The Meadowlark Festival

This year on the May long weekend I went to the Meadowlark festival in Penticton. Some part of my family has gone to it every year for the last 5 years, but I had never been. The festival is about bird watching and I am not much of a bird watcher. Every year they always have fun though and everyone else in my family has already gone at least once. Even my grandma took a turn and went last year, so this year I figured it was my turn to experience it.

I went with those who have gone every year, my two little sisters

and my mom and dad.

It takes 4 to 5 hours to drive from Surrey to Penticton and we left Friday morning. I took my laptop with me because these days it's not a good idea for me to completely take a weekend off work. I did most of my work on the ride there and the ride back.

At a road side stop before Princeton there was a whole bunch of fearless groundhogs. They were popping up from a number of different holes and probably get fed way more people food than is good for them.

My mom had looked on the Internet for accommodations in Penticton and apparently she hates looking on the Internet for this stuff. Sometimes my family camps and sometimes they stay in a hotel but either way they've had bad experiences with noisy groups partying on the May long weekend.

So the plan this year was to stay in a quiet place away from all that. She booked two nights at a campground up in the mountains overlooking Penticton. For the third night we would decide where to stay. The campground had a great view.

Unfortunately the campsites were not very good, with rocks spread out all over the place making it hard to find a place to put tents. The sites also weren't very far apart from each other and we had been told when we booked that there were only two sites left to choose from. Mysteriously, when we went to bed almost all the sites were empty.

To get a better view of the valley, my sisters and I hiked down through a little valley and up the other side.
He we could see for miles in many directions over Penticton and the two lakes and many mountains surrounding it.

That evening my dad had his first scheduled festival event, a walk through the dark to look for owls. He left, while the rest of us spent the evening at the campsite.

We discovered it was really cold up in the mountains at night! We played some cards with my sisters both bundled in their sleeping bags and sat around the fire.

I had trouble sleeping for any long period of time during the night. Most of me was warm except my feet which were a little too cold. In the morning we found frost on our tents. We decided it was a little too cold for camping and that we would get a hotel even though we had already paid for a second night at the campground.

We left the campground early in the morning so my dad could get to the meeting spot for his second event, a 7 hour birding tour with an expert.

The rest of us had an event in a couple hours so we ate some breakfast and then hung out at a nearby playground.

The event we went to was a tour of a bluebird box trail on the Blasted Church vineyard. Apparently a long time ago in this area when they wanted to move a church to a new location they used controlled dynamite to knock it down and then reuse much of the wood. If they failed at using the right amount of dynamite they got a blasted church.

The bluebird boxes were simple a set of boxes set up along posts around the vineyard for birds to make their nests in. Every year they are cleaned out and then filled with cedar shavings.

Many of the boxes were empty but a few had baby birds in them or eggs. We didn't disturb the baby birds but here are some bluebird eggs we peeked at.

After our tour we looked for a good motel with a pool. Unfortunately it was colder than usual for the May long weekend and so none of the outdoor pools were ready yet. We choose to stay in the Flamingo motel. Then we met my dad after his tour and drove back up the mountain to take down camp. Afterwards we drove south to Okanagan Falls where my family has a tradition of visiting Tickleberrys for ice cream and kettle corn.

They make the kettle corn out front in a giant iron kettle

They have about 50 different flavours of ice cream and this is the size of their "single" cone. You get to choose 3 flavours for it. I had Banana Fudge, Triple Chocolate Brownie and Rocky Mountain Raspberry. It was delicious!

During the weekend we played RoboRally 3 times. My sister Natalie is addicted to the game. I didn't even plan on bringing it but when they picked me up at my apartment she grabbed it off my desk and took it to the van. We played sort of a mini game on the car trip there (it's not really a travel game!) in which I won. Then we played a game at the campground in which I was last and then a game on a much tougher board in the hotel and I won by a mile.

On Sunday my sisters and I slept in while my mom and dad went to an event involving watching many different species of hummingbirds while eating brunch. When they returned we went out for the day to visit beaches at both lakes and drive a loop out of town doing some bird watching.

I forgot to bring my camera for this part of the day! Natalie and I had a lot of fun tossing a frisbee back and forth on the first beach on Okanagan Lake. I was working on my forehand throw to improve at Ultimate and unfortunately I hit a little kid in the head. Apparently his mom didn't seem to mind. It helped her get him off the beach and off to some lunch.

Natalie and I went for a short swim at the second lake, Skaha Lake. It was really cold but not as cold as I expected. I guess I'm more used to the ocean.

In the evening there was the Lost finale but I only watched part of the recap hour before we got in the van to drive to our last event at an observatory. I used my dad's ticket while he went to bed early.

The Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory has a huge 26m dish and many small ones.

We weren't there to learn anything about the observatory though. It was just the location for our talk about the earth, the moon, the sun and the stars. The presenter used what he called "high tech" devices to explain the phases of the moon, eclipses and the layout of the milky way galaxy. Really he just used spheres and his head represented the earth. The phases of the moon happen because of the different angle the sun shines on the moon from compared to the angle we see it from, not due to the earth casting a shadow on the moon! That's called an eclipse.

