Flickr

I've been putting more and more of my photos up ion flickr lately, you can check out my account here:

flickr

http://www.flickr.com/photos/37291262@N07/

I'm off to work, enjoy!

Billy's Visit

Billy came over to the island for a weekend of riding and photog-ing, here are some of his more awesome shots form our 7 hours of riding. Check out his flickr page here

We found this whale earlier in the day

Then came back to tire tap him later (where you hop off the ground and slap it with your rear tire)Gangsta shotscon'tBest photo in the world

Broken bike? Improvise...

I found a big crack in my mountain bikes fork, the day before Billy was supposed to come over and ride. I considered canceling, but instead i went ahead with the planned ride and improvised on my 11 year old cross country hardtail.

Boo-hoo :(Michiko put a superman bandaid on it, so I think that pretty much takes care of it.

What a day it was, the shere hilarity of ridding something that clunky and old combined with perfect weather and the usual good times that comes from a day of ridding with Billy. Unfortunaly Billy's camera batteries were low, but he shot a few good pictures anyways.

Billy on the roll in, oddly enough this went no where after the rock face, no secret trails to be found

Borrowing Billy's Bike (blur 4x) to test this roll in (Later I did it up on the hard tail, v-brake pride)Me, ridding the zen trail on my hardtail, Billy and I must have hiked and re-rode this section of trail 20-30 times (at warp speed of course)

Also, I thought I should put these up, spring had pretty much sprung as of 2 weeks ago when I took these pictures in beacon hill park.

Cherry Blossoms are out

Beacon hill petting zoo

A few noteworthy occurances around our apartment:

Endless amounts of firetrucks next door

The neighbors cat got locked out when they went to work, so he visited us for a while

Juan de Fuca Trail

Billy came to visit for the weekend and suggested we hike the Juan de fuca trail. I'm not really equipped for an over night trip so we opted to hike just one section (the most difficult section), the 7km from sombrio beach to chin beach and back again.

sombrio beach, our start/end point

the trail we pretty scary in some sections, its hard to show in th photos but the drop to the ocean off the side of this trail was rather unnerving. (more scary section to come)this slippery log was pretty sketchyy for walking, sketchier still for running, as billy demostrates moments after this photo.many of the sections were washed out, we had to pick our way up, across and down a few landslides.
in anoher slide area we were provided with a rope for some mad repelling
the king of frightening moments was the bouncy, low sided cable bridge, but it did net some amazing views.
view from the bridge toward the ocean (the other side was a giant waterfall, but it was too dificult to get a good shot of)the "other" view from the bridge. 80~100 feet? (hard to tell from the photo)

I took a short video so you can get a better feel for the terror/fun
fungi
this is an emergency shelter at chin beach, not damaged or in bad shape at all, looked like a good place to spend the night.inside
billy @ chin beach
chin beach.

heading back home again

I was surprised at how fun hiking coul be, a great way to spend some time outside, so I'll probably have to do a few more day trips and hopefully work my way up to the west coast trail this summer.

Botanical Beach Low Tide

Michiko and I took a trip out to Botanical beach for the march 7th extreme low tide. Despite getting snowed on during the drive up our time at the beach was sunny, yet extremely windy, to the point of making it difficult to stand (Michiko likened it to being back in Japan during a taifun). Luckily we dressed warm and one of the beaches was sheltered away from the wind.

I swear I saw some sort of monster fish behind michiko just after I took this picture, maybe a dog fish? Ling cod? Leoplurodon? Very chilly day at the beach

The sand stone formations make for some crazy tidal pools

We brought my portable stove and made a pot of tea on the beach and had some snack, it was pretty hard to keep the stove lit with all the wind, by a small rock outcropping ket us somewhat protected.

tea time

we had to drink from the pot b/c I forgot the cups

BIG waves, we didn't go anywhere near the water

Michiko stayed bundeled up, with good cause... (it was windy)

Fridge worthy?

Look what I made at school, Corel draw hasen't got me licked yet.

Free Parking

Oak Bay Marina

Reading Break came and went, however I'm still stuck in neutral. Michiko and I have been spending our time trying to find an excuse to get out of the house, luckily Victoria (and Oak Bay especially) is cluttered with small parks. So walks, drives and even some badminton have provided an almost daily escape from the usual sitting around watching seinfeld.

On a walk on the beach minutes from our place we found an eagle roosting
local scallop and oyster dinner :)View from gonzales lookoutan old building at gonzales lookout, lots of antenas on this building, hmmm...
Duck hunt
more ducks, beacon hill park.
dollar store babminton raquets are not an especailly high quality item.
I just missed getting a picture of the pilot boat running out to meet this incoming freighter