Photos

A few pictures from Burnaby Lake, August 4, 2018

I decided to test my post-cold stamina (not really post, since I’m still coughing a bit and such) by going for a walk around Burnaby Lake. It was quite nice, with sunny skies and temperatures in the low to mid-20s, so sweating was kept to a minimum.

The run-like stats were 2:51 hours total time, 9:26/km pace (slower than normal, to be expected) and apparently 836 calories burned.

Upon arriving home I ate an entire cake.

Kidding. We don’t have any cake in the house.

The current resurfacing is now complete according to the official park website. They finished doing the Pavilion trail, so the area from the second boardwalk to the rowing pavilion parking lot is freshly surfaced. There’s a part not far from the bridge at Deer Lake Brook that has a large exposed pipe you normally have to hop over, but they have either removed it or so effectively buried it I didn’t even notice it when walking through the area. I’m hoping they do the Cottonwood Trail next, but it is all a mystery as they only post when actual work is happening, not thrilling teasers like COMING SOON: All those nasty exposed tree roots will soon be buried safely underfoot as we prepare to resurface the Cottonwood Trail.

I took a few pics along the way.

Some English lavender bowing gently in the breeze:

And I finally did a search on these stupid orange-red berries that I have seen growing everywhere my entire life.

These are apparently Rowan trees and the berries, which I always thought were poisonous, are actually more inedible when raw due to containing parasorbic acid, which can cause indigestion or kidney damage (maybe I sleepwalk and eat Rowan berries. This would explain a few things). Cooking the berries turns the parasorbic acid into the friendlier sorbic acid. I’m not planning recipes any time soon, though. More for the birds.

This shot was of a cluster hanging above my head, so I held the phone up as high as I could and shot from below. The shot turned out okay, though there’s a bit of sun bleed in the corner.

Finally, the bridge at Silver Creek is being replaced. Because there is no handy alternate route, they have put in place a temporary bridge next to it that looks like an unfinished prop from a science fiction movie. It felt solid to walk on, but still a little weird, especially with the overhead bits.

Also, since these walks don’t really count as hikes, I’ve boldly added a new category for the blog. Get ready. It’s called…

Walks.

Yes, I know, it’s brilliantly simple, just like me!

A few random pics from Central Park and Metrotown

Yesterday I bought a new desk fan. This is as exciting as it sounds. The brand name is Vornado, which is a portmanteau of vortex and tornado, which seems a bit redundant as a tornado is a vortex by definition. Then again, calling the fan Tornado would probably not conjure up the right image, either (“Imagine the destructive power of a tornado in your living room, in a convenient, compact form!”) so I guess they made the right call.

Anyway, before acquiring the fan I enjoyed some of this absurd summer weather by strolling about Central Park. A few of the pics I took didn’t turn out well (tip: your iPhone camera will auto-focus on a face, it will not auto-focus on a flower, unless you make that flower the center of your image or tape a picture of a face to it). But a few did.

I like the composition of this one, but the white flowers are a bit fuzzy and blown-out.

This one captures some nice detail in the flower and surrounding leaves.

And then there were the fish in the lower pond. Given how hot it was it’s not surprising some of them were barely moving. I watched one lazily swim toward the edge of the pond and drift until it hit bottom, at which point it bolted backward, like a cat that turned a corner to find a banana on the floor. Here’s a shot of them collectively hoping for cooler temperatures.

Trying to swim somewhere cool. Also, I think those kids in the background are feeding the trout.

And here are some fish demonstrating their fancy camouflage. It’s like “Where’s Waldo?” except wetter and stinkier. The one in the center of the image is the fish that ran aground, as mentioned above.

I left the park and went to Metrotown because I love crowded suburban malls, especially ones with working air conditioning. The Grand Court (which I’d say is more Grand-ish) was having some kind of panda awareness event.

And one more from the escalator. I think the fake pandas on display here actually outnumber the real pandas out there. Actually, I have no idea, but I wanted to say that.

After this I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond, grabbed my fan and left for home (well, I paid for the fan, too). The fan works well, and unlike the previous one, it’s not missing any rubber feet, so it doesn’t need to be propped up on a dish towel.

The one downside is it has a strong “new plastic” smell, being new plastic and all, and that new plastic smell is getting blown constantly into my face. It’s kind of gross. But after a few hours it’s much better and the breeze is otherwise pleasant and welcome.

