you know i didn’t realise just how many shot I took til I got to my 4th/5th set of captions to complete… its now over a month since I arrived home and I still have one more batch to do… still it was a good time (as this lot shows)… and fun times are better shared than had alone.
Carpe Dinner
Sunny Walk
Small Night in the City
meet me down by the skating rink…
more photos are up… including some of a little something that followed me home from australia.
for those not here delays in finishing the captioning are largely the result of some very nice weather we have been having here and associated activities that such a climate brings. highs in the 30s for the next few days as well… aw yeah!
After two trips across the water (one intercontinental and another across the georgia strait) I’m back in one place and uploading shots of my adventures…
More to come as I get more time to add captions…
Anyone wanna buy a bike? Mate’s rates of course!
a dinner in my life… was buying the weekly snacks for work and came across the ’super deal’ at my local grocery store. fresh organic mixed greens for $1.79/lb… filled the crumpler beyond bursting point and navigated the bicycletta home. no thanks to the crazy old lady who nearly ran the red light into me! with a flashing light, big bag on my back and red handlebars i’m sure you can’t see me!
the pineapples here are in season and super awesome!
my lovely lady and i enjoyed what was referred to as a ‘mellow date’ a few weeks ago. after a busy, busy week a quick trip to chapters for some bonus reading material and then some quality time spent with a brew at steppes tea house on broadway. himalayan spiced chai for me and orange chocolate for her… some awesome carrot cake and some of the unbelievable aphrodites apple rhubarb pie to share… enjoy the situations here…
mr jeremy fish of sillypinkbunnies fame has been ‘brewing’ a great beard for the past few months… one that i have definitely viewed online with strong envy… witness it’s destruction! thats some very very funny facial mould options… gives me a few ideas for when the time comes to scrap mine away…
Just when you thought Vancouver was heading into spring comes a quick weather reversal (or temperature drop) and out of the sky falls flake of white goodness.
Looky here for photos of last friday morning arund my place (the higher elevations of east van) and on the drive to the hill (i had planned to take the day off after a crazy work at the pickle factory).
Once again vancouverites freaked out on the roads with these conditions… what is it with the locals. they live in sight of mountains of the stuff, it happens every year, yet they all go Cah-Ray-Zee when it falls. They lose all ability to be sensible on the roads… it’d be funny if it wasn’t slightly scary…
The snow was super extra magic and my buddy John and I got some great lines all over the backside of the hill that you normally can’t hit up. Then the sun hid for a bit and it cooled slightly firming the snow for them to open the newly remodeled big terrain park. Fun times with some of the crew there… tired legs and further onset of my head cold later when we came down though. ooops!
for the king band is dead. or maybe not… nobody was really sure, but local skate-punk-thrash band S.T.R.E.E.T.S (Skateboarding Totally Rules, Everything Else Totally Sucks) played what may be their last show on friday night. They have cult-like status around here thanks to frequent cross north american tours, close friendships with some other rockin bands from around the world, explicit thumbs-ups from skate-bible Thrasher magazine, complete local scene supporting and their continual support of their friends bands. Oh, and they completely tear a stage a apart live… total annihilation in effect.
The venue was the old warehouse deep in DTES a place I’d spent NYE two years ago at, wherein it was everything a warehouse shoud be, a spectrum of sounds, great people, multiple floors of different chaos and good times. Friday night there was a smattering of art (some great, some average) and the main room for the bands.
I was planning to ride my 24″ bmx down to the action but it seems winter was not good to him and he was sporting a go-flat-fast puncture i had not planned on, so off on ‘frank’, dawn’s old bmx, and my old-old bike. 20″ of raw power… not. weird to be back on him and how small he seemed! i got there late, but in true S.T.R.E.E.T.S style the first band was only sound-checking 1.5hrs after doors opened. ah well… time for beer!
the first band ‘a javelin reign‘ were fast, technical metal of the sort that scares the less strongly minded. amusing to see some of the less well prepared attendees run for their lives when the first blast-beat kicked in.
