Derek K. Miller - Penmachine words music comment - Vancouver, Canada

When it's raining like this outside...

...there's only one thing to do:

Oh yeah, baby!

Labels: family, nintendo, videogames, weather, wii

With all my cancer treatments and so on, I have, remarkably, not been to Vancouver's famous Stanley Park since the vicious windstorm that hit Greater Vancouver near the end of 2006, a year and a half ago.

Having been born and raised in this city, I think that's the longest time I've ever been away from the park in my entire life, until today. I was downtown for an errand, and decided to take a side trip in the car to drive through the park and see how things were going.

I was astonished. Toppled trees are still everywhere, and the stretch of Park Drive from Prospect Point to Third Beach is unrecognizable. What I always knew as a dense rainforest overhanging the road now comprises steep, open vistas across hundreds of broken trunks down to the ocean.

Rebecca at Miss604.com has been documenting the changes since the storm hit, so I had some idea what to expect—but not really. I'd like to take my bike down there sometime in the next few months and explore the trails again. In many ways, it's a whole different place now.

Labels: environment, history, park, vancouver, weather

Once again, it is snowing crazily here in Burnaby. It seems like we've had many more days of snow this year than usual. I like it, it feels very Canadian here, but I can't go out and enjoy it.

That's because today I started my ninth chemo treatment (out of twelve total) in this cycle, which began in October and will finish at the end of March. I'll spend most of tonight in bed watching Iron Chef America and MythBusters. I'll probably also be lying down most of tomorrow.

If things go as they usually do, I'll be a bit better by Friday, and pretty much back to normal by Saturday, when I hope to play drums with my band for the first time since July.

But right now I feel just gross. Bleah.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, mythbusters, snow, television, weather

Oh, how I love the view from our front window on a sunny winter day:

Labels: photography, snow, vancouver, weather

For kids who live in Vancouver, snow is a bigger treat than in much of the rest of Canada. While it does snow here every year, it tends to arrive when cold outflow winds from the B.C. Interior get overwhelmed by a warm wet front from the Pacific—so it may very well dump down and then melt almost immediately.

Several times over the past few weeks, therefore, I've planned to take the kids out sledding in the fresh snow, only to have the sky turn to rain and the ground become unpleasantly sloppy before we get the chance. But not today. It was just around freezing, but the snow was pounding down, so we packed up and went.

We were the first sledders today at our local park, which has slopes as steep as any ski hill. So my daughters were able to get a bunch of good runs in before they were wet and cold and we went home for hot chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches. Unfortunately, because of my current cancer treatment, blood thinners, ileostomy bag, and all that, I don't think sliding and bumping down the hill is a good idea for me, so I just watched and took photos.

Labels: cancer, family, ileostomy, park, sledding, snow, vancouver, weather

Today's weather was as unpleasant as Vancouver winter gets: just above freezing, windy, with driving rain. Water sluiced down the gutters, and even brief jaunts outside, from the house to the car, or standing at the gas pump, felt bitter. Having something of a chemotherapy hangover from last week didn't help. I slept for four hours this afternoon in a grey funk.

The kids had trouble getting to sleep, in part because the house was creaking in the wind. I imagined what it must have been like to live in this climate in a Salish or Haida village 150 or 200 years ago—despite the richness of our landscape, surely even those First Nations people would have huddled inside their homes in weather like this too.

Then, tonight, around 11:30, I was getting ready for bed and looked out our front window. The wind had died down, the streets were dry, and the sky was clear; I could see stars and, in the klieg lights of the ski slopes, fresh snow on the North Shore mountains. It was quiet, and beautiful.

Labels: astronomy, chemotherapy, family, snow, vancouver, weather

Here, this afternoon, is what Kingsway in Vancouver looked like just as we were driving up the long, slow hill into Burnaby—notice there is no snow at all:

Mere minutes later we near the crest of the hill near our house in Burnaby, and it looked this way:

We needed the extra grip from the snow tires to get up our steep driveway. In Greater Vancouver, a few metres of extra elevation make all the difference.

Labels: snow, vancouver, weather

Mark pointed out that my post yesterday was slightly wrong; the Winter Solstice was actually last night (not the night before), or this morning if you're on Eastern Time. For a demonstration of the contrast in weather, here's what it looks like right now in Vancouver:

Unfortunately, it looks like it will all melt before Christmas. Maybe before sundown today.

Labels: family, holiday, science, snow, weather

Here's a photo of the sun finally lighting up the wall of my daughters' school this morning. It was 8:53 a.m.—there's the Winter Solstice for you:

Labels: family, holiday, school, science, weather

As often happens in Vancouver, our tap water is a little cloudy following the heavy rain and melting snow earlier this week. There is no boil-water advisory, as there was last year when this happened, however there is this:

Those with compromised immune systems due to HIV or who are undertaking chemotherapy [my emphasis - D.] or anti-rejection medications should always use drinking water that has been boiled or treated to the same level as boiling.

Damn, that's me, as my parents and wife pointed out. So no tap water for me. My immune measurements have been okay so far, but that can change—I've only had four of my planned twelve chemo treatments for this round.

Some people might take that, like advice to avoid drinking water in Mexico, as a good reason to have more beer or Scotch¹ or something, but these days alcohol makes me feel almost instantly like crap, so it's bottled or boiled water and diet pop for me.

At least I can still take a shower. And go to my company Christmas party tomorrow. As designated driver.

¹ Thank you again to everyone who came to my birthday party back in June and brought Scotch whisky as a gift. I have enough for several decades now, I think, especially at the rate I'm (not) drinking it at the moment.

Labels: cancer, chemotherapy, vancouver, weather

In a comment on one of my photos of the first real snowstorm of the season yesterday (it's almost all melted now, by the way), an Australian reader noted that he had never seen snow first-hand in his life.

That's a strange concept for any Canadian, but I started thinking about it and realized that not only did our hominid predecessors evolve in parts of Africa where it never snows, even today the great centres of human population—some of the most densely inhabited parts of China, the vast majority of India, Indonesia, almost all of Africa, the supercities of South America, and elsewhere—are also largely snow-free zones.

In other words, it has probably always been true that a big proportion, and likely the majority, of the human species has never experienced snow. And despite much easier travel, that is becoming more true as populations and climate shift. It's amazing that any number of us, from the Inuit, to the mountain dwellers of Peru and Afghanistan, to the bureaucrats in Ottawa, Vienna, and Ulan Bator, can handle the white stuff at all.

Does anyone have any data to back up my theory?

Labels: australia, environment, evolution, snow, travel, weather

People from the rest of Canada often make fun of us here in the southwest corner of the country, where the weather is generally mild and we never face the kinds of minus-35°C blasts our brethren enjoy so much.

I do think, however, that this weekend's snowstorm, which has been coming down continuously since yesterday, counts as Actual Snow. We can't see the road or sidewalk or lawn, and the big fluffy flakes have built up a good 10 cm on some surfaces in our yard.

Typically, though, a sloppy wet tropical system is on its way to Vancouver from Hawaii or thereabouts, so it's all supposed to change to rain this afternoon and melt over the next couple of days. So we'll enjoy the prettiness today and slog through the muck tomorrow.

If you like, you can watch a time-lapse movie of our putting up the Christmas tree yesterday.

Labels: holiday, snow, vancouver, weather