And it rained

Since arriving in Vancouver almost everyone I have met has asked if I like rain, because I am going to get a lot of it. Until November I was starting to think they were all exaggerating. It turns out they were not. It has rained a lot this month. In fact it has rained so much that 2 of the 3 lakes that supply water for the city suffered major turbidity from all the dirt and stuff washed in to them. The Vancouver water people issued a boil water advisory for around 2 million people and it lasted for about 2 weeks. In the end we found that there was not actually anything harmful in the water and it was just a precautionary advisory, but just looking at the water was enough to put me off drinking it.

I have been told that it doesn't snow much in Vancouver and when it does it doesn't hang around for more than 1 or 2 days. Well it seems that I have struck an unusual year for weather then, because it snowed for most of the weekend and part of Monday, then it started up again this afternoon. All up I think we have had about a foot of snow in the backyard.

With all the fresh snow I decided that it was time to start my weekly night snowboarding. So I caught the seabus from downtown Vancouver and headed to Grouse Mountain. Unfortunately I caught the wrong bus once getting off the seabus so it took about 2 hours to get to the mountain, 1 hour of which was spent standing at a bus stop in -10c weather. Finally I arrived at the mountain with just over 2 hours until closing time. My first run with my new snowboard was not particularly encouraging. For starters I got stuck on a flat patch just after I clipped my board on. Then when I finally got to a downhill section I found that all the skills I had picked up last year at Whistler had gone. By the time I made it to the bottom of the run I must have fallen over a good 10 times and was beginning to feel like the guy at the snowboard shop had sold me a lemon (yep blame the tools). However the next run was much better, I remembered how to turn and only fell over once or twice. By the end of the evening I was feeling pretty confident, not enough to attempt anything fancy like jumping but I was going reasonably fast and felt in control most of the time.
The view from the ski field was amazing. It was a totally clear night and the ski field looks out over Vancouver so you can see all the lights very clearly. If it wasn't so cold I would have taken my phone out of my pocket and taken a photo, maybe next time.
The mountain closed at 10pm so I made my way back down the gondola and caught the bus back to the seabus, catching the right bus this time.

The months of June, July, August, September, October and November

Well I guess it is about time that I jump on the band wagon and start a blog. This blog initially will be about me and my year in Vancouver Canada. I suspect that I will only rarely get around to updating it so feel free to read any posts multiple times while you wait expectantly for the next riveting episode.
So what have I been up to the last few months? Well for those who have not been keeping in contact here is a brief summary. Feel free to skip to over months that you already know about, I won't be offended. In fact I won't even know.
June:

• Arrived in Vancouver along with Joshua Brookes on the 29th.
• Went to the Capilano Suspension Bridge. Lovely sunny day. Rather hot. Bridge was well constructed but over priced. Had a sandwich from Quiznos for lunch. Very tasty.
  
• I guess I did something else but details of exactly what escape me. Can't have been too exciting.

July:

• Took a trip to Revelstoke for the wedding Jon and Jess Good. They successfully got married. I took some photos but it wasn't with my camera so I can't post them here. I suspect if you know Jon or Jess then you have already seen the wedding photos anyway and have probably heard pretty much everything else I have to say about the event. If you don't know Jon or Jess then chances are the photos wouldn't really interest you too much anyway.
• On returning to sunny Vancouver I started to settle down to life here. First thing was I needed a bed and a few other bits and pieces for the basement. So my new flatmate Andrew and I went on a day trip to IKEA. It really did take pretty much a whole day, the store is huge. I bought a rather nice bed, probably a little too nice considering I only need it for a year, but hey how do you put a price on a good night's sleep?
• Once the basement was furnished I got down to work. Datacom (my employer in New Zealand) kindly offered to give me some work for the first couple of months on a contract basis so I was working from home. The work turned out to be an average of about 10 hours a week so I had plenty of time to enjoy the Vancouver summer. Reuben and I decided that we would like to start playing tennis as there are lots of free tennis courts around Vancouver and we both had plenty of time to kill during the daylight hours. Back in our university days we regularly played squash together and were getting pretty good. As it turns out the skills developed in squash did not transfer readily to tennis.

August:

• Early in August I decided that walking and catching the occasional bus was getting old. So I did some thorough research on mountain bikes and took a trip to Dizzy Cycles. The nice sales man did a nice job of letting me convince myself that I should really skip the entry level bikes and get a Kona Cindercone. After all he said you will be able to make money on it if you take it back to New Zealand and sell it. As it turns out the same bike is considerably cheaper in New Zealand despite it being a half Canadian company. But the bike was very nice. On my second outing on my new bike I decided to check out how it handled a simple looking trail. Being the optimist that I am I thought mountain biking can't be too hard, and indeed going down hill I picked up quite a bit of speed. I was feeling like quite a pro. But alas I came crashing down to earth quite literally as a giant tree root jumped out in front of me. The front wheel went straight in to the root as I slid under the bike. I heard a loud hissing noise and soon came to the realisation that I was about to have a long walk home pushing my nice shiny bike.
• Sonia and Andrew visited for a couple of days en route to Edmonton for Evan Twist's 40th birthday. I showed them all the best cafes in Vancouver and that is about it, oh and I took them on a ferry ride over to Granville Island on one of the ferries Reuben captains. Granville Island market is a public market selling all sorts of fruit, veges, meats and deli products. It has been one of my favourite places to visit in Vancouver. Before getting a full time job I was taking daily trips there to buy fresh fruit and veges and other yummy stuff. Now I have to make do with quick trips on my way home from work when I have time or weekend trips.
  
