Swan Dive

Nice View

I came across this crazy little window on Saturday, which is situated in a stairwell in a parkade. (I shot it from outside on the street.) The window, as you can see is barred and filthy. Someone decided to graffiti some text on it, (it looks to be professionally done) which I think is hilarious.

During the course of the Chase, I spotted other weird little bits of things like this around and about, but just didn't have time to whip the camera out and capture them. I did however make a mental note of where I was, so at some point, I can go back and document them. I love quirky things like this. Vancouver is full of this sort of thing, if you keep your eyes open.

Speaking of photographs, I signed up for the next installment of Vivienne's fabulous photography classes. Swan Dive is set to begin a week from today!! I am really excited about shooting through the month of September and into the fall. This year I will be able to capture my most favourite season in a way I never have before. The idea of that thrills me.

You know how when you find something really, really good, you just want to share it? Well Vivienne's also just opened registration for Wading In and You Are Your Own Muse. If you been following my journey in her classes and thought maybe you'd like to sign up, now is the time! Buttons that link to all the classes I've taken so far are on my sidebar so you can click on through.

If you missed my posts during Wading In or Light Hunters, (or just want to read them again) use the handy little search box up at the top left and type in the name of either class. All the posts pertaining to it will come up.

Vancouver City Chase 2011

On Saturday morning, my son and I were up and out early to get to the City Chase starting line, which was at Granville Square, near Waterfront station in Vancouver.

The crowd of Chasers was huge-I think there were 700 of us! The race kicked off at 10 a.m. sharp and everyone bolted out of the square, across the street to the top of a parkade to get their clue sheet for the chase points we would be visiting throughout the day. It was mayhem and I found it hilarious to see the confused looks on locals' and tourists' faces as this sea of white t-shirts blew by them.

(Photo credit City Chase) 

After figuring out where we were going to start, team Brave & Crazy hopped on the skytrain and got off at the Main Street station. Our first Chase Point was "Rescue Me" which involved donning fire fighter gear and shooting water out of a fire hose to knock stacked up targets down. Then we had to drag a dummy in fire gear a certain length and finally, have one teammate put on a black-out mask and crawl a course using their partner's vocal directions for guidance.

From there, we went to Strathcona Park on foot (long hike!) for "Land Surf" and rode on long boards (like a skateboard only way more wobbly) along a paved winding skate park path. I took a bad spill* on this Chase Point but picked myself up and managed to finish. Pretty proud of this-I have no proprioception thanks to damage on my spinal cord from MS, so balancing on the long board was really difficult (thus the spill) but with excellent team work, we successfully completed this Chase Point in decent time.

From there, we made our way on foot to Hastings and caught a bus to the "Tourist" Chase Point. In this one we were give a Blackberry and had to travel on foot down Hastings to find things listed on a clue sheets. We had to photograph the answers and then return the Blackberries with the correct answers on them. This took awhile because some of the things we had to photograph were hard to find-like we had to find 10 strangers, line them up from tallest to shortest and take a photo. It was hard gathering 10 people, so we burst into a restaurant, interrupted people eating their lunch and asked for help. They agreed, but after we'd left, we discovered that the photo didn't save, so we had to shoot it all over again. We had to round up another 10 people! ARGH!

After that, we hiked to Pandora Park and did "Bananagrams" which was a welcome relief. We sat in the shade and got a sock filled with Scrabble tiles. We had 10 minutes to make them all into intersecting words like you do in Scrabble or we'd have to drink water out of our partner's sock. My kiddo got grossed out by that idea until I pointed out that we'd both packed a spare pair of clean socks in our backpacks and could use those! (We are smarter than the average bear! It pays to be prepared!) It didn't turn out that we needed to worry though-I play, on average, 10 games of Scrabble a day (online) and have played the game since I was 4 years old. We banged that one out in under 2 minutes!

Off again, this time to catch a bus for a short ride to Renfrew, to a park across the street from the PNE for "Sir, Yes Sir" where my boy took one for the team, running the army obstacle course twice because the tendon problem in my foot prevented me from running. By this time it was noonish and scorching hot.

