Biorythms

Some days you just don't feel like doing it. For whatever reason, the grey sky, the damp street, the chill in the air, for whatever reason when lunch time arrived I felt no motivation to ride. It wasn't that I was tired, it just didn't feel like a ride day.

But I did it anyway and is almost always the case, I am extremely happy that I did. The predicted 70 degree temperature never materialized but about 15 miles into the ride the sun did come out and it was from that point on clearly way too nice a day to not be riding. I concluded the month with a nice long ride.

Here's one of life's eternals, springtime on campus.

The big Horse Expo is over. I was a bit surprised at first to find no signs of the rent a fence. They had a pretty large area fenced off, it didn't seem possible that the whole thing had already been dismantled and carted away.

Eventually I did find, down by the midway entrance area a tiny remnant of a fence along with a nearly loaded truck, two workers and a battery powered screw driver. A few minutes later though, and I would have missed it.

Here's what the new arena in the place where the old wooden quonset arena/barn stood looks like.

Ag-Star Financial with the naming rights, I guess that's just a sign of modern times.

I noticed on Paris Daily Photo that bakeries is the theme for tomorrow. Too bad I didn't know earlier as I went to the bakery today. I do suspect that I have a couple of boulangerie photos that I could recycle though.

No snow

It DID rain and it was cold but not late April snow here yesterday. Apparently there was some snow in what could loosely be termed the "metro area" (Stillwater) but not here.

Still cold and rain means no bicycling.

Today was warmer but still no sign of the sun. It was one of those rare days when I never got the camera out of my pocket.

So I searched through my France 2011 and France 2010 folders and here is la Fontaine du Théâtre Français.

I like the colored one from a couple of days ago and from the Paris Daily Photo blog quite a bit too, but this one does not infringe on anyone's copyright.

Rain and what?

It was chilly and grey here today and I seriously considered whether the weather gods had ordered a rest day. An examination of the forecast for overnight tonight changed my thinking.

Of course, snow is anything but out of the question for the end of April.

I was battling a pretty strong southeast wind with mostly east and west riding again today when I rode past the Fairgrounds. There was obviously big doings (lots of parked cars) so I swung through the gate to see what was up. It turns out that this weekend is the big Horse Expo. And the first appearance at the Fairgrounds this year of rent-a-fence.

I was paused there after taking the photo adjusting my layers (removing full fingered glove liners if you must know) when a passing horse lady paused and leaned in to tell me that, "It's easier to ride a horse."

I thought for just a moment and then replied, "Yes, you're right." And probably she is right although riding a horse for a couple of hours a day 160 times between April 1 and November 1 would undoubtedly require a significant investment of effort.

She had started to walk away when I blurted out, "But I didn't have to train the bike". It was her turn to agree.

I rode down into the city for a bit and caught a glimpse of this scene on the freeway.

There isn't even anything major going on down there. It's about 2:45 in the afternoon and there is some construction off in the direction where all of the cars seem to be going. But that isn't good for mid-afternoon Friday.

A couple more details of yesterday's bicycle fatality. The incident occurred at 8:45pm. Tonight sunset was at 8:14. The police report as quoted in the newspaper said his bicycle had "standard reflectors" but no lights. He was on the left hand side of the street riding north against traffic in the outside lane of two southbound lanes. A local police captain is quoted as saying that "bicycles are supposed to ride in the same direction as traffic." The driver of the car was not issued a citation after the accident.

Weather alert and other warnings

Today is the day of extremely important football news. There are men in suits all over the sports channels and several other channels as well, all blabbing away as if they actually know something. There are about four pages of overwrought discussion in each daily newspaper, mock drafts, discussions of what the team needs, analyses of what the other teams have. I ventured out to the grocery store and discovered coming and going that even the radio waves are alive with chatter.

Well, I haven't seen anything like this since, well, since last week when we were in Vancouver and were treated to several pages per day of Stanley Cup hockey coverage.

It was cold today, a rude reawakening. It was only 48F when I went out after lunch. But the sun WAS out and it was a very pretty day, crisp and clear with that bright blue sky. The wind was a bit punitive from the north so I started out to travel mostly east and west. I got somewhere a bit off the grid.

I missed the planting of the corn at the field nearest to where I live but I stumbled upon definite planting activity at another field a bit further afield.

