Birkenhead Lake: The Winds of Change
During the summer Canada was slowly opening up, for the first time since COVID started. We hadn’t seen our family in over two years, so it was about time to change that. Gili’s dad came on a very last minute visit, and the boys were very excited to have their grandpa around. Usually we don’t plan car camping trips, but we did book this one to Birkenhead Lake as we thought it would be a good destination to explore with our canoe. We also heard it was beautiful there and quite remote, and although we were both sure we’ve been there before we couldn’t quite picture it. So it was definitely time to…
Porpoise Bay: Car Camping by Bike
This camping trip was organized months in advance. Well, two months, to be exact, so that everyone would be able to book a campsite at the ever popular Porpoise Bay Campground near Sechelt, on the Sunshine Coast. The families who were part of this trip are all from the outdoor preschool Kai was going to start in September. Since we’re good friends with a few of them we were invited as well. We liked the idea of spending a few days by the beach with friendly campers. After thinking about it we realized that biking to the campground shouldn’t be too complicated, and would make the trip more interesting. It also…
Stave Lake: An Adventurous Canoe Trip
Gili wanted an adventure. For me the week prior to the trip was exciting enough. Heat Dome. A school closure before the last day of school because of the extreme heat. A toddler whose idea of a heat wave was to hug me as much as possible. I guess he was feeling overwhelmed, and it was his way of dealing with it, but it definitely made things hotter. But a long weekend was coming and we needed to look for something to do. Our apartment was boiling, so staying in the city was less than desirable, but also there was no way we’d be doing a hot drive to an even hotter places. So…
Spring Local Bike Rides at a Six Year Old’s Pace
Spring. The season of change, the season of bloom and for the past two years the season of COVID-19 restrictions. Yes, in spring 2021 COVID-19 was still a big part of our lives. The number of cases was rising daily, anxiety was in the air and a travel ban was in effect. We spent much of last spring doing local bike rides around Vancouver. This year Neil was able to do longer distances, often challenging himself to ride farther. So we rode our bikes – a few bike rides were old and familiar, things we’ve done frequently. Quite a few rides were new to us, and we discovered a whole…
Alouette Lake: Missing Goat
When does summer officially start? Is it on June 21st? Or when school is out? Or is it on the first sunny weekend when you go on an overnight bike-camping trip? This year it seemed especially important to start summer early. In mid May when the forecast showed sun and high temperatures for an entire weekend we felt it was time. Neil asked to sleep in the tent and honestly he was right – it had been too long. There was a strict travel ban meaning that we would not be allowed to leave our health region, so we had to stay close by. We decided on a variation on our last trip of the previous summer (in early…
Hemlock: Binge Skiing and Toddler’s Fracture #2
On the sandwich week between spring break and Easter we headed to Hemlock for a week of skiing. We rented a small Airbnb apartment on the mountain and were quite excited as we hadn’t really left the city since October… We tried to escape before the Friday afternoon rush hour but of course we got stuck right in it. Then a diaper emergency required us to make a break in the middle of the trip. Although Hemlock is technically not that far from Vancouver the trip seemed to take forever. Finally we were on the infamous road leading up the mountain and soon enough we were in a different universe. High snow banks on the two…
Bike Parks in Vancouver and Nearby
Our kids love going to our local bike park (Vanier Park) so in the fall we decided to explore a a few more bike parks in metro Vancouver (and Squamish). Both kids love this activity and never seem to get enough of it. We love it too, it’s fun, free and gets the kids to be active and tired (which is our goal at the end of the day). There is also an element of risk taking and risk management that is so important for kids. If possible we also try to combine it with a longer bike ride, so that we get some exercise too. We have a (now)…
A Mini-Guidebook to Cycle Touring with (Two) Young Kids
Four years ago I wrote a detailed mini-guidebook to cycle touring with a baby/toddler. Since then we have had a lot of changes in our family, and two major additions. The first addition was our second son Kai who was born in 2018. The second addition was our cargo bike, a bright yellow Bike Friday Haul-a-Day (AKA Big Bird), that joined our family shortly after. In addition, time goes by, and our older son Neil (now almost six) grew and started riding his own bike most of the time. Two important additions, a baby and a cargo bike! In 2019 we did two overseas bike tours in three different countries.…
Hiking the Juan de Fuca Trail with Two Kids in Tow (Video)
Hiking the Juan de Fuca trail with our two kids was mostly type two fun. Meaning that hiking the trail didn’t really feel fun, or at least some sections of it. In fact at times it felt more like a survival trip, but in retrospect it was a lot of fun. It was a tough journey for us and the kids – especially for our five year old who hiked it all by himself, but we all came out of it stronger and proud of what we achieved. We all tend to appreciate or want certain things when we don’t have them any more, or can’t have them for a…
2020: Our Local Year
It’s strange to look back at 2020 and to realize that it actually started quite normal, or at least what normal used to be. For us the beginning of 2020 was all about getting back into our normal life in Vancouver after a long pause. Not only did we spend the last three months of 2019 bike touring in Japan and Taiwan, but Gili was on parental leave since the end of December of 2018… So January was all about settling into a new routine, Gili was back at work at an office downtown, Neil was back at his daycare, which he missed very much during our trip, and Kai…
