Climbing the Grind

Date: 10/08
City: Vancouver, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 147
Cumulative kilometre: 57055
Street: N/A
Weather: Sunny, warm

We packed the bike and said goodbye to Dave in the morning, the weather was a bit foggy and coolish. We arrived at the border a short while later. Dave suggested choosing a smaller border crossing, since waiting times on the main one could be very long, so we did. We got over the border in no time. When we came closer to Vancouver, it got hotter and hotter. We found a reasonable priced hotel close to/in downtown.


After we unpacked, we organized some brochures to make up our mind what we would like to see. At the end we settled for visiting Stanley Park, which is just a large green park area in downtown Vancouver. Just before we arrived at the park, we passed a square with sculptures which carried huge life vests. That made us curious, so we parked the bike and had a closer look.

It turned out that this was a Life Vest awareness exercise and the organizer dressed the sculptures with the oversized live vests. Sigrid actively participated for the good course; I guess she has to grow a bit before the vest fitsJ

We found out that the sculptures are called the A-maze-ing Laughter sculptures, and they don’t wear life vests normally J


Then we entered the park, following the road along the beach. All of the sudden we saw lots of people doing synchronized yoga.

It turned out that this was a yoga event where people would do yoga for the whole day. Exploring close by we found some totem poles, so we had a look at these and their story as well.


Some of the poles even had an explanation on the side.


And looking back from the totem poles, across the bay, was downtown Vancouver, I like the contrast from old to new.

We continued to ride around the park and took a couple of pictures before we settled on a place to watch the sunset.



During the time we were sitting and watching the sunset, a guy proposed just in front of us and she was over the moon, well you couldn’t ignore the screaming of joy.


We just sat back and enjoyed the sunset.


After sunset we drove home, what a beautiful day.

Date: 11/08
City: Vancouver, Canada
Kilometres ridden: 23
Cumulative kilometre: 57078
Street: N/A
Weather: Cloudy, rain, Sunny, warm

It was raining in the morning, so we took our time to get ready. The plan for today was to have a look at the Grouse Mountain and if the weather permits, walking up a path that is called ‘the grind’. As we found out, it is a 2.9km path with 850m elevation, well that doesn’t sound too bad, doesn’t it? We arrived in the car park and left as much riding gear as possible at the bike. The weather was great and the sun was shining, so off we went.


A sign suggested that an average person would need something between 90..120 minutes to get to the top and the record is 23 minutes. After the first quarter it was obvious that we would take us around two hours to get to the top. Below are some pictures where we tried to look relaxed J


But this is how it rellay looked at the quarter and half way marks:


People told us that it gets even steeper after the half way mark, I thougth they were joking.

But in the end we made it, around two hours.

From here on we used the chairlift to get to the Eye of the Wind, which is a wind turbine with a viewing platform on top.

The top of the turbine had a nice view over Vancouver; unfortunately it was a bit hazy today.


For safety reasons it was not allowed to walk the Grind down, so we had to use the lift (phew…). The plan for tomorrow is to get back to the Seattle motorcyclist retreat, Gaila’s and Tad’s casa.

Leave a Reply