Year: 2012

Last Glasses Post

When I had my eye exam, I had them order up three pairs of frames for me to look at from my usual EasyClip collection. I really like that the magnetic sunglasses are integrated into the total design. Well, I never heard from the vision place, so I started the Warby Parker frame shopping.

On Saturday my driver’s license renewal application came in the mail. Rather than take the DMV’s eye exam it is easier to get your eye care professional to fill out that side of the form, so we stopped in on the way home to get that done. While there I asked whatever happened to those frames I wanted to see. Turns out they had one of them, but were waiting on the other two before letting me know.

I tried on the one pair and didn’t really care for them, so we started trying on some of the other glasses with magnetic sunglasses that they had in the store. None of them floated my boat. Then we moved onto some of their sort of retro frames with not much more luck. At this point I was getting tired at staring at my own face (as I’m sure you are too) and was about to close my eyes and pick something at random, sort of a Pin The Glasses On The Man game, when Crystal who was patiently helping us out said, “I’ve just thing for you.”

She came out of the back of the store with three pairs of frames. The first one was OK, the second the same, but number three was the winner, the Eddie Bauer 8206 in Tortoise/Sapphire.

What about sunglasses you ask? Why Transitions of course.

Started up, went down, back up, still up.
Miata Top Transitions since 10/24/08: 1161

4 I’s Two

Alrighty now. The 5 pairs of glasses for Home Try On arrived Thursday afternoon. If you remember, I mocked them up a short time ago, and it is amazing how different they look in person.

It is also amazing how different they look when photographed in natural light:

#4 was supposed to be a Percy in Charcoal Fade, but it was unavailable, so I substituted the Crosby in Burgundy Fade. This turned out to be my least favorite frame, the color was too dark and the fade wasn’t much of one.

I showed them around at work to a few folks (of both genders) and most people agreed that the Reynolds in Striped Evergreen was the one they liked the best. I’m thinking that the main reason for that is they were the smallest and the least bulky of the five.

My favorite, sorta, was the Sinclair in Midnight Blue. I liked the shape, but the color was too dark for me. Unfortunately the other 2 colors this model is available in are probably too dark as well (if the colors match the ones on the different frames samples I got this time.) Next in line would be the Wiloughby in the Tenn Whiskey Fade, but that is almost too dark and then 3rd would have been the People’s Choice, the Reynolds.

I’ve lined up 5 more choices, including the elusive Percy in Charcoal Fade, with a few lighter colors. If the Percy isn’t available I’ve got a couple substitutes, but I hope it doesn’t come to that.

20,000 Miles Of French Roads

Actually the tour only covers a little more than a tenth of that figure at 2,173 miles, but on yesterday’s short flat stage from the Provence of Kroger to the department of Boardman the Purple Whale crossed the 20k mile figure.

As we do every year we’ve upgraded our cable package so we can watch the bike race. What started as the Outdoor Life Network and morphed into VS (later they spelled it out, Versus) is now this year the NBC Sports Network. NBCSN doesn’t show as many repeats as Versus did, so it is not as convenient for us to watch the weekday stages. Last year Versus had a 2 hour show be tween 5 & 7PM, but this year we have to wait until 8:00PM.

We were tempted to try their live streaming, but try as I might I could not find any information if I could replay the stage when ever I wanted, Like 5:00PM…

EVERYONE Loves A Parade

-Sunday July 1st Afternoon-
After our walk to the parks with kids and visiting the local Colqitlam Canada Day festival, we headed into downtown Vancouver to see that city’s parade. A dozen of us took the train, I don’t know what the total was, but it couldn’t have been too bad as an adult fare was less than $2.50 one way. The thing that was very intriguing was there were no turnstiles* and no conductors. I asked our host, “Why’d we buy tickets?” Her reply was, “Just in case a random Traffic Mountie asked for them.” Another fine example of the Canadian’s inherent politeness.

*They are working on installing turnstiles and they should be in place sometime next year.

First stop was to pose in front of the Olympic Flame from the 2010 Winter Games. As you can sort of tell, this is ground zero for the festivities even though the parade route is a couple of blocks over.

We made it over to a corner that was lightly populated near the end of the parade route that had some nice steps for viewing over the folks that would be lining the curb. We hadn’t planned our timing very well as we neglected to get dinner before heading downtown, so our choices were limited, but as it turned out their was a famous Canadian hamburger chain restaurant just a couple blocks away. We left the bulk of the group behind to keep claim on our spot and four of us headed to McDonalds.

We were not the only ones who were grabbing a bite to eat before the parade as the line was nearly to the door. I didn’t think we’d get anything to eat in time to see the parade, but apparently this wasn’t their first attempt at handling a huge crowd in a hurry as we made it out the door in about ten minutes. There was another line inside that was a little shorter, but a lot slower, the line to use the Ladies Room.

