The Jeff R Project

Rebecca Bollwitt (Over at Miss604.com) shared some new videos of our beautiful city and I thought I’d re-share them here to remind everyone why we love living here so much.

The first video is a time-lapse of Danny Askew‘s “summer” – which actually starts during the Olympics. It’s a little strange as it starts with Vancouver and the Olympics and suddenly jumps to Las Vegas for about 20 seconds, and then back to Vancouver and some lakes in the forest somewhere. It’s a great video though and the time-lapse is quite nice.

Summer 2010 Timelapse Reel from Danny Askew on Vimeo.

Next up is a sort of walking tour of downtown Vancouver. Brandon Moza was testing his Canon camera and got some amazing video. If it was only a matter of buying the same camera to get the same quality video, I’d be out shooting tomorrow.

Vancouver – Testing the Canon 7D from Brandon Moza on Vimeo.

I don’t have any pictures of it this year, it seems to have come and gone quickly. I’m referring to the annual pink budding of Vancouver. For the last few weeks, thousands of trees have sprouted their pink blossoms and come to life during the amazing weather we’ve had.

Unfortunately, and fortunately, that’s coming to an end. I say unfortunately because it’s so pretty to walk down the street and see hundreds of trees festooned in bright pink – a sure sign of spring here. It also means that we now get “pink snow” with sidewalks covered with millions of rotting pink petals as they drop from the trees making way for the green.

I say fortunately because it means that summer is fast approaching and the weather will stop being as unpredictable. Plus seeing Vancouver return to it’s lush forest-like state is the way we all want to see it.

It also means that Chris’ birthday is approaching. Early April and he’ll be, well let’s just say turning another year older. It always causes him stress and last year I didn’t exactly help alleviate that so I’m going to try to do something special this year. Not a big party, but something nice.

We’re also planning on a small mini-vacation either that weekend or the one after. Just a quick trip out of town for 2 nights to re-group and see someplace new. Technically it’ll be the first vacation we’ve taken as a couple. A few years ago we went to Calgary for a long weekend, but we stayed with my family the whole time and had a tight agenda of things we had to do. Not really a vacation.

This will be all about us – relaxing, no agenda (other than getting to the destination), no interruptions. The dog is coming with us, but he’s low maintenance generally.

Spring is in the air!

Anybody who knows me even a bit knows I’ve got a Starbucks addiction, but I’m trying to kick it.

In Downtown Vancouver, there is a Starbucks location within a few (read 2) blocks of just about everywhere. In the last 3 places I/We have lived, there’s been one within a block. And there is one within a block of my office.

Seriously, I didn’t plan it, but I think Starbucks did.

A few years ago I went to Yuma, Arizona for Christmas to visit my dad and step-mother and was tired most of the time I was there. I came up with my Starbucks Conspiracy Theory. Basically, the reason I was tired wasn’t that I wasn’t drinking coffee but rather, in Vancouver the air is so saturated with caffeine from one coffee shop or another (Starbucks, Blendz, Cafe D’Artigiano, etc) that you live in an artificially caffeinated state whether you like it or not.

So, this past weekend Starbucks finally released a store locator app for the iPhone into the Canadian iTunes store!

For me, it’s not about locating a store in Vancouver, it’s about remembering which stores are good (clean bathrooms, friendly staff) among the 100s there seem to be downtown.

And of course it will come in handy when we’re out of our comfort zone and I need a fix.

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So, this was the second weekend of the Olympics in Vancouver and things have certainly kicked up a notch or two!

Holy cow it’s so busy everywhere. We spent hours standing in line to see some of the Olympic pavillions or “houses” as they’re called.

By and large, they have NOT been worth the time spent in line. Here’s the ones that we saw and a rating…

• Royal Canadian Mint – 25 minutes for the non-medal line up. Time inside 10 minutes. Rating: 5/10
  We saw the $1,000,000 gold coin, and lifted the gold ingot. Whee!
• Maison Du Quebec – 25 minutes for the lineup before they opened. Time inside 2 minutes. Rating: -50 / 10
  Inside was another line to buy food/drink ($10 for a beer) and an empty stage with the promise of “entertainment” coming up soon. Uh – pass.
• Sotchi House – 2 hour lineup before it opened. We left.
• Ontario House – 2 hour lineup. We’ve been to Ontario, nothing they can do to tart it up will make us stand in line.
• Saskatchewan House – 15 minute line up. We could see it from the minute we got there and we saw it behind us as we left.
  Yes, that’s my take on the “My dog ran away 2 days ago and I could still see him” joke.
• Costco House – not an official house. 5 minutes in line, 2 minute wait for fried “pub” food. Failure to see what the fuss is about. Rating: 7/10, because were were hungry.
• Turner-Rose House – No line-up, good company, cheap food, comfortable surroundings and no crowds. We strongly advise you visit this one. Rating: 10/10

  We also recommend our Welcoming Emissary! He’ll make you feel welcome!

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Today is the 5th day of the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games. The title alone is a mouthful.

Vancouver is alive with people. It’s pretty crazy how busy things are. Even tiny hole-in-the-wall places that locals avoid are busy with tourists. And of course the popular places are even busier.

Sunday, Chris and I took advantage of the gorgeous weather (Yep, sunny and warm in February) and took in some of the Olympic sites. We’d been out Saturday but other than Robson Square didn’t “do” anything Olympic.

We went down to the jail cauldron to see what all the fuss was about. Wow, did someone screw that up. “Too keep people safe” they erected an 8 foot security fence over 100 feet away from it, completely obscuring the view. People were climbing on concrete crash barriers to get a 1/2 decent photo that didn’t look like it came from Guantanamo Bay.

We tried to visit the Royal Canadian Mint display, but it was closed for a private function, so we hopped on the Canada Line Skytrain and went to Olympic Village with the intention of taking the Olympic Line train to Granville Island. 45 minute line up. No thanks, so we walked the seawall – a much better choice.

Granville Island is known as “Place de Francophonie” or “The fake French area” during the Olympics. Honestly, I wasn’t feeling it. The eastern end of the island is blocked off and there’s a large area devoted to French culture and displays, but they were pretty uninteresting. I hear Quebec House is worse. That’s for next weekend.

We then did get on the Olympic Line train (courtesy of Bombardier) since there was no lineup to get BACK to the Skytrain. Cool. It was a nice ride, but not all that exciting. The Canada Line Skytrain back to downtown was lined up out of Olympic Village station! What!

So we walked over the Cambie Bridge and Chris got some great photos of the athletes village and Sochi House on False Creek.

We actually forgot we couldn’t get home our usual way from the Cambie Bridge and detoured up Beatty Street past BC Place, Alberta House and the Bell Ice Cube (huh?) and a huge crowd of people gathering around that area.

On the way home, we encountered a fleet of Mini’s that we had seen before. Canon has outfitted a fleet of 12+ Mini’s with camera lenses on top, and for some reason they really intrigue Chris and I.

After 4 hours on our feet and moving constantly, we finally got home and crashed. The dog was happy to have us back.

This week, we’re going to try to get out in the evening and enjoy some of the excitement and crazy during the evening. This will be “tricky” with having the dog at work, and the fact that Chris is working at 6:00am during the Olympics.

On the weekend, we’re hoping to make it to even more venues. Canada House, Northern House and a bunch of province ones too. I’d like to visit Sochi House as it’s supposed to be impressive, but Chris is disinterested. Considering the Russians tried to kill him last time he encountered them, I don’t blame him, so I may have to go with someone else. We’ll see.