Tag Archives: USARoadtrip11

Canada, city, family, roadtrip, travel

Vancouver walkabout

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Three days in a row the weather was good in Vancouver – sensational! The SkyTrain is not far from Karin & Adam’s place, so we took that into the city on Monday morning. When I say the weather was good, I mean it wasn’t raining – the day alternated between sun, overcast & wind of varying degrees. There’s a good walk around the waterfront with informative historical information boards – we took this towards the marina & Stanely Park. This area is also home to many seaplanes, it was neat to see so many landing & taking-off – something I haven’t seen much of for quite some time.

All that Albertan sulphur provides a bit of brightness

Vancouver is really nice, especially with a bit of sun, but there is a proliferation of glass apartment buildings & I think these are awful. There are all very samey & lack any sort of character. While the metro system is great, the roads system shows a complete lack of forethought when you try to drive through what is quite a small city – no/few highways, how was that a good idea?

Stanley Park was well worth a big walk around. We followed the seawall counter-clockwise for a few kilometres taking in the Nine O’Clock Gun, a lighthouse & the Girl in Wetsuit statue (the grumpy Danes wouldn’t let them call it a mermaid, so the tail became flippers) before heading in to the center of the park.

Just as we were leaving the park, much to Valerie’s delight, we came across a family of very docile racoons. I’d seen a couple on earlier rides, but racoons were one of the animals Valerie was still hoping to see in the wild.

We didn’t see any beavers at Beaver Lake, just water-lillies.

We walked alongside the very pleasant & popular English Bay towards another purported GT dealer in search of a dogbone for my bike. That was fruitless once again – but Valerie did manage to get a coffee-cup holder for Karin’s bike. Not sure they would be a good idea on a mountain-bike, but apparently it’s the thing to have on your Vancouver city bike.

bikes, Canada, event, family, friends, roadtrip, travel

Whistler visit

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Karin had a Sunday daytrip to Whistler planned for us & a couple of her friends, Mark & Elise.  It was a rare wonderfully sunny day in this part of the world & the slow drive up Highway 99 through Squamish had great views of the bay & mountains.  It was the last day of Crankworx (a ten day freeride MTB event), so the village was pretty busy; but not nearly as crazy as Saturday apparently.  We wandered around the village (nice to have no roads through it) a bit, had lunch & then Karin, Mark & Elise went off to go zip-lining.  Valerie & I pottered around a bit more, managing to catch Ryan Leech’s trials riding demonstration.  A thoroughly likeable guy (the couple of times I’ve seen him at events at least), he has a very good little show demonstrating what trials riding is all about.  Basically it’s on a special small framed MTB & consists of insane feats of balance, hopping on to things at height from a standstill & so on.  Impressive to say the least.

We filled in a bit more time with wandering around the Olympic Village & then getting a little lost walking to Lost Lake. I was expecting a nice quiet little lake surrounded by trees, & it was, but there were also hundreds of people on the grass around the shore enjoying the sun.

Blackcomb ski runs

The bottom of the main Crankworx course off Whistler Mountain & straight into the village

As far as I remember, we met the others & then returned to Vancouver, with a lot of other slow-moving traffic. It doesn’t seem as though we actually did that much, but it was a great day out & fantastic that neither Valerie or I had to drive. It didn’t take much of this beautiful sunny mountainous environment to have me dreaming wistfully of being able to stay in Canada longer – I’d put off thoughts of my departure with excited thoughts of the USA roadtrip.

engineering, roadtrip, travel, USA

Boeing Factory

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One of the few things I knew about Seattle before visiting was that the world’s largest volume building (13.4 million cubic metres on a 40 hectare footprint) was around. That alone was enough to go & visit the Boeing assembly plant, but with my interest in manufacturing it was a must – plus planes are just cool. Unsurprisingly, no cameras are allowed on the tour so you’ll just have to believe me that it is a big facility. We saw the assembly lines for the 747, 777 & 787 Dreamliner from high up above the floor. Naturally there were a whole lot of workstations, but being a Saturday backshift there wasn’t a lot of activity. The group wasn’t too big & the guide very informative – & clearly loving her job. Back at the Visitor Center it was great to get outside, enjoy the sun & watch a couple of WWII warbirds fly past twice. There was easily a few billion dollars of planes sitting around too.

A 747 tail

Traveling north we made another brief detour to Burlington (finally found the B in BNSF) to hunt down a dog-bone for my bike – they didn’t have one but I ended up with a pannier brace to hopefully do the job. With thirteen states, seventy-nine days & over 20000 km (12500 miles) of driving, almost 1000 km of mountain-biking over 80 hours we left the States & they let us back in to Canada. What a fantastic time we’ve had & every day we still see little things around that remind us just how much we’ve seen around the west-USA.  Not to mention all the fantastic riding I’ve done in some really great places.  If I was ever back for any length of time I think I’d spend a lot of time riding in Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho & Oregon.

We eventually met Karin near a beach (it was the first sunny day in Vancouver in months) to grab the keys to let ourselves in to her & Adam’s apartment. Very blessed to be staying in a home for a while, for the second time in the trip & also within a week.

city, history, roadtrip, travel, USA

Seattle

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For a city know for its rain & only having two seasons, winter & August, we were lucky to have an absolutely stunning day on Friday exploring what is a very nice city in the sun (but then most are). After much frustration with the metro’s awful website, Google Maps told me what I wanted to know simply & we headed downtown after a much needed sleep-in. First stop was the Underground Tour, which came highly recommended from Karin. The tour was insanely popular, but very well run, informative & most amusing. When Seattle was built originally it was in the intertidal zone & twice-daily flooding was a bit of a problem. Not to mention the smelly waste-disposal problem – sewage tended to come back in with the tide. Like all good American cities it seems, Seattle had a big fire in its history which went a good way to wiping out the whole city.

For the rebuilding phase the engineers wanted to take a long time to raise up the height of the city. However, the building owners didn’t wait so rebuilding started almost immediately. Eventually the City put huge retaining walls along the perimeter of 33 blocks worth of the city. These were then filled with whatever they could find & so the street was now up on the second story, while the sidewalk was still down on the first floor. Eventually a new sidewalk was built bridging the gap between the street & the building, leaving a underground network of tunnels where the old sidewalk used to be – this was what we toured through seeing all manner of relics. Well worth the time & money to get that interesting insight in to the city’s history.

The coil of the first electric elevator in Seattle & other paraphernalia.

The ferry to Bainbridge Island was a good way to get out on the harbour & enjoy the sun & good views of the city. So we spent a few hours riding out to the island, poking around & tripping back.

We strolled over to the famous Pike Place markets, saw people throwing fish around to order & wandered out. Valerie had decided some time ago that she wanted to buy me a Stetson in the States (I could hardly refuse such an offer) & as this was our last chance we eventually found the shop we were looking for. With me having no fashion sense, it was a long deliberation before I ended up with a grey fedora – which I hopefully will find occasion to wear a bit. That night we managed to tick off a very slight desire to eat at the Cheesecake Factory. It was crazy busy on a Friday night, but we had a nice meal & the cheesecake was very good & not too intense.