still touring

a recent picnic spot (note the beaver lodge on the right)
a recent picnic spot as seen through my sunglasses

a dragonfly enjoying our picnic
did i mention this idyllic spot is on dept. of ntnl defense land? we saw some flares being fired, took them as a warning shot and got out of there... it took us back to hiking in the negev desert in israel and having fake bombs dropped on us by fighter jets.

my parents came to vancouver for the weekend. we made the trek in to visit them. taking the skytrain always makes us feel like we are travelling again. thus it was a little surreal to ascend the escalator into the downtown twilight and see mom and dad waiting at the top with backpack safely buckled on and camera at the ready. we enjoyed an excellent pub dinner and wandered around downtown at night.
the art museum currently has a slightly freaky haida canadian flag projected on it... why isnt this guy the symbol of the 2010 olympics?
after walking off our dinner we met up with stacey and andrew for dessert. a lovely time was had by all, even if stacey did have to share her brownie with andrew.

hark! the visitors are not yet duly recorded. kylie's dad also flew in for the weekend. once again we were forced to put off our busy and stressful lives in order to show him some sights in the valley... just kidding! as you well know, this is what we would be doing anyways.

i enjoyed playing with greg's fancy camera, although i didnt really get to experiment much.

a picnic in a canyon

deja vu
in addition to bodies of water and dogs in the back of the truck, we also enjoy tunnels.
we really appreciated having greg around... kylie enjoyed seeing her dad, i had a partner with which to dissect semantics and niko had another person to throw his ring and wrestle with.

me, niko and a body of water

i am currently working in princeton. yesterday morning i saw a lynx cross the highway right in front of me. last night i went for a trail run past multiple deer. i also saw some bear sign (read processed berries and toppled trash cans) on the run but no bear thankfully. yesterday there was a cougar prowling behind the hospital (can cougars walk, or do they have to prowl? can stock markets fall, or do they have to plunge (/soar)?). i hope kylie doesnt read this post until i am safely back at home. dont worry sweety, i am taking all available cougar precautions.

Creatures of Habit

Marc and I spent this past weekend at the Sloquet Creek Hotsprings with our friends Shawn and Karyn. While going through the pictures to put on this blog post, I was struck with a sense of deja vu about the photos. Perusing through the pictures I realized that when we get together with Shawn and Karyn we spend a lot of time outside, often by bodies of water (i.e. lakes or hotsprings), we wile away the time sitting around fire pits, are amused by watching our dogs play and take lots of similar pictures.

A now for the STKAMKG (for those of you who are acronymally challenged that is all of our names put together, obvious to most, but I guess not to all) Picture Comparison Essay, if you will.

Exhibit A: We spend a lot of time outside, often by bodies of water (i.e lakes or hotsrprings)

Enjoying the healing, sulphuric water of the hot springs this past weekend:

Oh and here we are two years ago doing the same thing!
Enjoying our lunch by Harrison Lake on the way to the hot springs. (After eating a lunch of wraps with avocado. mmmm)
Here are Shawn and Karyn in September 2006 by another lake in Whistler just about to eat our lunch of Triscuits and avocado. This was actually the first time I had really eaten an avocado and now am fully on board and bringing them on our camping trips!
Exhibit B: Wiling away the time sitting around fire pits.

2008:

Marc devouring and savouring a VERY burnt cherry pie. Those Greidani can't let any food go to waste - blackened or not! This seems to be a theme for Marc.

2006:

Exhibit C: Dogs playing
On our first trip to Sloquet Creek, Bella (Shawn and Karyn's Weimeraner) was just a puppy but she still gave Niko a run for his money in the playing department. Now she is bigger and still just as playful and Niko makes the same growly faces while playing with her.

Exhibit D: Take similar pictures of . . .

1. Dogs in the back of the car.

2. Shawn's arse

3. Weird orange things growing on logsIn Whistler

On Harrison Lake

And sometimes, (but not very often!) we have pictures that don't fall into any exhibit. Let's call this exhibit X or xtra.

The 4 Runner taking a well deserved break from 4x4ing while we ate lunch. She (or he??) did awesome, ascending and descending up the rocky inclines!

We had a GREAT weekend weather wise and company wise and are looking forward to making this hot spring trip an annual one so all of you can see the same pictures from year to year!

recent occurrences

we spent the weekend in princeton, a nice little town between hope and penticton. thanksgiving was sunny in the interior, which made the chill at elevation a little less shocking.
these are old tunnels from the kettle valley railway

niko settled right in to our fully (if sparsely) furnished complimentary home complete with ballet/martial arts room in the basement.

there was a bear wandering around our back yard and through the hospital parking lot. at one point a nurse and i were watching it from about 6 feet away through the glass storm doors of the hospital. afterwards she tried to get us back into the building proper, but her pass wouldnt work! good thing the automatic doors didnt open after hours. i tried my temporary pass and got us back into the hospital. i had my camera and tried to get a picture of the bear as it ran across the parking lot and stood up against a tree, but in the few seconds i had i wasnt able to adjust the camera to be able to shoot from a lit room, through glass to a dark exterior, so the pictures i got were pretty useless. it was a small brown bear with really shaggy fur.

