Eventful Day

A couple of weekends ago, Mike and I went to check out the new area on the seawall that is near the Olympic village site.

It has been newly opened.

There are all kinds of cool things on the walk.

Here I am spinning in one of the chairs that dot the board walk.
Here is a dragon boat race that was going on while we were messing around.

Dragon boating is very popular here. You can see them practicing and racing quite often. I might try myself at some point. Good exercise and nice way to meet new people.
These giant deck chairs are also new.

This would be a beautiful place to bring a book and a coffee and read in the sun.
Here is Mike on one of the new walking bridges.

It reminds me of a whale's backbone for some reason.

We were on our bikes. I had just got a new seat on mine at a nearby bike shop and it is so comfortable now. Much more fun to bike around the city.
Here is a shot of one of the new deck areas.

New benches and lots of decorative stone and plants along the way.

There are also these stone anchors that can be seats.
So we were biking around and came across this park we'd never been to so we followed the path around it and came across this.

This path is actually a walking/biking bridge that spans over a piece of highway!

Can you believe it? Look at it it looks like a park.

I had to actually clime over some shrubbery and get a look at the cars going by underneath before I would believe it.
The flowers are out in full force now and there are some pretty amazing colors.

These ones were the exact same color as my bright pink shirt.
Yep, they are!
We were at Granville Market and there was this big commotion with bikes and a police escort and Mike and I realized that there was a huge group of naked bicyclers parading around the market. There were some pretty amazing getups. Lots of "glider bikes", some two-seater bicycles, unicycles, low rider motorcycles bikes you name it and their operators dressed in not much except colorful stockings, hats and body paint. The one guy to the left has his dog in the wagon. The poor thing must be so embarrassed ;) This group of bikers often do events like this. They have different themes, but I believe they do it to raise money for a cause and to promote bicycling for health and the environment.
Here is Mike at the top of this little hill on the Island.

You can see everything that is going on from up here and it is a nice quite, sunny little place.

From our side of the water we can see these little houses that are actually on the water. They are basically on docks and float. I'd always wanted to get a closer look at them. Isn't that cool?



Finally we were eating lunch in the market and noticed a big crowd gathered on the the dock outside.

We wandered outside and saw this race going on.

The paddlers seemed to be having a lot of trouble and I found out that their paddles and boats were crudely made of cardboard and plywood.

It is another event for charity called the plywood cup where the competitors create their boats and then have to race in them.

So that was a few hours that we spent biking around. Soon I'll blog about Heather's trip here. I just like to get these in chronological order.

Cheers,

A