Summer vacation 2018 Day 0: New Westminster

Summer vacation 2018
or
How I Learned to Have Fun
No Matter How Many Mosquito Bites I Got
(Which was Roughly a Million)

Day 0 – Saturday, June 30, 2018
New Westminster

Technically this is not actual vacation time, but it is my first of 23 days off, so it sort of counts as something.

I spent most of the day doing exciting vacation-related activities such as laundry, shopping and getting my new glasses, which arrived a week early, hooray.

The sunglasses make me look much cooler than I am and the regular glasses make me look normal, but with everything now in focus, just the way I like it.

That was pretty much the day, so as first vacation days go, it was not the most exciting, but it did leave me reasonably prepared for the actual vacation to come.

Miscellaneous things around New Westminster

A utility box on Columbia Street, cropped to only show the foxy cop illustration on it:

A seagull resting and pondering who to later fly over and poop on, along the boardwalk at Westminster quay. He seems to be saying, “Yeah, it’s gonna be you.” (It did cry fiercely when I later walked by again, but was too lazy to actually get up and do more than that.)

And at the bottom of the stairs on the south side of my condo building, leading to Allen Street, a strange collection of stuff, including personal photographs, that appeared today. There’s no doubt an interesting story behind this, but I’m not sure I want to hear it because the story is also very likely sad/horrifying. I expect all of this to be gone by tomorrow.

The things you find when you need to pee

One of the consequences of having the world’s tiniest bladder is often needing to pee when there is no convenient place to do so.

This happened yesterday as I walked to Lougheed Town Centre. Fortunately, much of the walk is along trails and I diverged off the main route to find an out-of-the-way spot to relieve the aforementioned tiny bladder. After I finished I noticed this a short distance away, just a few steps from a nearby creek. It’s a collection of painted stones, inscribed with positive words and phrases like “Believe”, “Keep your head up!” and “Let your path take flight.” Colorful, unexpected and entirely unexpected.

I also took a shot of this flower bed a few minutes before finding the stones, and rather like the way the perspective makes the flowers appear to go on endlessly. The lone white lily poking out is cute, too. The flower bed is located at Griffin House, a printing business on Cariboo Road. Kudos to the company for the color it adds to the area.

Woodpecker therapy in Central Park

(In which I took some time this afternoon to stroll around Central Park in Burnaby.)

Okay, I can’t really say woodpeckers would offer much in the way of therapy, unless you were looking for the cheapest, most excruciating trepanation possible. But I did see a woodpecker, not up in a tree, but sitting on a fallen one (also known as a log) and it was following script, merrily pecking away at it.

I didn’t want to get too close and scare it off, so the photo is kind of blah (optical zoom is something I definitely miss on typical smartphone cameras), but here ya go:

And at the lower pond, things were ducky. It’s also tough to shoot ducks (with a camera), not because they frighten easily, but because you have to be a worm to get down low enough for a good angle.

I took a photo of some of the fish they have stocked in the same pond, but due to reflection, refraction and the dull colors of the fish, I have not included the photo here. Just imagine a beluga whale majestically breaching or something. Yes, I know whales aren’t fish. But they breach a lot better.

There’s no Waldo hiding in this shot, I just like the interplay of light and shadow. The weird, bleached out color is accurate.

And now flowers!

And a few more on the way out of the park:

Finally, on one of the trails I don’t usually hit I saw this atop a giant tree stump. I don’t know.

Flower (and tree and bird) therapy at Burnaby Lake

I usually have two speeds at Burnaby Lake: fast and faster.

Today, I tried a new speed: not fast. That’s not entirely true, as I did power along for six km to reach the Nature House and Piper Spit along the trail. But once there I took my time to saunter around, enjoy the feel of the sun, watch the birds do bird things and then strolled back out of the park, stopping to take pictures along the way.

In other words, I acted like my alternate universe opposite. Slow, mellow, taking in the sights.

The walk into the park off of Cariboo Road parallels a commercial complex for a few hundred meters, though there are some nice plants and flowers along the fence that divides the two. Just be careful if you try to pick them.

At the Nature House:

Baby ducks, adorable as always:

Duck butt:

Birds on the boardwalk. I want to caption this with something funny, but I don’t know what kinds of funny things birds would say to each other.

This is from the viewpoint looking back toward the boardwalk pictured above. You can see most of the lake from here, the opposite of when I am running around it.

Baby geese. Not as adorable as baby ducks, but pretty cute. Too bad they grow into poopmonsters (seen to the left and right).

I have never seen a turtle in this turtle area. (The area is fenced off, I’m just standing right beside the fence.)

