Whistler, Vanc, Dallas, and San Jose

Last week was filled with travel for Cheryl and I.

Friday night we headed up to stay with Jen and Glade on our way to Whistler.

We woke up early to make the day trip out to Whistler, and by the time we made it to Creekside the line-up for the lift was somewhere between 45mins to an hour long. We were worried that we’d be sitting an hour at every lift line, but, although it did take us a long time to get up to the top of the hill, the rest of the day was a bit better. It was definitely the busiest I’d seen it in a long time, but the snow made it worth it.

It had snowed a ton the two days prior, and they had not opened the high alpine up until Saturday morning, so there was more than a bit of snow to be had. We were still able to get fresh tracks when we hiked up to Flute at the end of the day. Glade and I dropped a few ledges, and a 12 foot drop was feeling like 3 feet. So nice…  You can imagine there was some pretty huge cliff hucking going on around the mountain.

After heading back to Vancouver, Cheryl and I hung out in North Vancouver – I’m looking to buy a bike, so we toured all the typical North Shore shops, and we ended up hanging out with Kelly at a North Vancouver beach.

Sunday was Jerry’s birthday, so we were invited over to Andrea and Jerry’s for some birthday dinner in downtown Vancouver. Good times.

As soon as we got back to Seattle, Cheryl had to pack for her Monday flight to Dallas. She would be there Monday to Tuesday night. The timing of her trip was bad since I had a 6:50am flight to San Jose on Wednesday morn.

California was sunny, and warm, a stark contrast from the cold pouring rain that greeted me as I drove to the airport Wed morn. And as expected I was greeted with cold pouring rain when I got back late Thursday – ah Seattle.

This weekend is Cheryl’s birthday, so we’re sticking in town, and have friends coming down from Vancouver.

Should be fun!

Marley and Cheryl (and me)

Evan’s roommate was out of the country, and owns a dog. This combination presented a challenge to Evan, but an opportunity for Cheryl. Cheryl – as you probably know – loves animals, and wishes we had a cat/dog, or something fuzzy with four feet. Anyhow, at some point Evan realized that Cheryl would gladly sign up to walk Paddington without much convincing.

Now, Paddington is a labradoodle… Which sounds like a combination of the work of an insane mad scientist, biogenetics, and bad marketing, but, I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for the result. Knowing nothing of labradoodles except that they are dogs, have four legs, and are furry is enough for Cheryl to agree to take care of it for an indeterminate length of time.

To make a long story short, we somehow managed to get the dog to our neck of the woods, where we have a really nice off-leash area.

Here’s Cheryl getting ready to start our journey:

 

The dog park is really just over a block from our place, so we don’t have to walk far. It’s once we got to the park that the shenanigans began…

Now, I’ve never been to a dog park before. Back home every area is an off-leash area, so we didn’t have designated spots for walking pets, but I’m pretty sure dog owners don’t like their dogs being terrorized, which is exactly what began as soon as we took off Paddington’s leash.

As soon as Paddington’s leash was unhooked he ran to the nearest dog, and started ‘terrorizing’ it… That’s the only word I can use to describe it. Now, Paddington is not a mean dog, just a playful dog, but it seems like Paddington’s MO is to annoy a dog until it snaps at him, and then it’s time to move on to another friend or… victim. So here we were, watching Paddington move from dog to dog annoying each to the brink of their sanity before moving to the next. It was methodical, and almost genius in its simplicity and predictability. I’m sure if Newton were watching he would find an F=ma equivalent equation that would dictate his behavior. Now, if we called out “PADDINGTON” you’d expect some form of response… You would be wrong.

So, we now had the attention of every dog owner in the park (and there were many.)

At this point Paddington stole another dog’s ball and ran to the other end of the park. I was happy he was terrorizing a ball, and not another dog. Just as I thought he was preoccupied he ran back from the other end of the park to a group of three dogs peacefully drinking water from a bowl in the middle of the park. Paddington stepped directly into the middle of the bowl, and the three dogs slowly stepped back, in what I can only imagine was disbelief. Paddington proceeded to flip the bowl over, and when satisfied, he ran to the other end of the park… Cheryl re-filled the bowl, in time for Paddington to come back, and flip it back over. At this point he started running towards the big St. Bernard in the middle of the park and began attempting to terrorize it.

