Paul Romein

Since today was BC Day, I found I had an extra day to get a few things done.  Among the list was a trip downtown, so I figured what the heck – let’s do a short little hike out that direction.  It was a little bit of a double back from downtown, but I had a nice lunch down at Deep Cove anyways.  Sheena happened to be coming back from Squamish perfectly with all her gear and such from climbing and camping this weekend so I got her the phone and she was keen to come on out and get some more exercise!

I had heard from my uncle that this short and easy hike had a really nice view of Vancouver – and it didn’t disappoint.  However, today was a little overcast so it was a little hard to see.  You can check out my photos here:

For a total of a 5km hike, with just a few ups and downs (no real elevation gain at all), this was a great little hike. The terrain kept going up and down evenly, and there were a ton of roots all over the ground.  We saw a lot of small children, dogs, and families.  Not my usual cup of tea, but it would be one I’d start getting someone into hiking with!

I christened my awesome new real Swiss Army Knife (a gift from Harley – thank you!) up there by using it to open a Heineken that I carried up there!

View 10-08-02 Dog Mountain (Seymour) in a larger map

New Westminster’s Olympic Torchbearer, Don Benson, lit up the cauldron this morning down at Queens Park. We were there to capture the moment, and also interviewed him last week to create a short piece on him to distribute to international media! Check it out on YouTube, and watch for it on TV!

Over this last weekend, we shot the house location for our new film, Fresh!  Everything went very well, and we’ll be excited to get back out and continue shooting next weekend!

Photo credit, Colin Klippenstein.

This morning I woke up just past the crack of dawn and headed up to hike The Lions!  The total round trip took Lisa and I 6 hours and 50 minutes, including a 45 minute break that we took sitting on top of the West Lion.  The total trek was 17km, including our actual climb up the West Lion.  It wasn’t in the books, but there was a creepy rope path/climb that took about 30 minutes to actually summit the Lion.  You can check out our GPS log on Google Maps, check out the 175 photos in my web albums, or click on the image below to check out the high-res panorama shot I stitched from the top!

Lastly, here’s the other data logged by my GPS on the hike, logged by My Tracks.  The battery did cut out on our descent so it isn’t completely accurate.

So I drove out to downtown to drop off Brit this morning, then I came back for a few hours before driving out to drop Waddell off at the movies, and Vanessa at a sledding hill.  Nate was supposed to fly home from visiting with his girlfriend and her parents up in Terrace, but the snowstorm canceled his flight in the afternoon, as well as their fallback flight later this evening!  They’re going to try and get a flight in the morning on stand-by, but it’s more likely that they’ll catch the flight around 3ish.  Just thought I’d pop out a random update.

For the first time ever in western Canada, doctors have performed non-invasive, robot assited surgery on a patients heart.  It was the first item on the 6 o’clock news last Monday, and I’ve captured it to throw here on my blog:

Not only is this really amazing for the medical industry, but what’s really cool is that my mom is the secretary for the featured doctor on this report, Dr. Cook!