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.

A day on the left coast

Sunrise in Vancouver. The person who is employed had to get up early in order to get to work on time.Well, at least it WAS 8:30 CDT. It felt fine to me.

The employed person went ahead and went to work and I set about exploring the within walking distance neighborhood (it IS Canada, perhaps I should say neighbourhood).

This isn't the Burghers of Calais but this isn't Paris either. I like it though, I like it a lot.The plaque identifies the work as "A-maze-ing Laughter" by Yue Minjun. The plaque further identifies the artist as "one of the most influential contemporary artists in China". The work was placed in 2009 at this spot on English Bay on the west side of the peninsula where downtown Vancouver is located. Our hotel is on the east side of the peninsula. Another interesting detail is that the artist used his own face as a model for all of the laughing faces on all of the figures. The plaque also gives another name for the piece, a name which I suspect is the presumed English spelling of the sound we English hear when the name of the work is pronounced in Chinese: "Shi Xiang Sheng".

Canada is a lot like us and a lot not like us. I noticed this discarded cigarette package on a bus stop bench. I know we kept threatening to do something like this but I just do not believe that images like this one are coming to USA retail outlets any time soon.Here's one for the child we used to have. Jobs available in Vancouver.Across the street here's one of the boats they had for sale.Please note that that is not even one of the big boats, it is just one that photographed fairly conveniently.

I was pleased to notice that there is room within the Canadian economy for a rental fence company.These people go on and on about their "Steam Clock" so when my walking took me within a couple of blocks of it I decided not to wait for the employed person and went ahead and took a solo look at it. The plaque on the clock says the clock is steam powered. Lonely Planet says it is actually powered by electricity.Whatever its source of power it most emphatically DOES have, in lieu of the usual bell on the quarter hour and hour, a much more satisfying steam whistle. The whistle is a bit startling and totally fun.

After looking at the clock I stumbled up the hill and came upon Victory Square Park. On the northern side of the square stands the Vancouver war memorial, the Victory Square Cenotaph.

The Cenotaph was unveiled by the mayor of Vancouver on Sunday, 27 April 1924.

The inscription reads: "To the Glory of God, and in thankful remembrance of those who served their King and Country overseas in the cause of truth, righteousness and freedom."That's the Vancouver Lookout in the background. It's in the tourism guides, it's even in Lonely Planet. Personally, I don't know, it looks like a poor imitation of the really big Lookout thing located a bit further down the coast in Seattle. But, who knows, we've got some more time here, maybe it will make the schedule.

This is also in the corner of the square. I had walked away from it when I suddenly decided that is was way close enough to Point Zero that it deserved a photo. It looks like it may commemorate a survey marker or some such thing. Maybe someday I will find out what it actually is.And here's something I had never seen before, a sort of place where I have never been. That thing was extremely famous in 2010 when it was the Olympic Cauldron for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games.We will be leaving shortly for an away from the hotel location which is necessary for us to view the gold medal game of the 2012 Women's World Hockey Championships. This event is being held in Burlington, Vermont, and yet the game cannot seem to make it onto USA TV, not even onto the obscure cable channels.

Up here it is on TSN2, sort of the ESPN2 of Canada.

There are about five former Gophers and one future Gopher on the USA team. In addition to the players we are familiar with it is always just vaguely possible that we will see in the crowd the familiar face of a parent we know.

This trip is working out swell.

Vancouver baby!!

I am just coasting along in the wake of the employed person. She has important business in Canada. Travel was, as it almost always is, an all day ordeal but here we are at our hotel overlooking the scenic and somewhat artlessly yclept Coal Harbour.Blogger spell check does not approve of the "u" in Harbour, but it is Canada after all.

I can see the famous Stanley Park out the window, there on the left. Wrong on your first guess, it is not the bit with the house, that's privately held Deadman Island (another naming disaster). The park is the wooded bit behind the houses. I have located the bicycle rental places and some riding may occur.

Here's a look out the window at the mountains next to the Salt Lake City Airport, our two hour stopover on the way out of the country.I don't feel as viciously jet lagged as I usually do after international flights, it is beginning to seem just barely possible that a good time will be had by all.

Big city

Today conditions dictated a ride down into the big city. Temperatures have recovered a fair amount, rising up to and above the average for the day, and the winds while not absent were much more manageable.

I rode the Capital Loop in reverse. Having ridden it a couple of times now in reverse I cannot imagine why I ever rode it in the other direction. That whole two legs into a quartering head wind to set up an about 7 mile down wind leg? It is starting to seem like such bad, bad planning.

Much better is 7 miles into the wind (although that leg also includes a nasty hill which is even nastier when it is directly into the wind) followed by a couple of long blissful legs with quartering tail winds.

Yup, this way is better.

I stopped at the Empire Builder's house. The house has a fence and two gates. One gate is directly in front of the main entrance. This one is almost always closed although it was open today. The other gate is at the edge of the property at the gatehouse and has been open twice in all of the times I have checked to see if it is open. Today was the second.

The camera angle from the gatehouse is much better.Well, he WAS rich, it figures he had a pretty nice house.

Here I am standing in exactly the same spot but have turned towards the other historically significant building in the immediate vicinity for a photo opportunity. This shot includes one of the gate posts, a nice bit of nearly full bloom lilac, and the cathedral dome.

The dome has been re-coppered within the last, oh, I don't know, several years. The copper dome will eventually turn green again but for now oxidation has advanced only to the color you see.I was just cruising through my Bicycle 12 photo folder and noticed that I had not published this one:That's one last memory of our trip out of town to Duluth, TOPWLH on the dune at Park Point with Wisconsin in the background.

I promise that there are a couple of references in this post that will be revisited in the next few days.

I promise.

I passed through the Fairgrounds on the way home.

EG: NA
CB: 59
AOWG: 69

Pretty nice day but clearly not qualifying as OOTNDITHOD. It felt good to be out there, mostly (with two tail wind legs) I felt strong, I felt relatively fast. Bicycling is good.