He managed to do it fairly quickly, but was dizzy and feeling queasy by the time he finished. We paused for a couple minutes so he could rehydrate. He was my hero at that point in the day!

From there, we caught another bus, making our way to the skytrain station. We had a bit of a route crisis at this point because we weren't sure the best way to access the next Chase Point we wanted to get to, so there was some muddling around. We ate while we waited for the skytrain and made our way back to another station. When we were switching platforms at Broadway, we ran into friends who live in the neighbourhood and gave us advice about how to find the Chase Point we wanted. As it turned out, we never did go to that one.

We rerouted at Main Street station, making our way by bus to Charleton Park, a park where we take Indy swimming all the time. The bus drivers at this point were proving to be really unhelpful in terms of navigating to where we wanted to go, so we relied on our own observations while we road and hopped off when we spotted the park from the streets above. When we finally got to the "Zumba Life" Chase Point we were almost out of water. Believe me when I say it was HOT and we were not pleased to have to do a 5 minute dance routine on the seawall. The music just seemed to go on and on and on.

We left that one almost delirious and I guess we looked pathetic because when we asked a local walking his dog how to get out of the park and to the nearest bus stop, he walked us there.

Another bus ride and we were over by the Burrard St. Bridge. We stopped and bought more water (thank goodness!) and then proceeded to "Beauty Bar". We had to have a stranger draw a ticket out of a bag for each of us. One was "wax upper thigh" and the other was "paint right toes". This time I took one for the team cause my partner has hairy legs and waxing his thigh would have been painful. He waxed my thigh-didn't even feel it! (Being fair skinned, I've never had to shave above the knee.) and then I painted his toes. *snort* (His toes are still pink-I don't have any nail polish remover in the house.)

From there, we hoofed it to "Krazy Karts" our last Chase Point of the day. There was a bit of a line up, so I took the opportunity to guzzle more water and cool down as much as I could. We had to have one partner strapped into a go-cart and the other pushing. There was a bucket at the opposite end of the parking lot and the driver had to throw a tennis ball into the bucket. We had to get 5 balls in, going back to the start each time to get another ball. This took awhile because it's really not as easy as it sounds, but we managed to do it in about 10 minutes.

From there, we caught a bus and headed to the finish line, coming in at 6 hours, 25 minutes**. We completed 7 Chase Points. There were teams that came in behind us and many that didn't finish at all. The fact that we finished, in 30C heat, with 10 lbs. of stuff in each of our backpacks, with me being hugely affected by MS symptoms that worsen in the heat and a wrecked foot makes me REALLY proud! Not only that, there was not a single fight or cross word and we were smiling as we crossed the finish line. I'd say that's a huge accomplishment.

So how did we celebrate? Well first we went to dinner, because we were starving. We'd eaten the food and water we'd packed all day long, but with it being so hot and covering so many kilometres on foot, it felt like we hadn't had a thing all day. We found a nice patio in the shade and felt so much better after we'd eaten. Then we decided on a whim to do this:

Yup! We went to Adrenaline  and got tattoos of the City Chase logo on our ankles! This was hilarious because we were making our way to the skytrain, down Granville St. and as we neared Adrenaline, my son turned to me and said "Hey Mum, we should get tattoos." and I instantly agreed, so we walked in and did it. Afterwards he said he was kind of shocked that I would do it on a whim. Oh young Grasshopper, you have so much to learn about your mum!

I'm glad we did it-it's a memory we will always have of a crazy good time, doing something that was challenging (especially for me), but rewarding.

THANK YOU to Urban Rec for gifting us with this opportunity and to City Chase for making it happen. We are deeply grateful. We can now cross that off our life lists with huge satisfaction.

Also, thanks to Jenn and Penn for their "On Star" tech support!

