Merry Christmas, Eh!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all!

We hope this blog finds everyone well and enjoying the holidays.

The last month and half have been eventful for us as we attempt to get used to the cold weather here in Beautiful Bristish Columbia.
Marty (attempted) to grow a moustache for Movember and ran his first ultra marathon, we made a trip south to sunny California, had our first experience of snow play, enjoyed some live hockey and NBA and partook in the usual festive Christmas parties.

In November, Marty decided to have a go at growing a Mo and see if he could raise a bit of money for charity.  In the end we raised a couple of a hundred and the finished product turned out ok, not great, but ok!

The final day of the Mo

On a sunny day in November we went snowshoeing for the first time on Grouse Mountain.  It took a bit of time to get used to having the shoes on our feet, but once we got used to it we had alot of fun looking around the Grouse Mountain basic snowshoe trials and playing in the snow. As it was the start of the season not all of the snowshoes trails were open yet but we got to play in amongst the trees and then had some fantastic views of Vancouver. Also as it was the lead up to Christmas there was Reindeer on the top of Grouse, they had set up Santa's workshop and had made a ice-skating pond near the Chalet.

As the NHL have deprived us of seeing the Vancouver Canucks play some pro hockey (i.e the Lockout), on Marty's birthday at the end of November, we went to see Vancouver Giants play Moose Jaw Warriors in the Western Hockey League. This was one of the things we were really looking forward to before coming to Canada and it was really exciting even though the Giants lost.


Hockey!  Giants are in the red

A couple of days later we headed to the airport to make the trip to San Francisco. Marty had decided to do a 50km trail race there and so we were making a holiday of it, leaving on the Friday morning and returning on the Monday night. When we arrived in San Francisco, after a 2 and 1/2 hour delay, we picked up the rental car and Marty had to remember how to drive. It was the first time either of us had driven since arriving in April.  In order to get to where we were staying in Mill Valley, we had to drive across the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge with it's "International Orange" colour. That night we just had a quiet meal and ended back at the hotel early so Marty could get his rest before the race.

The Golden Gate Bridge

Saturday morning saw us getting up at 4.30am, getting a bus to the start line and then sitting in another "Warming Bus" until the start, all of this through a heavy downpour in San Fran. If there was one word to sum up the race it would be: Mud!  And lots of it.  When we arrived at the start line at 5:00am, it had been raining heavily all night and there was already tons of mud.  This was just a precursor to what I was to experience out on the trails.  There were some sections of the course that were ankle deep in mud and to add to the fun some of the trails were at 10-15% gradient.  Making it virtually impossible to run down or up.  I had one wipe-out during the race and it happened at about the half way mark coming down a gravelly, muddy hill when I lost traction and slid a couple of metres on my left side. I scraped up most of left forearm, side and knee, but did no major damage.  After a couple moments I got myself up and running again and had no major incidents for the rest of the race.  While Marty was off running, Erin decided it was a better idea to go back to the hotel, get out of the soaked clothing and watch a movie to return later with the car to pick Marty up. Best plan of the day.

Mud

5hrs and 16mins later

Battle scars

That capped a fairly successful year of endurance events for me, completing an Ironman, Marathon and 50km Trail Race in 2012.  Bring on 2013!

That night, after Marty had cleaned all of the mud out of his battle wounds, we headed to see an NBA game, Golden State Warriors vs Indiana Pacers. After a ridiculously overpriced meal and deciding not to have any $10 beers we settled in to watch the game. Although Andrew Bogut was not playing for Golden State due to being out injured, they still managed to win. The highlight being a Warriors player going for a 3 pointer from over the half court line on the half-time buzzer and getting it in. The crowd went wild.

Golden State Warriors vs Inidiana Pacers

Sunday's activities included heading out to the notorious prison, Alcatraz, looking around the pier's, particulary pier 39, and looking around Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco. After the trains wouldn't work because of the heavy rain, we were forced to drive into downtown in order to get the boat heading out to Alactraz. Alcatraz is the famous prison where the worst of the worst prisoners went, including Al Capone, and we did a tour and heard about the living conditions, the rules and the many escape attempts. Also from Alcaraz were some fantastic views of San Francisco city and bay. Later that day we had a look around the tourist shops at Pier 39, went to the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory and stocked up, and checked out Lombard St, the crookedest street in the world.   The incline is so steep that they had to make the street a zigzag so cars could travel down it.  We finished the evening at The Hard Rock Cafe for dinner.