I had started out west and was working back to the east when it became apparent that the wind had shifted and was now pretty punitively from the east. I changed my mind about that whole east west thing and went ahead and tacked off towards the north.

I had just crossed Hamline and was at Garden and Fernwood when I was abruptly and outrageously right hooked by this creep.

It could have been worse, I saw it coming. He pulled alongside and slowed and started to squeeze over towards the curb. My brakes worked well enough and I got myself stopped and avoided being killed. I yelled to express dismay and was rewarded with a single finger salute.

Nice.

I sat there and gathered myself. The creep didn't even know where he was going as he soon came back after making a within my range of vision U-turn. I had my camera out and got a pretty nice picture.

It has been a tough couple of days for two wheelers in this city. The morning newspaper reported three deaths within the last couple of days by riders of two wheeled vehicles. Two were motorcycles, one rear ended at a stop light, the other victimized in a collision with an SUV turning left across in front of a moving vehicle. Pretty clearly in both cases the two wheeler was not at fault.

An 18 year bicyclist was killed shortly after leaving the parking lot of his church. News reports indicate that he turned into the southbound lanes of a major street heading north.

Here's something a little more pleasant.

That's right across the street. Pretty white flowers, bright blue sky.

Everyone be careful out there.

Story time

A brief moment of cloud cover blew through just as I began to ride.  It was a warm day but that tiny moment without sun spooked me and I ended up with a south loop, an east loop, and a north loop.  The theory of course is to not get too far from home on a day when you aren't sure of the weather.

There was no need to worry, though, as the day turned out just fine.

Here I am on the east loop with a LOOK at Lake Como.

Lake Como is pretty and urban and close by but it turns out to be one of my least favorite places to actually ride.  I suppose there at least a couple of reasons but the one that comes to mind today is that there are a couple of spots, one on each side of the lake, where traffic can get a little unpleasant.

Here is MY annual lilac photo.  There are white flowers and violet flowers growing on the same branches of the same bush.  I have too much time to think about such things while riding and today I contemplated whether it is possible that the violet flower lilacs are hybrids of the white and the deeper purple lilacs and that some mixture of flower coloration is normal for this hybrid.

I started thinking about this about two miles after taking the photo when I noticed another lilac with what, in passing, appeared to be a single white cluster on an otherwise violet flowering bush.

Today was a little windy but it ended up being a really, really nice ride. Today for the first time in a long, long, time (like at least five months) I felt strong at the end of the ride. Too often in the early part of the season I spend the final miles of a ride just getting the horse to the barn. Today I felt strong enough that I was pushing hard, riding for effect for most of the last five miles. I felt strong, I felt fast (relatively speaking, of course).

So here's today's story time.

Here's something you don't see too often. I don't recall ever seeing this exact thing even a single time before. Make up your own story.

Mine is top down on the convertible and perhaps a few too many recreational beverages.  It's either that or a person has been buried in the street over there to the depth of her hair line.

On the grid

Springtime. Unmistakably springtime.

Today for the first time to me it felt not even a tiny bit like an abnormally warm day too early in the year for it to really be spring. Today felt like springtime.

There is a reason why I keep returning to the same routes. I like the route and enjoy the ride. Today I got back on the grid and took one of the pretty regular routes.

The wind was described as southeast on the TV but when I got out there it felt strong from the east but didn't seem to have much effect on either north or south. I have lots of routes where I ride mostly north and/or south, today I rode one of them.

It was warm and sunny, a spring day. The flowering trees are in full bloom, all of the trees are greening up. The sky was blue, it looked and smelled fabulous.

Springtime.

It is tulip time in Shoreview.

I rode on out to Highway 96 and doubled back through the Snail Lake Regional Park and the City of Saint Paul water impoundment facility.

Some will know that means Lake Vadnais.

I framed that picture up just exactly that way for a reason. I often try to eliminate signs of civilization from photos taken out there. Today I deliberately intended to include that gravel patch (the lighter colored bit nearer to the pavement) in front of the LOOK. The gravel patch is part of a late last year road and shoulder project which saw quite a bit of gravel added to the parking lot in particular. I have been riding gingerly around the edges wanting to be sure that the gravel had "set up" enough to be stable for the small amount of riding that I want to do in that parking lot. It now seems OK but that isn't the reason for including it in the photo.

