British Columbia – Page 5 – JohnBollwitt.com

2008 Aug 272008 Aug 26

Update on Olympic Village construction: August 2008

I pass by the site for the Olympic Village for the Vancouver 2010 winter games on a near daily basis. The progress in the area has been interesting to watch, and everyone who rides the bus over the Cambie Bridge tends to crane their neck or look out the corner of their eye as the bus passes by. If anything, the shear amount of workers and machinery is impressive that you have to gander a little bit.

So to update on the last post I made about this, here’s a more recent photo from just the other day, followed by some from early months.

August 25, 2008

May 26, 2008

January 15, 2008

That’s a lot of concrete in nearly nine months. Only 533 days until the opening ceremonies for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

2008 Aug 262008 Aug 27

First trip up Grouse Mountain

If there is one thing in Vancouver that beckons every visitor more than anything, it’s probably Grouse Mountain[wiki].

After nearly three years of living here, I have finally braved the gondola ride and the heavy tourist crowds to ascend to the top of the mountain. Well, at least we ventured around the lodge and a few of the nearby trails, but we finally made it up there for the first time. Yes, even Rebecca has never been up there.

The original intent of this visit was to enjoy a wonderful invitation by the folks who run Grouse Mountain to see what’s up there as well as take a ride on their newest attraction, ziplining.

As you can see, it was just a tad rainy on this past Sunday that we were there. Our thought at the bottom was that we would book our zipline time and hope for better weather up top, but our wishes didn’t come true. We’ll have to do a makeup trip another time, more so when you can see the end of the zipline or at least further than fifty feet ahead of you while traveling at 50km per hour.

One thing that this experience has done for me is drive my urge to do the Grouse Grind. I’ve wanted to do it since the day Rebecca told me all about it, but the intimidation of not knowing how to get there always prevented me. Truth be told, you can take a Seabus from Waterfront Station and hop a #236 Grouse Mountain bus on the other side to get there in about 45 minutes[googlemaps]. Hike up, take the mandatory gondola ride down for ~~$15~~ $5!, and you’ve done the grind.

The lodge has a fair share of amenities at the top, and I’m told that the nachos are to die for. Not something I would be the most keen on after a hopeful 45 minute hustle up the side of a mountain, but they do intrigue me.

Probably the biggest highlight of the day for me were the grizzly bears. There are two, full sized bears in captivity within an easy walk from the lodge. Abandoned at birth, they are being cared for in a very respectable area, complete with a nice swimming hole and lots of trees.

Nature never seems to grow old in terms of my personal fascination. Grouse Mountain, even on a cold and wet day, was a thrilling experience. Water never hurts anyone, but I can’t wait to experience it when I can really take in the beauty on a clearer day.

2008 Aug 212008 Aug 20

Cambie and Broadway are starting to look like streets again

Being that I work in the area near Southeast False Creek[wiki], my daily commute takes me through the heart of the Canada Line construction. Anyone who has seen that area on even a somewhat regular basis will tell you that it is a pain. Whether you are going on foot, transit, or your personal vehicle, you have to have patience to get through it all. That or wish for some good luck.

In the last couple of weeks, things are starting to resemble something normal again. There is a large amount of the streets being black topped, bus stops are shuffling a little bit, and there are more forms being put in place to build street curbs.

This is a big deal to me because there have been intersections that seemed to be dug up, work done, covered back up with black top, and the process repeats itself about three more times, in the exact same spots. The heavy machines come in and out to bust things up and repair it, almost like they are doing it for fun. Curbs seem to symbolize that something more permanent is on the horizon.

It just doesn’t stop with the Canada Line though. There are more condos and stores being developed in the same vicinity, so the extra trucks getting through the already congested and rerouted traffic is hopelessly frustrating. You know it’s going to be over soon, so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Oh yeah, and there is also that Olympic village being built. Can’t forget all those workers flooding the area along with their trucks and equipment.

Even the Wendy’s in the area just shut down to renovate, and Subway is setting up shop next to a new RBC bank just around the corner. There’s already a second Starbucks in six months in the area between Broadway and the bridge, plus a coming London Drug and Whole Foods on the same stretch of street.

The area of the Olympic village is also slated to get a London Drug and Urban Fare, but I can’t be sure on those time lines being before or after the Olympics.

It looks like I’m not the only one getting anxious for Cambie Street to come back, but the most important thing for me is getting the transit system free of construction traffic. There’s nothing worse than feeling like your running way ahead of schedule to get to work and end up stuck on the bridge for 25 minutes while you creep slowly to the only stop on the other side at Broadway.

2008 Jul 26

The pains of (not) owning a car in Vancouver

The true reason why I’m making this post is to make a guest appearance on Duane’s blog for Blogathon 2008. In fact, he tells me that the only way he’ll give me a ride home so I can go to bed is to make said post. But in a moment of “behold the power of blogging”, it made me recall a thought I had today about owning a car in general.

Plain and simple, Rebecca and I don’t own a car. Part of it is by choice, the other is the simplicity of keeping cost of living down. We haven’t had a vehicle to be called our own for a few years now, relying heavily on transit. That means getting from point A to B is sometimes good and sometimes spotty. It really depends on the day, but for the most party, I can’t complain.

