Cherry Blossom theme demo

Still lots of Vancouver to explore. Even though the SkyTrain Explorer book has taken me to places in the city I wouldn't normally venture to, there remain many pockets of the city that I have yet to encounter. Looking at the Jane's Walks in Vancouver a couple of weekends ago, the one along Fraser St. caught my eye, in part because of the subject but also because of who was presenting it.

Our guide, Mike Klassen, took us from 29th north to 16th, with a short detour in a back lane. The highlight for me was at the very beginning of the tour, the Fraser St. country lane. It does duty as a back lane for cars and a gathering area for neighbours. Mike tells us that he's vary rarely seen anybody drive with excessive speed, and kids can be seen playing in the grassy areas. He wants to see neighbourhoods learn from the trial and offer up ideas to the City for their own lane ways, suggesting they could enter into a competition as to which neighbourhood can design the best one, with the winner getting it built.

We also saw an unusual church roof, a wood bench out side Fray on Fraser, and we topped it off with a walk through McAuley Park and a visit to Matchstick Coffee at Kingsway and Fraser.

You can find all the photos I took in a set on Flickr, taken with the Samsung Focus on loan to me while my iPhone traveled across the country with Karen. Thanks to Mike Klassen for delivering a great tour and to and to the volunteers around the world who put them on.

Another successful, if short, trip to America. With a little trepidation, not knowing if it was "worth it" to stay in Seattle for a couple of nights, I set out on the first day starting at 5 o'clock on a dark and early on a Friday morning. I traveled by train via Amtrak Cascades, coincidentally sharing a car with John and Rebecca Bollwitt. They discovered that I had only planned to see if there was a ticket available for that night's Seattle Mariners opening night, having only planned to attend Saturday night's game. When John and Rebecca found this out, with their extra ticket in hand, they kindly offered the seat next to them in Safeco Field's Terrace Club. After arriving and taking a much-needed (and very much planned) three-hour nap, I bused in from the Bellevue Westin, eyes wide open as we passed through tunnels and over the floating bridge, and proceeded to my first tourist attraction.

Just before the game on Friday, thanks to the advice from a traveler to Seattle, I took the Seattle Underground Tour. For the first 15 minutes our guide regaled us with tale of how the city got its sewer system before spending 45 minutes walking underneath the streets, looking at the "first floor" of some of downtown's buildings. Highly recommended for an hour's worth of tourist activity.

Left: My first opening night! It was fun watching the hometeam Mariners run out of centre field, and seeing a flyover at the end of the national anthem. Though, a helicopter? In the land that gave us Boeing? Right: Ichiro patrolling right field the next day.

That night at the ballgame, I got to use up two of my Major League references prepared for the night: "Give him the heater!" deep in the count of an at-bat and "Too high!" when the visiting Athletics hit a home run. I didn't get to use up my third reference, though I would get my chance the next day.

Saturday proceeded with no agenda except sleep in, do a light workout in the hotel gym followed by a quick swim and hottub. I also wandered around the Bellevue Square mall and a few blocks of the Seattle suburb's downtown, if only due to their proximity to the hotel. The evening's plans were to bake in right field during batting practice of the second game at Safeco Field. Having brought my glove, I managed to catch a "home run" ball that had, unfortunately, ricocheted after striking a little girl, not paying attention, in the shoulder. Being a Blue Jays fan, I immediately offered her the ball, her mother throwing me a loop telling me that it was OK, she already got one. (I kept the souvenir.) Seemingly my luck is improving, as this now makes it two major league baseballs that I've caught at a ballgame, the first being a foul ball at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum in 2010.

Three beers deep and a bowl of nachos later, former Toronto Blue Jays relief pitcher Brandon League took the mound and promptly bounced the ball over the catcher. To the amusement of very few from the hometown crowd, I yelled out "Wild thing, you make my heart sing!" fulfilling my third and final Major League reference. Nobody laughed, but, a couple of pitches later, someone yelled out "Wild thing, you make everything, groovy", so I felt vindicated.

On Sunday, after working out and swimming a second time at the hotel, spending the afternoon hour on the obvservation deck of the Space Needle proved to be the final highlight of the trip. $19 just to see the panorama of a city, you say? I had hummed and hawed about it at the outset, but realized as soon as I walked on the outside deck I found it far more peaceful that I'd imagined it would be. Drinking a beer in the sky was a nice cap to a weekend visit.

The train trip back had no compadres on it, so I was stuck in a car with a loud party of four. That's why the good lord invented the dining car.