September 2019
Night Activities!
Bike the Night!
First time for me - we decided to try out
the Bike the Night event, organized by Bikehub. The ride
starts at Sunset Beach downtown and goes around False Creek, past
Granville Island then over the Burrard Street Bridge and back to
the West End. Our plan was to exit the ride at Granville
Island so we could take the short walk home.
Getting to Sunset Beach in the West End was a bit tricky.
Plan A would be to ride over the Burrard Street Bridge, but the
bridge is tall and we would probably arrive with tired kids.
Plan B was to start at Granville Island and take the bike ferry
over to the downtown side and then ride along the seawall to the
park. We rode Plan B.
After an ice cream fuel up, we got in
line on Beach Avenue for the start of the ride. We think the
ride got started a few minutes late (7:45 was advertised, but
there was a distant speech at the front of the line that we didn't
hear). The ride started very slowly as packed queue slowly
expanded to riding speed. The first few hundred meters was
less than walking pace.
We started on Beach Avenue and rode under
the Burrard Street Bridge. Beach Avenue is only one lane
each way and pretty quite most days so this didn't seem that much
different from a regular ride. When we got to the Granville
Street Bridge, we turned up under it and let out onto Pacific
Street - one of the major routes downtown.
Once we were on Pacific Street, we rode down the hill into
Yaletown. We had all of the East bound lanes so suddenly
there was a lot of space between bikes. The police blocked
all of the intersections so we kept riding, even if the light was
red. There were volunteers and lots of people ringing bike
bells as we rode past people watching us.
Once you ride past BC Place, the tall
buildings start to thin out. There aren't any tall buildings
on the ocean side (there may be a park there some day) and the
skytrain and causeways block building on the city side.
The skyline gets busy again once we rode
into the Olympic Village. We had our only real bunch up on
Olympic Village. Our bike path would make the village an
Island so they had to stop us from time to time to let cars get
through.
The last leg of the ride for us was along
6th Ave. Again, no tall buildings (steep slope on the left,
railway tracks on the right) so it feels quiet. We got off
6ths on the access road for Granville Island and rode down to
Granville Island.
At this point, we got off the ride so
we could walk home. The kids had a great time and wished we
had gone all the way. Maybe next year!
Taekwondo Belt Testing
The kids
have been taking Taekwondo for about a year and it's time for them
to do their belt testing to move up. The kids are in a dojo
with multiple locations but the testing is centralized - all kids
from all classes test at the same time. Being a kids program,
the youngest kids are maybe 5 years old but the oldest are
teens. The test has multiple phases - fitness, trivia, poomse,
blocking and board breaking. They get a total score out of of
100, but basically all kids passed.
The part the kids liked the most was the board breaking. The
sound of breaking the board is intense and you get two pieces of
wood to take home!
Both kids did really well - congratulations!
Cross Country Race
The
kids school has an active cross country program - run mostly by
volunteer parents. The kids come to school three days a week
and run laps around the school. The coaches teach them how to
launch, how to pass and how to keep running. There are 4 after
school meets and then a city wide meet up at the end. The
whole thing lasts about two months before the weather gets too cold
and dark.
The race days start with the grade sevens, then the
kindergarten + grade 1's and then each grade after that. Both
Nara and Claira race. Even though the after school meets are
just a fraction of the schools in city of Vancouver, there is often
50+ kids from the same grade on the start line.
As the
grades go up, the course gets a little longer. We were running
at Vanier Park which has a reasonable sized pond that the kids run
around. The course has some up and down hill which is probably
makes it more interesting to run.
When the kids get to the end, they
get ribbon. The first 15 (or so) kids get "placer" ribbons
with what number they got. The rest of the kids get
participation ribbons. It's amazing the variety in ability in
kids running - some are clearly gifted at running and some putting
110% into the race.
Funny thing happened on this race day - a beaver left the big pond
and had to cross the race course to get to a different pond.
It was a Canadian moment watching the kids run around the beaver.
Tags: biking(9), running(7), cross country(7), Vancouver(7), night(5), Taekwondo(4)
People: Nara(8), Claira(7)
From: John Harvey Photo > Blogs for 2024 to 2005 > September 2019
Last Modified Sunday, January 22nd, 2023 at 00:05:47 Edit
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