Happy BC Day!

British Columbians have had a long weekend. The weather has been very cooperative for this one. What a great time for a Canadian civic holiday! Of course, we did much less than during previous years. COVID-19 has made this a bit of a non-summer. However, one cannot deny its beauty.

   

I did shoot this photo with my drone this morning. We plugged in 'Kimchi' for around twenty minutes which provided just enough time for a short flight near the baseball fields at the edge of Queen's Park.  The Fraser River can only be seen from this location when one gets up above the trees.

Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park

This surely isn't the usual long weekend of the summer!  Pride took place today only online and not in a colourful, downtown parade.  We didn't head to Vancouver at all.  In fact, I don't think we've taken the SkyTrain since returning to the region at the end of March.

I opened Google Maps again with the goal of finding additional parkland which is near but that we've never seen.  Last Sunday, we went a little ways upriver.  Today, we drove just a bit down Marine Way in search of a bit of more green along the river.  We found that almost the entire Fraser River shore of Burnaby is accessible by a trail.   We didn't walk far but were quite near Boundary Road.  Blackberry bushes had been cut back, but we still managed to eat some during the little walk.  Large housing developments are spilling over the hill from Vancouver and Burnaby.   I guess it's good that in a formerly industrial area, river access has been maintained for the public.

New Access to Westminster Pier Park

 

Yesterday, Jay noticed people walking on the new, Sixth Street, pedestrian bridge to Pier Park. It runs over the rail tracks and gives an alternate way to approach the Fraser River. We saw the lights, but it appears as though these are just temporary lights. The project is far from finished as the stairs, kids' playground, and landscaping are not complete. We took a walk over at close to 9:00 pm. It is nice to say we were among the first to stroll down the ramp.

 

Nearly Three Weeks to Arrive

 

Jay received a care package today. It came from his sister in Sri Lanka. With the collection of items were many, assorted COVID-19 masks. That country has done, and continues to do, a much better job coping with the pandemic when compared to here.

A Warm 32 Degrees Celsius

The original appointment was set for yesterday. We had arranged for a guy to come and install our sliding closet doors. We got a call earlier in the week rescheduling to 12:30 pm today. The first fellow was Russian and helped unpackage the doors and installed the upper-rails. For some reason, he forgot to bring along the drill bits for cement floors and left to go get them. 

His company called us and said he was feeling light-headed and would be unable to complete the job today. I think it was dehydration as we offered him refreshments but he didn't take us up on it. Today has been the very hottest day of the season.  Due to his job, he might be concerned about catching or spreading COVID-19.  

Another fellow came at around 2:00 pm after finishing his first job. He had to drill into our concrete floor to anchor six bolts for the bottom track of each door. This is the type of work which can be heard throughout our entire, 17-storey, concrete building. It always makes me cringe, because it's like having a tooth drilled.   At last, we're all set with the replacement sliding doors and will no longer need to look at our clothes a hundred times a day. 

Our usual afternoon naps were cancelled but I'll cope.  When choosing my afternoon coffee k-cup, I took somewhat of a chance. This one arrived in our last variety pack.

 

I think it was supposed to be blueberry.

The New Westminster Quay

Cloudlessness is a nice situation in BC during July.  I live for this weather and wish that all our time in the province could be spent with similar sun and the temperatures of today.  After running uptown, we drove to the Quay and parked long enough for a lengthy morning stroll.  

This riverfront development was completed before we moved here.  It is a nice neighbourhood with a mixture of low and high rise housing, and even has a large cooperative housing component.  The city's parks department outdoes itself with the flowers and vegetation along the Fraser River Boardwalk.  

Up in Downtown Again

I last had the drone out twelve days ago. We've had a run of great weather, but I just didn't take the time to practice flying. This morning, I considered driving uptown to discover a new location, but the Westminster Pier Park is just too close and easy to access. I had never taken my Mavic Mini to the west end of the park.

It was sunny and although a bit gusty, at one point, I got up to an elevation of 60 meters. This number is less than half of what's allowed by law and I think it will take me the rest of the summer to go close to the limit. I could hardly spot the 249 gram (8.78 oz) airborne device at the altitude I reached today.

 

 

Earlier this afternoon I posted the picture directly above on Facebook. I mentioned that this shows downtown New Westminster, my home since 1998. I didn't specifically mention that our buildings are on the top left-hand side of the photo, the ones with the green balconies. We are on the front side of the taller tower on floor ten of seventeen. 

I'll end with a drone selfie below. Behind the end of the park is the construction area for a future two towers which will stand over 50 stories high along the New Westminster riverfront.

A Large Thought

To everyone who has ever helped me, in ways both big or small, get to where I am today ...

  Columbia Street Construction Site, New Westminster, BC, Canada

Lower Como Creek

 

Today was the beginning of what we consider perfect weather. You'll never ever hear me complain that it's too hot. For, when temperatures are 30°C, I'm the happiest. I absolutely love it when one needn't think twice about running out the door in shorts and sandals. Thankfully, for a number of years we've spent winters in such places. It has been quite a few months before the local weather has caught up to our preferences this year. 

