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It was a good weekend
Feb. 20th, 2012 08:57 amWe did indeed go to the Vancouver Aquarium on Saturday. Due to various snafus, a bit of wind on the drive and a long border crossing we didn't get to the Aquarium until just after 2. It's OK, three hours is about all the walking we felt like doing. A great bit of fun for the cost of a few munchies and a half tank of gas.
We haven't yet figured out how to gracefully exit Stanley Park. The last time we were here we ended up somewhere in West Vancouver before we finally figured out how to get back to BC 99 - and then we missed a turn at 41st Street and ended up over by the airport somewhere. This time I had the directions to get us onto the Trans-Canada and from there to the exit that would take us to the border. My granddaughter, however, decided she wanted pizza, and the pizza she wanted was an outfit that put an ad in a map of Stanley Park we had picked up. Pizza sounded good, and the ad said "mention this ad for a free drink," so once we had done the Grand Loop of the park and figured out where we were, we made our way there.
There was a parking stall on the street right next to the place. Unfortunately Vancouver requires you to pay for parking until 9 PM on Saturdays (or at least that part of Vancouver does) and I had forgot to bring my loose Canadian change with me. I did, however, have a five tucked away in my wallet, so we filed into the pizza place and I walked up to the counter.
"Can I please get change for the parking meter while we order?" I asked the fellow behind the counter.
"Oh, you can order," he said in a thick accent.
I was beginning to think I had fallen into a rejected Monty Python sketch. "No, can I please get some change?" I said, pointing to the five.
He stared at me blankly. His assistant opened the till, made change for another customer, and closed the till again, all while he looked blankly at me.
"Can I please see a menu?" I said. I figured that would get a response, and indeed we were given a menu.
My daughter went next door to a fruit stand and bought an apple. She paid for the parking with the change while we decided on a pizza we could point to by way of ordering.
It was an okay Hawaiian pizza, with sesame seeds in the edge of the crust which had a nice flavor, but it wasn't worth fighting Vancouver traffic to get to. In my opinion, anyway. And I still haven't figured out whether we got our free drink.
Fortunately Blank Stare Pizza was right on the corner of Granville so we could just turn right and we were on 99 and on our way home. And we stopped at the Sonic in Ferndale once we got across the border. Mmmmmm, cheese tater tots and cherry lime soda. So bad for me and yet . . . so good.
Yesterday I finally got a ham radio walkie-talkie I've had for almost 20 years back to working again and made a couple of contacts. The radio has an internal battery that needed to be replaced, and in the process of getting the back off I managed to mangle the heads of a couple of the screws that hold the back on. I've ordered replacements. That, and I had a beastly time getting a power cord rigged up so I could hook it to my semi-homemade power supply. I plan to just leave this radio at my operating position, set up to access the one or two repeaters I use the most and leave my "big rig" for other stuff. The next project is doing the prep work on a big box kite of an antenna. I'll describe it more in another post.
We haven't yet figured out how to gracefully exit Stanley Park. The last time we were here we ended up somewhere in West Vancouver before we finally figured out how to get back to BC 99 - and then we missed a turn at 41st Street and ended up over by the airport somewhere. This time I had the directions to get us onto the Trans-Canada and from there to the exit that would take us to the border. My granddaughter, however, decided she wanted pizza, and the pizza she wanted was an outfit that put an ad in a map of Stanley Park we had picked up. Pizza sounded good, and the ad said "mention this ad for a free drink," so once we had done the Grand Loop of the park and figured out where we were, we made our way there.
There was a parking stall on the street right next to the place. Unfortunately Vancouver requires you to pay for parking until 9 PM on Saturdays (or at least that part of Vancouver does) and I had forgot to bring my loose Canadian change with me. I did, however, have a five tucked away in my wallet, so we filed into the pizza place and I walked up to the counter.
"Can I please get change for the parking meter while we order?" I asked the fellow behind the counter.
"Oh, you can order," he said in a thick accent.
I was beginning to think I had fallen into a rejected Monty Python sketch. "No, can I please get some change?" I said, pointing to the five.
He stared at me blankly. His assistant opened the till, made change for another customer, and closed the till again, all while he looked blankly at me.
"Can I please see a menu?" I said. I figured that would get a response, and indeed we were given a menu.
My daughter went next door to a fruit stand and bought an apple. She paid for the parking with the change while we decided on a pizza we could point to by way of ordering.
It was an okay Hawaiian pizza, with sesame seeds in the edge of the crust which had a nice flavor, but it wasn't worth fighting Vancouver traffic to get to. In my opinion, anyway. And I still haven't figured out whether we got our free drink.
Fortunately Blank Stare Pizza was right on the corner of Granville so we could just turn right and we were on 99 and on our way home. And we stopped at the Sonic in Ferndale once we got across the border. Mmmmmm, cheese tater tots and cherry lime soda. So bad for me and yet . . . so good.
Yesterday I finally got a ham radio walkie-talkie I've had for almost 20 years back to working again and made a couple of contacts. The radio has an internal battery that needed to be replaced, and in the process of getting the back off I managed to mangle the heads of a couple of the screws that hold the back on. I've ordered replacements. That, and I had a beastly time getting a power cord rigged up so I could hook it to my semi-homemade power supply. I plan to just leave this radio at my operating position, set up to access the one or two repeaters I use the most and leave my "big rig" for other stuff. The next project is doing the prep work on a big box kite of an antenna. I'll describe it more in another post.