When we were in Duluth for the hockey we went out to that beach north of town. While standing there looking at the water we discussed some that the large boulders and gravel lining the beach are probably not native, that "rip-rap" was hauled in in the park construction project. I partly believe this to be true (I am not a geologist but I know a couple) because there is a broad expanse of soil between the nearest on land bed rock exposure and the rocks on the beach. Further I thought I could discern a slight difference in appearance between the bed rock and the beach rock.

We got to discussing agates. I theorized that there were quite probably plenty of agates in the gravel but that spotting agates was a skill I had never acquired even though I sometimes wish that it was something that I could do.

A couple of weeks ago I rode to Vadnais and stood looking down at that new gravel and had a eureka moment when I though I spotted an agate. I kept looking and eventually brought two small stones home with me. One I felt pretty confident was an agate and the other I thought maybe could be as well. My intention was to consult one of the geologists I know and get a professional opinion.

Today I was standing at Vadnais lining up my photo when it happened again.

And this time there is absolutely no question, I don't even need a geologist for this one.  I included that gravel patch in the photo because it is where I found two agates.

So the two larger rocks on the top are the ones I found a couple of weeks ago.  The one on the right of the photo seems the most like an agate to me.

The two smaller rocks I found today and they absolutely are agates.

It's a small thing but it made me happy.

Here's another small thing that made me happy.

Two years ago when we went to Paris we stayed on Rue Saint Honoré. We walked down towards Palais Royal frequently and passed by two really pretty fountains. We caught our cab for the airport from the taxi stand right in front of one of the fountains. I tried to find out the names of the fountains but was never able to.

Today I was catching up with a blog that I read frequently but not every day and came across this post: Fontaine du Théâtre Français. The post includes this photo of a fountain recognizable to all.

In the course of reading through the comments on the blog I discovered further that there is a famous painting of the Place and Fontaine which is part of the collection at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

The work is entitled Place du Théâtre Français, Paris: Rain, by Camille Pissarro (1898).

Sometimes small things are the most fun. Today I found two agates and the name of a fountain in Paris. Pretty good work, all things considered.

Off the grid

I had completely forgotten that sometimes it feels really good to stretch.

I felt pretty good this morning and when I got out there the day seemed really quite nice. Monday is the day with the fewest other bicyclists out and about so I decided to take advantage of the weather and the relative solitude and ride a bit farther than what my usual ride has been.

With only light winds from the southwest I got all the way to Saint Louis Park. I checked the map on the kiosk board there and the vous êtes ici shows west of France Avenue, that makes across the city limits, Saint Louis Park.

It is also worth noting that the name of the trail as indicated by the kiosk has changed from the Greenway to a regional trail of the Three Rivers Park district. That whole three rivers thing is a west suburban park and trail system. So I have ridden all the way across Minneapolis and out the other side. I was about 15 miles from home at this point.  At that point I am completely off the normal ride grid.

I turned back.

And still ended up with my longest ride so far this year.

For example, this picture was taken on the way back. It is the channel between Lake of the Isles and Lake Calhoun, taken from the Greenway facing towards Lake of the Isles.

The winds were quite light when I started out but strengthened some while I was out. The light wind at the start enabled me to ride fairly hard on the outward leg. When the winds increased on the return trip I found myself feeling really, really strong despite the extra distance.

I had completely forgotten that sometimes it feels really good to stretch.

Golden sunshine a perfect blue sky

First off, just let me say that I DO NOT LIKE the new Blogger. As is usually the case in these "Upgrades" they have automated functions which I prefer to do by and for myself. It is that whole artist is solely responsible for content thing. If I double space something it is because I want double spacing. I do not want Blogger to "fix" it for me.

I do admit that I do like the new overview page. I found some missing comments in my new spam mailbox and released them to the full blog. It looks to me like the comment moderation thing may have been cleaned up significantly.

So, as usual, some good even though some bad. And since I don't have a choice . . .

I set about today readapting myself to Fahrenheit. The newspaper says average high has now reached 60F (just over 15C). Today therefore was coolish, only about 51 when I headed out although with the sun staying out it may be threatening to reach average.

