Why it's important to plan

A three day weekend here = an opportunity to go away.

We left on Friday night (after work) and blitzed the highway, only stopping briefly at Hope for dinner (looks like a good place - more to explore).

Where we faulted was with our planning. The August bank holiday is understandably one of the busiest weekends of the year. We didn't bother to book a campsite - adopting our usual 'turn up and hope' theory.

For the first time ever, it failed us. There wasn't a single campsite free in an entire park that we'd planned to stay (Manning Park for those Canadians who know where this is).

Thankfully, Monty, our trustee vehicle, came to our rescue once more:

Yep, we gave up driving late into the night and slept at the side of the highway. We set up our camping gear in the back of the car...squashed between our two bikes...and fell asleep to the peaceful sound of traffic.

Lesson learnt for us; book a campsite when travelling during high season.

CS

Celebration of Light

So the Celebration of Light festival kicked off in Vancouver this week. It's essentially a firework contest between Italy, Brazil and Vietnam, hosted in Vancouver (yes, pretty random).

Amazingly we watched the contest from the comfort of our sofa - as we look over English Bay. Here is some pictures from Vietnam's display:

Look forward to seeing Italy and Brazil's attempts later this week!


CS

Quick shout out to The Naam!

I rarely take any notice of restaurants.

In fact, despite visiting more than my fair share, I rarely remember their names. There are many mediocre places around that never grab my attention.

However, I wanted to give a quick shout out to The Naam, a local restaurant in Kitsilano:

We were both blown away by the experience. The restaurant had a great vibe, live music & delicious food.

Interestingly it was entirely vegetarian - and still, we both came away with smiles on our faces. I'd highly recommend it & we'll definitely be going back.

CS

Our hiking boots are firmly back on!

The sun is shining and it's time to get our hiking boots firmly back on.

Today we did a five mile hike around the Lynn Valley, a beautiful spot on the North Shore - and we grabbed our friend Cathy on route to join our adventure:

Yep, I am wearing David's t-shirt...I liked the colour & his clothes appealed more than my own (Holly and Gabby can sympathize...)

It felt great to be hiking again. Need to get more miles under our belts!

CS

An Atomic sprint for ultimate place

Following my enjoyment of the Gastown Grand Prix I decided to get straight out there the next week and enter a criterium myself. It was considerably shorter thankfully - 25 minutes plus two laps. It turns out the professionals had made it look easy. 

It's incredibly hard to keep yourself going at full capacity for that long. I was riding for 30 minutes total with an average speed of 24mph and I still didn't manage to keep in with the group. I lost them going uphill round a corner about 3 laps from the end.  

It ended with me and a fellow team member going for an uphill sprint finish for penultimate place. I got ultimate place by a wheel! I think I'm going to need some practice. May be racing again tomorrow, and definitely next Tuesday. 

Here's me with my new number. 

On a connected note I've joined a cycle racing club called Atomic racing. They are a pretty strong bunch and I've already racked up about 350 miles with them over 4 Saturday rides. 

 

On my second ride they started 'coursing' which as you might guess is sending two riders out in front (with a 30 second head start) as 'hares' to be chased by the pack. It was a flat course, probably about 3 or 4 kilometres long. I was chosen to be one of the hares and we were working together to push as hard as we could - I developed an inability to breathe at one stage but we escaped the pack by a clear margin. Great fun. 

All in all summer in Vancouver is incredible, so far this week I've cycled 140 beautiful sunny miles. 

Gastown Grand Prix

David's first post for some months and yes, you've guessed it, it's about bikes. 

Last Wednesday was the Gastown Grand Prix a professional criterium road race through partially cobbled Gastown (the oldest bit of Vancouver). It was great to see the professionals charging around the streets lined with 30,000 spectators. We watched a lot of it 'French style' - sat in a cafe eating Moules Marinieres and drinking wine and I have to say I could get used to it. There's a good video/article about the Gastown Grand Prix if you're interested. 

And here's my own less professional version, gives you an idea of the speed they were maintaining on one of the 60 laps round a 1.2km course. 

And here are a couple of pictures...

Vancouver vs. English weather

I've heard the weather hasn't been very good in the UK for the last couple of weeks?!

We've had a scorching week and I've just checked next week's forecast:

Mon

• 25°C
• 18°C
•  

Tue

• 25°C
• 17°C
•  

Wed

• 23°C
• 16°C
•  

Thu

• 23°C

I'll not lie, right now we're feeling pretty smug about being able to enjoy Vancouver's finest sunshine. Especially as we have three stunning beaches near by...sitting on the sand, watching the sun set is a glorious way to spend an evening...


CS