***

*That spill actually resulted in excruciating knee paint that I didn't really become aware of till after the Chase ended. I was so focused on dealing with (read: ignoring) the pain in my foot with the wrecked tendon that I didn't realize I'd injured myself. I went to the ER early on Sunday morning to get assessed and have x-rays. Nothing broken, but I have messed it up and have to stay off it till it heals. No more long boards for me!

**Dying to see the finishing results-I want to know where we placed over all! I'm curious!

And We're OFF!!

In just a few short house (4 to be exact) we'll be standing at the official start of City Chase Vancouer! We've prepared as much as we can-I was tasked with figuring out a cross word to get letters to a word scramble, which when deciphered revealed a chase point. I successfully completed that and have mapped out that location and planned the travel route, so we're good to go!

Also, thanks to generous friends far and wide we did meet our fundraising goal for City Chase's official charity, Right to Play! We received pledges from Canada, the US and New Zealand! THANK YOU, THANK YOU!! We really appreciate the support and more importantly some little kids in impoverished countries will have access to sports programs for an entire year, thanks to all of you! Who knows-you may be helping to foster a love of sport in a child who could grow up to be an Olympic medalist!

I will check in here as soon as I can. Not entirely sure when that will be-the chase finishes at 4 p.m. and then there is an after party. Factoring in tiredness and well....I'll post as soon as I can.

For friends on the East Coast, please stay safe. I am thinking of you and hoping that the dire warnings are not going to turn out as serious as they've predicted so far. When you can, please check in and let us know you're alright!! I worry, you know! xox

Catcha on the flip side!

August Alfresco

Last night was the second Alfresco dinner of summer 2011. The secret location was on Robson Street, in front of the Vancouver Art Gallery. They've closed that section of the street off for the summer, so it was a safe place to set up a rather large flash-mob style picnic. (100 people!)

This was the first time they've set up on an actual street and it made things interesting. For one thing, this particular area is high traffic for tourist who seemed to think we were actually photo worthy. See all those people standing at the end of the table? Those are onlookers, not diners! Every now and again I would look up and they would be half a dozen people shooting photos or videos of us eating.

Lots of people stopped to ask us what was going on and a few wanted to know if dinner was free. (Um, no!) One homeless woman asked Colleen (the girl who made the crazy delicious bacon tarts last time) if she could have something and she gave her one of her bacon corn muffins. The homeless woman trundled off down the street munching happily away.

Since my marinated chicken was such a hit last time, I decided to stick to a meat dish and made sweet and sour meatballs. They were success-there wasn't anything left to take home and several people came up to tell me how good they were. Yay! I love cooking for people who love to eat!

The girl sitting next to us made this lemon pie. My husband was delighted when she sat down next to us-lemon pie is his favourite!

 This green bean dish was my favourite of the night. It was nutty and garlicky and so delicious. Kelly, who had come for the first time made it. She's an interior designer and we had a long conversation about photography. I told her all about Wading In, Light Hunters and Swan Dive.

In the end, I asked her for the recipe and she gave it to me. We've got an insane amount of beans coming out of our garden right now and I want to make this to take to our neighbour's Eid celebration next weekend. (Eid is a Muslim holiday that follows Ramadan. It's the end of a period of fasting and prayer, when you have a big celebration meal. Our lovely neighbours invited us to join them again this year. We had such a good time last year.)

 More yummy food!

 Some of what was on my plate. The shot glass had a yummy dessert that was some sort of cheese that was like a custard with berries and a reduction on top. MMM! The little muffin was orange liquor flavoured and so good. The thing wrapped in tinfoil was an ear of roasted corn.

I'm hoping there will be one more Alfresco before the weather turns. I think everyone who attended last night agrees. It's such a good time and a great way to meet new people. If you missed reading about the first one we went to, it's here.

Just a couple more photos to share.There is a surrealism exhibit on at the Vancouver Art Gallery right now. I took a class in High School called Western Civilization. When I signed up for it, I thought it was going to be about culture, but it turned out to be about fine arts. It was like an art appreciation class on steroids. (Very dry subject matter and we had to do things like look at a painting and be able to say who did it, what style it represented, when it was created and so on.) This banner was up and I knew that I knew the artist. It's Edith Rimmington's The Oneiroscopist. Seeing it this big was pretty disconcerting!

