Beautiful, Busy British Columbia

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It seems that predictably as my general business increases that the updates on the old blog decrease. No matter, it has been a busy (by my no job or responsibilities standards) couple of weeks. Here is a quick recap:

Summer in the City

We arrived in the lower mainland for a heat wave of a long weekend. I can’t think of anywhere that I would have rather been then battling the traffic of the Greater Vancouver Area to get to an air conditioned skyscraper when it is 30 and sunny outside. The reason that we were in Vancouver was for an orientation and course in respect to our positions in the JET Programme. All and all the were a bit of a waste of time, particularly the course. I did find out a little bit more about what to expect while in Japan – we are going to be over paid and likely not have a lot of work to do. That was the general impression that I got at least, the other over riding theme of the weekend was ESID which stands for “every situation is different” and it was said so often that they created an acronym for it, actually it is not an acronym because it doesn’t make a word so it is just an abbreviation. So that was the official business while in Vancouver, I am still waiting on a few details – like what city I am going to be living in, what grades I am teaching, and other insignificant stuff like that.

While we were in Vancouver we also did some visiting with members of Tessa’s extended family which was nice. Not so nice in the big city was anything to do with the car, it is soooooo busy there, roads, parking lots, bridges – drove me crazy – pun intended. If I was forced to live there, I definitely would not have a car; it takes hours to get anywhere. I don’t understand the mentality of commuting for a quarter of your work day. Also on the car theme, we paid $21! to park in downtown Vancouver for 3.5 hrs.

Another thing that I didn’t like about Vancouver was how obvious the disparity of wealth was. During one of the hour long drives through the urban jungle you would drive past the biggest most excessive multi million dollar homes I have ever seen in Richmond, then past high-rise condos in downtown Vancouver starting $590,000 then 2 block later in East Van, you could easily see hundreds of people are living and starving on the streets. I found it pretty disturbing.

Sea to Sky

From depressing Vancouver, we followed a stream of luxury SUV’s and Audi’s north on Highway 99 to Squamish. Squamish has labeled itself “The Outdoor Recreation Capital of Canada,” our time there certainly helped it live up to that designation. We arrived with the intention of staying a night and visiting Tessa’s brother and his girlfriend, but it ended up being a great 5 days of keeping fit and having fun. When we arrived in town we hiked up the Satawamus Chief which is an omnipresent landmark in Squamish, it is a 700m hunk of granite, protruding from the edge of Howe Sound. It was a good little grind, an hour straight up in 30 degree heat, and lots of humidity. We had a good little sweat going. We met Tessa’s brother Ian at the top, we hiked up the back, he climbed up the face (16 pitches, for anyone that knows climbing). The next day Ian took us climbing, which was a lot of fun, I have never really enjoyed rock climbing a heap, but I had a blast. Ian geared us up, and showed us the ropes – pun intended. By the end of the day Tessa and I were quite bagged, our arm muscles normally reserved only for beer drink were quite taxed. Tessa and I both had personal victories, Tessa climbed a 5.8+ and I climbed a 5.9 and attempted a 5.10a (I was foiled by 1 move). For anyone that doesn’t speak rock climber, those accomplishments are not particularly impressive, unless you are unfit and never climb.

Keeping the outdoor recreation wheel rolling, the day after rock climbing Tessa and I left for a multi day backpack in Garibaldi Provincial Park. The trail was phenomenal, but the weather was not so much. The area we were hiking was quite spectacular from what we saw when the clouds lifted for a few minutes total over the 3 days. The land features are pretty cool, they are formed by volcano’s and glaciers at the same time. Despite the weather we had a pretty enjoyable 3 days, we put on almost 50km over that period, and my new boots are awesome, no feet issues at all. Mud, water and a whole lotta snow, couldn’t get to my feet. Thanks new boots.

I am in Prince George now at Tessa’s parent, which will be our base till Pemberton.