can you see the bear heading to the tree?
(hint - no, you cant see anything)

we were having a beautiful sunny drive back through manning park and sunshine valley, marred only slightly by turning the corner into the smoggy fraser valley, when we encountered a yellow xterra on hwy 1 with a 17 year old holding his entire body out of the driver side rear window at 120 km/hr. at first we were just annoyed at his disregard for the safety of others, but after the fourth time he leveraged himself out the window i was ready to run him over and keep driving. he was standing on the seat and either had someone holding his ankles or had his feet wedged against the door (i guess he trusts nissan's latches). we expected a vehicle full of teenagers, but as we drove by (so i wouldnt have to stop and/or get rear ended if he fell) kylie noted that the driver was a lady our age or older... who was laughing.

now we are home, and though thanksgiving day saw us eating grilled cheese sandwiches, granola and oreos, kylie just tried out shareen's delicious pumpkin cake, as well as chicken beside walnut stuffing with sage and little bits of italian sausage. mmm....

finally we will turn our attention to a shirt my mother gave me a few months ago from pioneer ranch camp. i worked at pioneer ranch for 2 summers (the place i sharpened both my orienteering and kayaking skills used recently) and thus i obviously carry a fondness for it, but that doesnt account for how much i like this shirt. i just really like it. i love the kid ripping it up in the sunshine.
after seeing pictures of me windsurfing in egypt last night our friend nolene commented "everywhere you go, you are always looking for something to do. that could be your motto... go play outside!"

thanks for the great shirt mom.

moms and (mom)ars

kylie's mom cherri was here to visit for a week and we had an excellent time together. we started things off with the now traditional hiking and berry picking.

a full container of end of the season blackberries... in october! crazy.

niko enjoyed having cherri around as well as vice versa.

the weather was a bit overcast, but that's ok b/c it gave us an excuse to stay at home and play with our new toy... a wii!

what i love most about the wii is how it levels the field between gamers and nongamers. in just 2 rounds cherri was playing tennis like a pro. i routinely beat kylie at mariokart, but i have yet to beat her at boxing... and cherri beat us both at bowling!


here is a video of kylie taking out her own mother... get UP girl!!

kylie and her mom took a day trip to bellingham and another to vancouver. unfortunately they dont have any pictures b/c i wasnt along to take them. ;-)
on our final night together, cherri took us out to our favourite restaurant, shandar hut, where we enjoyed a multicourse indian meal fit for a maharaja. thanks cherri! the leftovers were great too.

i also wanted to give you a little update about the MOMAR. it has been 2 weeks and i am basically back up to speed but with a different setpoint. i was pretty impressed that i wasnt too sore on the day after the race, but i guess my body wasnt done rebuilding... when we got back to chilliwack i went for a bike ride up vedder mountain. the whole thing took about 2.5 hours which is pretty normal for me, but i was SORE the next day. and not just my quads either... my abs and my left foot were also hurting. i then tried to do some chinups but couldnt even muster the energy for one rep! 2 weeks out and i am back to my normal biking and chinup strength, but i still havent gone for a run yet.

the race director put up some nice pictures on his blog so i thought i would show you a few more shots of what the course looked like.
above and below is the terrain we scrambled through for the orienteering course.

here is me coming to the finish line in a dead heat with the 3rd member of a 4 man team as detailed in my previous post.

here is me looking thrilled to be finished.


i was planning on going on a rant here about the current banking crisis but i just dont have the energy to write down all my thoughts and properly reference them. perhaps i can summarize my feelings:


when you have a financial system that is only successful when it is rapidly growing, and publicly owned companies and banks that are compelled to post ever increasing quarterly profits to keep their share prices high, the system is obviously unsustainable.

when you attempt to sustain that rate of growth by encouraging your citizens to overconsume (through mass marketing, consumer culture and even via direct advice from your head of state) you risk creating a nation of debtors who own a lot of plastic shit.

and finally, when banks are willing to give people more and more money, through loans, credit cards and mortgages to fuel this spending spree, regardless of their ability to pay it back, you will certainly create a financial crisis at some point in time.

this whole "lack of liquidity" line is really getting to me... the major banks, particularly in the US, have been making record profits in the last couple years loaning out more $$ than they have, and to people that will have no ability to pay them back. of course its going to come back to bite them!

maybe capitalism isnt the perfect god given economic system that james dobson thinks it is.

when this whole thing started making the news, i remember reading on the front page of the globe and mail about the fall of the first few US banks, then turning to somewhere around page 8 and reading about china's first space walk. apparently they plan a space station in the next few years. we are watching history happen, and it is happening fast.


that turned out a bit longer than i would have liked it. i will end on a much more positive note... if you enjoy music, or bathroom humour, or have previously or may in the future have an encounter with the medical system, you should watch this video:

No your eyes aren't playing tricks on you . . .

This really is a picture of Marc eating baked cheese out of the oven with a fork.