We talked about star charts and part of the presentation was supposed to be to go outside and look up at the stars but unfortunately it was too cloudy to see much.

The next morning we drove back to Surrey taking the scenic route down through Osoyoos to do more birding. The weekend was a lot of fun and luckily it wasn't all about the birding. It was good to get away from the city for a while. I hope to find more weekends this summer to do a lot more camping, hiking and swimming.

The Relay for Life 2010

Last Friday from 7pm to 7am Saturday I participated in the Relay for Life to raise money for cancer research. We had a great time and looked good doing it although it was a little chilly this year.

As we have for a few years now we dressed up as the Justice League, a team of superheroes battling cancer. This year it also fit with the theme of the relay campaign which was to fight back and to give courageously.

The Flash along with Batman were far more recognizable than me. A lot less people have heard of or can recognize the Green Lantern. I'm sure more people will recognize the Green Lantern after the movie in 2011 staring Ryan Reynolds. I may add a photo of me here later if I get a good one from someone else who was there.

We had a ton of stuff to eat at the relay and most of it went home with whoever had brought it. I brought some muffins but I don't think anyone had any. When I got there someone had brought pizza and subway. There was also a lot of candy, nuts, chips, ritz crackers, other muffins and that was just the stuff we brought. At midnight there was a free midnight snack, sandwiches from Baron of Beef and in the morning there was some food from Tim Hortons.

The food kept us going and I also kept track of how many laps I jogged around the track and met my goal of doing 25 laps which is 10km. This is the first year I've kept track and done many jogging laps. It was kind of warm jogging wearing the costume but everyone else was really cold and bundled up.

The relays we have done in the past have been in June at Bear Creek park. This year there was no Bear Creek park relay so we went to the relay in Delta. There were a lot less people than we're used to but apparently more people than the Delta one usually has.

While there was more free food than usual, the entertainment was really badly planned or not at all. The karaoke stretched on way longer than most people could put up with. In order to do some races that were originally planned we had to round up all the people ourselves and really bug the volunteers about running them. Then the volunteers participated in the two races we had and kept the prizes for themselves. I know it must be hard to find volunteers willing to last 12 hours in the middle of the night, but these people were just ridiculous.

See my blog posts about the relay 2 years ago, 3 years ago, and 4 years ago. It is interesting to look back on past relays. I wish I kept my blog more active last year.

Sun Run 2010

So this year I decided to do the Sun Run. It was my first time doing it and I signed up just a week before the run. You have to put yourself in a category based on how fast you will complete the 10km. I ran 5km near my house to figure that out and it took me 24 minutes. I knew that to do 10km my pace would be slower and that the Sun Run has a ton of people so they might get in my way too.

So I put myself in the 1:00-1:15 category, which meant I got a white bib when I went to pick up my gear on Thursday. The numbers start at 1 with the fastest group the blue group and then theres the yellow group, the green group, and then finally the white group starting at about 23000.

There were 51419 runners on Sunday and to keep track of them all they gave us a race timing chip. It gets attached to your shoe and then records your time across the start line and across the finish. This is how they can publish official run times for everyone in the Vancouver Sun. I heard that in the past you had to return your race chip or pay $40, but this year they were disposable.

There were a ton of people filling Georgia street for about 8 blocks. This is looking back from my spot about halfway along the start area. At 9am there was a countdown and then they blew a horn and the first wave was off.

Of course none of us in the white group could tell this since they were too far away to see. This is looking forward towards the start line from my spot in front of the art gallery. It wasn't until 20 minutes later after a couple more waves that I could see people moving. Then we got moved up and then stopped and then moved up again. Finally after about 50 minutes I crossed the start line. By then I'm sure all the fast blue group had finished the run.

I ran the Sun Run with an official time of 52:11.8. Since I started in the white group I passed a lot of people. I was still really surprised though that I came in 4607th place. Actually now it says 4629th. I keep getting pushed back for some reason. There must have been many people who underestimated the time it would take them to finish, since otherwise you'd expect me to have a place similar to bib numbers in the green group, somewhere between 9000 and 23000.

After the race I met up with Adam and we got some free juice, fruit, chocolate milk and red bull. We hung around for an hour and then I went home to take a much needed shower.

Well it was annoying waiting so long to start, the run itself was fun. It was a really nice day out, there was some music playing all along the course and some people dressed in some weird costumes. I think I'll do it again next year except I'll put myself in the green group, 50-59 minutes.

BarbeCURE

On Saturday, we had a BBQ as a fundraiser for cancer and the Relay for Life. My relay team is the Justice League and the relay is May 14th at 7pm to May 15th at 7am. I think this is my 4th year doing it and we always have lots of fun. We dress up in superhero costumes and many people want to take our photos.

Anyways, the idea was that everyone pays $10 for a burger and then we all brought snacks for everyone.

Many of my friends are on the relay team but also many that are not showed up to support it.

The first game of the Canucks' second round of the playoffs was on during the BBQ. They destroyed Chicago 5-1.

We made a lot of money at the fundraiser!

We're still way below our fundraising goal though. If you want to help us out, you can do it on my donation page.