Mostly after a week in Rain City it was especially pleasing to see all of that blue sky. Here are the four crabapple trees set in a square at the top of the hill in Shoreview. I get there with great regularity and some other readers have been there as well.

There were lots of pretty flowering trees in Vancouver but I never managed to find a single occasion when one of those trees presented itself to me with the encouragement of a break in the overcast allowing sunshine. The combination of the show off trees and my emergence from behind the clouds encouraged me enough that I found another set of trees, this time three at the stop sign. These are also trees that appear here nearly every year. It was a very pretty day.

A week off the bicycle inevitably leads to some loss of bicycle fitness. I don't think those 10 or so km on the rental can really be counted on as miles, particularly they can't be counted as miles maintaining bicycle fitness. Fitness had degraded slightly but I still felt invigorated by the sunshine and managed to post an recordable average speed.

I got all the way out to Lake Vadnais. I thought the blues were stunning.

That's a LOOK at Lake Vadnais.

Safe at home

I texted TCWUTH with the news that we had touched down safely at MSP, she replied with the news that she was waiting for us at baggage claim #8. This made TOPWLH laugh, although I personally cannot imagine why, it is exactly the sort of response I was expecting to receive from our most excellent dafter.

Last evening in Vancouver we dined at the Rain City Grill. The restaurant was recommended by Lonely Planet and we both pronounced ourselves quite pleased with the meal and the experience, most particularly the meal presentation.

Exquisite.

I took this photo out the window of our restaurant from the table where we were sitting.One last thing about those laughing figures, they were placed in that small plot of public park in 2009 on loan from the artist. We couldn't seem to get away from them at any time while we were in Vancouver as here is a newspaper report from The Globe and Mail, a Canadian national newspaper.The artist has lowered the asking price from $5 million to $1.5 million for permanent acquisition.

After dinner we watched the Canucks-Kings Stanley Cup game at the Davern Arms with Bob and Jason and Prinyi. Jason and Prinyi thought we were good luck and should stay over for the next game on Friday. Bob offered that we could stay at his place, Jason said he would come over and cook breakfast.

It all promised to be good fun but we came home instead because . . .

There's no place like home.

Officially off duty

Too late to do anything about it I discovered that the employed person was not actually off duty yesterday. It turns out that her "conference" was still running. She says that the last of various "break-out sessions" which is relevant to her work was held on Monday making her free to sight see.

OK. It's a good story and even if not . . . well, why would you ruin a good story just for . . .

It had rained over night giving us wet streets and paths and 7C when we left the hotel today. A bicycle repeat didn't seem like a good idea so we went in search of old buildings in downtown Vancouver. Vancouver is a setting which can only be described as spectacularly scenic but the downtown and the suburban areas visible to downtown though across the bays and inlets are overrun with late 20th century glass walled towers. After a few days of looking at the buildings and comparing them to the nearby water and mountains we have both come around to the opinion that the architecture of modern Vancouver is H-I-D-E-O-U-S.

So we were looking for old buildings.

She hadn't actually noticed the Marine Building before and I like it a lot so we went there for additional examination. Here's another view of the elevator lobby with a better view of the ornate floor.We noticed that there was a mezzanine overlooking the lobby so we boarded one of the elevators, and not finding a button for mezzanine, pushed 2. Here's where we found ourselves:I wasn't completely satisfied with the way the photo of the entrance came out the other day so we stopped and got a couple of detail photos. this one is the archway over the main entrance door.There are panels on the pillars depicting historical events. I don't know if the detail is very visible on this one but that panel commemorates the SS Empress of Japan, the figurehead of which was in one of yesterday's photos.We found ourselves drawn to anything with a corroded green copper roof. This one turns out to be just a pretty fancy hotel but there in front of it is THE major church of downtown Vancouver, the Anglican Christ Church Cathedral.I have often in the past included photos of churches so we went inside to see what this one looked like. And it is a quite attractive interior, nice old wooden construction, nice stained glass, a few steps down from Parisian cathedrals but a nice enough old church building.Vancouver claims to have the third largest Chinatown in North America (our guess is San Francisco and Los Angeles). Neither of us had been down there previously and we were close enough to make it part of today's stroll so we headed off in that direction.

This is called the Millenium Gate and it is the entryway to Vancouver's Chinatown.A Chinese settlement had developed in this area even before Vancouver was incorporated as a city. The area was later named Shanghai Alley.

