Collecting the marathon pack

5 May 2017

All our miles of walking yesterday didn’t end with the Lost Lagoon. In the evening Jen wanted to take us out for a bite to eat at one of her favourite restaurants. We went in her car but, on the way, we stopped off at one of her favourite beaches, Spanish Banks, named in commemoration of the June 1792 meeting of the English under George Vancouver and the Spanish under Galiano and Valdés. This was the shoreline we’d been looking out at from English Beach earlier in the day. 

After such a beautiful day, with temperatures in the mid twenties, it should have been a lovely evening for a stroll along a beach and, at first, it looked as if it would be, although the light was beginning to fade. As we strolled along the shore admiring the gigantic pieces of driftwood that looked like sculptures I thought I might even get some good sunset photographs. What I didn’t expect to see was an eagle sitting on a sandbank created by the outgoing tide. We don’t have eagles in England and this was the first I’d ever seen. What a shame it was too distant for a decent picture.

Spanish Banks is actually a series of beaches on the shores of English Bay, opposite Stanley Park and close to the grounds of the University of British Columbia. There is plentiful parking and, behind the beaches, there is woodland and a trail. Jen told us this was a popular place for locals to have picnics, play soccer, volleyball and swim. Even at this late hour there were people about, walking, running and unwinding at the end of the working day.

“There’s a storm forecast for later,” Jen said after we’d been walking for a while. “We don’t often get thuunder storms here so it’ll probably come to nothing but we probably shouldn’t walk too far just in case.”
We, of course, are all too farmiliar with thunder storms and storm clouds. The clouds that had snuck up while we’d been walking certainly had a thundery look about them. In fact, when I looked closer, I could see rain falling on the opposite side of the bay over Vancouver and the beaches we’d walked along this morning. The dark clouds and the low sun painted the scene with a beautiful golden glow but, as none of us had coats, we all agreed it was best to head back to the car.

Fat spots of rain began to fall shortly after we turned back, making us quicken our step. For once, Lady Luck was with us. Although the rain kept falling, it didn’t get any harder and we made it back to the car damp rather than soaked. There was even time for a quick almost sunset snap before we drove away.

We ended what had been a fabulous day in one of Jen’s favourite restaurants, East is East. Without her we’d probably have never found it but I’m so glad we did. The atmosphere was wonderful, with subtle lighting, rustic tables, colourful ethnic wall hangings and artwork. The food was even better, based on the kind of thing you’d find along the silk routes through Mongolia, Tibet, India, Persia and Turkey. The whole experience reminded me of my days in Morocco. If I lived in Vancouver this would quickly become a favourite of mine too.

The threatened storms never really came to anything but, this morning, the skies were still grey and overcast and there was drizzle from time to time. We had just one mission for the morning, to collect Commando’s race pack. It was still not certain he would be running the marathon, his Achilles was still tender and untested on a run, but, if he didn’t collect the pack and his chipped race number, he wouldn’t be able to run no matter what.

After our previous wet and fruitless attempt to get to the Vancouver Convention Centre we did the sensible thing and asked for Jen’s advice. She explained that we needed a Compass Card, a reloadable fare card that works on all the transit systems in Vancouver, to get through the barriers at the station. She happened to have a couple and, to save us the hassle of getting our own, she leant them to us. It is so much easier when you ask someone in the know. We also did some research on the route so, when we arrived at Broadway City Hall Station this morning, we more or less knew what we were doing.

All our careful preparation paid off and we managed to catch the Skytrain, an unmanned rail system a little like Docklands Light Railway. Despite the name, our journey was actually all underground, which disappointed Commando a little. In the 1950’s the city had plans for a monorail system but funding was an issue. The system was eventually built and opened in time for Expo 86, the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication. The technology came from the Urban Transportation Development Corporation, an Ontario crown corporation. Since then the system has been extended and now has almost fifty miles of track, making it the longest fully automated driverless system in the world.

Despite the lack of panoramic views the journey to Waterfront Station ran smoothly and the station itself was a joy to behold. Built in 1914 by the Canadian Pacific Railway and architectural firm Barott, Blackader, and Webster. The style is neoclassical, with ionic columns, a grand main hall with two large clocks and ornate ceilings with oblong mouldings and pastel coloured paint. Above the columns and arches of the walls there are beautiful murals of Canadian landscapes painted by the wife of a Canadian Pacific Railway executive. I could have stayed there for hours just taking everything in but Commando was eager to pick up his race pack.

Out on the dismal street it took us a while to get our bearings but, with the help of a passerby, we were soon heading in the right direction. When the water came into view we knew we were on the right track but we didn’t actually know which building we were looking for. We walked up and down, staring at the buildings, hopeful of seeing queues of people who looked like runners. The problem was the train journey had been speedier than expected and we were early. There were no queues because the expo hadn’t yet opened.
“That building looks just like the back end of a cruise ship,” Commando remarked as we came around the side of the Pan Pacific Hotel.
A few steps further and I was laughing out loud.
“That could be because it is the back end of a cruise ship,” I chuckled.

The next odd thing we saw was a huge killer whale that appeared to be made of giant Lego bricks. For a few seconds I thought I was seeing things but it was actually a sculpture by Douglas Copeland called Digital Orca. Created in 2009, it isn’t made from Lego bricks at all, but from powder coated aluminium on a stainless steel frame.

While I was taking photos Commando had spotted another interesting sculpture. It was an unusual piece, four tubular pipes rising to make a kind of twisted pyramid over a pool with a fountain. The tubes looked as if they could be lit from within.
“I should think it would look amazing at night if it could be lit up,” Cmmando said.
Little did we know we were looking at the famous Cauldron from Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympics. The Olympic flame has it origins in Ancient Greece where a fire was kept burning throughout the Olympic Games to celebrate Prometheus’ theft of fire from the God Zeus. In the Amsterdam Olympic Games of 1928 and the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Winter Olympics in 1936, a similar fire was introduced to the modern games and has been used ever since. A torch is lit in Greece and carried in a relay to the site of the games. This is the cauldron that was lit in Vancouver in 2010, or at least one of them. Vancouver actually had two cauldrons, one inside the BC Place Stadium and another, outdoor cauldron, outside the Vancouver Convention Centre, which was hosting the International Broadcast Centre for the Olympics.

Without even realising it, we were standing in the Jack Poole Plaza right outside the Convention Centre we were searching for. Of course, this didn’t mean we found it immediately. We wandered up and down a bit, got distracted by a little sea plane landing then discovered lots of sea planes on jetties on the water in front of us.

Eventually we turned back to The Cauldron and the buildings around it. This was when we finally noticed the Convention Centre sign. To be fair, this may be one of Canada’s largest convention centres and it may occupy two buildings, but the signage is hardly in your face or easily noticeable. Frankly there was quite a lot else we didn’t notice. Maybe it was the drizzly weather or the need to collect the race pack. The building we went inside won a Go Green certificate for being environmentally friendly. It has, amongst other things, a living roof, with six acres of landscaped grass, four hundred thousand native plants and four colonies of bees. Still, even if we had known at the time, it’s not open to the public so, unless we got on one of the little sea planes, there was little chance of seeing it.

So, totally oblivious to the amazing building we were inside, we collected Commando’s race pack, got his chip checked, wandered around the expo looking at all the sports gear for sale, found his name on the flag in the foyer and left. As we went down the stairs to the exit I did stop to take a picture of the wonderful globe hanging from the ceiling. That much I did notice.

After that it was back to the station and onto another Skytrain. This time we took a different train so we did actually get to go on some of the elevated parts of the route, even if it did mean a long walk back to West Broadway.

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