My parents came over for our first Thanksgiving in our new house. We had it a week early since both Theresa and my dad were going to be away during the Thanksgiving weekend. Theresa was very excited to use China from her great aunt Totsie, crystal from her grandparents, and silverware from my grandparents.
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| From thanksgiving 2009 |
We had our trees pruned today. What an adventure! Our huge cherry tree that “pooped” all over the deck has now been downsized by about 6′.
This is what our cherry tree used to look like:
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| From tree trimming 2009 |
And this is what it looks like now:
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| From tree trimming 2009 |
The holly trees have been removed, giving us a better view into the neighbour’s yard. Sadly, no view of the Fraser river was hiding behind the cherry tree. We hired a company to do the work. It was money well spent, considering it’s a dangerous job and we could have ruined our new deck, the landscaping, and/or the garage!
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| From Second Honeymoon |
For our second honeymoon, Theresa and I went with the English to the Sunshine coast and Strathcona park. We had 3 nights in Lund (very small town north of Powell River) and 3 nights in the Strathcona Park Lodge, 45km from Campbell River. In Lund we took a boat cruise into the not so desolate Desolation Sound, and spent a great day exploring Savary Island. On Savary Island, the 10 of us split into three groups. Ollie, Cliff, Theresa and I walked around pretty much the entire island, and had a good swim at Sutherland beach. Steven, Sharon, mom and dad spent most of the day relaxing at a different beach. Robert and Catherine rented bikes and explored all of the island that way.
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| From Second Honeymoon |
In Strathcona we had two good hikes, and managed to squeeze in some paddling and swimming in the Upper Campbell lake too. We stayed in the Strathcona Park Lodge, which worked out really well. We had a big cabin to ourselves with a view of the lake from the patio, and easy access to the water.
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| From Second Honeymoon |
The pictures are up here.
For our honeymoon, Theresa and I decided to do a week of riding on the Kettle Valley Railway. The KVR was build between 1910 to 1915. It was an amazing piece of engineering, especially famous for it’s trestle bridges in the Myra canyon near Kelowna. The railway was overcome by the highway, and now the railbed is mostly a gravel path that is part of the Trans Canada Trail.
Since it was our honeymoon, we signed up with Great Explorations - they supported our ride by moving the gear between campsites and providing all of the meals and 2 guides, Wendy and Dave.
The planned ride was from Beaverdell to Coalmont. Because the Beaverdell campsite wasn’t in great shape, we camped about 25km further up the trail. The first day half of us rode the extra km from the campsite, which was a pretty long day. We stayed at the hydraulic lake campsite, and bathed in the resevoir!
The second day of riding was through the Myra canyon. There were great views of and from the Trestles. This was definitely the busiest part of the trail - we hardly saw any other cyclists except for here. We stayed at Chute lake that night, with a bajillion mosquitoes, and had our first experience with Fire Pie.
The next day we rode to Summerland. This route was mostly downhill, which was good because it was pretty loose trail. We stopped at the Hillside Winery on the edge of Penticton for lunch and wine tasting. After that, Theresa and I stuck to the road to get to Summerland, while the rest of the group stayed on the railbed. At the Peach Orchard campsite that night we had a visit from The Kettle Valley Brakemen, who gave us a musical history lesson about the railway.
The fourth day of riding was from Summerland to Chain Lake. We (except for Rick) shuttled up to Faulder to skip about 12km of climbing. Perhaps we should have shuttled a bit further - the first 5km of trail was the toughest of the trip. The path was like riding uphill at the beach. Our planned meet point at Thirsk lake had unfortunately been closed due to a re-damming of the lake, so there was a lot of confusion. The group I was with were all out of water, but managed to meet up with Wendy at Greg’s cabin and bike rental place across from Osprey Lake. The Chain Lake campground was really nice, with the campsites right on the lake, and hardly any other campers. I was also able to demonstrate my skills with an axe.
The final day of riding took us through Princeton to historic Coalmont. The views were great throughout the day - a couple tunnels; rolling hills above Princeton, and riding through a canyon to Coalmont.
Theresa and I struggled a bit on our cyclocross bikes, and would use mountain bikes if we were to do it again. We still had a great time, though, largely thanks to the camaraderie of the group.
