Mika and The Eye of the Wind (Playing tourist)

It is Chantal's birthday today. She's turning 40! So her partner Conrad and her son Mika are taking her up to Grouse Mountain and I'm tagging along (seems like the right thing to do on a sunny day in the Year of the Snake).  I remember when I was upset when they raised the price of the gondola ride to $16.  The price tag now is $44! Aah. The good old days....  This is Mika's first time in a gondola and it shows ;-)

When we arrive at the top of the mountain my choice of clothing still seems adequate. Hawaiian shirt over a T-shirt. It is sunny and warm up here, despite everything being covered by meters of snow. For lunch, we get a table at the window in the Bistro.  Here the location of your table makes a huge difference! At $19.75 the dish of Mussels is rather pricy, but the Mussels (with Bok Choy) are very good. So is the served wine. Mika busies himself with drawing a picture of the gondola that brought us up, aided by the supplied crayons and the gondola taking a long stop at one of the masts to pick up some maintenance worker. He looks pleased with the results.

After we have soaked up the view, we take the short sleigh behind a slope-cat that is included in the admission. A very short ride! Some clouds are evident now and I put on a sweat-shirt to fend off the cold.  Then at some point Chantal mentions the wind generator on top of Grouse Mountain.  I had completely forgotten about it!  A few years ago I was all excited about seeing it, but then life set other priorities. This is not included in the admission, but for $22 is comparatively reasonably priced, if you can get excited about wind generators and high places.

We have some time to kill before the designated time for the tour to leave (3pm) arrives.  So we walk around and at sotme point I had to ask Conrad about something I though I heard Mika say: "Did he just say hydraulic system?" Turns out Mika, who just turned 5 in January, wanted to show us the hydraulic systems in this machine. I am still speechless, so you can try to figure that one out. Here Mika is pointing out one of the hydraulic systems.













More time was passed by Mika and Conrad in a strange gloved-hand puppet show, which, judging by the picture, Mika enjoyed tremendously.

It is 3pm and we excitedly wait for a snow-cat that will take us up the hill.   When I see no vehicle and ask about it, the guide tells me it's a walking tour. Ah well, that'll help work off the food we just gorged on!  Alas, you only walk 7 minutes to a main ski lift, which takes you up to a 5 minute walking distance from the Eye of The Wind, as it is majestically called up here. Another first for Mika:  taking a ski lift.


Chantal took this picture of a blade speeding past behind me. Quite a feat, getting a decent background, a decent pose, and capturing the blade at the right time despite the always present time lag of digital cameras is not that easy, as I found out when I tried to duplicate this picture with Chantal as the subject.







This is it. The view from the top. You can't get any higher in Vancouver without mountaineering equipment.                  

4 hours of sun, cold, and maybe the altitude air had exhausted us.There is a picture of the faces of the adults in the elevator down, but we look like ghosts and one of the elevator riders has issues with unflattering pictures. The only one apparently not affected is Mika, who is still having a blast. Another indication that age is a fact that can no longer be denied?

But we were all happy to get off the Eye, off the ski lift, off the gondola, off the mountain.  Seemingly I was in the biggest hurry, as indicated by my distance when I took this picture of Mika, Chantal & Conrad in front of the Eye.