British Student .ca

Yesterday I woke up early (10:30am) and decided to try video blogging by showing you just how close I live to Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics.

There were more road blocks around the venue than I thought and was to lazy to see if I could cycle down them. So I went Downtown briefly and on the busy (underground) Sky Train I made conversation with some other Vancouverites about the various routes that all get reffered to as Sky Train, even though most of my usual line (The Canada Line which opened one week before I arrived) is underground. After they left I realised I didn’t think about the simple way to date how old each line is. The Expo Line: 1986 when the World Expo was in Vancouver (Sky Train built 1985?). The Millennium Line, built in time to start the second millennium(actually late by 2 years). The Canada Line, well that must be the year Canada won the Winter Olympics in Vancouver? The Wikipedia Sky Train article has lots more interesting information.

Overall Vancouver transit (public transport) impresses me, it’s good to see it finally being used as much as it can handle, and still Vancouver staff and passengers are over friendly and polite. The busy stations and packed buses remind me of a normal day in London, so I really wonder how it will cope with hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Midterm exams and classes are over for two weeks (I have my midterms after the break), we no longer talk about marks but medals! On Thursday the Olympic flame made it’s way across the UBC campus, which was covered in police and campus security.

I went out on my bicycle so if boredom struck I could just cycle on somewhere else. I don’t see what’s so exciting about the torch, with all the crowds most of us could just see a flame as it went past the Forestry and Computer Science buildings. Yet everyone ran to try and catch up with it, how many of them even knew who was holding it? I casually cycled on, using some roads parallel to Main Mall to get ahead of it.

The Old Bus Loop demolition/construction/turfing finished just last week and formed a centre for celebrations. Some student clubs lined the pedestrianised street and to the side a stage was set up with some bands playing. I saw the torch go down the car park before the bus loop and then tried to cross the crowd. I knew I wouldn’t see it at all down the bus loop, but I caught glimpse of 4 cycling police officers and wondered where they were heading. They went the other side of The Knoll (a grassy construction heap that had expected to have protesters on) and around the SUB. There are lots of steps around here, but I know some cunning little step-free gaps and paths that clearly the police didn’t know. Turns out they were only getting to the traffic lights to see the torch leave the campus. I missed the UBC Torch Flash Mob but I’m not really bothered, it had so much organising and choreographing while pigging backing on another event, it was more ambush marketing than flash mobbing.

Last night (Friday) was the opening ceremony and torch cauldron lighting. I didn’t really think ahead for this and so didn’t arrange with anyone to go anywhere. I kind of suck at getting people together and going out anyway, I should be part of a group of people that can do that. So I ended up watching it in the floor lounge on TV with a few other people. I sat with my laptop to be able to research teams on Wikipedia despite the network port not working and a weak wifi signal. I wanted to watch the BBC coverage but their iPlayer stream of BBC2 wasn’t working.

After seeing most of the ceremony I actually missed Great Britain walk round the stadium. This was soon forgotten when we saw the mess up of part of the indoor cauldron not lifting up, so one of the 4 sport stars didn’t get to light it with their flame.

Later in the night, about 1am, the fire alarm in the building went off. Those that weren’t out partying, or staying in bed, went next door to the Commons Block. In the TV room they were watching a repeat of the ceremony, and I got to see Great Britain this time.

Long before I got to Canada I knew I would want to get a cheap bicycle while I’m here. I’ve been looking on Craig’s List, which is very popular here, but it’s been ttaking a while. You have to search the bicycle board for something resonable annd cheap, look at the photo as this may be all you have, and then contact the seller. You then might never work out a time to meet them, discover the bicycle isn’t suitable (one was far to small for me), or it’s really far away and the seller’s car is at the garage. So you repeat the process from searching the lists again. This gets disheartening, especially when you got your hopes up about a 70s Raleigh bicycle made in Nottingham, UK.

I went along to the student run Bike Kitchen but they had less than 10 bikes for sale, all priced $300 or more. It got to Friday last week and I really wanted to buy a bicycle. I didn’t know what shop to go to but I had seen loads along Broadway on the 99 bus route. My Friday should have finished at 1pm, but I was interviewing students for research until 4pm. Despite the shops probably closing soon I headed for the bus at 4:30pm to at least confirm where the shops were.

First stop was West Point Cycles who were extremley helpful in the 2 minutes I was there. I would highly recommend them even though I didn’t buy a bike there. Apart from new bicycles.accessories they only sell ex-rental which start at $250. They suggested Cheapskates, apparently Vancouver’s best used bike shop, but confirmed with collegues that it had closed down a week ago. The only other option they gave was Craigslist and a shop named Ride It, which everyone knows by the massive “Cheap Student Bikes” sign above the store front. I got on a slow bus to go the 10 blocks to Vine Street. On the bus I met Andy, one of my floor mates, who had also been searching around for a bicycle and was heading to Cheap Student Bikes. This shop, now Vancouver’s only second hand bicycle store, also had friendly and helpful staff. They have a full range of bicycles new and old, from less than $80 to $400 and probably beyond. I left with a nice black Rocky Mountain (Canadian brand) bike for under $200, and Andy and his friends bought a small well made folding bike for someone’s birthday present. The shop gave each of our bikes a 10min check after we bought them, and then it was so dark outside I took my bike back on the bus. On Saturday I went for a cycle and on Sunday, after some annoying fire alarms, finally got to cycle to church. Check the photos for more details.

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