Last weekend was busy. To put it mildly. Well, okay, Sunday I was busy being a couch potato, but everything leading up that point was busy...
Friday night was the Snow Patrol gig - I've already written about that. But I was far from ready to call it a night, I was truly buzzing from the post-gig adrenaline that you get when you just experienced something amazing.
I'd been invited to 2 different parties that night, one really close to me in East Van, and one in Kitsilano, thrown by an Aussie workmate, Michelle, which wasn't quite so close. But not being very sensible sometimes, I chose the Kits party first, with an idea that i'd try to get to the East Van one later on.
So I jumped on a bus and got 1/2 way there before i realised that I had no booze with me. So what, you say - just go to a bottle shop or corner store and get some.... Uh-Uh, not here in Vancouver, B.C. If there is one thing that bugs me about this town, its that the liquor stores are all Government run, and they all close at 11pm. End of Story. Thats it....In a word, Bummer.
When I got to the party, a smallish 2 bedroom apartment, it was jumping, crammed in with 20 or 30 odd people there. A quick scan of the room and I knew about 5 or 6 of them, all Aussie, and listening to the chatter, it was all that I could hear. There was one sole Candian, an Irish girl, a smattering of Kiwis I guess, and then alllll Aussie. There were a few more late arrivals along with me, also without booze. Someone drunkenly piped up and said she knew of one bottle shop that was open til Midnight, on Commercial Drive - about 4 blocks from my home. Without thinking too much into, 4 of us made the decision to check it out.
"Jump in my car, I'll drive" says one guy. He was sober, he said, so we all hopped in. This was no ordinary drive tho. His mate had just arrived off the plane from Oz and so he wanted to pick him up form the airport in style, and had hired a Mustang convertible for the day. Red, too, coz red goes faster!! I somehow landed the passenger seat, and then we were off speeding thru the Vancouver streets at close to Midnight to try and find this bottle shop. We seemed to be taking the long way 'round, coz it took forever...
Then all of a sudden, the driver pipes up to his mate "How are them mushrooms kickin' in??" Sure, he was sober, but he was also tripping!! I thought he was a little erratic behind the wheel! No wonder. Anyway, we get to the bottle shop....and of course it was closed. I could've cut my losses here and walked home, but not being very sensible again, I chose not to.
Okay, so lets get back to the party then, resigning ourselves to a sober night (well some of us anyway!). It was no biggy anyway. It was a great night out for a drive, top down, spinning around the Vancouver suburbs close by the marina with a view of the city skyline all lit up in lights. Back at the party, we were taken pity upon and given a cuppla beers by a cuppla guys who looked like they didn't need anymore anyways. Most people were pretty well trolleyed by this stage, evidenced most clearly by Michelle and Paul singing along to a song, using a RUBBER DUCKIE as a microphone!
Paul and Michelle sing karaoke into the Rubber Duckie Microphone...
Not long after that, I got a taxi home, completely forgetting about the 2nd party.
Next day, Saturday, I'd devoted to getting up the Grouse Grind. Grose Mountain is one of three mountains that provide the awesome backdrop to Vancouver. Merely a stones throw across the Burrard Inlet, its a very short bus ride away to the snowfields in winter, and awesome hiking and mountain-biking terrain the rest of the year.
Grouse Mountain...The Grouse Grind begins. Otherwise known as "Mother Nature's Stairmaster From Hell"...
I concede its pretty terrible of me to have this amazing resource at my fingertips and not use it once until now - especially as I had missed the Whistler season.
A word of Warning...
There is one walk in particular that you can do - the Grouse Grind - which is reputedly the most popular day hike in North America. The grind in the title stems from the fact that it is a 933 metre elevation gain squashed into a mere 2.9 Kilometres of trail. Its popular nickname - Mother Nature's Stairmaster from Hell. It is literally like walking stairs - uneven, crooked stairs, for 3 kilometres. It is said that completing it in between 1 and 2 hours is a good effort - altho there are professional sporting events here where the record is some 24 minutes to the top.
Too easy really...48 minutes for me...
My housemate Ceri was up for it too, but after faffing about for ages, we didn't leave the house till after 1pm for the train downtown. Getting there also involved taking the Seabus across the inlet to Lonsdale Quay. Of course, here we decided to stop for lunch, and I wanted some pics of the amazing views, before we hopped on the bus to the mountain base. Another coffee break for me before we started meant that it wasn't until 4pm that we finally took off. Procrastinating? Putting off the inevitable? Fear of the unknown? Who knows, actually?
it's only 2.9 Km long, with an ascent of 933 metres...
I'm in pretty decent shape at the moment - all these 10-20 Kilometre day hikes I've been doing, and cycling everywhere has done me the world of good, so I shouldn't have been too concerned about this piddly little 3 kilometre jobby beforehand. And indeed I really shouldn't have - I nailed it in 53 minutes! Ceri came in at 72 minutes. I still felt pretty fresh at the end too, like i could have done it again.
See how happy I look!...
Getting back home needed to done a little more hastily than getting out - we had another party to get to tonight in Kits. An Aussie Barbeque. Haven't been to one of those since.....well, since i threw one in my house for my birthday last year in Dublin!
Me and my harem, Eryn, Ginny and Jenny (also known as Bruce and Trev...)
This house was decidedly larger than Friday nights party. In fact the house was huge. It was an old style weatherboard - 3 stories, witha front patio and an attic, with a massive backyard thrown in for good measure. The rear verandah was decked out in eucalyptus branches and leaves as well - I could have been back at home! I fell in love with it straight away. Kits is full of these types of houses - its amazing to walk around this suburb just checking out the architecture. There were even more Aussie folk here than last night as well, with once again maybe a couple of locals thrown in for novelty value. The barbie was great, and we even managed to get a little drunk tonight, having remembered to bring the booze. I wasn't gonna go thirsty 2 nights running!!
Aussie House Party in Kitsilano...
Eventually tho, the days events caught up with me, the Grind grinding me down, and weariness setting in, and it was "Home James" by Midnight.
P.S. Was invited to do the Grind again yesterday by my pal Travis and his girlfriend Michelle, so Ceri and I joined them again. Happy to say that I knocked 5 minutes off my time, coming in at 48 minutes (Ceri posting 67mins). We're talking about making this a semi-regular event. Its a great cardio workout - i'm wondering if i can bring my time down to 45 or even 40 minutes!
Tony
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