Here on historic Shanghai Alley is a Han Dynasty bell replica. The bell was gift to Vancouver from its sister city of Guangzhou.The bell is a replica of one unearthed in Guangzhou in 1983 during excavation for a major new hotel. The original is over 2,000 years old and has quite an interesting history. It was buried in a king's burial tomb which was discovered more than 20 meters below the modern city streets.

The other major Chinatown tourist attraction here is the Doctor Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden. The book says it is the only Ming Dynasty style Chinese garden built outside of China in 400 years.

We are all aware that gardens are not at their peak at this time of year but we still managed to get a nice photo of my fellow traveler.That's pretty likely to be it although never say never, we don't actually leave town until tomorrow.

Bicycling breaks out

This morning was only 5C. Every morning the overcast just keeps getting heavier than the day before. The weather channel keeps lowering the expected highs (only 10 again today) while raising the probability of precipitation (up to 60 percent today) with 10 mm predicted for today, more for tomorrow.

Naturally we decided on a bike ride.

There are several bicycle rental shops over on Denman Street, we checked out three of them before settling on one. We headed back to the hotel to optimize gear choices and committed to the ride.

We stopped at the running gear store on the corner to try to buy a cheap pair of gloves for the Guest Rider as 5 promised to be a bit chilly on exposed fingers even at the reduced speeds that our rental comfort bikes were going to allow. It wasn't as easy as buying cotton gloves in Hibbing I will tell you. They had some running gloves but no cheap ones. The cheapest was $20 and they had one pair which didn't fit GRider. They had several choices at the $30 level but the most choices seemed to be $49. I like gear as much as the next guy, but . . .

We were trying to devise a strategy, like perhaps she wearing my gloves and me buying the $19 gloves which looked like they might be an OK fit for me. The sales guy noticed our plight. He commented that he thought they had some $10 gloves but an inspection revealed that that particular item was sold out. He said, "Let me check the free box," which I am pretty sure in this case means the lost and found. The phone rang and he had to answer it but he tossed a pair of used gloves to GRider which she found to be a good enough fit to allow riding comfort.

That's today's gear story.

So off we went.

I had only walked as far as the point of the island park visible from out hotel room (Brockton Point) but on bicycles we quickly zoomed around the corner and into uncharted territory. The one way bicycle path at sea wall level is about 9 km, a distance we judged too far to walk but a very, very easy ride, even on fat tired rented by the hour bicycles.

This one is called "Girl in a Wetsuit".I am not making any of this up, I don't have to.

I suspect that yellow stuff in the background is yesterday's referenced sulfur.

Here's a view of Lion's Gate Bridge, the passage over the narrowest point on the entryway into Burrard Inlet and Vancouver Harbor. The lions reference is to pair of mountains on the north side of the narrows.The figurehead is a replica of the figurehead of the S.S. Empress of Japan, a for obvious reasons very recognizable Vancouver commercial vessel from 1891-1922.Guest Rider for scale.

Here's the lighthouse at Prospect Point, beneath the Lion's Gate Bridge. The book says that the narrows have tricky currents with aggressive tides running at times over 6 knots. There are also shallows and very little maneuvering room at this point. In such a place a light house is a much needed aid to navigation.Here's the Guest Rider and our bikes with Siwash Rock in the background.The plaque says that according to First Nations legend the pinnacle of rock stands as an imperishable monument to "Skalsh the Unselfish" who was turned into stone by "Q'uas the Transformer" as a reward for his unselfishness.We had a two hour rental and plenty of extra time so we went outside the park and rode on down to the English Bay beach where the burghers made another appearance.Encouraged by her antics, other tourists began encouraging the small child accompanying them to mimic the Guest Rider. The small child was not quick to grasp the concept. She didn't want to do it. Personally I think the small child was missing out, the Guest Rider appears to be enjoying herself.

It is Vancouver but I do love Paris so we had lunch here, right next door to our bike rental place.The menu was at least partly in French and we got to merci, au voir ourselves out the door. The charming madame wished me a bonne journée in response.

Cloudy in the morning

We are starting to discern the pattern, it is cloudy when you get up in the morning, unsettled with possibility of rain until mid-day and after that the sun quite often appears and the day turns nice. Sorta like Seattle (duh!), or Nantes.