This did not work so well, and at this point I openly started calling him Marley.

I’m not even going to go into that, but afterwards he decided to run directly towards the biggest mud pit in the park. He did a superman slide into the mud at top speed, then just laid there. Looking around as all dog owners continued laughing at him. He of course took this as a challenge to somehow find a way to get more muddy, then he rolled… Oh yes. What was mixed in with this mud I will not spend time contemplating, but I’m sure it was not just mud. Regardless, Paddington was rolling in it, and everyone was laughing – until Paddington started terrorizing their dogs in his new mud-monster state… Then somehow it seemed less funny to them.

Here’s a shot of Paddington after his first mud encounter:

 

At some point we managed to get the leash back on Paddington… Then we left the park. I believe this whole thing took about 5 minutes, but we went straight to Lake Washington and made Paddington take a bit of a swim before drying him off.

Here’s Cheryl drying off Paddington back at home:

And from here we somehow managed to get Paddington back to Evan’s house…

Good times :)

Assorted pics from the last couple of months

After my trip to the Dominican, and subsequent (painful) flight back. I spent some time in Sault Ste. Marie for Christmas. SSM is not quite the Dominican…. At least the weather sure wasn’t.

As an example…

My dad had to shovel off over a foot of snow before being able to BBQ dinner:

This year was the first year not all of my brothers were home for Christmas. Jamie and Michelle continued their Honeymoon in the Dominican Republic over the holidays. The good thing was that I spent the entire previous week with Jamie and Michelle, so I was still able to touch base with all my brothers regardless.

Here, we’re opening presents on Christmas morning. Michael is not in this shot unfortunately, this is mom, Steve, Adam, Nathan, Missy, and Dad.

 

I flew out on boxing day to head to Kitchener to visit with Cheryl’s family. We had a great time playing with Ryan’s new copy of Guitar Hero World Tour, and tubing in the local tube park just five mins from Amy and RJ’s house. In this shot Ryan, Lindsay, and Cheryl are just getting ready to head down for another run.

Back in Seattle, we’ve been having a wacky winter. Lots more snow this year than I’ve seen in the past 7 years I’ve lived in Seattle. This is a shot of my driveway that Cheryl took after one particularly big dump of snow. Nowhere near what you see in Northern Ontario, but more than usual for Seattle. The strange thing is that Jan and Feb were bad in terms of ski conditions. It’s almost as if it snowed more in Seattle than on the slopes…

Just after getting back from Ontario we found out that both Cheryl and I received our Green Cards. This was a process I’ve been in for a long time, so when Henry and Trang found out they decided to surprise us with red, white, and blue cupcakes. Cheryl and I decided to celebrate with some filet mignon, and sparkling wine (not real Champagne - that stuff is too expensive for our tastes.)

Cheryl’s dad took a job just outside of Vancouver, so he’s now within a short bus drive of visiting us. He came down to spend the day with Cheryl and I, and we went on a tour of the neighborhood.

I brought home massive paintings from both Africa, and the Dominican Republic. They go for $30 or $40 there, so when I found out it was going to cost me over $150 to frame each painting I decided I’d take matters into my own hands. Here’s Cheryl getting ready to stretch my Dominican painting over the frame I built. Much cheaper than getting it done professionally, but we didn’t get all the crimps out of it, so we didn’t do as good a job as we would have gotten if we shelled out the cash. If I ever buy an expensive painting I’ll definitely get it framed professionally.

Cheryl’s mom came up to visit for a week shortly after we got the painting up and running. We ate at our favorite breakfast spot (B&O Espresso), they went to the Northwest Flower and Garden show, and also to the Lion King musical. Here they are on their way over to Bainbridge Island on a ferry. It was still pretty cool to be up on the top deck, but again, not quite as cool as Northern Ontario.

I’ve been snowboarding a few times in the last month, but also had a chance to help out the DirtCorps. They are now working on a legit trail just outside of Issaquah. It’s called the Duthie Hill Bike Park. The next week I went out to another trail to race, but since my bike is out of commission I decided to take photos instead of trying my luck on Cheryl’s bike.

Here’s one of the local riders sucking it up to maintain speed (not height) through a jump:

Anyhow, that was Christmas/Jan/Feb. Hope all is well!