Greatest Accomplishment

Here's to my greatest accomplishment! I completed reading this book with two day left in our Canada trip. It feels good, real good!

The Epic Return of Cute and Cuddly Sunday

Here it is, the much awaited return of cute and cuddly Sunday:

Vancouver Aquarium

The second best part of my trip with the Basketball team was when I went to the Vancouver Aquarium when I had a little extra free time. Here are some of the pictures that pretty much sum up the experience:

Whale Watching

The highlight of the entire Canada trip for me defintely was our 3 hour Whale Watching tour in Victoria. We began our trip by taking the Ocra Spirit Adventure Shuttle from our hotel to the dock where we signed in and got our tickets. It was a sunny morning in Victoria, but as soon as we hit the open water there was nothing but ocean, fog and mist to greet us. Every once in awhile we would get a break from the fog, but not a lot. We started our tour by going to visit an area called "Race Rocks" where California Sea Lions and Stellar Sea Lions congregate throughout the year. Our guide also told us in the past they have had some Transient Orca sightings in this area, and had even witnessed a couple Transient Orca kills. For us however, nothing but Sea Lions barking and growling in our direction. It probably didn't help that one of my players were trying to bark and growl back at them. I wonder if they found him to be as annoying as I did? We then continued on in our mission of finding some Whales! After travelling for another hour we got the call that a group of Resident Orcas had been spotted near Victoria, so we made our way back towards Victoria and to meet up with the Orcas. As we arrived on the scene there were already a good amount of other boats in the vicinity, so we took up our position and waited for the Orcas to head our way. It was still a little foggy making picture taking nearly impossible, not too mention my inability to get my camera to cooperate with what I wanted it to do, so I decided to put the camera away and just enjoy the sights and sounds. The Orcas were swimming probably about 50 yards away from us surfacing to breath and then diving back down again, when all of a sudden I noticed out of the corner of my eye that 2 were heading towards our location. One surfaced right at the back of our boat and another one passed right beside the boat directly under where I was standing at the rail. It was such a thrill to not only see these Orcas in the wild but for them to pass so close to the boat was a dream come true. After they passed we made an attempt to get ahead of them again, but they were moving fairly fast as when we stopped the second time some of the pod were already in front of us, but once again a couple went under the boat and a calf surfaced right along side. I was hoping to be able to follow them some more but alas our time had expired and we made our way back to Victoria. I was a little disappointed that I was only able to snap one photo that I knew would not turn out well. I would have been more than happy to follow the whales all day long if I could. Who knows maybe I missed my calling, maybe I should have gone into Marine Biology afterall.



Visit the Orca Spirit Adventure Link to visit the Orca Spirit Blog that chronicles every whale watching tour.

Royal BC Museum

We started our sightseeing at the Royal BC Museum. Luckily for us it had the Titanic artifact exhibit. Here's how it went down. Each patron to the exhibit is given a replica Boarding Pass with the information of a passenger who was on the Titanic.



I was Colonel John Weir a 60 year old man living in Dundee, Scotland. Unlike most passengers I was travelling by myself to Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. I was a Quartermaster General in the Spanish-American War serving in the Philippines and was a long time resident of Utah. I originally booked passage aboard a different vessel but switched to the Titanic because of the coal strike that was occurring. I boarded the Titanic in Cherbourg, France on April 10th, 1912 as a first class passenger.

The exhibit was interesting and cool. The best part for me was the very end of the exhibit where they had some of the passengers personal effects and a little history behind why they were on the Titanic and whether or not they survived. I found this room to be the most interesting because it made me wonder what must have been going through their minds at that moment. In that same room there was the entire passenger manifest split into the group of survivors and non-survivors. Colonel John Weir did not make it off the Titanic. This made me wonder: did he help others onto the life boats and sacrficing his life for the sake of children and their mothers or was he trying to buy his way onto a life boat pushing people out of the way to try and save himself, or maybe he was asleep or too drunk to even know what was going on. I like to think the first scenario is the way things transpired.

The rest of the museum was interesting as well. I especially liked the first faces exhibit about the native Indian tribes of British Columbia and their art.

I've Returned

My trip to Canada has officially ended. What began on Sept. 1st ended on Sept. 10th. Overall, it was a good trip and I will be sharing in later blogs some of my favorite parts and activities. The team ended up going 4-1 during our trip and the only injury was a sprained ankle.
Our journey began Saturday the 1st at 1pm when we boarded the bus and headed down to LA to spend the night before catching our flight on Sunday. As a treat Saturday night we went to one of the player's house for dinner and relaxation. When we arrived and looked into the backyard what greeted us was a lamb on a spit that this player's Father had been cooking all day. It was my first time having lamb, and I must say it was actually pretty good. The meat was a little chewy but flavorful.
We arrived in Victoria in the afternoon after connecting through Seattle and made our way to the hotel. Once at the hotel we had about an hour and a half till we had to be ready for practice. It was a short drive to the University, but as luck would have it we went to the wrong gym and the bus had disappeared, so we ended up walking 3/4 of a mile back to the other gym. It was on this walk that we realized that the University had a huge wild rabbit population that were not too fearful of anything. One would expect squirrels, but instead there were rabbits and they were everywhere.
We were in Victoria from the 2nd till the 5th at which time we hopped on the Ferry and made our way to Vancouver to finish our trip.

Here are some pictures:


Victoria


Thunderbird Park, Victoria BC


BC Parliament Building




From the Ferry


Vancouver Skyline


Vancouver Art Museum Fountain


Vancouver Sea Plane

More to come later...