I have added what I think is probably a pretty accurate depiction of a turtle, if one ever actually showed up here.

A lot of the land around the lake is marsh, which tends to be quite soggy. This has a certain effect on trees in the area. I call this The Leaning Tower of Treesa (sorry).

On the way out of the park I didn’t see too much to photograph in the way of flowers, but if you imagine a hundred pictures of thousands of buttercups, it would be a good approximation of what I could have shot (ironically, none are visible in the shot above, one of the few stretches that wasn’t festooned with the things).

Yet more flower therapy at Langara Golf Course

I didn’t actually go golfing.

Instead, I went for my usual stroll along the trail around the golf course, except this time I only did one loop (about 2.7 km) instead of my usual two, walked slower, and took the time to stop and take pictures of some of the flowers along the way.

These pink blossoms are in one of the gardens of a home adjacent to the trail (the path in the background is a private one, not the one I was walking along).

Pink blossoms near Langara Golf Course, May 22 2018.

I believe these are Lydian Broom (Genista lydia), growing wild on the perimeter of the golf course. The wooden fence ringing the course can be seen in the lower-left.

Lydian Broom at Langara Golf Course, May 22 2018.

Finally, what might be some orange daisies…or possibly something else. A botanist I ain’t. There’s a pleasant, dream-like softness to the flowers, especially the one in the left of the frame. The miniature picket fence is also kind of adorable. These flowers are part of a small public garden maintained presumably by some public people. I took photos of some of the other flowers, but didn’t like how they turned out. I may try again on my next walk.

Orange flowers and tiny picket fence near Langara Golf Course, May 22 2018.

More flower therapy along the Brunette River

I went for another walk today, a little longer, but at a still-slower pace as befits a statutory holiday when one moves more deliberately in order to sop up all that “would otherwise be working” time. I ventured from home, down the Brunette River trail, then up to the Production Way SkyTrain station, where I let mass transit do most of the walk back home.

This time I did tap the camera “viewfinder” to tell it what to focus on. It worked surprisingly well on one shot.

I’ve also developed a sudden appreciation for flower therapy (I’m sure this is an official term, I’m not even going to check), where you go out, find pretty flowers, then take pictures of them, just to help you relax, unwind and center yourself. It beats thinking about how you spent a long weekend fighting then recovering from a kidney infection.

Anyway, a few more pics!

The first is an artificial pond that was created as part of the restoration work done in 2012 when they expanded the nearby No. 1 Highway by two extra lanes. The pond has a spillover (unseen in the photo) and a stream on the east side that eventually reconnects to the river (also not visible). The white fluff is cottonwood seeds and plenty of them. It’s the time of year when they start piling up like snow. If I was allergic to cottonwood seeds I would still be at the spot I took this photo, unconscious and blown up like a puffer fish.

Cottonwood seeds gather on the surface of an artificial pond along the Brunette River, May 21 2018.

These pink blossoms are in the vegetation alongside Government Street, not far from Brunette River. The best part is how you can’t see the dual railroad tracks that are about five meters behind the flowers, nor the giant Costco warehouse that was directly behind me.

Pink blossoms along Government Street, May 21, 2018.

The final shot is a bunch of daisies not far from the above flowers. You may be able to guess which one I focused on.

Daisies along Government Street, May 21 2018.

That shot almost makes me look like I know what I’m doing with a camera. Sometimes I do.

Another little stroll around the nooks of Lower Hume Park

Yesterday I went for my first post-infection walk, noodling around Lower Hume Park and some of the upper area, taking photos of all this nature stuff while walking at a pace much unlike my usual (which is silly-fast). It was a mild early evening and the sun was just about to dip into its sunset colors.

The first photo is a broader view of the shot I posted on May 15th. The sun is more diffuse here, so the color doesn’t pop nearly as much. It’s like pulling back the curtain to show the weird man behind it. Still kind of mesmerizing.

Flowering tree near swimming pool at Hume Park, May 20, 2018.

I’m not sure if it’s bad composition or pushing the limits of a smartphone camera or just “be grateful I didn’t stick my finger over the lens” but the blowout of the sky is unfortunate in this shot. It otherwise vividly captures the scariest tree in Lower Hume Park. It looks like it ate a bunch of people, then died with them trapped inside. Pleasant dreams!

Definitely not the Tree of Life, seen on a trail in Lower Hume Park, May 20, 2018.

