Grouse Grind and other Shinans

Another long time since the last guy. I am officially gonna stop saying that because I don't think these are gonna be regular at all. I think they know how to write themselves by now anyway so I shouldn't have to mind it anymore.

Sarahs friend Nicole was still in town for a couple of days after the concert so we went out to dinner at a place called Cactus Club which is right beside the beach. It was a gorgeous day so there was a pretty big line up waiting for tables but as we were 6 people we timed it just right to get one of the few large tables just as another group was leaving. Nicole is from Kelowna and loves it there but it was pretty awesome to hear how impressed she was with Vancouver. To be fair it was a cracker weekend for her to visit weather wise but it made me and Saz feel pretty good to hear her say "and you guys actually live here!"

During the week I was pretty stoked that my bike arrived from NZ! Thanks very much Gillian. I had borrowed Sarahs car and managed to navigate all over the show in it to get to work and then from work to the airport and home again. I am writing this a couple of weeks after I picked up and its still in bits unfortunately but we have had some busy weekends. Its sitting in pieces all over my apartment. Jimmy would be proud!

On a 10/5/13 I went to my first ever fondue party. It was freaking amazing. It was Damiens birthday and him and Anita, his girlfriend had put on a wonderful spread. We cooked allsorts of tasty meats in oil (basically deep frying shit) and then coated them in melted cheese. One of the coolest dinners I have ever had because you could have big yarns while you waited for your treats to cook and dinner lasted about 3 hours or something. Then there was of course the melted chocolate for dessert. Thanks so much guys, real tasty!

Feeling guilty about eating so much meat and cheese Sarah and I decided to do the infamous Grouse Grind on opening day. It is pretty ridiculous. Kinda like stairmaster 3000 up a hill. It is only 2.3km but rises 850m or so. Millions of people out on it huffing and puffing. It reminded me more of a gym than a forest trail but I really enjoyed it. We got to the top in 1 hour 20min.

I tried to do the last quarter as fast as I could and that was a terrible idea. So knackered! When we got home we drank ceasars to replenish our fluids.

On Sunday I had the brilliant idea to run the sea wall again. That was a bad choice. I think I got around in 45min or something but definitely paid for the grouse/sea wall back to back weekend on Monday at work.

Choir Concert

So the big concert finally came around. It was kinda weird going into it as it was pretty much the first thing I did when I got to Vancouver and it can definitely be accredited with introducing me to some pretty cool people. Not looking at anyone in particular!

The concert itself was a sold out show of around 200 people. I wasn't very nervous at all because I was performing with about 80 other people and I was right at the back! The couple of small choir songs we did were a bit more intense as there was only about 12 of us and I was standing at the front. There was choreo and everything. It was all good fun. For the record we sang: Dancing Queen (gross), Edge of Glory, Surfin USA, Shout, Three Little Birds, I saw her standing there (poorly), Get Ready, You'll Never Walk Alone, and Livin on a Prayer.

After the concert we all went around the corner to a pub called speakeasy. Jesse and his girlfriend had come up from Portland (co-incidentally, not for the concert! Although he said he enjoyed it) so I had a good yarn to that bastard. Many an IPA was drunk and I had a delicious "Russian Burger". Later on we went to a place called Fan Club which had a pretty good band called Whisky Songs playing. There were only a three piece but rocked the hell out of there instruments. The drummer also did some mad rock rapping as well which contrary to my normal musical tastes was pretty kick ass.

The next day we kept fairly low key except for a little 10k run around the seawall with Jesse. There was about a billion people out enjoying the cracker weather and it was more like an obstacle course. Despite not feeling fantastic we still managed to make pretty good time around it in about 50 min.