Light the Night 5km Charity Walk: Oct 2nd Victoria

Well it's that time of year again! Nancy and I are asking friends and family to join the We're with Bob! Team for a 5km walk the evening of October 2nd to raise funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Canada.

If you are unable to join us and would like to support our efforts by a donation, we would be greatly thankful for your support in the memory of Bob.

For those of you already signed up, see you next Saturday and if you've already donated and/or are fundraising, thank you so very much. So far the team has raised over $4000.

For event details and to donate: http://www.werewithbob.com
Your support is greatly appreciated.

I feel like Marlon Brando as the Godfather!

After much deliberation, I went under the knife to have my four wisdom teeth removed on Friday morning.

I am still of the belief that Canadian dentists use the extraction of wisdom teeth as a money earner. There never seemed to be a convincing reason to have healthy teeth removed, except that they MIGHT be a problem in the future.

However, as I managed to get the procedure covered by insurance and as such it didn't cost me a penny I had all the teeth removed. I'm hoping that this doesn't mean that I have lost any of my wisdom, similar to Samson losing his strength post a haircut. The painkillers are working a treat right now, but the discomfort is intense.

Dukes of Hazzard for Real

On returning from Vancouver Island last weekend, awaiting for the ferry we saw the GENERAL LEE from the Dukes of Hazzard.

In the TV shows the car had the doors welded shut, leaving the Dukes to climb in and out through the windows.

My childhood was relived in a moment!

With my continued learning and experiencing of Canadian culture, Wendy thought it would be an idea to invite us to the Sannich Peninsula Harvest Feast. This was the second annual feast, held at the Sannich fairground and turned into a fun Saturday night with the locals.

I discovered that the Sannich area is a traditional bread basket of the Greater Victoria area as it has the greatest concentration of active farms in British Columbia. At a time, when interest in "buy local" is growing and there's talk about a "100-mile diet", the event was able to celebrate food and agricultural heritage with a 10-mile harvest dinner (with the exception of dairy, coffee and tea). The dinner was a turkey and beef roast dinner, with all the trimmings and desert was a huge selection of fruit pies with ice cream.

Nancy also won a huge bag of local produce on the ticket lottery and so we got take home carrots, potatoes, leaks pumpkins, corn, etc. Although, I would have much preferred to have won the delicious lemon meringue pie!

Washington DC Holiday Highlights

It has now been nearly two weeks since leaving Washington DC behind from our very enjoyable holiday. I thought I would do a blog post with some of the highlights and photos. Nancy and I had a great time with everyone and the best times were had just chatting and catching up with the gang. So in no particular order, some of the events and fun times are below:

- Night time, Segway tour of Washington DC. Seeing all the monuments, museums, White House, Capital Building and the Mall in 2 hours was amazing. Easy on the feet, no other tourists getting in our way, plus we visited a couple of places that I had not seen in all my previous visits to the capital, including the Roosevelt monument.

- Driving range and batting cages. We have done this a few times, but the highlight here was seeing Anthony hitting a whole bunch of extreme, 90+ mph fast balls in the batting cages. All credit to him as the rest of us were unwilling to step up and face the machine.

- Air and Space Museum near Dulles Airport. Having visited the Air and Space Museum in DC on a number of previous occasions with the all important moon rock at its front door, I never knew there was a second museum. There was a range of planes, aircraft, machines and space equipment and a viewing deck to see the nearby airport. We enjoyed an afternoon with Beth, Ryan and Kris there and saw the first Space Shuttle, the Enola Gay (the plane that delivered the first atomic bomb in WW2), Concorde (although it was a French one!) and a F14 Tomcat (the type of aircraft featured in the film Top Gun).

- Hanging out at the Swimming Pool. With the hot and humid weather it was a joy just to simply hang out at the local pool with the kids, especially in our matching t-shirts (see photo). Anthony developed a number of dangerous games as well, including Bravery Ball, to keep everyone entertained at the same time.

- Tennis after breakfast. On three mornings, post breakfast, a group of us would head to the nearby tennis courts for a couple of hours of hitting. Top fun had chasing tennis balls around and also seeing everyone's game improve. BSH - Big Sexy Hitting was certainly on display when Laura was on court.

- Sports and board games with the kids. Getting my arse kicked by Ryan over the board game of Trans America was humilating but good fun. Kicking a football around outside with random star appearances from Abi was fun to watch, despite the many bug bites. Then of course there was the 10KM run challenge (see the previous blog post) and seeing the ultra-competitive spirit of all the guys.

10K Challenge - The Results

It has been nearly two weeks since the completion of the 10KM race challenge and five days since our departure from Washington DC back to Vancouver and Im still catching my breath. The final race and culmination of the challenge proved to be eventful on 29th August. The setting was a sunny, humid, Sunday morning with a strech of the Washington and Old Dominion trail in front of us.

Anthony surprised everyone by actually being in Washington for the event, looking fit and ready to put down a good time. Kris had a benchmark time already in the bag at 46mins 46 seconds, while my best time was 51mins 7 seconds from a previous 10K race. Ross had it all to do with no banked time, but had home court advantage on his side.

The final results were a testiment to everyone's competitive spirit with Ross winning the challenge with an amazing time of 46mins 36 seconds, beating Kris's best time by 10 seconds, Anthony crossed the finishing line in a very impressive time of 48 minutes. Leaving me with the position of last place with the time of 51 mins, as I couldn't improve on my best time on the day. Congratulations to the guys for achieving great times, all below the 50 minute mark.

However, the day was slightly tarnished by a trip to the hospital for Ross after he collapsed to the ground at the finish line. Usually this wouldn't be an issue and an opportunity to poke fun at him, but he did it in front of a passing police car and the cop called for an ambulance. They promptly treated Ross and forced him to the local hospital for rehydration. As you can tell from the photo of Ross in the hospital, he didn't care about consequences and was simply overjoyed at beating the rest of us in the challenge!