Canadian Flag at Metrotown Mall

The streets, stores, billboards and malls of Vancouver were transformed this week in anticipation of the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics. But is there a Vancouverite out there that’s really excited about it?

Most of my friends associate the Olympics with impossible traffic, higher parking rates, a clogged transit system that’s already at capacity, and rising prices. In fact, the only good thing I can think of that’s a direct link to the Olympics is all the cultural centers that are going to be popping up — and that’s only because I expect there to be lots of great ethnic food at each one. I hope I’m not disappointed.

Go Canada Go!

Eating chicken feet at Dim Sum

I arrived back home on Wednesday and I’ve been catching up with everyone and everything ever since (which by the way, involves a lot of food: Sushi at Kiku, Dim Sum at Red Star Seafood Restaurant, Thai at Green Basil and Brekkie at IHOP within the last 48 hours — oink oink). I still haven’t gotten around to resizing all my pictures from my last couple of weeks in Oz for posts. :S

Announcement

I just realized that although I’ve mentioned it on Twitter, I haven’t posted anything about it here on my blog. My sister (Angela), brother-in-law (Morten), brother-in-law’s brother (Kim) and I are going on a road trip of the states starting this Saturday, October 10th!

We’ll be heading down the West Coast, drop Kim off in LA (he’s got a conference to go to), drive across Middle America, head up the East Coast, and back across the Northern states in about a month. I’m hoping we’ll take a little longer because I’m pretty sure a month isn’t enough time to cover everything. The official site for the trip is By Land, Sea or Air. Twitter hashtag: #roundtripUSA.

Interruption

Ang just walked into my room, said “in case you feel like a little light reading” and dumped a box of travel books from BCAA on my desk. And these aren’t even all of them! They got a set of Canadian travel books too.

BCAA Travel Books

Hoooolyy Guacamole. Did you know that if you sign up for a BCAA membership you can get all these travel books for free (normally $17.95 CAN each)? And all the maps you want too! Ang and Morten both got memberships for about $100 Canadian (they had some sort of two-for-one summer special) which will give us roadside assistance, six free tows, and as many maps and travel books as we want. The travel books are very similar to other guidebooks like the Lonely Planet series, but they’re arguably drier and more fact based information dispensers than travel entertainment. I think I might borrow the USA Lonely Planet book from the library for the trip anyways. You know how it is when you get used to a certain guide book format. Damn you Lonely Planet. You’ve conditioned me!

Anyways, I digress. The point of this post was to let you know that I’m still kickin’ around and still in blogger mode. I’ve just been a bit busy unpacking, getting ready to repack, meeting with friends, and catching up with family. Only 24 hours left before we leave on our US roadtrip! Eep.