Along with warm summer days come long days at the beach, and if we’re lucky a bit of camping. The last two weekends in a row, we’ve managed to do both! Our first trip was up island to Rathtrevor Beach and then this weekend we made it out to China Beach. Despite one set of hands being dedicated to holding and working with the littlest guy, we managed to have a great time and enjoy our time together.
No, I’m not kidding you. I finally fulfilled a long held childish dream. I made it onto TSN during a professional golf tournament. The sad part is that I wasn’t playing but was rather a lowly spectator. If any of you saw the final few holes of the Telus World Skins game, you would have seen me during a pan view of the crowd moments before the winning shot was made.
I’m not going to go into too much detail what the Skins game is all about. Let it be sufficient to say that to have it come to Victoria was a huge, huge deal. A once in a lifetime opportunity for the loyal Canadian golf fan. Two of the more notable names in town were Mike Weir and Fred Couples. If you’ve even heard of either of these guys, you’ll know this is a big deal.
I wasn’t really planning on attending as the tickets are not exactly affordable for most human beings. Through shear dumb luck a free ticket ended up on my desk only days prior to t-off.
For those non-golfing, non-sport following people you probably don’t know how things played out, so here’s a real quick run down. In the end, the entire tournament came down to one single shot in a sudden death type playoff. That one single shot would be worth $270,000 to the winner. I was standing just a few feet off the back of the 18th green when Mike Weir, fellow Canadian and lefty golfer, put the ball 3 feet from the pin from 125 yards out to win the cash and overall title. Needless to say the crowd went wild, as did I.
In the end however, the big winner of the tournament was the Queen Alexandra Foundation for Children and a project they are working on known as Jeneece Place. Through the efforts of Telus, the Skins game, and local community, a check for $1,000,000 was presented at the closing ceremonies. Somehow lost in the media coverage was how a day of meaningless sport culminated in something of true value.
We had a pretty busy weekend a little while back. Now that the weather is getting better, Brett is starting to ride his bike without training wheels. It was also the opening day for baseball at the local ball park. This is Evan’s first year in T-Ball, and Brett is signed up for Blast Ball. Blast ball is like T-Ball except toned down for fewer bodies and only one base with a squeaky toy in it :). With spring also comes the blossoms. And with blossoms comes the hummingbirds. I managed to get out one evening with the camera and get a few shots. Now it would be fantastic if hummingbirds visited our feeder!
One of the things to show up under the tree this year was a bird feeder. We live right along a creek and green space so the bird life out our window is fantastic. Along with an ordinary bird feeder we’ve also hung a humming bird feeder. While it hasn’t had as much attention as the seed feeder, it hasn’t been ignored either.
Off the top of my head here’s a list of confirmed visitors thus far.
Dark-eyed Junco
Red-breasted Nuthatch
Chestnut-backed Chikadee
Spotted Towhee
Purple Finch
Anna’s Hummingbird
Today I managed to spend some time up close with the big lens on the camera. I think I managed to get some reasonable shots. I’m hoping to get some hummingbird shots at sone point, but I won’t hold my breath!
Every year the LDS community in Victoria puts on a Nativity Pageant for the community. It’s well attended by people all over town with 4 shows a night for 3 nights straight. Having a baby this near Christmas and being part of the LDS community, the newest edition to our family had a chance to play the role of baby Jesus for a couple of showings. Not sure what the record of for youngest baby in the pageant is but he’s probably close!
Here’s a few pictures from last night.
No better way to spend the first day of November on the wet coast then playing a little baseball! I love living in Victoria.
Evan and I did a little fishing again today. It rained hard all morning but had let up by early afternoon. I hoped it was going to hold off for the rest of the day. It didn’t.
Looking back now, I think I can blame it on a Beaver Camp. Evan came home that weekend raving about how they went fishing. I don’t think they caught anything, but he was hooked. From that day forward it was a constant question of when I was going to take him fishing. Not being much of a fisherman I figured that I could wait this one out. Eventually he’d forget and loose interest, right? He’s only 5, so surely my plan would work. I managed to hold out for about 4 months I think, then finally realized my plan had failed. A couple weeks ago Tricia told me that ‘tomorrow night, you are going to get some fishing gear’. And so it began.
Luckily the first time out we actually managed to catch something. A little rainbow trout. Not big enough to keep, but enough to feed the habit. Unfortunately it met an unintended demise as we couldn’t get out the hook it had swallowed deep down. We’ve since learned that in such a case it’s best to just leave the hook in and cut the line. Beginner’s ignorance I guess. We’ve been out a few more times since, including a full on camping trip complete with canoe and many hours of fishing. Nevertheless, we’ve been a rather empty handed since. Again early this morning before work we headed out to Elk Lake for an hour and a half. No luck today, but Evan holds out with that eternal youthful hope that one day we’ll bring home a whopper!
So I’ve had the itch for a while, and finally I got a chance to scratch. The weather has been getting warmer and my legs have been feeling good. This last week there was a slight change in the family routine allowing me to get out and ride in the weekly race series.
This was my 2nd bike race ever (if you don’t count the hill climb I did last fall). It was a Road Race format, which in this case means you go multiple laps around a long course compared to the short course Criterium format. I’m not sure how long the course was, but we did 15 laps in what I think was between 1 and 1 1/2 hour racing. I don’t really know how long it took, it was all a blur, quite literally.
The course wasn’t for the faint of heart with a screaming downhill run and a couple sharp corners. The organizers did a great job setting up the course and sweeping the road in key places. I raced in the ‘B’ group (a.k.a - slow group), which consisted of 22 men and 7 women.
The group stayed together pretty much the entire race. There were a couple breaks out front which were quickly swallowed up by the pack. I generally just focused on keeping the rubber side down, staying out of trouble and keeping up with the group. On the last lap I managed to sneak up a ways which put me in the an OK spot for the sprint to the line. Turns out I managed a top ten spot! It wasn’t for skill, strength, or endurance. I’m sure it was just dumb luck since my daily training is just a bike ride to work. Although my lungs and legs took a beating it feels good not to get completely crushed.
If you’ve got the patience, Tricia took a bunch of photos as did the race organizers.
Now that spring is finally starting to show itself it seemed high time we took the canoe out for a dip. We got together with the cousins and headed on up to Spectacle Lake. It’s a nice little body of water tucked away near the top of the Malahat and Shawnigan Lake.
It was a nice calm day with not too many people. We had the beach all to ourselves (which is a good thing given there were 11 of us) and only shared the lake with a couple fly fisher-women. The fish were jumping most of the day and those with rods seemed to have enough luck to hook 4 or 5 fish while we were there.
The kids had a blast going for rides in the canoe, exploring or digging in the sand. We managed to capture a few pictures of the day.