OK, 7 weeks after getting back from Europe, I’ve finally managed to upload all my photos!

Head over to the photos section to check them out.

Last Saturday saw us dressed in our finery to witness the marriage of our friends, Stu & Helen. After a week of crappy weather, there was some concern that we’d have to move indoors, but Saturday morning dawned, the rain was absent and clear, blue skies remained. Everything went ahead as planned and a great day was had by all.

Photos are here.

As part of Vivid Sydney the Opera House, Museum of Contemporary Art and other structures were being lit up at night. I’d been at the movies with Neil and Claudia on Tuesday at Circular Quay, and had seen the images being projected on to the Opera House, so I resolved to come back in to the city another night and take some photos.

I’d received a tripod as a present a few years ago and had never got around to using it, so this was the ideal time. On Thursday night, I packed it up, along with my camera and remote shutter release and caught the train to Milsons Point just as it got dark. Not having shot time-lapse photos before I just played around with various settings, experimenting as I went along.

Starting from Milsons Point, I then headed to Kirribilii, then walked over the Harbour Bridge to The Rocks, then Circular Quay and finally to the Opera House itself.

Here are the photos.

Jacqui’s grandmother passed away a couple of weeks ago. She was 94, and her passing was both peaceful and expected. Jacqui had enough warning to be able to fly up to Ballina, where her grandmother was in a nursing home, and say her goodbyes

The following week the family flew up for the funeral service, and we decided that after the funeral we would all rent an apartment and stay in Lennox Head for the weekend together. It was the perfect antidote to the sorrow of the preceding week.

Here are the photos.

On Saturday, after relaxing on the couch for the day, by 4pm I was starting to get a bit bored and looking for something to do. I remember that, while running in Centennial Park at dawn or dusk, I’d often thought to myself that I should show up with a camera some time, so I figured I’d head down and take some shots.

Bloody traffic was terrible, so I got down there a bit later than I would have liked and was a bit rushed trying to get around to a few different places before the sun went down, but I still got a couple of nice shots.

Yesterday, I finally got around to sorting through photos I’d taken over the last few months, condensing them down to a few albums and uploading them to the site.

We visited the Blue Mountains (photos) back in early August for a wintery weekend away which certainly lived up to its name, with a howling gale knocking out the electricity on Friday night and playing havoc with our attempts to keep warm.

My trip to Malaysia resulted in lots of photos, from walking around Georgetown and Batu Feringgi, to visiting temples and seeing Orang Utans, although I still have to go through the ones from the wedding, which was one of the main reasons for going to Malaysia in the first place. Maybe next week.

Had a perfect start to the day today: up early, down to the beach for a run, then a swim in perfect azure water, then coffee and toasted banana bread for breakfast, before heading home to start work. Can’t get much better than that!

Also, yesterday I finally got around to uploading my photos from “Tiff & Nick’s Wedding”:/albums/35.

That’s it, my season is over. I’m in Banff now with a couple of days to kill before flying out of Calgary, ending a 14-month sojourn in Canada. After leaving Fernie, I went up to “Kicking Horse”:http://kickinghorseresort.com/ to meet up with Tom, Dave, Rob and Paul for a few days riding there.

Unfortunately, the resort has gone down in my estimation since last year. It’s still got awesome terrain, and great steeps off the ridges, but their lift system is useless and they still can’t get a decent internet connection set up on the hill. For some unknown reason they don’t run the one chair which lets you access the good terrain on the front of the hill, forcing everyone to use the gondola, so on days when there’s a bit of new snow, you may have to queue for 45mins to get up the hill. They also like stopping the gondola during the day so that they can do avalanche control, stranding everyone down at the bottom of the hill. Why they can’t either do it in the morning before the resort opens, or just prevent access to the bowl which they’re currently bombing, leaving the others open, is beyond me.

Despite all that, we still got some good riding in over the four days, so it was a decent end to the season. Right now I’m sitting in Banff and it’s -34C outside incl. wind chill, so Canada seems determined to give me a proper winter send-off!

