Filler

This is just a quick post to let y'all know we're heading to the Rockies on an extended camping trip for the next couple of weeks. We bought M a lovely new pair of hiking boots and went hiking up the Capilano River on the weekend to prepare our gluteus maximus and gluteus medius for the more challenging hikes ahead. There must be something wrong with them because we both came back bow-legged. We're hiring the biggest gas guzzling nature annihilating beast of a machine for our most ambitious roadtrip yet so we can see nature right and all that but also so we can fit our bikes in the back. We're going to hit Kelowna, Golden, Glacier Park, Yoho National Park, Jasper, Lake Louise, The Icefields Parkway, Banff, and Mount Robson National Park. So expect loads of photos of mountains and nature and wooly headed unhappy campers. We could really do without an encounter like this one. I'm planning on wearing my Judo suit for the entire trip just in case. In the meantime here's some more photos which I uploaded to Flickr to keep you entertained. There's some overlap with this here blog but mostly they're some of our favourite older photos - well, favourite in focus photos maybe. As usual feel free to comment, take the piss etc - I'm looking at you Anonymous Dave. Enjoy and we'll see you in September.

Come As You Are - Then Go Home!!

Aberdeen, WA

Last weekend was a bank holiday weekend - Monday was BC day. Believe it or not it was the first bank holiday that came that didn't happen to fall on an oncall week for me which meant we could leave the city for a few days. So we decided on Wednesday to head south the the states - maybe end up in Portland. I tried hiring a car downtown on Tuesday and was told there was none to be had! So I had to venture further afield to a suburban branch of Budget car hire. That would have been just my luck - 3 days off in a row and not being able to leave the city because all the hire cars in the city were taken. But we eventually got one, and early on Saturday morning I got a taxi out to Kingsway driven by Greg7. Greg had moved from Montreal over 30 years ago on his way down to California but unfortunately has yet to make it south of the Canadian the border.

This sign recently replaced the original bullet holed one

As it turned out, the trip turned into a mini rock pilgrimage. After waiting in line for over 2 hours like a good Canadian to cross the border we skirted around Seattle - home of the bringers of undanceable "first dance" music - Minus The Bear (we still have to drop in to the city to take a look) and headed south towards Tacoma and Olympia in Washington. Aberdeen Washington is the hometown and birth place of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana - kind of like a Grunge Graceland - so we (I) went about 100 miles out of our way to check the place out. A very scary place indeed. We were abused energetically and vociferously no less than six times by groups of local men with spare hair in pickup trucks. It was hard to make out exactly what insults they were throwing as they sped by but "Go Home!!" was a common one I believe. When you think about it, the place is a complete out of the way dead-end where nobody would even consider visiting unless spurred by a morbid voyeuristic rock n roll curiousity like ours (mine). The town's most famous son (if you don't count Bill Boeing he of 747 fame) a manic depressive junky who ran out of the place as soon as he got the busfare together, spent the rest of his life insulting the indigenous redneck population and bitching about how awful a place it was to grow up ....and then promptly blew his head off. Not exactly a shining ambassador for sunny Aberdeen. The place is pretty impoverished and very run down. Mullet Hairdressing and Logging are its primary industries - all the cardboard houses have big dirty dinosaur logging trucks and pickups propped up on bricks parked crooked outside. It's kind of like The Glen Of Imaal with uncontrolled sprawl. A huge hispanic population aswell which we found kind of weird - maybe because it doesn't tie in with my Glen of Imaal comparison. We didn't have any information on addresses or places of interest (the Haggard practiced in Sarsfields clubhouse in Newbridge for example - no blow-in could possibly know this without having Poggy or Pop or Keg as a guide) and Aberdeen sure as hell doesn't have a rock n roll stroll, so we kind of just wandered around, abuse bait for rednecks.