Here’s something far less creepy, a pleasing mix of yellow and white blooms a few steps away from the Brunette River. You can see the camera and I had a bit of a disagreement on what to focus on. I should note that I don’t use any of the available controls–I just aim and tap the “take photo” button. I’ll probably look more into actually shaping the photos soon. The clarity on the leaves is nice, though.

Splashes of color near the Brunette River in Lower Hume Park, May 20, 2018.

This is a cropped photo of a pink blossom located on the far side of a drainage ditch, not far from the covered seating area. Fortunately the ditch is dry, so I didn’t have to get wet and stinky to grab this shot (the travails of not having optical zoom).

Pink bloom in Lower Hume Park, May 20, 2018.

And finally this low-perspective shot of flowers and vegetation leading off into the not-easily-traversed bits of Lower Hume Park, which are probably inhabited by coyotes, snakes and hill giants.

Leading off into the less-accessible area of Lower Hume Park, near the Brunette River, May 20, 2018.

Overall, it was a pleasant walk and I took the time to find little details I’d missed before or had forgotten about (like that delightfully hideous tree pictured above).

The Great Horseshoe Bay Parking Adventure

This afternoon Nic and I drove down to Horseshoe Bay so Nic could use his keen photographer’s eye to get some pics of ferries so I might ponder how to use them for a potential book cover. We had it all planned out. Mostly.

It was a beautiful and unusually warm day–my watch told me it got up to 26°C, which is much warmer than normal for not-quite mid-May. Not that I’m complaining. I got downtown early, so I strolled around seeing what has changed, then went to Sunset Beach, where two women were in the water, not exactly swimming, but up to their waists in it and wearing what may have been, “What were we thinking?” looks on their faces. A short distance away several crows were pestering a seagull. I couldn’t determine why as there was no sign of food and I doubt the crows were nesting right where the tide comes in. They flow off after a few minutes, having forced the seagull to move about one meter away from its original position.

i wasn’t standing very close to the feathered fracas–I’m not big on volunteering to get pecked–so this is a fuzzy, zoomed-in shot of the action in which one of the crows looks more like abstract art, but when I have an iPhone 18 with super telephoto lens as standard, this would look way better. So just pretend for now.

Crows vs. seagull. No matter who wins, somebody is getting pooped on.

I then met Nic and we had a nice lunch at the Fountainhead Pub on Davie Street. Given the weirdly warm weather, there was lots to look at, namely hot young guys that made me feel like a dirty old man. I remember walking down Davie Street when I was their age. It was when parachute pants were legitimately in style. For a few weeks, anyway.

Off we went to Horseshoe Bay next. Getting there was pretty straightforward, though we were caught in the middle of the lanes reversing when we got on the Stanley Park causeway (strangely, this happened on the way back, too. I’m still amazed there aren’t more accidents when they switch the traffic flow). Once we got to Horseshoe Bay we spent literally the same amount of time that it took to drive there (30+ minutes) looking for anywhere to park. About half a dozen drivers managed to nab spots just before we got to them. At first it was annoying, then maddening and finally, as expected, kind of hilarious. On one of our final go-rounds we actually came across a spot and parked in glorious triumph (for two hours, anyway).

We headed a few blocks down to the bay to await the ferry’s arrival, which we didn’t actually have to do at all, since it came in while we were trying to park. I was more worried it would leave before we could get out of the car to take any pics.

But we did get pics and I’m perusing them now. We’ve made tentative plans for a zany day trip to Nanaimo, as I suspect we can get even better images at Departure Bay.

Also, I got a sunburn on my neck. I have no idea how that happened. I mean, I understand the science behind getting burned skin from exposure to the sun, I just have no idea how my seemingly minimal time out in the sun led to a burn. So yes, the neck is feeling a little warm. Also my upper arms, too. At least I’m not getting a sunburn on top of my allergic reaction rash. I’d probably look like a boiled zombie.

Before leaving we got a couple of waffle cones and they were good. I did not dribble ice cream on myself, something I do almost as if it is a requirement every time I have an ice cream cone, so that was nice.

Here’s one shot of the ferry I grabbed. It’s the Queen of Oak Bay in all her marina-crushing potential:

Queen of Oak Bay tooting out of Horseshoe Bay. A bay in a bay, as it were.

On the way back to the car I got a photo of a children’s boot perched near a giant propeller because why not? (Nic also took a shot of this, but my angle was approximately 500 times more dramatic.)

Big prop, little boot.

All in all, a pleasant little outing, other than the (unexpected) difficulty in parking and the (in hindsight, inevitable) sunburn. I really ought to just slather myself in sunscreen from now until October. And next time we’ll probably take the bus.