First Snow of The Season

A heavy Pacific storm dumped 30 centimetres of snow on the top of the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort in the last few days, raising the hopes of local skiers that weather climate patterns will bring plenty of snow this coming winter. The freezing level is expected to remain steady with more periods of snow forecast for this week on that mountain.

On Monday morning Environment Canada issued a weather warning for Vancouver, forecasting 50 millimetres of rain by Tuesday, this week. The heavy rain has already forced officials to close the popular Grouse Grind hiking trail on Vancouver's North Shore.

For me, I returned from Kelowna yesterday over the mountain pass and experienced my first snow of the season, which you can see in the photo.

English Bread & Butter Pudding - NO Tiramislop, thanks!

Today was cultural pot luck day at the office.... Yes, I hear you cry "what is cultural pot luck?". Well, it is where a bunch of people at work were invited to cook or bake a homemade dish from their cultural background (or a signature dish of their choice). The idea being that everyone could taste different foods from a variety of nationalities, especially as the office has people from at least ten different countries.

This presented me with a major dilemma due to my limited culinary skills, so I ended up resorting to the classic English desert of Bread and Butter pudding. One of two dishes that I learned on a cooking course two years ago with Nancy, Emily and Mr P. Apart from initially putting the pudding in the wrong glass bowl for the oven which would have created a disaster, all went well with the cooking part (as the photo proves). I was slightly worried how it was going to taste, but it seemed to be a big hit with everyone in the office and most of it was eaten with a number of compliments from the team. No reports of food poisoning yet, so an overall success.

Canadian Thanksgiving

This weekend is my second Canadian Thanksgiving in Canada, which is due to be spent enjoying the company of Wendy and Scott Marks on Vancouver Island. The plan is for turkey dinner on Saturday evening.

However, what are Canadians thankful for???? The American thanksgiving holiday is famous for the celebration of the Pilgrim Fathers and the Mayflower ship landing on the East coast of the USA. This was the much discussed question at the dinner table from the only Brit and the less than convincing answer seemed to be linked to harvest festival. On further research, i.e. a search on Wikipedia, I discovered that The history of Thanksgiving in Canada goes back to an explorer, Martin Frobisher, who had been trying to find a northern passage to the Pacific Ocean. Frobisher's Thanksgiving was not for harvest but homecoming. He had safely returned from a search for the Northwest Passage, avoiding the later fate of Henry Hudson and Sir John Franklin who died.

Hey, whatever.... the important thing to me was that I get an extra day-off work! Here's to Canada Thanksgiving.

In concert with Jack Johnson

Last night was a night with Jack Johnson at the Rogers Arena and we (Nancy, myself and Wendy) sat back in our seats and bobbed our heads to the beat, while a giant screen projected images of churning water and waves. For those audience members who weren’t hard-core fans, the show was a nice change of pace but nothing special. They mouthed along to the tunes heard on the radio, but otherwise many just kind of stared and hoped he’d do a jig or something.

The marijuana cloud hovering above Rogers Arena was big and fluffy by the time Jack pulled out onto the stage. If the haze didn’t make you yawn, Johnson’s lack of interaction did. He zipped through his repertoire with little banter in between songs. There were a couple of songs that took Nancy and I back to memories of Manchester, especially banana pancakes and better together. Upside Down was a cheery number that made us smile with his relaxing voice. Still, I wanted more than what I could hear on my ipod.

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!

Where's Wally (AKA Anthony)?

Where's Wally?

Is Anthony in Woburn Sands or Ashburn, Virgina??? Mmm, we wonder!

Only a few days left until Nancy and I fly out to Washington DC to find out in person.

Ice Cream Heaven has been found in Vancouver

Saturday afternoon saw Nancy, Wendy and myself stumble across ice cream heaven, right here in Vancouver. Driving across the city we just happened to pass an ice cream store in an industrial area. Turns out, this place sold over 500 different flavours of ice cream with 218 flavours on constant display. It was mecca for an ice cream lover! Some of the numerous and exotic flavours included curry, wasabi, fenal, rhubarb crumble, cinnamon... the list goes on and on. Let's just say that all our future visitors to Vancouver will have this as a destination.

Also as a side story, our Sunday brunch was shared with none other than Joshua Jackson... famous from the TV show Dawson Creek and various movies. Mixing it with the celebrities.

Golf and Sunshine in Kelowna

It is about a year ago, that I was in Kelowna for the first time and Nancy joined me for a few days of relaxation in the sun and we visited the local vineyards. This year, my golf game has improved and I completed two rounds of golf in the last couple of days, as part of a Dealer corporate event. My golf score has improved, but I'm still somewhere off from being considered a decent golfer, but I did achieve my first birdie + a drive of over 250 yards.

The real highlight of the trip was an evening dinner at Summerhill winery, which is claimed to be the most visited winery in the whole of Canada. We took the dealers there for the last night dinner and it was the most spectacular view of the lake, west bank, downtown Kelowna and the night sky. We sat out on the patio, enjoying a mix of red and white wine, fantastic food, desert and iced desert wine. Topped off by seeing shooting stars over head.

On the last afternoon in Kelowna, I took the opportunity to spend Friday afternoon on a speed boat out on the lake and enjoyed the cool water for a swim. I know, I can hear it now.... tough day at work!

I didn't get any photos of my Kelowna trip, but I was back early on Saturday morning to Vancouver and received an invite by Scott M and Nancy to join them in the local park in Coal Harbour. I thought it was appropriate to illustrate the fine weather and view of our summer in British Columbia in the picture.

No Tennis, No Pink Laptop, but off to Kelowna

With a foggy, raining Saturday our plans to attend the Vancouver Tennis Open were washed out, so my planned blog post was scuppered. Emily's suggestion for the blog was a pretty picture of her new PINK laptop. I think not.

This week, I can look forward to a couple of rounds of golf in Kelowna as my company is holding its annual golf event for the MB dealers. This means I can get some sunshine and brush up on my golf game. I am also looking forward to having dinner at the Summerhill Winery, which is suppose to have amazing, scenic views of the Okanagon valley.

The England Boys

I have a great boss, Ted, but he is Canadian and he takes enormous pleasure in torturing the British members of his team with all sorts of stereotyping. Things recently escalated due to the England team's poor showing at the footy world cup and the devastating 4-1 defeat to zie Germans.

Today the four Brits in the office decided to take a stand and demonstrate a British stiff upper lip by wearing our England footy shirts to our monthly team meeting. All to the soundtrack of the Great Escape theme tune! Small victory for the British Empire.

Happy 1st Anniversary to Em & Kris

Many congratulations to Emily and Kris King on their 1st wedding anniversary. In the words of Emily herself, now they can officially get a divorce!

We wish them all the best on their happy day and look forward to seeing them in person at the end of the month.