The Weather Channel reported 7C this morning with 40 percent chance of precipitation, rising to a high of 10. 10 is acceptable if you have a jacket and another layer or two like, for example, the fleece vest that I have along.

The employed person headed off to her daily rounds. I killed a few more minutes and then layered up and went out to entertain myself. The nice thing about layers is that it gives you another whole garment with pockets. You can carry a couple more items that you might not include in a one jacket with only a couple of pockets trip. I took both cameras, for example. I can take video with the cheap pocket camera. The high rent SLR digital is early generation digital SLR and does not do video. I knew this when I bought it and could have gotten a later generation which did have video capability but part of the reason why I jumped in the first place is that the early generation (still a great, great camera) had gone on sale outrageously cheap. Anyway today I was carrying two cameras.

I was warm enough in my extra layers even though I did have to put up my hood. 7 isn't really all THAT warm. I met the employed person for lunch and then started to think about maybe arranging an afternoon sitdown. Before I ever got anywhere near our hotel I found a few interesting things to look at. Soon enough the sun came out and the temperatures sky rocketed up to 15.

The good thing about layers is that you can peel them off. The down side is that once peeled off you have to carry them. When you are carrying not only the extra layers but also the miscellaneous items that you piled into the extra pockets in the extra layer the whole thing gets to be quite a production.

Lengthy digression, on with the show.

Hey boat girl, sell anything this big lately?I didn't think so.

It is a cruise ship the name of which I have already forgotten but it is based in Nassau. There were people walking around with jackets announcing an around the world cruise.

An interesting bit, to me, especially considering the size of the water craft, is that Vancouver isn't by any but the wildest stretch of the imagination anything like on the actual sea coast. That's salt water out there alright but the body of water is Burrard Inlet. The brochures describe Burrard Inlet as the heart of the port of Vancouver. Down where our hotel is we are on Coal Harbour. You have to go around the end of Stanley Park to the north, the side opposite where we are to get to English Bay. English Bay is a bay on the Strait of Georgia. The Strait of Georgia is the famous inland water route to Alaska. On the other side of the Strait of Georgia is Vancouver Island. At the south end of the island the Strait of Georgia leads you to the San Juan Islands, and thence to the Strait of Juan de Fuca where if you get confused and head to the wrong side of the Olympia Peninsula you will find yourself in Puget Sound headed to Seattle. Only a swing to the west at that point actually leads you out into the Pacific Ocean.

I had pan fried Pacific Salmon for dinner last night. It was good.

End of another lengthy digression, on with the show.

I just stumbled upon this almost completely by accident but it was a very interesting diversion. It is downtown Vancouver's Marine Building.The book says this is the most famous building in Vancouver and that at the time of its completion it was the tallest building in the British Empire.

The building was begun in 1929 amid great fanfare and eventually completed for the then princely sum of $2.3 million. The book says it is a masterpiece of art deco comparable to the Chrysler Building in New York.

Perched on the bluff at water's edge the building was designed to resemble a huge ornate crag encrusted with starfish, crabs and other marine life and topped by a flock of deco Canada Geese.

Here is the main entrance with ornately designed archway including deco geese on the facade.The main lobby:And two of the five elevator doors in that main lobby.I hung around for a fair amount of time and gawked. It was way interesting.

Here's another bit of public sculpture on the Seawalk at the Convention Center. It is called "The Drop".According to the plaque, The Drop, "pays homage to the element of water and the untamable forces of nature which are omnipresent in Vancouver."

I don't make this stuff up, I don't have to.

The panel goes on to say that the piece "displays a technical perfection, artificially coloured to correspond to the sky, and contrasting with the pale yellow of the mass of sulfur visible on the horizon. The sculpture creates a visual dialogue with the architecture of the convention centre. It marks the interface between land and water, between nature and technology accented by its interaction with the lines of the cruise ship."

Apparently The Drop was taken down temporarily for the Olympics, as it was blocking the view of the television cameras. So much for "untamable forces of nature".

OK, there might be a little tiny bit in that last bit that I made up.

The sun was out and this may be redundant but I don't remember the other picture of the cauldron (and Digital Orca) having lighting this good.Finally, I learned another interesting bit about Dead Man's Island, the source of its name.

