yvr / sea

just returned from a great trip to vancouver / seattle. the main purpose of the trip was to compete in the rio tinto alcan dragon boat festival in vancouver wit space dragons. we flew up on a friday afternoon to get there in time for a team dinner wit our host team phat phish. saturday and sunday were tourney days. it was intermittently rainy, but not actually cold. there wasn't too much downtime, but the finish line set up was great, and there was a lot of good competition (space brought up 4 boats!). saturday night reep and i went to china town where we visited the night market and got some food. we ended up walking a few miles back to hotel which was a terrible idea cause our feets were killing us for the next few days. reep even needed to get a new pair of shoes!

on monday we went to whistler blackcomb. some of us had rented cars, so reep and i were pretty lucky to be able to add on last minute. unfortunately the zipline tour was already full so reep and i had to go separate of our team. but it was still a ton of fun. i loved it, as i love heights and speed, but i admit i did get scared when they told us we should go upside down and let go of the ropes. eck!

tuesday reep and i dedicated to sightseeing. we visited canada place, tandem biked around the perimeter and interior of stanley park, and saw the sights. it was a nice chill day. aj (also from our team) met up wit us on tuesday night.

wednesday we took a car back to whistler. reep and i had planned to go to vancouver island to kayak but the weather was really bad so we decided to kayak another time. aj recommended that we atv, which was a ton of fun. we all had little mishaps on the ride, but nothing serious. we also saw a black bear! reep and aj were gonna mountain bike (freaking awesome course, you and your bikes go up on ski lifts!), but they were too unprepared. one of the highlights was finding out that the luge course that they built for the 2010 winter olympics will be open to the public the year later. i'm so there!!

friday morning we got back to vancouver and reep and i got on a shuttle to seattle airport. we rented a car and promptly drove to the rei headquarters, which was kind of a bust. i was hoping they're have more paddling gear (not necessarily specific to dbing), but their section was even smaller than the one we have a home. =\ the climbing wall looked like a lot of fun but it's $20 a person and we'd have to wait a couple days! so reep and i skipped it.

on saturday we did sightseeing in seattle. we spent quite a bit of time at pike's place market. afterwards we went to the emp and sci-fi museum. we looked that the space needle but neither of us really felt like going up so we skipped it. that night reep went to play streetfighter. ...or tekken, i forget. i stayed home and slept.

sunday was pretty cool. we went kayaking around the san juan islands. we got a 2-person boat and totally smoked everyone else. hehe! reep was in charge of steering (which is apptly pretty hard to do, as you use your feet to adjust), and i was crazy paddling. reep kept telling me to slow it down and stop, which i was not happy about. lol. that evening we drove to mt st helens.

monday we went walking around mt st helens. i really wanted to do the upper portion of ape cave (it's a bit longer and more challenging), but we started it wrong and had to do it backwards. not recommended! funny tho. it was a mile to two to cave entrance above ground and i nearly quit. i hate hiking! but once we got underground i don't think i complained at all. not even when i slipped and ended up nearly flat on my back. i love spelunking (if you can call it that).

since we had a flight pretty early on tuesday reep and i decided to skip the hotel costs on monday night and instead drove down to portland to hit up voodoo donuts. from the little we saw, portland was pretty cool. "keep portland weird" is apptly the slogan. very young and definitely has a large counter-culture. must return!

all in all, great trip. quick fire impressions:

rio tinto alcan dragon boat festival is good for the specators, but organizers didn't really consider the athletes.

yvr is the best parts of sydney (friendly, clean) and nyc (the culture, cosmopolitain, polished) but all the latinos have been replaced by asians and a good many of the construction workers are female.

whistler is beautiful with a ton of activities, altho it has no night life.

seattle is like the worser parts of la (dirty and old) and sf (hilly and touristed out). =\ i'm really sorry to say this, but i've always loved seattle the times i've come before...