I’ve posted the pictures here.
For the first major home project, we decided to work on the deck. The old concrete patio was badly broken up, and needed replacing. The landing and stairs down from the kitchen need replacing more urgently, but we thought the deck might be an easier place to start. Even though we just wanted to make a simple rectangle, it still took a lot of work. Dad and I both took Thursday and Friday off of work, plus the wednesday which was Canada Day. In the end, we put down the last deck board at about 8:30 pm on Sunday!
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| From deck construction |
Theresa and I trimmed the end of the deck boards, and stained them today, and had a celebratory BBQ. As usual, the pictures are up here.
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| From deck construction |
As one of our training rides, we went to Fort Langley and cycled to Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and back. (Map)
You’d think that the cycling would be a highlight, but Brad wanted to take pictures of roadkill.
As we made our way through the farmland, we were told to “Geeett ‘Eeerrr Dooone!”, saw a lot of Sunday morning church services, had ice cream and picked a fight with a driver (well, I, Theresa, picked a fight - he was too close to my beloved!).
See our entire bike ride, including Brad floating on air (watch for it!).
Chris and I have lived in the South Slope of Burnaby for six years. I decided I wanted to live on one of two streets: Clinton or Portland. And on those two streets, I only wanted to live on two specific blocks. Why? Because they were pretty and they were still a 10 minute walk to the skytrain. As for the names, I liked Clinton because I thought he was a good president and I’m all for Hillary. Portland because my best friend grew up in Portland, OR. I figured both streets had good juju for me.
We looked around at houses casually for several years, stepping up our efforts to “a bit more than casual” in the last six months. Our townhouse landscaping was so nice in the spring and our interior was well done, so it was easy to continue to live there and difficult to buy a fixer-upper.
We had a specific price range, specific two blocks, wanted a south facing back yard. Good luck finding it! In our price range we saw a lot of junk, stuff that made me so made that someone else wanted me to give them how-much-money-for-that-piece-of-sh**? As a consumer, I felt disrespected (yeah, it was a tough search). Chris made me stay focused on the 10 minute walk to the skytrain because we have one car and don’t want another. He drives to work, but I’m a regular transit user.
We finally found a house on the street we wanted with a south facing backyard. The upstairs had been nicely renovated and the downstairs was still unfinished. An unfinished basement was good because we had seen a lot of finished ones with terrible workmanship and we didn’t want to pay for that only to have to tear it out later. When I walked into the house, I knew I wanted to buy it. I kept my mouth shut until we left and I said to Chris and the realtor in a whisper, “I think we should buy this house.”
We made an offer and they countered at what we thought was too high, so we didn’t counter. We waited two weeks, made the same offer, their counter was better, so we countered and they countered and we accepted. After that ensued one of the busiest work and personal times for both me and Chris.
Since we were soooo busy, we had to put Chris’ parents to work. We enslaved them at very little cost to ourselves, barely fed and watered them, and forced them to do back-to-back late night and early morning shifts. I comfort myself with the fact that they liked it.
In the end, we managed to move.
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| From tofino |
For Theresa’s birthday, I booked a room at the Clayoquot Field Station near Tofino. I had read about it in a magazine as a place where researchers stayed. It was in the Tofino Botanical gardens, but was essentially a hostel. We had the “Teacher’s Room”, which was quite nice, although the walls were quite thin. They had the shorebird festival, so we went birding at 7am, and again at 4pm. We also went to a slide show by an expert birder. It was cold and wet, but still interesting.
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| From tofino |
Back to NY for another 2 week trip. This one straddled the Easter weekend, which I wasn’t too happy about. Our company keeps a bike at the hotel we stay at, so I managed to get in a couple of rides on the Bethpage Park bike path The path is quite nice through a forest and around a couple of small lakes, and is entirely separated from the road. On the second day, I did the same path, but biked from the hotel instead of driving there, which added about half an hour each way.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/873605/best_bike_trails_around_long_island.html
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| From new_york_april_09 |
I also went in to Manhattan on the Saturday. Unfortunately the weather was cold and wet. I went in to the Natural History Museum, which was interesting, but packed with people.