However, today I had the extreme pleasure of being able to borrow my mother-in-law’s car for the day in anticipation of Beck returning from an unexpected trip.

So, I decided to take it to work, and you would think that this is the point where I start complaining about traffic. This is not the case. It was the parking that was the most stressful thing.

Where I work, the underground parking is all reserved, and the other, optional lot is as well. That means you are subjected to the song and dance of finding various parking spots around the building, most of them being only good for one hour. Then you park here or there, stay for maybe two or three hours, and hope that this is the day that is not that once a month occurrence when they go around to pass out $40 parking tickets.

It was so stressful. All day I felt like I was constantly forgetting something when actually I couldn’t stop thinking about the car getting a ticket or having a tow truck pull it away.

We’ve been talking about getting a car for the better part of the year now, and the decision is just a matter of when. We have a good idea of what we want, but I now know, completely and fully, that this car will not be commuting me to and from work. It’s not that far to go, and that stress of finding parking is something I can certainly live without.

Give me the bus and ear buds shoved into my ears. I’ll take that over running outside everything hour and a half to move the car in a half-block to two block radius or work. It’s just not worth it.

2008 Jul 262008 Jul 26

Photos from the Surrey Fusion Festival 2008

Last weekend, Rebecca was contacted by the city of Surrey to come out and help cover the events of the Surrey Fusion Festival. The three days of food, live performances, vendors, and artist displays were brought together for the soul purpose of putting a variety of ethnic flavors that comprise the areas of the lower mainland into one place. And let me say, they did an amazing job of pulling it off.

Once again, I played photographer for the day, gathering shots for coverage on miss604.com. The organizers understand and recognize the reach that a hyperlocal blog like Rebecca’s has, so they wanted to make sure that they did everything they could to spread the world about the event, even if it’s after the fact.

Here’s a variety of shots that were my favorite of those three days.

This last photo is by far my favorite out of the whole bunch, and it’s not because of the photo quality or how the light hits the shot just right. It’s the fact that when we saw these prawn crackers, we more so thought about how it would taste. The spelling didn’t catch us until after the fact.

With hope, those “pawn crackers” helped to make you understand how great the Surrey Fusion Fest was this year, and I really hope that the momentum is there to do it again next year. The whole gathering was laid back and a great atmosphere that one has to experience to really enjoy.

If you would like to see more photos, please see the entire set on Flickr, and Rebecca has some great posts highlighting the festivities from day two and three. Our social media ninja in arms DaveO even made a guest post to give his perspective, and he was just as pleased with things as we were.

2008 Jul 052008 Jul 06

Photographs from Surrey Canada Day celebrations

Rebecca was contacted by the fine folks at the city of Surrey to be a media co-sponsor for their Canada Day events in Cloverdale. July 1st saw nearly 40,000 people crowd onto the Cloverdale Millennium Amphitheater grounds to play games, see stilt walkers, get their faces painted, and see a jam packed line-up of musical acts on the main stage, including the likes of Rymes With Orange, The Payola$, and Loverboy.

Events like this tend to find me with media access for the both of us, and of course that means I have to take my camera along with. You can read all of Rebecca’s coverage of the event [Surrey Canada Day 2008: The Schedule, Morning Recap, The Music], but the following are some of my favorite shots that I took.

Will is a really amazing musician. See him live if you can because you must.

That’s Mr. Bob Rock[wiki], ladies and gentlemen, in the flesh.

You can see all 104 photos on Flickr. Shooting outdoor events can be a lot of fun, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s loud in the photo pit, not to mention the sweltering heat on that day. Sometimes I feel intimidated by being surrounded with folks that have larger and much more expensive photo equipment, but the pictures that come out from my endeavors tend to speak for themselves. It’s not what you got that matters. It’s how you use it, and I’m doing my damnedest to learn my camera and get better with every shot.

The folks at the Surrey Canada Day event were amazing in terms of getting us the media access and letting us know the low down on what was going on, where everything was located, and were just generally awesome people. By far, the best treatment I have ever experienced in terms of media access for new media folks.

2008 Jul 01

Playing photographer at the Vancouver Dragon Boat Festival 2008

About a week and a half ago, I had the extreme pleasure of joining Rebecca on a really cool experience of covering the Rio Tinto Alcan Dragon Boat Festival for the festivities of 2008.

People come from all over to compete in this event, not to mention watch and enjoy the festivities.

The Festival was created to show off Vancouver’s growing cultural diversity and to promote racial harmony among Canadians – new and old. Vancouverites were invited to the festival to experience spectacular food, entertainment, arts and children’s programming reflecting Vancouver’s cultural diversity. At the same time, interest in paddling was taking off and more and more teams formed and registered each year.

Twenty years later the Festival still fulfills its mandate to promote cultural harmony among Canadians. It has developed into one of Vancouver’s most anticipated summer family events. [dragonboatbc]

This was just a little bit more than the run of the mill walking around, shooting pictures, and seeing the sights. Thanks to Anita, we had media passes to the event.

