Brunch, Coffee and Rodeo

Well last Saturday was a pretty good day. I got up extra early for a Saturday, as I was meeting Roz and Reuben for brunch at 11. So after getting up at 9:30 and having a nice french press coffee I headed out for a gentle stroll to Feenies. Feenies is a restaurant owned by Rob Feenie, Iron Chef 2005 winning "Battle Crab". He also has been inducted in to the B.C. Restaurant Hall of Fame, quite an achievement I am sure. Anyway, I ordered the Salmon Benny, which was very nice, although I think it was pretty poorly named. It was a croissant with smoked salmon and poached egg, no hollandaise sauce. I also had a smoothy which I thought was rather nice although no particularly thick for a smoothy.

After brunch the day just got even better with a trip to the Elysian Room for a coffee or two. Reuben used to work with one of the guys who works at the Elysian Room so managed to score a nice discount and a free cup of coffee from the Clover. If you want to know what the clover is then just click on the link above, they seem to be becoming quite popular in the better cafes around Vancouver. The coffee they were brewing was a coffee flown in from the Yergecheffe region of Ethiopia by Nova coffee in Denver. It was one of the nicest brewed coffees I have ever tasted, on a similar level to the Panama I sampled at the Coffeegeek cupping session in January. I decided not to buy any of the beans though as I had just bought a pound of Kenya AA beans from JJ Bean on Friday so was well stocked already, also the price of $20 for 8oz was a little more than I have been willing to pay for coffee lately.

After coffee I had to run to catch a bus to Ryan's place where I was meeting Ryan, Mike and Kirsty to go to the Cloverdale Rodeo. This was quite an experience, I have never been in a place with so many cowboy hats before, I was even tempted to buy myself one just to fit in. There were a bunch of exciting looking rides there and lots of your typical carnival games where you can win big soft toys etc. There was also live entertainment in the form of Nearly Neil, a Neil Diamond impersonator. He was pretty good and his band was really tight, although after 3 or 4 songs I was feeling like I had heard about as much Neil Diamond as I cared to hear.

The actual rodeo started at 7:30 or so, so the light was getting a bit dark for photos especially given the quick movement. I did get a few shots of the early events that almost came out OK though so here goes.



The horses showed great athleticism, jumping really high.


In the bull riding, on of the cowboys got beat up pretty bad by a big old bull. I think he got his hand caught as he fell off and got dragged around then savagely attacked by the bull. He was carried off on a stretcher.

My funny family

It has occurred to me over the last few days that the audience of this blog has started to grow, and not everybody who reads this blog knows who the other common readers may be. Furthermore, some of the readers of this blog prefer to read anonymously and don't post any comments, whereas other readers are more familiar with the whole blog thing and like to leave comments for others to read. I can categorise these two groups in another way too, friends and family from New Zealand (the anonymous people) and friends from Vancouver (the nice people who leave comments).

Tonight I decided to check the comments awaiting moderation and found two anonymous comments asking who Shannon was. The posters didn't leave there name but there was a clue from one of them leading me to believe it was a family member. Now those of you who are friends of mine from Vancouver are probably not so familiar with my family and there somewhat childish attitude when it comes to me and any female that I mention, somehow not grasping the concept that I have friends of the opposite sex, and that being friends with a girl does not necessarily indicate any more serious relationship or prospect thereof.

For those of you back in New Zealand, Shannon is a friend from University Chapel. She is in my home group along with her husband Lucas. They are from Missouri. Shannon plays the piano and sings very well. Lucas is a very funny guy, he tells great stories, like the one where he killed a snake and cooked it on the engine of his car and ate it, but he tells it so much better. To find out more about Shannon and Lucas, check out their blog here.

I think I will try and get some photos of some of the friends I have made here in Vancouver and a short blurb on each of them so that in the case that any of them feel inclined to leave a comment here in the future you will all know who the person is.

Oh and to answer the second part of one of the comments posted, yes I probably will introduce Shannon to Mum and Dad when they visit next month.