change of seasons

We went for a walk the other day and John said, “I miss this smell.” Ocean mist, damp technicolour trees, ribbons of smoke in the air from someone burning leaves in their yard… welcome to Fall.

Today, 24 Hours featured a couple pumpkin patches around Vancouver. I’m glad I made asked Jenny to write her Pumpkin Patch Review, since it’s been my #1 post recently. Now that we’ve been smacked in the face with some Fall weather this week I feel like getting all cozy-snuggly, drinking some hot chocolate and traipsing through the stores’ Halloween displays (which are currently right next to the Christmas decorations).

I wrote about Ice Skating on Metblogs a little while ago, sharing some childhood memories and info about where to go in Vancouver for some ice time. Remember when it snowed in Vancouver? Yeah, things actually froze. Late at night my brother would set up a border of 2x4s around the cement patio behind our house. He’d then turn on the hose and flood the area so that we could wake up to some ice in the morning. Sometimes it worked. Most of the time we’d just settle for the road our front, which had snow packed down so tight it was ideal for hockey and skating around in your shoes.

Thinking of our setup now, it reminds me of a CBC documentary I saw a couple years ago, called The Hockey Nomad. It’s by Mike Downie (Yeah, Gord‘s older brother) along with Dave Bidini (of the Rheostatics). Based on Bidini’s book The Tropic of Hockey, they travel around the world to the most unlikely hockey places like Dubai, Transylvania and Mongolia. The Hockey Nomad is available on DVD and you can probably find the book over at Chapters.

I’d love to go ice skating this weekend but they just interviewed the head coach of the Vancouver Giants on Pratt & Taylor (as I’m typing this). The Giants are 10-0-1 right now – hot damn. They play tonight vs Spokane (featuring Canucks draft pick Grabner) and tomorrow night vs Saskatoon. Tickets are under $20 and the games are always exciting. I think that’s where we should end up this weekend but I’d be pretty content just going for another walk.