Three of the best things about living in Vancouver are
1 Proximity to Squamish
2 Having an 8th floor apartment overlooking English Bay, which, for four nights a year, hosts the Vancouver Celebration of Light tri-nation firework competition
3 Cheap and excellent sushi.
The weekend has been relaxing so far…. Friday night barbecue on Nicole and Richard’s deck in North Van (to celebrate Richard’s 35th (!))… Matt brought a walking frame to the party and Jordan started to shake when it was pointed out that Rich is now closer to 40 than 30… It was SO good to see everyone , including Yoda Matt, “Fuck your shit up, I will”.
Saturday, after contemplating bouldering in Pemberton with Matt and Meghan and deciding we were making too late a start, Alex and I met up with Jeremy, Nikki and Patrick at the Edge and went climbing at the Sport Temple and Pleasure Dome areas north of Squamish where we met up with Terry McColl. Patrick made an epic ascent of ‘Just Glue It’ at the temple (video)before rushng ack to Vancouver to iron a shirt and go to a wedding and Nikki made her first 5.12 red-point in two years. Alex and I climbed ‘Phantom Menace’ and Alex had an epic and tangled rappel from the top of the second pitch on Patrick’s 80m rope.
After climbing we whizzed back to the city in a hour (plus half an hour to park the cars in the hordes of firework traffic), picked up trays of great sushi from the Kishi Sky place on 1st and Nikki, Jeremy, Alex, Dryw, Marc and myself ate and watched the fireworks in my apartment. The performing nation was Sweden and we listened up the music via the simulcast on Classic Rock FM (8th floor in Kits is bit too far to hear it live from the barge). I didn’t see Canada’s performance on Wednesday, but heard they set their fireworks to jazz and it was excellent. Sweden chose to set theirs to what Marc and I decided must have been the soundtrack to an 80s movie, starring either Rob Lowe or Patrick Swayze (Pat just having the edge). Just when I was thinking it was way too Eurovision, they wove in some of Abba’s greatest hits…