Where the Heck Have I Been?

Vancouver! That's where...

We returned late yesterday from a 3.5 day weekend in Vancouver. Vancouver was fabulous! Possibly the best trip we have ever taken. 

The Vancouver skyline is dominated by "see-throughs". These are glass skyscrapers that appear to be almost all identical. Apparently, these were built around the time China was reclaiming Hong Kong. Many Hong Kongese feared life under Chinese rule, and built get-away condos in Vancouver. It turns out that life under China is not so bad, and many of these potential ex-pats never made the move, so many of these are empty. Nevertheless, they rule the skyline and are quite striking.  There's also a bunch of cool neighborhoods, a nice downtown, a drug-infested hell hole part of town, and lots of nature right out of the city. "Kits" is hipper than anything I have seen in MPLS, as well.

Vancouver looks like a cycling paradise as well. Many many of the streets have designated bike lanes that are almost as wide as the car lanes, and most of those that don't have a designated lane have sharrows. The only downside is that there is almost nowhere that's flat. It would be a challenging introduction to hills at the beginning, but I saw many riders and they were all kicking ass on the hills, so I am sure it's do-able.

Lots more Vancouver photos, and a very short video of Friday morning Tai Chi club, at the Flickr site located over here.

In other news, I heard Warren Buffet on the radio tonight talking about how this economic downturn has really changed peoples behaviour [note the honorary Canadian spelling] as a result of this economic crisis.  I agree. I am seeing fewer cars on the road, I think, and I personally gave up my paid downtown parking for a bus pass this month. I figure it's incentive to take my bike to work more, and even on bad days there's no reason I should not be riding the bus since I live to a convenient route. The only thing I am surrendering, really, is some freedom on when I leave work. So far, so good. And I find that I actually like planning to catch a bus because it make me wrap things up more neatly and gets me out the door on time (It's hard to argue with "gotta go - gonna miss my bus!").

Finally, we are also zeroing in a CSA and going to give that a go this summer. We are still a little nervous about drowning in vegetables, but we are likely going in with a friend so we have a little bit of a pressure valve there (sneak a few extra into his bag when he's not looking).

That's the news for now. Take care and watch out for tomorrow's 8 inches (of snow, that is).