The island is 3.2 hectares, about 8 acres I believe. In 1862 an early settler who was interested in acquiring the island, found, upon inspection of the premises hundreds of red cedar boxes on the upper boughs of trees on what was then a heavily forested island. A local First Nation chief informed him that the island was a burial grounds of the Squamish nation commemorating the scene of a bloody battle in which 200 warriors were killed. Out of respect the new settlers of the area kept the place separate for use as a burial ground until 1911 when an American saw value in the trees and acquired the island for the purposes of logging off the trees.

You don't see any old growth cedar there now so I suppose we all know how that one came out.

Overcast, with poor contrast

Yesterday after I posted the employed person and I went out for dinner. she wanted to see a couple of the things that I had posted about (naturally enough I think). My morning visit to the Burghers of Vancouver had been mostly a private event. By the time she and I arrived the site was swarming with tourists. That's OK, that's what we are too, tourists.

She adopted the attitude prevailing among the tourists, and decided that she was one of the burghers.I was a tiny bit surprised by this but it seems to be tulip time in Vancouver.I am also a little surprised by the palm trees. We are, after all, north of the 49th parallel here, which to my 45th parallel Minnesota sensibilities, seems too far north for palm trees.

Today when she went to work I did some walking, actually probably a little too much walking in Stanley Park. Stanley Park is named for Lord Stanley who was the Governour General of Canada at the time the park was established. It turns out that this is the exact same Lord Stanley who donated that silver cup that the hockey people are so excited about at this time of year.

This is the image that appears on the front of the local "official guide" to Stanley Park.But, no, that's not Lord Stanley or any other Stanley at all. That's Harry Winston Jerome who in 1971 was named the British Columbia Athlete of the Century for 1871-1971. Jerome was a sprinter of exceptional accomplishments, setting six world records during his career in the early 1960s. He set the world record for 100 yards at 9.3 seconds in 1960, lowered it to 9.2 in 1962 and to 9.1 in 1966. He looks fast even today but in actuality is not even moving. It's a statue.

Those are very fast times for 100 yards. Well, I guess a world record IS a fast time. I admit to not being aware of Jerome previously. My interest in track and field probably began shortly after Jerome's period of prominence. The winner of the 100 yard dash in the Olympics was at that time dubbed the world's fastest human (the same appellation currently applied to the winner of the 100 meters, it's a meter kind of world). The first world's fastest human that I recall being aware of was Bob Hayes, the winner of the 100 in 1964, with, if I recall correctly, a world record equaling time of 9.1 seconds.

Usain Bolt of Jamaica is the current world's fastest human and the world record holder in the 100 meters with a time of 9.58 seconds.

A bit further along the walkway I came to the totem poles. It seemed OK to me as the whole area seemed pretty culturally sensitive to what the signs called the First Nation peoples.Here's something I didn't know, totem poles have no religious significance. They are just stories told in carvings, often telling details of family history or other such things.

Here's a view back across the harbour towards Vancouver downtown with Canada Place the white sail looking place on the left and the Vancouver Convention Center on the right (that's where the employed person goes to work). The convention center has a grass covered roof.I also found out while I was over there that that Dead Man's Island thing isn't exactly PRIVATELY held as the guide book said. The Department of Defense, specifically the naval reserve, operates a training center on the island.

This is back on the downtown side, next to the convention center.

It is called "Digital Orca".It probably looks a bit more impressive on a day when the sun is out. I was a little disappointed with the lighting conditions but sometimes you just have to consider that you may never be here again and that these may be the best lighting conditions for photography that are ever going to be offered to you and you just have to go ahead and take the picture.

Here's one for a selected audience, I call it the Vancouver version of the Galeries Lafayette map.Actually it is probably a bit better for navigation that the Galeries Lafayette map but only just a tiny bit so.

The sun came out this afternoon, eventually the temperature rose from the morning 8C to probably 12. With the sun out that was plenty nice enough.

But then we had to spend WAY too much time getting the employed person's cell phone squared away. Last week while we were at home we/she subscribed to some additional services (that means dollars) that were meant to make our phones work in Canada. At first not so much but it appears that after a lengthy LiveChat that she has gotten her media squared away.

We're still here.