We got back to our corner with time enough to finish most of fast food before the parade, but it was no longer sparsely populated. It was jammed with seemingly more people than live in our fair city of Aiken. The parade included everything from a Scottish Pipe Band to a Chinese Dragon to Imperial Stormtroopers and after watching nearly the whole thing (or as much as we could handle), we headed for the train for the ride back to Colquitlam.

By the time we got back to the house, no one really wanted to head back to the park we were at earlier in the day to see the fireworks, so we sat on the back deck drinking wine and telling tales. Turned out it was a good thing that we didn’t go, as they cancelled the show because some knuckleheads jumped the fence surrounding the fireworks.

Happy Canada Day

-Sunday July 1st Morning-
Sunday dawned overcast and misty. While we waited on the house full of people (4 Canadian adult cousins, 2 Canadian kid cousins, 4 American adults and 2.5 American kids) to all get up, get some breakfast and chill until we could head down to the local park for the Canada Day festivities, Donna and I decided to go for a walk and get our first international cache. As soon as we mentioned the word walk, there came a series of small voices, “Me too”, “Me too”, “Me too” & “Me too.” James and Mady and their 2 cousins, Laura and Anna, were coming with us.

We headed uphill first, so that the way back would be all downhill. There were about 5 caches within a mile of the house, but mostly the kids were more interested in being kids, so we headed for a park where they could blow off steam. Donna and I pushed swings, spun merry-go-rounds, teetered totters and made sure no one wondered off. Finally the rain and wet pants convinced the kids to head back home, but we walked right past it. There was another small park in sight just down and across the street from the house. More playing and whatnot ensued.

We didn’t mind this detour at all because this park also held a geocache. I headed off, GPSr in hand to look for it with James and Laura. Laura spotted the camoed lock-n-lock first behind a fence post. Laura grabbed a hockey trading card and James took nothing. We had accidentally left behind at home all the SC State Park schwag we had collected to drop in the caches out west, so I dropped in a couple of American quarters for trade. And as I was explaining the whole trading thing, take something, leave something, she put the card back and picked up the 2 quarters. Oh, well, they’ll catch on later.

In the photo above, from left to right: James, Laura, Morris the Moose (the RCMP mascot), Anna, Morris’ handler(who makes sure he just eats bear kibble, not little kids), Maddy and lastly, some random passerby.

He Who Hesitates Is Searched

-Saturday June 30th Afternoon-
After we picked up our rental car we drove over to Mukilteo to watch the Yellow Belted nephew James take his weekly Taekwondo lesson. We of course reacquaint ourselves with his little sister Maddy and acquaint ourselves with his newest and littlest sister Susan*.

*I looked through all my photos and I don’t have a single photo of 8 week old Susan. Probably because she spent 90% of the time inside her papoose being toted around and the other 10% she was either feeding (no cameras allowed) or getting her diaper changed (no cameras desired.)

After Taekwondo we all piled into cars for the drive up to Canada to visit cousins. James wanted to ride with Donna and I, so we moved his booster seat into the Gray Whale and the two nieces rode with their parents. Scott and Beth gave us James’ birth certificate for his ID and they said they would go through Canadian Customs first and tell the officer that we had permission to drive James across the border.

As we got to the border there was a few minute wait and when the Morrisons in front of us went through they headed to the left, not to the right which is the road into Canada proper. We we cleared by the same officer and told to go to the right and we could pull over and wait at the visitor center or continue on because our travel companions were selected for searching.

No reason was given for their selection, so it was entirely random or it might have been that when the CBSA Officer asked Scott if they were any weapons in the vehicle, he went, “…Aaah…I don’t think so…”

Gray Whale

-Saturday June 30th Morning-
Last year ASCO offered a deal with National Car Rental, you could join their Emerald Club at no cost and get up to a 20% discount, so I opted in thinking I’d never use it, but it might be worth checking out the next time we rented a car.

As luck would have it, for this trip to Seattle, they we a little less than the price of the second tier agency we usually use, so we stepped up a bit on rental car company ladder.

When the taxi* dropped us off at the rental car place we were surprised that there was not a soul around to help us, just an empty computer terminal and a sea of cars.

*Our plane got into Seattle at midnight Friday, so we took a shuttle to our hotel to get a 1/2 nights sleep. When we got up Saturday morning rather than take the hotel shuttle back to the airport and then get a rental car shuttle from the airport to the off-site rental place we took a taxi to make it one shorter ride instead of two longer ones. I’ve got aninteresting taxi ride story for another day.

Thinking there must be some kind of mistake we go up one flight on the escalator to the rental counters. The nice lady put down her crossword, looked at my paperwork, said that all I needed to do was go back down and pick any car from the intermediate aisle.

There were a bunch of Chevy Impalas sitting about, but then I spotted a familiar profile. It was a 2012 GLS (AKA base model), only a year newer that the Purple Whale, so at least all the controls would be right where I was used to them being. It had only 4,000 miles more on the odometer, so all the interior panel rattles were right where we were used to them being too.