second up was arguably one of the best local bands… the affable gents of ‘ladyhawk’ given they dont actually have any music released its always interesting to see so many people singing along. i guess its a testament to how damn catchy them tunes are!
unfortuntely the local boys in blue didnt agree and shut the show down about 2/3rds of the way through their set. apparently the place only has capacity for 100 people, and 350 tix had been sold. personally i think 100 was about teh number of your average chronically obese mall and tv-addicted citizens that could have fit in the main room, but as for the crew that were in attendance, and far less well nourished… well this isnt the first time i’ve questioned the fire laws here. 4.5sq ft of space/person? sure….
anyways… i decided to hang around til i was asked to leave in sterner terms. mainly ‘cause i thought that if this was the last show they werent going to go out like that, and it may easily be moved to any number of kitchens/living rooms in the strathcona/east van area. i got talking to some rad kids i’d seen around town as we waited to see what would happen. well i guess enough people thought it was really over, or got put off by the police who were lurking heavily at the back, that someone slammed the door to the art room closed quickly locking the rest of the stragglers out and it was back on again. not without some serious complaints from what i heard later though… but what can you do?
needless to say the rest of the show was the sort of epic metal/thrash voyage that validated every effort id put into that night. smiles, singing, dancing, fists/skateboards/beers raised. bros up, fools down. people looking out for one another. all the great songs… dedications to their longtime fans, guest vocals from the crowd… it all became an amazing blur.
and then on the way out i managed to get a copy of their unreleased new album ‘invaders from gnars’. well worth the 2yr wait!
Yesterday I lost my popped my alleycat cherry and raced in the Valentines Day Alleycat here in Vancouver. What is an alleycat? “Alley Cat races offer a chance for bike messengers to compete against the clock and each other. Traditionally, race participants are handed a list of simulated stops to which they can map out their own route. Then, when the race begins, bikers peel out in all directions, dodging obstacles and negotiating traffic in their mad dash to the finish line. These races are usually completed in live traffic and feature anywhere between 10-100 competitors”. Sounds crazy? Well it is, and its a lot of fun too. I turned up at 1:30 to find only a few guys there… all of whom immediately introduced themselves and we all started chatting and talking shop. At about 1:50 the organiser Andy (of the infamous fyxomatosis.com) a local courier from Melbourne (via SF/NYC/London/amongst other places) rolled up and registration started. Maps were provided to non-locals as all the messengers knew the locations without any need for a map. Owing to a demostration against anti-muslim cartoons that was happening metres away from our motley gathering of bikes and bags (and beers) it was decided that the mass start would be moved a few blocks away to avoid the watchful (and interested) eyes of the Vancouver Polcie Dept who were ‘monitoring’ the protest.
The feeling of 30-50 bikes riding on mass down some of downtowns busiest streets (W.Georgia for the locals) was amazing, especially since most of the competitors were on brakeless track bikes so to make sharp speed corrections you make little skids by locking your pedals up. The start can be seen in the gallery of shots I took and the map and manifest/task list are also there.
It would take far longer than I’ve got to type up the experience but highlights include the high-speed ascent/descent of a 8 or so storey carpark, the mass bunch start/race to the first checkpoint that blazed along the streets and through light after light and down several cobblestone alleys, seeing competitors around the city and getting a thumbs up or grin as we passed each other, the teamwork between competitors sharing clues and tips for finding articles (though i hear at the top end of the field it was pretty cuthroat!), running down three blocks of a sidestreet to find a copy of the vancouver courier when i knew 5mins ride away i had 3 on my front porch, the finish where everyone from first-to-last hung out, geeked on each others rides and swapped stories.