I’ve uploaded new photos as well: “Australia Day”:/albums/33 - “Fernie”:/albums/32 - “Kicking Horse”:/albums/34

I’ve just uploaded a couple of albums taken over the last month. First up is the World Cup Downhill Skiing from Lake Louise a few weeks ago. It was -20C outside, and these women were hurtling down the hill at 120km/h. We were freezing our asses off just watching them, so I hope they have heated race suits or something!

When myself and Jacqui got to Ireland, Dad took us to visit Newgrange, Ireland’s most important prehistoric site. It’s a burial mound, built over 5000 years ago and oriented to sunrise on the winter solstice.

Jacqui’s brother, Mark, arrived for his first visit to Dublin, so I took himself and Jacqui on a walking tour of Dublin, featuring such highlights as Temple Bar, O’Connell St., the LUAS and Dublin’s oldest pub, the Brazen Head.

Finally, I had Christmas with my parents, so there’s photos of the day’s festivities.

I was surprised just how French Montreal actually is. Sure, I knew everyone speaks French, and are proud of their French heritage, but I still wasn’t prepared to feel as though I had landed in France itself. In comparison to Vancouver, it’s a much older city (about 300 years older), so it has a lot of classical European architecture which is completely missing in Vancouver, and almost all other North American cities. The ethnic mix is completely different too, as there are a lot more North Africans and Muslims than in Vancouver, which I suppose makes sense when you consider the location of France’s ex-colonies. I’d imagine that anyone arriving to start a new life in Canada from the stretch of coastline between Lebanon and Cote d’Ivoire would naturally gravitate towards Québec from a language perspective at least. Add French street names such as Rue Saint-Denis, and suburbs like Verdun… though there are some concessions to Canada’s bi-lingual nature, like Rue University instead of Rue Université

Despite my schoolboy French laying dormant for years, I was able to make myself understood enough to order food and metro tickets without encountering any blank looks! We’d been told that people wouldn’t speak English to us, either because of inability, or a simple refusal, but of course it never happened. Everyone we met was friendly and helpful, and quite happy to talk English, though I still made the effort to start conversations in French. I might even sign up with the Alliance Francaise once I get back to Sydney.

Another thing which stood out is how many churches there were. There seemed to be one every few blocks; the Cathédral Marie-Reine-du-Monde is on one side of Place Canada, with St. George’s Anglican on the other, with construction of both starting in 1870. I also went to Notre Dame Cathedral and took a few photos. An usher had to come over and tell me to take my hat off. I’d completely forgotten, so the years of indoctrination as a kid are clearly wearing off. Mum won’t be too happy though ;-)

Photos: [on foot] – [by bike]

Last Sunday was Canada Day, a celebration of Canada’s 140th birthday. There was a fireworks display held in Vancouver Harbour, starting at 22.30 once it got dark. Some of the best vantage points were just down the road from our apartment, so myself, Jacqui, Tom and Anna headed down for a look…

[Fireworks Photos]

Myself, Jacqui and a Danish friend of ours, Rikke, headed over to Victoria, on Vanouver Island, last weekend to go whale watching. We boarded the ferry from Tsawassen straight from work on Friday evening, arriving in the backpackers in Victoria around 8pm, just in time to get some food and book our place on the whale-watching boat for 9am the next day.

On waking on Saturday morning we were greeted by drizzling rain, which wasn’t what I wanted to see when facing three hours in an open boat. When we arrived at the shop there were loads of great photos of orcas so I was glad I’d brought out my good camera. We got dressed up in all-weather survival suits and boarded our semi-rigid inflatable, ready to cast off. It wasn’t raining too hard, but I still made sure to keep my camera inside the suit.

Once clear of the mouth of the harbour, the twin outboard engines throttled up and we were off. The sea around Victoria is sheltered from the open ocean by Washington State, so it was a nice, calm ride out to the San Juan Islands where we met J-Pod, one of the families which frequent the area.