As we were making our way to where Alfresco was set up, we were tripping over all sorts of filming equipment. Apparently they are filming Innocent with Bill Pullman inside the art gallery right now. We're pretty blase about this sort of thing because Vancouver is Hollywood North. We see this sort of thing all the time. My husband's aunt ran into Matt Damon in a local restaurant a couple weeks ago. That's par for the course around here.

We also passed this tribute to much-loved NDP leader Jack Layton whose life was ended far too soon by cancer. I think we're still all in shock here. As someone said, "He was the best Prime Minister we never had." I think we all feel cheated that cancer stole his life just when he'd really got started. No matter what their political leanings, people genuinely liked him for who he was. He was a good man who loved his country deeply and will be missed. He will be laid to rest with a state funeral tomorrow.

Seth Apter, Author

This, my friends is the cover of Seth Apter's new book, which he received from the publisher yesterday. Doesn't it look positively delicious?!? I know he's worked incredibly hard on it and it's going to be fabulous! How could it not be? Seth's the man when it comes to having his finger on the pulse of the wold of mixed media. In a way, his yearly artists' survey, The Pulse is like the glue that holds our community together.

The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets & Passions of 100 Artists Revealed is due to hit the shelves in early March 2012 and will be available for pre-order on Amazon soon. If you'd like to be notified when that happens, you can join Seth's mailing list.

I have to confess: I've been keeping a secret. I have work appearing in Seth's book. I haven't been able to say anything about it till now, but yesterday, he sent me an email saying that the editor has approved all the material he chose to include in the book so I could finally tell you! I am extremely proud and honoured to be a part of it. I love the challenge of working within an author's parameters. It always pushes me to grow as an artist, which I find so rewarding and it's always a thrill to walk into a bookstore or library, pick a book or magazine up off the shelf, flip it open and see my contribution inside. It just never gets old!

Congratulation Seth on reaching this important milestone in your journey as an author. At long last, you're in the home stretch. Soon you will have the fruits of your labour resting in your hands. Bravo my friend, bravo!

Papergirls Know How To Party!

Last night was the Papergirls party and exhibit at the Roundhouse. I met up with Penn, (my art partner in crime) and we viewed the 500+ pieces of art that will be handed out for FREE at a secret location on Saturday.

 The Roundhouse is a gorgeous community building in the heart of Yaletown. I'd walked by it daily during the 2010 Olympics, on my way to the stadium. I was always in a rush during the Games, so last night was the first time I really got a chance to see inside it. It's beautiful facility, full of large spaces with huge windows that allow for lots of natural light. The architecture is wonderful.

In the gallery space last night, there was masking tape art and words on the floor. Such a cleaver idea!

The art was displayed clothes line style throughout the space.

 It was a good sized crowd and I liked that we had plenty of space to spread out in so that we could really see the art.

Organizers welcomed everyone and I'd been asked to say a few words. I made a short speech about how I'd come to be involved in the project and what I thought about it. I'd given some thought about what I wanted to say, but hadn't written anything down, so it was mainly off the top of my head. That was something new for me. I usually write everything down, but I wanted to try something new. Penn said it sounded good to her, so I'm chalking that up as a win.

There were so many cool and interesting piece of art. Here's a sampling of some of my personal favourites:

Here's Penn with the piece she created.

We had a really good time and met some fun and creative people. It always feels good to make new connections in the artistic community. It always makes me think of this piece of poetry by Rumi:

"There is a community of the spirit. Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street and being the noise."

Based on the success rate of the first ever Papergirls event, I think it's safe to say it will happen again. Penn and I are already thinking about what we'll do next year!

