Whistler-Extravaganza weekend!!!! Day One

A while ago, Theresa, Chad, Pammer and I decided to book a weekend extravaganza in Whistler. Finally our weekend arrived!! Last weekend (the long weekend up here in Canada, for you American readers of mine) we headed up for 3 days of fun (Sat-Mon) But the best part is that we decided to take the train there!!!! The Whistler Mountaineer leaves from North Van and takes 3 hours to get up to Whistler. We got a meal, non stop bevy service and slowdowns for extra scenic photo ops!! The weather was amazing, hot and sunny and perfect for sticking your head out of the train windows and feeling the wind in your face!!!

Here are my travelling companions, ready to go!!!
Pammer, looking pensive and watching the amazing scenery

We were lucky to be right at the very back of the train, which was cool because when we crossed the tressel bridges, we got a view of the whole train stretched out before us....i'm a fan of the sepia/b&w colors for certain types of pics and i thought it worked for said photos down below

If you look closely, you can see a mountain there in the background...it's fairly snow covered still, so it sort of blends in to the sky b/c of the sepia, but i think it still looks cool

In Whistler....home of the 2010 Olympics....here we are practicing for our tryout on the Bobsled team

Cheers!! We went out for a fantastic Mongolian dinner where you choose your meat and veggies and they cook it up before your very eyes...mmmm...delish.....and some Rickards complimented the dinner perfectly!!!

There was still snow on the top half of the mountain and some of the top runs were still open. And it's also downhill mtn. bike season...It's wierd to see the combo of both skiers/snowboarders and mountain bikers wandering the village!!
And the view from our hotel balcony

end of day one.....how FUN!!!!!!

day 2 adventures....ATV'S!!!!

Day two, the weather was still amazing and it was time for some FUN...ATV-style!!!
Here's a before shot...my face is still clean...compare it to the pic at the end...lol

here's me and chad just before going high speed through a mud pit....sweet....

here's the view from part way up the mountain...that's Whistler village down there

me and pammer giving the thumbs up!!
And here we all are at the end of our adventure...safe, sound and DIRTY!!!

And with our helmets off you can sort of see our muddy faces....the best part was walking back through the Village to our hotel looking like bums...lol!!!

A little bit 'o dirt never hurt anyone!! Well i'm off to hit the showers!!!

How FUN!!! I definitely recommend ATVing to anyone...it's SO MUCH FUN!!!!

day 3 - a rainy ride home

Well, our last day has arrived and it's time to go home...it's not so hard to leave when it's raining I guess...but it would have been nice to have a couple more days to relax!! Anyway, the train ride home was still beautiful, in a different way other than sunshine...lots of low cloud, fog/mist and raindrops...still cool for photos!!
this is just to see if you've read till the end of my 3 posts!!!! Our hotel had WICKED robes...lol!!! here are pammer and I showing them off...Pammer doing a Zoolander, and me being pensive...

Ok you've made it this far, here are a few last pics of the scenery on the way home...late afternoon after the rain, some cool lighting for sure

And back to North Van, under the Lyons Gate Bridge, and it was time to disembark and head home....

SWEET weekend full of fun, laughter, food, drink and of course FAB company!!!!!!

another week, another fleur

Well not much happened this week - little bit of work, little bit of play, little bit of time with "rebs" shooting some flowers. My apartment, of course, remains in chaos, as the packing continues, just 3 weeks left!!!!! And another highlight from this week, that most people don't care about, is that the semi-finals of the NHL playoffs got underway...ahh...good hockey!!

Anyway, here are some fleurs to share with y'all, a random assortment of gerbras, a tulip and even some dandilions that i think look like pretty perty weeds :)

This is a pic I took while on a walk at lunch today - I'm looking over the edge of a bridge, to the water below (pretty sure that's my head at the bottom of the shot, the black dot) and in the midst of the tree reflection, you can see a bicycle that someone has abandoned, sitting below the water's surface

whew...what a week

If I were to choose one word to describe this last week it would be "chaos". But don't fear, there's actually not much stress accompanying that chaos...at least not yet!! My apartment is in disarray! I've decided to get a head start on my packing, as time always seems to get away from you toward the end of the month....so there are boxes everywhere. Some are full, some are half full, some are still flat and waiting to be put together. 28 more sleeps, i can't wait!!

And then there's the chaos at work. It was a crazy week. Not because of clients, not because of paperwork, but rather because of vandalizism. Where I work there are a couple of different buildings on our property. Addiction Services - the department I work in - has a classy looking trailer at the west end of the parking lot (and by classy I mean...uh....well pick a word the opposite of classy...). There are 3 other buildings on our property, for various departments. Anyway, so you know how people (ok yes mostly people who are in active addiction) have a tendency to steal copper to try and make a couple of bucks? Well earlier this week, somebody tried to do just that....someone crawled under the Addictions trailer to try and steal copper pipes. However, in their apparent confusion, they misunderstood which pipe was for what. Apparently the water pipe looks surprisingly similar to the gas line....do you see where I'm going with this? Anyway, they hacksawed through the gasline, realized what they'd done, and took off. Amazingly, there was no explosion, just a buildup of gas under the building, until some lady walked by early in the morning and heard the gas hissing from under the building. I guess she made the appropriate phone calls, because when we all arrived for work, we were greeted by police cars, fire trucks and the gas company. To make the rest of this story shorter, I got Wed. afternoon off (woo hoo!!!) and we've all been playing a fun game of "office juggling" for the remainder of the week. Now we're just waiting for the smell of gas to dissipate and are supposed to be back in our offices by monday but we shall see...

Anyway, let me leave you with a few photos I took today. I went out to Chilliwack to pick up the new kitchen table and chairs I bought earlier this week and made a pit stop near the river to take some pics...enjoy!!