Alcatraz Prison

Erin and Marty on Alcatraz

After exploring the city on the Sunday we took advantage of having a car and headed out to the Sonoma wine region in the surrounds of San Francisco on the Monday. Sonoma is about 1 hour drive from San Fran, and after a breif stop in Sonoma town to grab a few maps from the visitors centre, we headed to the Benzinger Winery in Glen Ellen where we went on a tour of the winery and learnt about the process of making the wine as well as their organic farming techniques. At the end of this we had some tastings and they told us about their sister winery, Imagery Estate Winery, which was 5 minutes away. After having lunch at a nice pub we headed around to their sister winery for a few more tastings before heading back to San Fran in order to catch our flight back to Vancouver.

Benzinger Winery, Sonoma Valley, CA

The following Monday, early December, we decided to hike up BCMC to the top of Grouse Mountain. BCMC is a trail that parallels the Grouse Grind but as the Grouse Grind is closed in the winter months due to the snow, BCMC is a slightly safer option. It was amazing as we climbed seeing the snow depth get greater as we got higher. It reminded Erin of when you see people in the movies wandering through the snowy woods.

Snowy trees on the BCMC trail

During the lead up to Christmas we of course had the obligatory Christmas parties to attend. The first was the Pacific Road Runners (PRR; Marty's run club) Christmas party which was at a local Irish Bar in Vancouver. It was a good night with everyone talking about their next exciting (from Erin's point of view insane) ventures for running. The following weekend we had a double bill with the ALS Christmas Party on the saturday night and the Reckless Bike Store party on the Sunday night. The ALS party was a big affair at The Fairmont Hotel Vancouver with about 150 people and it was a good night with prizes given out (not that we won anything) and trivia questions. The Reckless party was a bit smaller, with about 15 employees and their partners, and was at a local Oyster Bar in Yaletown.

Every December in Vancouver a German Christmas market springs up in downtown offering German fare. On a monday evening we headed to the Christmas market to check it out. There were many stalls selling Christmas trinkets, decorations, toys, German products (i.e Steins), German food, beer and mulled spiced wine. We partook in some of these later products and enjoyed looking around at the stalls.



Mountain Highway, North Vancouver

Then on a Tuesday morning in late December (week before Christmas) Erin was getting ready for work when she looked out the window to see if it was raining. It wasn't raining, it was snowing and she got a bit excited and woke Marty to tell him the good news. Getting to work that day was fun, although a bit longer than usual as Erin kept taking photos and playing in the snow. I did however take alot shorter time than most people at my work who took 3 to 4 hours to do a normal 30 min trip. On this day Marty decided to go hiking and did so on some of the trails that normally accomodate mountain bikers and runners.  On this particular day they were knee deep in snow!







 

Our back patio during the snow

The Mt Froome forest

Our Christmas Day entailed us rugging up and heading for the snow. As the snow did not want to come to Vancouver in order to give us a white Christmas we decided to chase it instead. We therefore headed up Grouse Mountain for a morning of snowshoeing followed by a Christmas lunch at Altitudes Bistro at the Chalet. Because there were more Snowshoeing trails open on Grouse we decided to do a trail called the Snowshoe Grind which is about a 5km round trip but it is very steep in sections. It is so steep that the easiest way to come back down is to slide down, which was so much fun. After this we had a go at skating on the outdoor skating pond which was covered in snow. We then headed inside to warm up and ran into some of Marty's friends from PRR who joined us for our Christmas Lunch. This years Christmas lunch was a bit different to normal including a huge plate of Nachos, followed by Beef sliders and Creme Caramel and Brownies for Dessert all washed down with some beverages. We finished off our Christmas day by coming home, putting the cricket on and enjoying some Whiskey and Eggnog.

Top of the Snowshoe Grind

Sliding down the Snowshoe Trails

Merry Christmas

Boxing Day saw us once again rugging up to go to the snow. Together with some friends of Marty's we went to explore the snowshoeing trails of Mount Seymour. Walking around the snowshoeing trails of Mount Seymour was like walking through pure white surroundings. There is about 5km of trails in their snowshoe park and we walked around this through the trees, feeding the birds and throwing snowballs at each other. It was snowing the entire time we were walking around and it created a really mystical feel to it. We finished off our trip to Mount Seymour by going and having lunch at the Seymour Pub.

Erin in white surroundings of Mt Seymour

Our next big adventures are a 1 week ski/snowboard holiday to Banff in 2 weeks and Erin is going to Ontario for work for 2 weeks at the end of Jan/early Feb.

Well that's about it for now, we hope to hear from some of you soon.

Cheers, Erin and Marty