us the clue the night before (in the form of a facebook-posted crossword I was frantically filling in at 11:30 pm) of Academie Duello, the fencing academy right downtown. Perfect. We could make our route specifically so this one was included. So we crawled in, were fitted withfencing helmets, and I got on a wooden horse (can’t help but insert the Old Spice parody here: we now smell like the team you want your team to smell like, and I’m on a horse) holding a shield and six foot wooden spear. Eric pushed the horse along a course and I had to spear 3 rings as we went. Then off the horse, he had to do 15 diamond push ups while I fought off an attacker with a longsword. SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET! This wasn’t a play sword, either, it was ten pounds of ting!ting!ting! metal and a crazy guy swinging at my head. Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for that helmet, I wouldn’t have a head, because his sword was bouncing off me like nobody’s business. After that, to prove that torture is always fair, I had to do 15 burpies(I HATE BURPIES) while Eric defended himself with two metal shields against an equally crazy guy wielding two swords at his head. Yay helmets. We made it out barely alive, but we were done!

The finish line was only three blocks away, so we sprinted (read: walked until we knew the people holding the ribbon could see us then ran to make it look like we had energy left) across it. Done! Chased and conquered. We were exhausted, happy, hadn’t fought all day, and thought we had done pretty good. The official results were just posted today (if you’re not first you’re in the dark for a few days following the Chase, as it takes a few days for the judges to make sure everything is accurate ), and we finished in 98th place! Out of 351 teams! In seven years this is the first time I’ve ever broken the 100 mark, and we beat our record from last year by over a hundred teams. High five!

All told it was awesome, fun, exhausting and I’m totally doing it again next year!

Gearing up for the Vancouver City Chase!

holly — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:23:21 +0000

It’s that time of year again: time for the Vancouver City Chase!

Quite possibly my favorite day of the year, it’s the only day that I get to run around like a madwoman, doing all sorts of random adventures in the best city in the world! At this point all we know is where the start/finish line is and that a secret hint delivered by facebook directs us to Portside Park, but what we have to do there is still a mystery. Awesome. And just because they love me (yes, I choose to believe this), they have decided this year to hold it on my birthday. Yep, Saturday is all about meeeeee!!

So now we’re in prep mode, which is always an interesting thing to do when you don’t know what you’re prepping for. My teammate is hitting the gym (of course, two whole days of exercise is going to make a huge difference, lol!) and I’m hitting the streets, trying to familiarize myself with the areas downtown I don’t often get a chance to see. Like I had no idea where Portside Park was until I google mapped it. With the Canada Line getting you from downtown to Richmond in 20 minutes, that opens up a whole new section of Vancouver that we never could access before, since you would loose too much time in transit to actually complete the race in the allocated 6 hours. My spider-sense is telling me to check out areas around the Canada Line stops. Since my office is not too far from a Canada Line station, I already have my coworkers prepped that if I call they’ll quickly do anything I need (love them!). Going near work would be too awesome for words. But, of course, I could be way off and doing all this for nothing as the route this year could be completely in the other direction. That surprise is the wonder of the Chase.

So far this year, in the other City Chases accross Canada, they have done stuff like strip bowling, holding a live crocodile, whitewater kayaking, shooting machine guns and completing a military obsticle course, so God knows what we’ll be asked to do, but one thing’s for sure: it’s going to be epic.

And I’m going to love every second of it.

Full recap to follow!!!

Come to Vancouver – we have the best weather!

holly — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 21:42:48 +0000

Ahh, summer in Vancouver. Perfect days with a rare cloud punctuating the pure blue sky, a gentle breeze coming in off the ocean, the majestic mountains surrounding us in a comforting hug, and the sun glinting off the glass skyscrapers of the downtown core. Damn, right it’s the best place on earth. And you should all drop what you’re doing and come now. Immediately. Vancouver wants you. We have perfect weather, so take advantage of it before stock runs out!

Summer finally arrived at the end of June, after the longest winter on record. Well, technically winter was exactly the same length as every year, but this year it felt like we skipped spring entirely. But once summer dawned, it hasn’t let up one bit. We’ve now had nearly a month straight of “coat? I don’t even need socks in this weather” weather, and I’m loving every second of it. Life should operate at this temperature every day. I guess it does in LA, but here we don’t need to deal with nearly as much traffic, garbage, smog, noise… you get the point. As much as I appreciate (and boy do I appreciate) the chance to finally thaw, this weather also shows off Vancouver at its best, and everyone needs to take full advantage of it.

Right now we’re in the midst of the Symphony of Fire fireworks competition for four consecutive Wednesday and Saturday nights, which floods the shores of false creek with thousands of “ooooh”ers and “aaaah”ers. Soon we’ll have the Dragon Boat festival, too. We actually don’t have a deep pool of festivals and events, but the attractions we have year-round are pretty damn spectacular, and when you see them in this fantabulous weather, they’re even better. You can immerse yourself in the native culture of the pacific coast at the UBC Museum of Anthropology and then get your nekked on at Wreck Beach; shop Robson Street’s trendiness and then finish off the day at a waterfront cafe on False Creek; bike Stanley Park’s seawall, feed the squirrels and enormous raccoons, then visit one of the best Aquariums around to splash with the belugas and dolphins. A few weeks ago I did the bike thing for the first time since I was like 6 and it was great. It’s a really smooth, relaxing ride, and a 2 hour bike rental from Spokes on Denman only cost CAD$10.00! And regardless of what you do, remember to snag a funky twist on lunch at the world-famous Japadog gourmet Japanese hot dog cart. Trust me, it’s worth the wait.

But honestly, I’m here in the best place on earth, and I cannot recommend strongly enough that you should be too. What are you waiting for, people? We have sun!!!!