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.