Thank you to the Papergirls organizers for bringing this event to Vancouver and to Roundhouse volunteers for helping to host it. I am feeling pretty chuffed that I can officially say I've had my art exhibited at the Roundhouse! (Which didn't really occur to me until someone pointed it out-I was more focused on the giving part and being excited to see what other artist had done. The exhibiting part was a bonus!)

If you're local and would like to see the exhibit, I believe it's open to the public until Friday and then Saturday, keep your eyes out-Papergirls will be delivering FREE art at a secret location in the city! Watch for girls on bikes handing out art! I'm hoping our paths cross while I am out doing City Chase!

We Need Your Help!

In order to earn our first Chase Point (which gets us on our way) for Saturday, our team needs to raise $100 which goes directly to the official charity of City Chase, Right to Play. Right to Play's mission is "To improve the lives of children in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the world by using the power of sport and play for development, health and peace." Having been involved in the 2010 Games, it's a cause I can easily stand behind.

If you read the news I shared in yesterday's blog post, you know that we only have FOUR DAYS to reach our goal, so if you can help out, please do! Any amount is appreciated! To go directly to our fundraising page to donate, click here. for every $50 raised one child will be able to experience Right to Play's weekly sport and play-based programs for A YEAR! I'd say that's money well spent!

Please help spread the word! Thanks!

Exciting News!!

A couple weeks ago, I entered a contest online to win registration ($150) in a local event called  The Mitsubishi City Chase. Urban Rec was giving away registration for 3 teams to enter the chase. This is something my son and I had talked about doing in 2009, but it was not to be-I spent the spring and summer of 2009 going through chemo to try and get my MS to go into remission.

 I entered the draw by explaining why I wanted to participate. The draw came and went and unfortunately, I didn't win. I'd been following City Chase on Twitter and we'd been talking about the event. I told them that I'd entered and that I was hoping to win because not only was it something I really wanted to do with my son for the good memories we'd create and the chance to do something like this before I am no longer physically able, but also because if I won, I would be writing it about.

My plan was to share my experience in the chase on the MS Society's website for young people who have MS or have a loved one affected by MS, Someonelikeme.ca which I write for. Participating in this amazing event would give me a wonderful opportunity to talk about resilience and not letting MS keep you from going after your dreams. Anyone who knows me knows that if anything, my diagnosis 3 years ago has only made me more determined to work harder and faster to cross things off my life list and I've been crossing off some pretty big stuff since then!

Anyway, as I said, I did not win the draw. I was disappointed, but ultimately okay with it, because you can't win 'em all. I set it aside while hoping to be able to catch some local coverage about how it all turned out on the 27th.

And then something happened....

This afternoon, I got an email from the good folks at City Chase. They had shared my entry and the conversation we'd had about my motives for participating with the fine people at Urban Rec and GUESS WHAT?!?! Urban Rec decided that I (we-my son and I!) should be in the chase too! They have gifted us a registration!!

WE ARE CHASING ON SATURDAY!!

I was completely stunned-I never saw that coming and it's totally made my week, quite possibly, my summer. I am constantly in awe of how the magic of my life works. I love it when life throws the doors wide open!

So I want to say a HUGE THANK YOU to Urban Rec for their incredible generosity and to City Chase as well for being so sweet. I am deeply grateful. I promise that our team, BRAVE & CRAZY will leave it all out on the field of play. We will think hard, play hard and most importantly, laugh hard and at the end of it all, we'll come in smiling and with a good tale to tell. See you at the finish line!

A Scholar's Garden

My friend Carol and I went on a photo date this morning. She took me to the Dr. Sun Yat Sen Garden in Chinatown, Vancouver. I've lived her 25 years this summer and oddly, I've never been. We drove down streets I've never even been on and I can see I'm going to have to go back and explore because there were tons of things I would like to shoot.

We arrived early and chose to have a guided tour of the gardens. I'm glad we did-our tour guide was a lovely Asian lady who was extremely knowledgeable and patient with my many questions about how some of the elements of the garden (like the stone masonry) were constructed. I have a feeling those are not the sorts of questions she's used to getting. (I'll blame my Gramps for my interest in that kind of stuff.)