Today on Google Earth, I saw a patch of green running though a rather industrial area near our Canadian Superstore and Coquitlam IKEA. I didn't recall seeing anything that seemed as though it could be a park. So, we drove twenty minutes from the apartment to check it out. Sure enough, there was a recovered creek zone labeled as a 'linear park' running to the Fraser River. Next to the water there was a small area with grass and a few picnic tables called Don Roberts Park. It was really a pleasant place in a very unexpected area. We walked a few kilometers. 

Before heading back home, we spent 20 minutes at New Westminster's Queen Park so my car could charge up a bit. Now, because the weather is good, if I were to charge the battery to 100%, my Hyundai Kona shows it would be able to travel about 509 km (316 miles). That'd be enough to get to Portland, Oregon. I'm sure I'd suck up more electricity than that with my propensity for a lead foot with Kimchi on any good highway.

 

 

2LP Double Playing Time

"Thanks for listening to Spotify. No really! You could have listened to the radio. You could have spun some vinyl. You could have played a cassette tape. You could’ve listened to an 8-track tape, if you knew what an 8-track tape looked like.  But you listened to Spotify. Thanks for that! And you still have hundreds more playlists to enjoy."

   

Screw you, Spotify. 

I found this today when cleaning the front closet. I don't know where I picked it up.   It couldn't have been in the case from Columbia House in my Ford Pinto during college.

Getting Rid of the Bifolding Closet Doors

Getting through our hallway has been difficult recently. I guess it's good that, for the most part, it's only us using it. Last week, we stored junk waiting for our condo's free removal event. After those items were cleared, it seemed nice to have a clear shot to the apartment door. 

Today though, two bedroom closet doors were delivered. They have to sit in the hallway.  We're having a guy come to put 'em in. We are pretty good at many kinds of chores, but we decided we'd rather not discover how good we are at hanging sliding doors.  He doesn't get here until next Wednesday.

Things Were Different a Year Ago

I turned 61 years old today.  The outside temperature in New Westminster, BC reached about 20°C (68°F) but seemed cooler.  In fact, I chose to wear long pants rather than shorts this morning.  I'm much more at home when temperatures are around 10°C hotter than this.  It was a calm and restful day.

However, I couldn't help but recall my birthday last year when it was a tad cooler than this.  On this date in 2019, Jay and I explored a glacier just outside of  Skagway, Alaska.  I had waited sixty years for my first helicopter ride.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Tile Trackers Make Great Birthday Presents

I used to work for toys prior to early-retirement.  My devices still set me back cash and I cannot justify those which aren't somewhat essential.  As such, I will probably wait a little bit before getting more Bluetooth trackers.  

I got my first lot of four this morning.  An Amazon box was in front our the apartment door when we got back from buying vegetables. I have to say, these little, plastic squares are a bit addicting.   I can imagine having them all over personal objects. 

I'd easy accept some as birthday presents, if you don't know what to buy me for tomorrow's celebration of my sixty-first.  I'd like a couple of Tile Slims, please. Yet, I'd not turn down a pack of Tile Stickers, or if you'd like to give a single item, a Tile Pro would do just fine.

For the Love of Gadgets

Yesterday, I asked on my Facebook feed whether anybody I knew had experience with Bluetooth trackers. The response was nada. Of course, a few years back I deleted my old account with several hundred friends and acquaintances. Now my account has just 20 or 30 people who I'm interested in hearing from and whose posts don't piss me off too much. So, I haven't a large cross-section of the universe to poll.

 

I'm such a sucker for gadgets!  Until a little recent research, my concept of trackers was a vague mixed-up jumble of untruths alluding to GPS devices and mysterious FBI vans. 

Put simply, in the current state of development, a tracker is just a little Bluetooth chip with a speaker that can be summoned from a phone app.  For example, this would let one find one's lost keys if one were on a keychain in another room.

They've undoubtedly improved since their inception a half dozen years ago. Now, they can show their last mapped location if it lies further away than Bluetooth's mere few hundred feet. Many brands have an anonymous crowd-sourced software feature that allows other users to automatically help find a tagged object if lost in a public place. 

I have absolutely no need for this type of device, but I just ordered Tile Mates from Amazon Canada. Each was priced substantially less because of the four-pack deal. Tile is the present leader in North America although they may not be the best choice. In fact, I contemplated going with Chipolo which is popular in Europe as they offer more robust services free of charge.  However, an order would have to be sent via international courier and take 5 to 14 days to reach Western Canada.  Because of overnight delivery, I hope to start playing with my Tiles tomorrow!

Sunny Day Activities

What did we do on the hottest day of the summer so far? 

Well, we verified a few choices for a bathroom tub reno, and ordered two closet doors at Lowe's in Queensborough.  We also waited for the MALM bed from IKEA.  I'm glad the guys had a dolly as the seven boxes made for a massive and heavy delivery.

We spent the majority of the afternoon figuring out how to assemble the bed. Again, we'd be experts at doing another after all the painful trial and error. However, it is a skill we're unlikely to ever put to use in the future. 

After sleeping with the memory-foam mattress directly on the floor for two nights, it's going to seem easier getting down out of bed tomorrow morning.  I think I like the look of Leirsund slatted bed base.  I hope I like the feel of it.

We still haven't assembled the MALM bed's four, under-bed drawers. We'll unbox those tomorrow.  Yay, more places to hid junk that'd be better if thrown away.