Vancouver...Terry Foxes and Ronnie Raccoons

(This post was meant to go up on the 28^th of December, but after arriving to Whistler to meet up with the boys and celebrate New Years Eve, I was basically either drinking, or snowboarding, or both. I then thought I’d be able to catch up on some posts with some downtime in Shanghai but among the websites banned in China (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter) is innocent little blogspot. So these accounts are a little late, but don’t think of it as being ripped off, think of it as a cheap version of time travel, back to a remote and distant time known as “two weeks ago”).

With a beauty of a white Christmas behind us, we flew out of Toronto on the 27^th December to start our two week holiday on route to landing back in Australia on the 8^th January. Vancouver was our first stop, and knowing we had about 24 hours to soak all that Van City had to offer, we made a beeline to our hotel as soon as we got off the train downtown. I don’t really know if a beeline is a good thing, or a fast thing, or exactly what it is…every bee I’ve seen seems to just buzz around petty aimlessly, perhaps stopping for some nectar every now and then. So yeah I guess beeline is the correct term, as we struggled to find our hotel with our already-too-much luggage, bouncing around the city aimlessly.
Once we arrived, we noticed we were right across the road from BC Place, Vancouver’s football stadium, which was hosting a music festival / rave, meaning our room vibrated with every annoying pounding of the bass. The brochures described it as having the most talented DJ’s around…which is as is an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one…I guess they are pretty talented at simply pressing buttons those DJ’s…but I’m good at pressing buttons too (I have ninja PS3 skills, and are pressing keyboard buttons as we speak! Maybe I should be a DJ). But I digress…

The night was spent at a bar, trying to drink enough beers to sedate us and get a good night sleep in spite of the annoying doof doof going on across the road.

This led to a bit of a hangover the next morning, but not enough from deterring me from a good ol’ fashion yog around a new city. At 8.30 I got my gear on and headed outside to a leisurely 5 degrees…with absolutely zero snow on the ground and the hottest temperature I’d felt in weeks, I was like a pommy on Bondi Beach in winter, displaying my pasty white pins for the first time since summer.

My starting point was at Terry Fox Place, which had a statue and plaque dedicated to the great man himself. Terry Fox was a young man diagnosed with a bone cancer and was an above-the-knee amputee at age 19, and attempted to run across Canada (on his prosthetic leg) at age 21, in 1980. His cancer got the better off him about 1/3 of the way along his journey and he never finished his goal, but his legacy lives on, especially in Canada. I’d first heard of Terry a few months before our Melbourne to Sydney run. I won’t give you the full details (as I’d like to in more detail in another blog), but you can read about him here.

After a few snaps with Tezza (or T-Fox to some), I headed off, inspired and motivated. Inspired from Terry, and motivated by the fact I was kind of hungover and pretty hungry.

Terry Fox Plaza. Place of legends

 

 

I headed towards to famous Seawall, which is, as the name suggests a wall by the sea. But the cool thing about it is the fact it is a cycle and walking path that surrounds just about the entirety of Downtown Vancouver, meaning you can run for 30-40kms with the city on one side of you, and the Pacific Ocean, or the various bays on the other. And it seems it’s no secret. Every man and his dog were out walking or riding along the scenic seawall (ok, so only half the men had dogs, but there were a lot of mutts).  The people I was passing was as varied as the scenery…couples with prams, running groups, serious cyclists, lots of fit looking people, and even a guy jogging along in his jeans and dress shoes who looked quite hungover, in turn making me feel relatively good about myself.

Surprisingly, some people aren't aware this famous seawall even exists...the captain of this boat was clearly one of them

 

The scenery was abundant, as was my love for the countless female Vancouver hotties jogging along the seawall this beautiful city. I caught a glimpse of the ocean after a while and noticed a bunch of rocks on the shoreline. Not any old rocks, but six strategically placed rocks to form the equivalent of a 15 foot “rock man” known as an Inukshuk. Inukshuks hold a special place in Canadian’s hearts, as they represent their useful rock-man-making skills, or something like that.*

Inukshuk. Very Inuk-y shuk-y

 

 

*Ok, so it's more than just rock-making skills by the looks of it

 

Moving on from the Inukshuk, I noticed I was entering Stanley Park, the massive forest-like park adjacent to downtown. I don’t know who Stanley is (maybe he was an Inukshuk) but I like his park! Countless trails, hills, stairs, lakes and of course the Seawall surrounding it, makes for a pretty neat and accessible playground for the locals.

I ventured away from the Seawall and into the belly of the park, and soon realised that without the water to my left to guide me, I didn’t exactly know where I was going. I came across the beautiful and aptly titled Lost Lagoon, which made me feel a little better about not knowing exactly where I was.

Getting lost at Lost Lagoon

 

And just then, in front of me I saw an animal that I semi-rarely come across while on a run-a raccoon! He was about twice as big as a housecat (or once as big as one morbidly obese housecat), and leisurely waddled across the path a few metres in front of me to the lakeshore to grab a drink. I paused, and tried to get a photo of the little fella, but he was camouflaged in the shrubs and branches and weeds. I crouched and waited for him to come into view and within five minutes he was on his way back to the path. He eyed me up and down as he came towards me, and I tried to remember if raccoons were aggressive or how bad the damage would be if he decided to claw my face off…Rabies? Mad cow disease? Herpes? I couldn’t remember. By the time I remembered it was rabies, he was three feet away and I thought that jumping back and shrieking like a teenage girl at a Katy Perry concert probably wasn’t a smart idea, and with not much more than a sniff in my direction, little Ronnie Raccoon waddled back off into the bush with as little urgency as he had waddled out of it.

Ronnie Raccoon grabbing a drink at his local...

 

 

...and then doing a dine-and-dash

 

I continued along the lake hoping to see some of Ronnie’s family, but only came across swans and geese and Asian people…that’s not being racist, that’s just telling it how it is.

 

 

I veered out of Stanley Park and onto the northern side of downtown, joining back up with the seawall again. Instead of being lined with beaches and parks and Inukshuks like the southern side, the northern side was home to high rise buildings and wicked views over the bay to Northern Vancouver. The most interesting building I ran by was One Canada Place with it’s distinctive sails on top, which is where the seawall ends. Running by One Canada Place, I passed under a banner saying “The Canadian Trail”, and as I did, I noticed the bricks under my feet were engraved with the names of various Canadian towns in B.C, it’s most western province. Within 20 metres, a large coloured strip declared that I was now passing into the next brickwork province of Alberta, with the bricks now representing Alberta towns. This continued for all 13 provinces and territories, from west to east until I had run across this brickwork Canada in about 30 seconds…Terry Fox eat your heart out!

Crossing brickwork Nunavit, a Canadian territory at Canada Place

 

With the seawall coming to an end, I again headed inland, and dashed and darted around the downtown area known as Gastown, a neat little district with old red brick road and old school shop fronts, before returning to our hotel a little over an hour after I had left it. 12kms of photo-snapping, scenic running in and I was ready for breakfast, a coffee and to explore the rest of this sweet city.

As I draft this post up, it’s 5pm and we’re sitting on the bus headed to our next stop of Whistler, which will be our home for the four days...on the agenda is snowboarding, and catching up with mates from back home, meaning if today was my last run for 2013, it would have been a cracker of way to end it off!