As defence I'm neutered and spayed - synchronicity in Aberdeen

We passed through Montesano aswelll - home of the Melvins (who play here next month - woojoo!). A very unlikely place of origin for the kings of stoner rock. I would liken Montesano unfavourably to Prosperous Co Kildare .......but with a cathedral. We also drove through Ellensburg WA on the way back - home of The Screaming Trees. Why such a concentration of amazing bands from such an unlikely corner of the the Northwest? We came to the conclusion that just like theres about a million metal bands in Allenwood and an above average concentration of soft rock bands from Port Laoise.... there's feck all else to do in these places if you're not into becoming a mechanic or a mullet technician. That theory does beg the question why isn't Port Laoise soft rock or Allenwood metal any good? We passed Sleater Kinney road on the way through Olympia aswell. So thats where they got the name.... Apologies for all the boring music references, but it really was great fun for me visiting all these places I'd read about years ago. Poor M, even with her proud grunge-kid heritage didn't seem to enjoy the magical mystery tour nearly as much as I did.

What spending a few hours in Aberdeen can do for your IQ

We camped overnight in Schafer State Park near Brady WA then headed for the Columbia River Gorge near Portland in Oregon. We knew absolutely nothing about this place before we arrived other than it was meant to be purty. Apparently it's also the windsurfing capital of the world - the gorge acts as a wind trap generating year round dependable gusts of wind against the current. We pulled into Hood River a gorgeous little town right on the banks of the mighty Columbia River. The place was full of surfer dudes in RVs and pickups with bikes, surfing gear, dogs, jet skis, female companions and even kids all strapped on to the roof.

Outside Brady, WA.

We got in early to the campsite, cute hoors that we are, and got a lovely spot right beside the river. Our most recent camping purchases were 2 blue collapsible camping chairs - deluxe deck chairs basically. Every campsite is full of them and you're really not at the races unless you're sitting beside a campfire perched on one of these things with a bottle of beer in one hand and a Canadian flag in the other - the Canadian flag becomes even more indispensible if you're in the US. We went looking for firewood and bumped into a lovely man on the beach who said he had tonnes of the stuff, brought us back to his house and there in his garage was a small pile of what used to be some kitchen units and some other bits and pieces of miscellaneous furniture. Whatever he gave us burned like the hob of hell though. We melted a few of our neighbour's tents with our campfire that night.

Tacoma WA

On Monday we drove back through Portland spending the day wandering around record shops and bookstores. We had a delicious cinnamon bun breakfast in a gorgeous cafe near Burnside somewhere (see photo below). It's a very laid back city with a very vibrant music scene and very similar to Vancouver in that it's constantly voted one of the best cities to live in. We spent a couple of hours in Powells City of Books - apparently it's the largest bookstore in the US, taking up one and a half city blocks, ate lunch at a swish vegan restaurant (swish and vegan are words which you don't see together very often - normally vegetarian restaurants are dark malodorous places which leave the bang of soup on your clothes for days - anyone remember the Winding Stair Cafe in Dublin?) and were on our way back over the Columbia river for the epic soft rock accompanied return leg home to BC. American radio is tragically bad, sucky to the max. A suck sensation. Total journey was 1800km. We were both very happy to see our bed that night and thankful to Nickleback for keeping us safe on our journey home. These five words in my head scream are we nearly there yet? Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no.

Portland, OR

Portland, OR

The brother of the man who gave us his kitchen to burn

That's not a deckchair, THIS is a.... Is your dog OK?

Thanks for bringing your family - but please drink up!

M's parents joined us in Vancouver for the last 2 weeks in July and an eventful 2 weeks it was. The weather was really well behaved even if they weren't! The first couple of days were spent acclimatising and getting over the jet lag. The evenings were mostly spent watching the sun go down over a stir fry on the balcony or over some sucky sweets on English Bay.

Hiding beer from the police on English Bay

M had a couple of days off while they were here which worked out really well because it allowed her to act as tour guide. One of the first trips was down to Chinatown where they bumped into a man selling edible Pot Pourri.