My end comment… scary, fast and freakin’ fun!
after turning off comments on this blog a millenia ago, it seems it only turned them off from new posts. so i have been accumulating comments on old posts. i have a mailbox rule set up that deletes anything from myself (setup a while ago to combat this issue) and while giving the settings a spring cleaning i found all the old comments. said problem has now been rectified… and let me say it took a while!
and you’ll find cinematic. the trailer to his new clip. kanye, pammie? wtf? anyways… homeboy always hits the high notes, every song… and i doubt this will be the first time he misses his cue. new levels, new levels indeed…
antisocial (the best local skateshop/gallery in town) built an indoor park to comemorate the deaths of two local skaters (and friends of the shop) who were shot in different incidents in the past year. it is hands down the craziest thing i’ve ever skated… take a peep! i got some fun carves and kickturns in but as for really getting gnar… forgeddaboutit! photos exist of doubles lines over the glory hole, and stories of flint-sparked grinds on the big wall… i’m looking forward to the rumoured monthly night sessions.
Hot on the heels of emails from Jonas (Vail, CO) and Lucas (Japan) comes my update of a weekend spent slashing turns through the BC Interior powder… Big White style
No action shots ‘cause i was too busy making turns and finding new lines across the whole hill (i hit all but one lift in my 2.5 days finishing up on sunday with a run that traversed almost the whole width of the hill in a final hurrah of trees, hits, lazy groomers and still untracked powder)
molson black label= bad. Of course I already knew that… but when Dawn and I rolled into a local gig last night the thought of $2.85/sleeve (similar size to a schooner) seemed like a good idea. I mean Pat’s Pub is hardly a high-class establishment, but i figured one wouldnt hurt as the place is way better than the cobalt (RIP). well although the next two were hardly better tasting (Budweiser, out of a bottle, there was a special on them and i’m now convinced that the best tap beer they have @
pat’s is molson canadian and i KNOW that hurts my head) i was feeling a bit slow this morning. it’s not as if it was a late night but i just think my body cant process sh%tty beer as easily as it used to, and over here they really have cornered the market on baaaaad beers. between 40s south of the border @ every gas station and the ’strong’ 6-packs that sell for less than a dollar/beer you can get messy for cheap, but damn is it nasty! i swore off the cheap cans (and thats all the cheap stuff comes in) at my first house when i was sure that one beer (BullMax) i tried tasted like cold metal… and i the buzz was almost instanteous (@~8% its not surprising). the hangover was wonderful… not! and that was off one tall can…
i guess what im trying to say is that in country with a lot of rad smaller, independent breweries i should pony up and stay away from the corpo-mega-brews. when i cant well, its worth the extra buck or two to be able to function properly the next day… let alone what its doing to my body.
enough whinging from me cuz it wasnt that bad… it just reminded me of a lesson i keep needing to re-learn! go look at some pictures
2 posts in one night!!! my new years resolution was to get up on this lil piece of internet real estate and post a bit more regularly to let all my peoples see what i’ve been up to. cut down on my guilt for not writing my giant update mails as often… anyways. a few more shots to caption/review from the holidays… gotta go… speak soon!
a combination of other travels, illness and a belated return to work have delayed the extraction of my xmas shots from my camera. unfortunately there are a few more than i can caption right now so here is a lil’ collage i prepared with the shots from the ‘family’ part of my trip.
new place to park my bike, stash my skateboard and propogate the air with wireless internet. shacking up with my girl, warm days, good times in the vancity…
Finally uploaded all my shots from the recent trip ‘down south’… Plus got Tiger up and running on the iBook. It is worth all the hype… i just need to complete my switch back to MacMail from Entourage. But what can i say… it runs faster on 933MHz, 640MB electronic typewriter… lates
Seems like I have a thousand ideas for posts and then i get nervous about posting them or forget them. The former really isnt an excuse (but are people really concerned about what I’m doing over here?) It’s certainly easier to blog than send out one of my long-ass updates, but i like the effort that goes into my updates. They seem a lot more permanent than simple posts. Still I want to keep my fans ([insert long quiet silence]) happy. And I’m inspired by all my varied friends blogs (if you do one, then assume I’m reading it, and if im not then i should be!)
Anyways…I uploaded a load of shots from one of the funnest afternoons ive had indoors in quite a while. Enjoy hombres!
so my girlfriends sis is in this local band… and i seem to have become a bit of cheerleader for ‘em cuz (imho) they totall kick ass. well they finally got their act together and got a site together. included are a few tracks for your listening pleasures… i have photos and here they are!
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