As you would expect, there are rules that commercial whale-watching operators must obey to minimise the impact on the whales, the main one of which is that the boats are not allowed to approach within 200m. Even with my 200mm zoom lens on the whales were still pretty small, so I wondered who’d taken all the photos in the shop, as they were much closer than 200m. Apparently, if the whales choose to come closer to the boat, that’s OK, but since J-Pod were sleeping when we encountered them, they completely ignored us.

If I get around to doing another trip I’ll make sure to go on an afternoon boat in the hope that they’ll be a little more curious, though with the number of boats visiting them daily I’d say they’re unlikely to be bothered investigating all that often. After 90 minutes with the whales it was time for us to head back to harbour and get some dry clothes on and avoid the crap weather by heading to the movies. Before doing that though, we went to the Bug Zoo which was pretty interesting. I got to hold a Giant African Millipede, which was about 15cm long!

Sunday dawned and it was still raining, throwing our plans into disarray, as all the stuff we wanted had planned to do was outdoors. After a drive around Victoria we decided to head back to Vancouver early, stopping off at the Butterfly Gardens on the way, as it was indoors. We figured we’d be there for 20 minutes or so, but it ended up being closer to tow hours. It was really interesting, as they’d loads of different species of butterflies fluttering about, along with some flamingoes and other smaller birds. Myself and Jacqui took loads of photos, and some of mine came out really well, though I was playing around with my manual settings, so the depth of field was really shallow on a lot of photos. If I’d increased it just a fraction more I would have had some awesome shots. Still, I was pretty happy with a few of them.

Whale Photos

Butterfly Photos

We’ve just come back from a weekend away to Whistler, for the last weekend of the ski season. Nathan and Tom went snowboarding on Saturday afternoon, Anna and Stef went for a go on the ZipTrek, whereas I went for a leisurely cycle along the Valley Trail with Jacqui. The scenery was great, with excellent views back towards both Whistler & Blackcomb. We also passed a number of lakes and all of Whistler’s major golf courses. I thing myself, Tom and Nathan will have to head up there for a round sometime.

We cooked a huge BBQ on Saturday night then split up for another day of acitivities on Sunday. This time myself and Tom went MTBing on some sweet singletrack near Lost Lake. We only managed two hours though, mainly due to the heat as it was almost 32C! It felt a bit weird being back in Whistler with the temperature 40C+ warmer than the last time. We also had no water with us, being without our Camelbacks and not having suitable water bottle holders on the rental bikes. Still, it was good to get out on the bikes again.

The drive home along the Sea-to-Sky highway was spectacular, surrounded by mountains initially, then slowly giving way to the ocean as we approached Vancouver. As usual, I took some photos, so check them out.

[photos]

Yesterday was a public holiday, so we made the most of our time off and headed off to Deep Cove Kayak for a few hours of paddling. We were a bit worried about the possiblity of falling in, since the water here isn’t quite a tropical as Sydney (!!), so we rugged up a bit and headed off. Anna chose a particularly spectacular outfit, leading to suggestions that she’d gotten dressed in the dark ;-)

After a bit of messing around getting organised, we were all on the water by 11.30, with two hours to do as we pleased. We paddled along the coast, surrounded by hills draped in fir trees as far as the could can see. Jacqui braved the risk of dunking and brought her camera along, so I have a few of her photos to show off the scenery.

The two hours passed really quickly, and we were back on dry land without incident. To ensure we replenished our energy levels with a couple of beers and a huge burger at The Raven. We’ll be going back there again!

[photos]

Bevin and Jonny came down from Whistler for the weekend as she was heading back to Ireland. We decided to visit the Vancouver Aquarium and check out what they had in store for us. Highlights were the Beluga whale show and the dolphin show, but they also had some pretty good displays indoors as well.

I signed up as a member, so I can go back as often as I want for free. I’m pretty keen to try out some of the behind-the-scenes tours and meet or feed some of the whales or dolphins.

Anyway, I got some nice photos, so check them out.