• Late in August I took a well deserved vacation. With the ridiculously long hours that I had been putting in working for Datacom I was thoroughly exhausted. There is only so much of getting up at 10 and working until 12 that one can take. So I booked a trip to New York to visit May and Jack, some friends from university and Datacom. I wasn't really expecting to enjoy New York all that much but I was very pleasantly surprised. I absolutely loved my time there. Most days I just walked around Manhattan, checking out the few good cafes that I found on Coffeegeek. On the few days that May and Jack had off they took me to the US Open where I picked up a few tennis tips to try out on Reuben. We also went to the Metropolitan Museum. Not really something I ever thought I would do while on a vacation but it was pretty cool, much better than the Auckland museum. On another day we took a stroll through central park after finding out that our shoes were not acceptable for the tennis courts there. We ate out a lot during my visit to New York sampling a wide variety of the international cuisine on offer. It would be easy to spend an awful lot of money eating out in NY, it is not a cheap place at all. Another highlight of the trip was going to the Phantom of the Opera. I had only seen the movie version before so was well pleased to be able to see it at the theatre.
  

September:

• My trip to New York continued in to early September before I flew off to Toronto to visit Craig, Sandra and Zach who were over for Zach's first operation. We took a day trip to Niagara Falls and another day trip to Paramount Wonderland, Paramount's answer to Disneyland. Sonia and Andrew also joined us in Toronto for a few days.
• On returning to Vancouver I started work full time. I am working as a contractor for a small software company who then contract me out to a large investment company. The work has generally been pretty interesting although at times it has been rather basic and not very challenging.
• Reuben has a friend who works at the Elysian Room (my favourite cafe in Vancouver so far) who hooked us up with free tickets to the Vancouver coffee expo. This was really a trade show and not intended for the general public, but we decided to go anyway. I enjoyed getting to sample all the different espressos and lattes and french press coffees that the various roasters and coffee machine manufacturers were giving away. I was pleased to finally sample a blend that I had been hearing a lot about on the Coffeegeek forums called BlackCat. It is roasted by a roaster in Chicago called Intelligentsia. It took about 4 attempts before the barista finally got the grinder dialled in to give a good extraction. The shot was quite good but I wouldn't rave about it. Maybe he hadn't quite nailed the grind. I will have to take a trip to the cafe that imports the beans and see if they can get a better shot for me. We also saw a couple of competitors in the Canadian barista championships. The first guy was actually a TV chef doing a special show on barista competitions. He wasn't a professional barista and it showed in his performance. The second guy was a bit better but I don't think he made it to the final round. They did give me a few ideas for constructing my signature espresso beverage, but seeing as I don't have an espresso machine here in Canada that will have to wait until I get back to NZ.
  

October:

• After my first few weeks of work I decided to start biking to work as it was cheaper and quicker than catching the bus and would help keep/get me in shape. On the 4th day of riding to work someone decided that they needed my bike more than I did so they took it. When I talked to the security guard at my office building to ask if he had seen anything he informed me that for $25/year I could lock the bike in a secure cage in the basement. Nice to know, would have been even nicer to have known it the day before. So far I have not replaced the bike, and I keep forgetting to phone the police about getting a police report from them. I reported the theft online on the day it was stolen but as yet have not had anything from them.
• Gareth from Datacom came over for a visit after attending a Microsoft seminar in Seattle. We had a jolly expensive round of golf at one of the cheapest local courses. It was a really nice course with very well kept greens and fairways. Both of us played terribly, although Gareth played slightly worse than I did.
• Went with my cousin Ryan to see Jamie Cullum in concert. I was never really a big fan of Jamie but a few weeks before the concert I saw a couple of minutes of a concert of his on TV and it looked to be a pretty entertaining show. So I went along not expecting too much, but man was I impressed. It would have to rank among the top few concerts I have ever been to. He played a very long set (I didn't get home until about 2am and had work the next morning) and the quality of the musicians was fantastic. I highly recommend him to anyone who likes pop jazz music.

November:

• Following hot on the heels of the Jamie Cullum concert came the concert I had been waiting for for a long time. The Dixie Chicks came to Vancouver. I have never heard anything quite like the noise at that concert, and most of it was not coming from the stage. It is beyond me why anyone would go to a concert and just scream the whole time but that seemed to be what several thousand people payed good money to do. At points it was near impossible to hear the band playing at all. What I did hear coming from the stage was very good though and I generally enjoyed the experience, although if I was to go again I might consider going to a US concert where the whole political thing the Dixie Chicks keep going on about seems to have reduced their fan base substantially.

Well that sums up the last few months up until this week. I will write more about this week's events in the next post. There may even be a few photos thrown in. If anyone wants further elaboration on any of the happenings mentioned above then please feel free to drop me an email. If you don't know my email address ask someone who does.