I learned alot about Chinese design. For example, the key shaped doorways are symbolic of the gateway to heaven. Any doorway that is square shaped is the doorway to earth. When human beings stand in the space between these two portals, they are happiest. What I loved most was that every single doorway and window was created to frame the natural beauty of the garden. When you move slowly through the spaces, you see some amazing vignettes.

These are some of the roof tiles, which have intricate patterns on them. I shot this because I liked the symmetry. There is the symbol for longevity on the face of each one and flanking that symbol on both sides are bats, which are considered to bring happiness. The garden has thousands of bats (symbols, not the actual animals) in it.

There are four elements to a Scholar's garden: water, plants, stones and architecture. Part of the beauty of the garden is the pond that runs through it. The pond water is specially treated so it's always a dark jade colour. If you look closely, you can spot some of the resident turtles sunning themselves.

There are water lillies throughout. They're in bloom this time of year.

So gorgeous! One thing I really appreciated about the garden is that it's so relaxing. There are high walls surrounding it, so you can't hear the traffic of the downtown core. It's like a serene oasis in the middle of the city. One thing that was really cool was that I got to see a real live Ginkgo tree. I've only ever seen the leaves and fossils of the leaves, but never a live tree. It's really beautiful!

I spotted frogs in the pond. You have to be quiet because they are quite skittish and if you make too much noise, they disappear. The garden was pretty much ours for the first hour or so, so we got some good shots.

There are also large school of koi fish in the pond, some of which are 45 years old! Part way through the morning, one of the guides struck a small gong and then put it in the water as it vibrated. They do this so the koi feel the vibration in the water and make there way to a certain spot in the pond to be fed. The kio came quickly and they are quite tame. It was pretty amazing!

 I think this is far and away my favourite photo of the day. I love how the light is coming through the window and how it frames the long hall on the other side. It's a Light Hunter's paradise!

On our way out, I spotted this trike and had to take a photo. I love the little Chinese lanterns hanging above. So charming!

One of the best things about Vancouver is that there are so many wonderful treasures neatly tucked away, just waiting to be discovered. THANK YOU Carol for introducing me to this wonderful place. I learned so much this morning and had such a good time! I can't wait to explore Chinatown!

A Gift For You!

 I've had so much fun creating images for Wading In and Light Hunters and I thought it would be fun to share some of them with my loyal readers (that's YOU!) by creating some Desktop Wallpapers from them. I know we're a little over half way through August, but the bandannas were just begging to be used.

My husband has a ton of these and he wears them under his hardhat during the summer months, draped over his head so his neck doesn't burn. (Think Foreign Legion hat style.) I snapped this shot one day when he'd washed a bunch of them and hung them out on the line to dry. They looked so pretty flapping in the breeze-kind of like little prayer flags. I think there's just something so oddly charming about laundry on the line in the summer time.

Being Canadian, I have a soft spot for our national symbol, the maple leaf. When I saw this one lying on the forest floor, I couldn't resist. I love the texture and contrast that were captured in this image. There's a beauty in simplicity.

To add these to your desktop, click on the image to get the full size, then right click and choose "set as background" et voila!

I've signed up for Vivienne's next installment of photographic goodness, Swan Dive, which begins on September 6th. I am really excited about shooting in Autumn. I've waited all year for this, my favourite season. It's only a few weeks away and I can't wait till it feels like the season has "flipped the switch" and the weather changes.

I love the wind stirring the trees, the leaves fluttering down and crunching underfoot, the clean, crisp air, the harvest. It's cozy sweaters and jeans and hiking boots. It's celebrating birthdays, Thanksgiving, our wedding anniversary and Hallowe'en. I hold my breath during the summer. (I loathe it, truth be told. Yeah, I know I'm probably going to catch some flack for admitting that, but it's true.) In Autumn, I breathe deep. Everything about Autumn makes me feel joyful and alive.

I am *so* ready. Bring it on!