Probably the best thing about the media access for this event was being able to ride in the media boat and follow the racers as they went from start to finish, paddling along until their bodies couldn’t give anymore.

With my trusty camera, I decided to try something a little different and shoot some video with it of an actual heat or two.

The Dragon Boat Festival is a real passion for some of these racers. There’s a community that comes from the numerous teams, and the action is just as intense. This is something that you don’t really get a sense of until you get away from all of the tents and vendors on dry land. When you get down to the water level, it’s a whole other experience that I’m really glad I had the opportunity to see.

2008 Jun 112008 Jun 11

So long, Trevor Linden

I’ve already made mention of this before, but today it’s official. Trevor Linden[wiki] is leaving the game of hockey.

No matter how little of time I have been an avid Canucks fan, there is no way to easily say how incredible of a person Linden is. Even though the career is over, it’s not about being sad. He never won a Stanley Cup, never blew away the masses with his talent on the ice, nor did he really set any notable records that will live forever in the history of the NHL.

When it comes down to it, he’s just another guy.

That’s easier said than what he actually means to the city of Vancouver and to the legions of Canucks fans around the world. He is who he is, and if you don’t know him already, then you don’t know an amazing person.

The day job took me very close to the events as they unfolded today. Running around to help out at the press conference to having him pop in at the home base for interview with the media #131, there is something that strikes you about the guy. Deep down, he’s still the same 18 year old kid that was drafted into the NHL twenty years ago, to this exact day.

And every time I was in the same room as him, he was nothing but smiles.

It gives you some comfort to know that people like him are out there in the big dollar business of professional sports. Even though he could walk into nearly any place in Vancouver and be treated like a king, he’d still give you the time of day and directions to the nearest Tim Horton’s. Hell, today it felt like he’d even give you a lift there in his car, he’s just that awesome.

2008 May 26

Comparing nearly six months progress of the Vancouver Olympic Village

I have a mild obsession with the Olympics. The fascination has been with me for as long as I can remember, so it’s no surprise that I watch all the construction with anticipation, all political arguments aside. I just love the games. Period.

So almost six months ago, I took this photo on my way into work in the morning.

This afternoon, I took this photo on my walk home.

The progress of this small city is astounding. We watch it everyday at work, and I battle the lines at the various places to eat near work on a constant basis. No matter when or where, there is always at least one construction guy or gal either buying coffee or having a bite to eat. The day I don’t have to cross the street without the fear of impending doom from a cement truck barreling down the street will be a strange day, especially with that Canada Line going in just a few blocks away.

Here’s another neat comparison of a photo that I took back in January, looking towards Science World from the Cambie Bridge.

And then, today, looking from about the same point, slightly more zoomed in.

I’d say that’s progress, but here’s a couple more photos for fun.

You can see more here.

2008 May 262008 May 25

Vegan food with Sean Bonner of Metroblogging

On a bit of a whim, we were invited to have dinner with Sean Bonner and Jeffery Simpson at The Naam in Vancouver last week or so. Sean was in town on a whirlwind tour of the greater northwest, stopping in Seattle, Vancouver, and Portland to check in on the Metroblogging meetups for each of those cities. Reason being, Sean Bonner is the guy behind Metroblogging, starting the first site in L.A. and now up to 50 cities around the world.

We were able to meet up with Sean and some of the other Metroblogging Vancouver crew, of which Rebecca is a member of, the next evening. Still, it was a neat chance to find out more about the man and his methods of madness in terms of how the network operates on top of what he has gone through to grow the blogging site to what it is today.

What is Metroblogging?

Metroblogging started off as a more locally focused alternative news source in Los Angeles and has turned into the largest and fastest growing network of city-specific blogs on the Web. We got sick of reading local news that was syndicated from the other side of the country, or was just repurposed national chit chat that had nothing to do with our city. We created our first blog as a throw back to the days when a local news paper focused on local issues, and you could walk down to the corner coffee shop and chat up the reporters whose column you read earlier that day. This idea didn’t stay in one city for long and before we knew it there were Metblogs in Chicago, Portland, Karachi, and Vienna. Today there are over 50 Metblogs in countries all over the world. Local politics, event reviews, lunch recommendations and ways to avoid that big traffic jam downtown. If it’s happening in our cities, we’re on it.

We are bloggers first and foremost, and we love our cities. Even the parts we hate. [metblogs]

The project that Sean now heads is daunting, to say the least. It was interesting to learn about the trials and tribulations of the original structure of Metroblogging and the recent migration to WordPress to run the back end for all their city sites. That kind of a roll out has got to be a challenge, and there has been a lot of elements to work through for them.

Now with the hard parts are out of the way, Sean gave hints as to things they are working on because finally, with a WordPress engine running the site, they have the ability to start doing things they’ve been wanting to do for a really long time. I’m just not going to tell you what they are because you’ll have to check out the nearest Metroblogging city to you.

Side note, The Naam[googlemaps] on 4th Street in Vancouver is amazing. Vegan food that even non-vegans would love. I could have been fine with the sesame fries and fried tofu, but the chilaquiles were pretty awesome.

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