Tandem biking with Lachy and Cathryn

At the end of August, we had an fun and action-packed less-than-24-hour visit from our friends Lachy and Cathryn from Redcliffe, Qld. They had 3 weeks in Canada, during which they came to our convention before spending 2 weeks on Vancouver Island with Lynelle and her family, which was the reason they had come to Canada. Lynelle was their bridesmaid, and she is now the younger worker in our field. :) After their fortnight on the Island, they came back to the mainland and stayed with us for a night before flying off to Europe for the holiday of a lifetime - 3 months with a camper van and no set plans!!!

Anyway, back to the Saturday in question... We picked Lachy and Cathryn up off the ferry and headed into Vancouver to go tandem biking around the Stanley Park seawall (this is becoming our standard welcome-to-Vancouver activity to do with our visitors!). We collected the bikes and off we set...

At one beach we rode past, there were hundreds of little rock statues all the way along it. These are called inukshuk (singular) or inuksuit (plural). They are a cultural symbol of the Inuit people, and a man-shaped one (called an inunnguaq) is the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympics:

Further along, we came across a man who was making them. The ones he was making looked different to the first ones we saw, and required much more time and skill. His consisted of up to four single stones, each balancing upright on another stone with no extra support. During the few minutes we watched him, he spent most of the time painstakingly maneuvering the rock below to try to get it to balance on the big stone!! It's an amazing skill, and must really build patience!

After our ride, we had lunch at an Italian restaurant, before heading home to prepare for the trivia night we were hosting that evening!

To be continued...

Downunder BBQ

First, some photos of our new car...

Nice eh? :)

But really... one Saturday in August, the weekend after our convention here, we went to the Annual Downunder BBQ hosted by Vic and Joan B in Surrey, BC. (Vic's a Kiwi and Joan's an Aussie, but they've lived here for a few decades!) It happened to be on the same day as their cul-de-sac was holding a classic car show, so that's where we came across the above specimen, as well as the following gems...

Here comes Joan...

The Downunder BBQ was attended by about 24 Aussies, Kiwis, and spouses/ children of the above - more than half of them we actually hadn't met before! Vic and Joan have a huge, beautifully maintained yard and garden perfectly suited to such events. It was a bonzer evening of eating ripper tucker - including pavlovas, Caramello Koalas, Freddo Frogs, Fantales, Jaffas and Minties! - meeting new blokes and sheilas, and talking nine to the dozen in jolly proppa lingo for once.

Unfortunately we have hardly any photos of the evening, as Ben used up his photographic energy taking photos of cars, and the new camera is still more his pet than mine. :P Here are the only offerings:

Davina (from Melbourne) with Greg and Sandy's little boy:



And some blokes having a chinwag...



Next year I will try to take some more photos for you!!

Lions vs Roughriders

On Friday 7th August, we went to a BC Lions football game, which Ben had been given tickets to by his boss. Canadian football is very similar to NFL (American football), known as gridiron in Australia. The BC Lions are British Columbia's team and they were playing the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Being a home game for the Lions, the audience was very heavily orange-biased (the Lions' colour), with only a smattering of green (the Roughriders' colour).

The evening was an awesome opportunity for Ben to try out our new (secondhand :P) Nikon D60, and this is the first blog entry since getting our new camera that probably would not have been worth posting if we'd been using our old 3x zoom camera (due to the lighting and our distance from the action)!







Neither of us had been to any kind of football game before, so this was a brand new experience. We didn't really know what to expect but it was actually quite fun to experience the atmosphere! We had no clue what was going on most of the time, and the main thing that stood out was how often they stopped! They would run a few metres and then the game clock would stop and the teams would be replaced with new players from the sidelines. Unlike in Australia, many of the players were obviously pudgy - guess their main job is to look big and scary, rather than to actually have fitness and stamina!























It was also the first time we have seen cheerleaders (who were definitely not pudgy). They were the "felions", and throughout the game they worked a LOT harder than the football players!









We also saw the BC Lion mascot (who seemed to like the blond cheerleaders), an advertising blimp dropping prizes, and a few elderly ex-Lions brought onto the field during the interval (one in a wheelchair) to be cheered again for their service to BC. Some of the fans were also quite entertaining to watch!













BC Place, where the game was held, is the stadium where the opening ceremony of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics will be held next February.

So it was another truly Canadian experience for us. And yes, the BC Lions won the game!