This past weekend was rather busy. Saturday was a rare sunny and warm day, so we decided to try to take full advantage. We started with our regular video chat with Grandma and Grandpa, had breakfast, and then biked down to Granville Island for Ocean Construction Supplies’ annual open house. Last year’s open house was of mixed success. This year was much better.

Ocean is an oddity. It’s a fully functional and operational and industrial concrete plant in the heart of a tourist destination. It actually fits quite well into its environment, with brightly and colourfully painted concrete trucks. (Note: We didn’t actually take any pictures of the cement trucks, so the next shot is by Maurice Jassak as found at http://www.seegranvilleisland.com)

Unlike last year, Aidan was excited to actually get in the cabs of some of the construction vehicles, like this large front-end loader. The cab was ok, but he didn’t want anything to do with the tires, bucket, …

Mommy was allowed to do this, but he didn’t like it very much…

He also sat in the cab of this concrete truck (this photo also by Maurice Jassak)

Part of the fun is a big pile of sand that they put out in the middle of their marshalling yard. They sprinkle this sand pile with Tonka trucks, and it ends up being swarmed by mostly boys, aged 3-6. This shot shows a rare moment when there were no other kids on the edge of the sand pile. Typically it looks like a very confusing hive of bees.

Lastly, he went back to the Bobcat that he sat in last year. This year, the camera survived.

After biking back home, we grabbed some lunch and then headed out geocaching!

We headed down to Delta, just south of Vancouver. There were a number of caches that were placed as part of the BCGA’s Cache Blitz 2008. These ones were rated 1.5/1.5 and there were about a half dozen of them so we figured it was going to be easy going.

It was no such thing. The first cache’s ground zero put us in the middle of a parking lot, with various heavy machinery nearby (a wood chipper, for example). It was right beside Splashdown Park, which was preparing for the coming season, so there were lots of muggles around. And lots of trucks. After poking around for a short while, we stopped. We just weren’t comfortable, and it wasn’t an appropriate area for Aidan.

Our next stop was out in the middle of nowhere, beside a fence post, a drainage ditch, and a pile of discarded building supplies. We searched for a while — the GZ put us in the middle of a field-like area — and then another geocaching crew pulled up. They found it in short order, in the pile of rubbish. I was refusing to look in there, but had pretty much figured it must have been there since it wasn’t anywhere else. I mean, I hate digging through garbage to find caches. What is that teaching Aidan? And, once again, the coords were off.

The third stop was much more satisfying. It was a short walk along the edge of a ball field, and Gwen found the cache within seconds of arriving at GZ.

The last stop was next to the highway, in some trees, surrounded by more trash, in an extremely hilly area. All the found logs noted that it took them forever to find it. We DNF’d this one too. 1.5/1.5? Not a chance. Also not appropriate for Aidan. And the trash again?

I was quite steamed by the end of the caching — quite frustrated. So, we went to DQ, grabbed some ice cream and drove down to Boundary Bay park to overlook the marshes and mud flats and eat some ice cream. It helped considerably.

Back to Vancouver and cleaned the apartment better than it had been cleaned for quite some time! Put the boy to bed and then Carla and Tomer came over and we played Thurn and Taxis for the rest of the night. It’s an interesting 2 player game; I’m not sure if it’s better with 4 or not. Tomer won both times, I’m sure he enjoyed himself.

On Sunday, it rained.  We stayed inside.

This is partly how I spent my birthday…

… and it was great.

OK, so it’s Monday 7am. Aidan’s had 3 nights in the toddler bed. Putting him to bed hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world, but for the past two nights, it hasn’t taken any more than 10 minutes for him to calm down. It could certainly be much harder. In fact, we were expecting it to be much more difficult.

He hasn’t fallen out over night. He hasn’t gotten up over night. In the mornings he does his (now) typical morning routine … he sings and talks to himself until one of us comes down and ‘gets him up’. It’s funny: I’ve heard about the phenomenon of toddlers staying in the bed because they don’t think they can get up until someone comes in and ‘gets them up’ even if there’s nothing physically preventing them from getting up … but I didn’t think it would happen in our case. And I don’t know how long it will last. Yesterday, I merely poked my head in Aidan’s room (around 7:30-ish after letting him sing and talk for an hour or more — he’d been making noises on and off from about 5:30 am) and then he swung his feet over the edge of the bed and got up and started playing.

We spent a little bit of time yesterday letting Aidan ride his bike. It’s obviously going to take a little bit of time for him to get used to it. He liked walking it (pulling it by the handle bars) almost as much as being pushed on it. There was a little bit of peddling, but not a lot. We need to go down to Charleson Park to let him free-wheel for a bit.

On the geocaching side, Aidan and I headed off to pick up a cache that we didn’t attempt last weekend. California Roll and Blue Chevy Mad Science is by Acadia Beach on the north side of the Point Grey pennisula.  I thought it’d be a quick find, but I didn’t read the logs too quickly.  Turns out it’s about 30 m off the trail on a small hill and it required a fair bit of bushwacking.  It was just Aidan and I, and typically when we’ve gone after caches that have been off-trail, it takes one of us to wrangle the boy, and the other to search for the cache.  I weighed the options, and given the enthusiasm of the boy I decided to take the plunge.  I was a bit worried that a muggle was going to wander by and ask what I was doing leading a 3 yr old boy into the woods, but … oh well.  Anyway, we made our way to ground zero and proceeded to spend … I don’t know 20, maybe 30 minutes looking for the cache.  Aidan kept himself quite occupied by poking at trees and leaves, and playing with the hiking pole I had given him, but it was still distracting having to keep one eye on him and one eye on the ground looking for the cache.  Plus, I couldn’t very well range too far away from him.  But his humour kept up, and my humour kept up and eventually I stumbled across the cache.  I called Aidan over (erm, and helped him climb/scramble over the brush and fallen trees) and he happily checked through all the damp geoswag while I signed the log and deposited one of our pins.  After that it was a quick trip out, and as far as I know no one called the RCMP to report me. :)

Postscript: It’s 7:20 am now and Aidan’s been awake for the past 10 minutes or so.  Happily singing and talking in bed.  I guess I’ll have to go down and get him up!

This is part of the reason why we cache, and why we place caches (from our Are You Shore You Don’t Know Jack cache in West Vancouver):

Wow! Now this is why I go geocaching on business trips.

So there I was stuck in meetings, looking out the window and noticing that the sky is clear–a February rarity in the Northwest. I begin to get restless. I’m hoping the meetings are done at least before dark and I figure that maybe I could nab a nearby urban micro or two. My heart, though, is pulling me toward a corner of the map that shows a lighthouse and a park along the inlet.

Then a miracle occurs: the meetings conclude at 4pm! I race back to my hotel, change clothes, grab my gear and head for the rental car. I’m glad I have everything pre-loaded into my GPS. By 5pm I’m walking down a path surrounded by giant pine trees and following the needle toward the cache.

I logged the cache about 5:30p and then stood there and admired the view. What a difference from the drab conference rooms, PowerPoint shows, and emails of the day. I’m used to mountains for sure, but you Canadians really have a great thing going here with the mountains rising right out of water.

Thanks, Left Coast Floyds, for placing this cache. It was just the energizing break I needed, and another great example of how geocaching has taken me to places I would have otherwise never seen.

Proimion
Centennial, Colorado USA

PS. Go Avs!