Sunday, February 21, 2010

Vancouver ROCKS!

There's a long and proud history in this city of people balancing rocks and building mini Inukshuks. On an average day, a stroll along the sea wall by False Creek or in Stanley Park will pass a dozen or so of these structures.

Now that the Olympics are here, however, we've taken inspiration from the last Olympic host city

Thanks, Beijing!

and have built ourselves a Terracotta Inukshuk Army!

Photos taken yesterday, by me, at False Creek by Science World.


 

  

There was a stretch of a good few hundred metres of shore line that looked just like this
Right after I took these photos, an official photographer from NBC Today asked to take a photo of me! It must have been my Team Canada hockey jersey - Team GB toque combination, because he asked me where I was from and which events I'd been to. If any of my American friends are still talking to me after today's hockey game, please let me know if you saw me on TV!

16 comments:

  1. I think the question may be are we talking to them

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't see you.... sorry.

    And I am now a bit confused about why the commentator stressed "we beat their all NHL team" since as far as I know, US has a NHL packed team too??

    Confused is the word. And I will have to avoid internet tomorrow morning and just dive into the recording of the Sweden vs Finland since there is no way I will stay awake until 1.30 am to watch it.... Too important day tomorrow :(

    oh, and I'm keeping fingers crossed for the Germany game. They have a great goalie and a good forward line of NHL pros...

    ReplyDelete
  3. We whooped Canadian butt. Why would we not be talking to you?

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't know why you guys are talking about hockey, there was no hockey game last night, no sirree. You must have all imagined it.

    Look at the pretty pictures, though! Aren't they nice? The sun is shining and all is well in Inukshuk land, la la la (skips away)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thomas, your guys did indeed kick our butts. Maybe it'll be good for us, you never know! And as Mr E Man pointed out last night, "they have to play Russia. We play Germany. Who won this game, again?"

    (Yes, I know our game is an extra game. We've decided that this is A Good Thing - an extra warm-up game, if you will).

    I don't get to see many of Brodeur's NHL games - is he usually that inconsistent? He made some really great saves, but at least two of the goals were his fault. We were all calling for Bobby Lu after the 2nd US goal, I wonder if he'll get the start against Germany.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Cath,

    Hate to break it to you but ... the winner of Canada/Germany gets to play Russia. The USA will play the winner of the Belarus/Swiss game (and we already manhandled the Swiss). We could wind up meeting Canada again in the Finals ... would be one heck of a game!

    Brodeur has a less than stellar 0.89 save percentage for the Devils this year. He's not the Brodeur of old. I imagine Luongo will be back in the net for Canada's next game.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Glad to hear you thought that Brodeur was inconsistent too. We weren't sure how it would have looked on TV. The 2nd goal he let in was totally due to him showing off, and I think it shook the team's confidence a bit.

    Still, the shots on goal were pretty one-sided. You have to give the US goalie (Miller) kudos for keeping the US in the game. Yes, it burns to admit that :).

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thomas, I was obviously given dodgy information last night. Boooooooo!

    I think Brodeur actually had better NHL stats than Luongo going in to the Olympics, but Luongo had been playing really well in his last few games. The pundits on TV this morning were saying it's likely that Brodeur will start against Germany, but that they'll switch to Luongo PDQ if Brodeur lets in an early goal... we'll see. I'd love to see Bobby Lu given a chance in front of his home crowd.

    Mermaid, it was pretty much a consensus! Mr E Man said early on that Brodeur is a better puck handler than Luongo, but really, you don't lose that much of your advantage if your goalie doesn't handle the puck - but you sure do lose a lot of your advantage if your goalie doesn't stop shots!

    Yes, Miller had an outstanding game. He wasn't the only reason they won, but he was the most important one - the shots were 45-23 to Canada!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Cath: Didn't Luongo shutout Norway in the first game?

    ReplyDelete
  10. He sure did.

    But, y'know, no disrespect, but it was Norway. Currently ranked 11th in the world. The Swiss are 7th - higher than I would have guessed - with Russia #1, Canada #2, US #5, and Germany #12.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The Swiss are 7th? Must be that lone NY Islander on their team. ;)

    Good luck with Russia (I am assuming you'll beat Germany).

    ReplyDelete
  12. Again, no disrespect, but if we can't beat Germany, we don't deserve to be anywhere near the quarter finals!

    ReplyDelete
  13. huh, I thought Germany was higher than Norway... then again, I probably would stack Norway too far down just because...

    Germany did well, imho, and have a great goalie and at least 5 good forwards/non defense men. As long as you can score, it should be a piece of cake :)

    and by the way, was there a reason you skipped out on saying Sweden is currently ranked 3 ;) I'm not looking forward seeing the game against Slovakia though. It's going to be tough. They (Sweden, maybe I should write we) need to score goals. we have a great goalie/defense situation going but goals? I guess if we only play Sedins, Alfredsson and Bäckström (with a side kick of Weindein or however he spells his strange name) we're good? 'Coz Forsberg sure isn't scoring...

    ReplyDelete
  14. Sorry, Chall - I was focusing on Canada's past and future (including potential future!) opponents.

    I bet you wish Alex Burrows was Swedish - he plays oh so well with the twins!

    GOOD LUCK in the women's semi-final vs. USA today!

    BTW, it's just been pointed out on Twitter that "Martin Brodeur" is an anagram of "A morbid return"

    ReplyDelete
  15. What would happen if you were to say, accidentally, knock one of those piles of rocks down? Would you get chased through the streets by people wearing those sporty new Canadian olympic team gloves?

    ReplyDelete
  16. Heh - I don't think I'd want to chance that!

    We did see one guy building a new inukshuk while wearing a rather large backpack. At one point he turned to pick up a new stone, and his bag almost wiped out an existing structure. A whole bunch of people watching from the path simultaneously shouted "DON'T MOVE!" I'm not sure if they were his friends or random strangers, but it did the trick...

    ReplyDelete

I promise to respond to all respectful non-spam comments! Don't be shy! Oh, and please don't type my surname in your comments; I know you all know what it is, but I'd prefer Google to rank other pages before this blog.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.