Closing out summer

The leaves are starting to turn, the morning air is crisp and we've been on vacation only once this year. With that in mind, we took some much-needed time and carved out a long weekend in the other Vancouver with friends the Slighterallis.

I'll leave the foodie discussions to Amy over at the Dinner Hour. But suffice it to say that Dan and I think Juliana and Amy could talk about food 24/7 if given the chance. So it was only fitting we took our foodies to Granville Island, where they met a couple of hunky guys over a pile of raspberries.

I hope to write more about the trip later this week. But whether or not I get back to that, it was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed the time when Dan and I crawled down to the waterfront along Burrard Inlet on Stanley Park's west side and played with the stacked stones, a tradition that I believe was started by the First Nations people. Here, Amy investigates whether they are truly stacked or actually cemented together in some fashion.


Not long before that I'd done the same thing, on another stack, and managed to knock over the pile. So after feeling like a cultural trespasser of some sort I'd embarked on a re-creation projection. I'll be the first to say that mine was nothing like the originals, but it did go four stones high. I'm pretty proud of that. Attempt to put one together and you'll quickly learn it's a Zen-like exercise in balance and patience.

Here, on the right in the foreground, is how mine looked. You'll see many more of these in a couple of years, when Vancouver hosts the 2010 Winter Olympics at Whistler.

Thanks, Dan and Juliana, for a great trip. And happy anniversary.