[photos]

The Sun Run, a 10K fun run and Vancouver’s largest annual running race with 53,000 participants this year, kicked off at 9am just up the road from our apartment block. The fitness centre across the road thought it would be a great promotional tool to set up an aerobics class out on the street… complete with pumping tunes and instructor with microphone: “when your heart rate rises, your life goes wheee!”, “Vancouver, you make us proud”, and my favourite “when you say hello to us, you’re saying that you have energy, you have strength!”. They decided to start this around 7.30am, an hour and a half in advance of the race! Wankers!

Since I’d been woken up anyway, I got up and myself and Anna went out to shoot some photos.

[photos]

Finally, after 7 days of continuous rain, the sun came out and Vancouver turned on its charms. Myself and Tom made the most of the opportunity and went for a walk around Stanley Park to see the sights and take a few photos.

We came across a pair of swans building a nest, which was a good excuse for me to take out my new Canon EF 70-200 lens and get some close-up shots. I got a great one of a Mallard drake. It’s so sharp, and so crystal clear I find it hard to believe I took it myself ;-)

After strolling around for a bit longer than originally planned, we met up with Lisa’s friend Carole for a few beers. She’d given us valuable help over e-mail before we arrived, and yesterday she gave us the lowdown on Vancouver life and answered all our questions.

There’s a couple of thing I’d noticed about Vancouver:

First, I’ve yet to see an estate agent’s. They’re everywhere in Sydney and in Dublin. Do Vancouverites not sell their houses, or maybe they’ve got some alternative, as-yet-unheard-of way of transacting real estate business?

Second, there are a lot of homeless and mentally disturbed people wandering the streets, more so than Dublin or Sydney. In Stanly Park yesterday we came across a woman standing on the beach shouting abuse at the ocean.

Finally, like Sydney, there’s lots of great, cheap ethnic food. We’ve had something different each night and have yet to have a crap meal. That augurs well!

[Photos]

Carrying my SLR around on the ski hill plays havoc with my snowboarding as the last thing I want to do is fall over and land on it, so I usually didn’t bother bringing it up the hill. Tom took plenty of photos with his IXUS, so I grabbed a few of them and stuck them up here.

[Photos]

Phase 4 of the trip began yesterday. Myself and Tom bid Paul farewell as he headed back to The Real World ™, then hit the road ourselves on our way to Jasper for a couple of days riding Marmot Basin.

The drive from Banff to Jasper goes through Banff National Park and Jasper National Park and runs right along the continental divide, so there’s mountains all around. It also passes the Columbia Icefield on the way, which gives the road its name. The information and tour centre was closed for winter, but you could still see some glaciers from the road. You’re supposed to be able to walk right up to one of the glaciers, but snow obliterated the trail, it was bloody freezing and there was no-one around, so I settled for taking pictures from the road. The scenery is spectacular along the whole 220km route, so while Tom drove I took loads of photos ;-)

[Photos]

Jacqui headed back to LA yesterday. She enjoyed her couple of days in Fernie, especially as she has never seen so much snow in one place. She wasn’t interested in coming up the hill to ski or snowboard, but decided that we should do some cross-country skiing instead – we booked a day trip out to Island Lake.

Got to their car park at 9am, to be picked up by a snow cat for the 30min trip to the lodge. Once there we were kitted out with boots & skis and taken on a 90min trip around the lake, on a nice, easy, tracked, cross-country trail. Since neither of us can ski, and we’d each only attempted cross-country once before, we both fell over a couple of times, usually when there was a bend after a downhill. Jacqui ended up with a pretty impressive bruise on her arse!

Once the exercise was over, we were treated to a gourmet lunch in the lodge, followed by another snow cat journey to complete the day.

Since it was also the last day of our course, we all headed out to dinner with our instructors, Anouk and Shaun, and with all the ski instructors too. After that it was off to the Northern to see The Finagli Brothers (Lewi & Dicko) play for an hour or two, which was a great laugh!

Island Lake Photos

Fernie Photos