This man will loosen the dung in you

Actually he was a Chinese herbalist who was probably highly qualified to prescribe a natural remedy to cure whatever ails you. Whatever occurred in that small shop on Gore Street, Matt and Anne ended up paying for it for the next 2 weeks. They had to adhere to a strict regime of one cup of boiled pot pourri soup a day. I only smelled the stuff cooking and it was the oddest smelling pot pourri I've ever encountered. Judging by the facial gymnastics required to down this jazzy tea, it apparently tasted pretty odd aswell.

But other than the minor herbal unpleasantness and the very basic continental breakfasts provided daily by Maitre'd Maisy the rest of the holiday was spent sampling the tastier delicacies and cuisine that Vancouver has to offer. We had lovely meals in Gotham - a fine Vancouver steak house, but being the resourceful vegetarians that we are we still managed to roll out of the place, Cin Cin (thats 2 chins appropriately enough), Quattro on 4th and the Sandbar on Granville Island.

Chin, Chin, Chin and Chin at Cin Cin's

It'll take us weeks to recover from all that rich food. We're quintessential amnesiac bullimics - we eat all round us and keep forgetting to upchuck. Bellys on us like poisoned pups as my mam would say. Speaking of getting poisoned, I've come up with a failsafe plan which allows me to drink beer and not die the next day - dont drink pitchers, especially pitchers which smell like Frish. It's not that I'm a lightweight, I'd actually prefer a bout of Weil's Disease fresh from a bottle to some of the hangovers I've been having recently.

Vancouver's Celebration of Light Festival happened to coincide with Anne's birthday on the Wednesay evening. So after dinner we watched the fireworks on English Bay from our balcony.

The theme of Italy's display was "Gastric Disturbance"

More Fireworks - sponsored by Syrup of Figs ©

Then on the weekend I wasn't on call we rented an SUV and headed up to Whistler picking M up from work on the way. We stayed over on the Saturday night and headed up the mountain in the cable car on Sunday morning after a breakfast which for me mainly consisted of high quality ketchup. It was our first time up the mountain even though we'd been in Whistler (9 out of 10 snowboarders prefer it) a couple of times and it was pretty impressive. A beautiful clear day with temperatures approcahing 35 degrees.

If anyone asks..... we're in the Rockies

Bizarrely though there was still snow in patches on the ground further along some of the hiking trails so I spent the time up there with a snowball pleasantly melting on my head and down my back. I also accidentally invented the snow ball headache ®

Anne even built a snowchild (it was a very small snow man). The scenery was absolutely spectacular - a definite highlight of the trip. Then we headed North towards Pemberton and I had my first experience of +40 degree heat. Like typical Americans, the heat was so intense we only ventured out of the air conditioned environment of the car to pop into a shop to buy prog (aka ju ju's).

Ciao Daaaaaa

So other than that it was a pretty relaxing holiday for all involved. Our final outing was to Bard on the Beach - a really entertaining production of Shakespeare's Midsummer's Night Dream complete with Prince songs and a cameo appearance by Fr. PJ (the priest what married us). The rest of the time was whiled away settling effortlessly into the local lifestyle, walking around the city shopping, drinking schneeky lattes in the local Blenz, or the odd impromptu siesta on the balcony.

What do I have to do to get your attention, send you smoke signals?

On the last Friday of every month some militant hippy locals organise a peacefully disruptive city bike ride called the Critical Mass bike ride. It's an international movement to encourage the use of bikes as an alternative to the car. I was on the ride at the end of June with two guys from work and it was great crack - Orange furry bikes, doubledecker bikes, musical bikes, tandems for 3, bikes pulling pramfuls of kids, all meandering through rush hour traffic forcing motorists to stop and allow them pass through. Its great because there's never a route published - it's follow whoever's at the front, which makes it impossible for the police to plan for it or contain it. It's purpose is supposedly to promote alternative means of transport but really it's just an excuse to hook up with a couple of hundred bizarrely dressed madsers and have a bit of fun in the sun while seeing parts of the city you'd never otherwise get to see. This month there was bikini clad cyclists, the everlasting wheelie and 1 brave lone naked cyclist who hilariously was forced to don a pair of shorts to get into the pub for a pint at the end of the ride.

Orange furry bike

Declan DaVinci

Out with a bang