Island Trip

Then I went off on a backpacker bus to Tofino and Victoria with the Moose travel network. I had a great view of the luggage rack.

First stop once we got off the boat was a small lake for a little swim and a jump around. There was a lot of jumping around on this trip.

We got to the hostel in Tofino, enjoyed the view, made dinner, then sat round a campfire until late.

Then I went bear watching. The highlight was seeing a mother with three cubs plodding along the shore, turning over rocks looking for food. We saw a few other bears and some bald eagles.

After that I went for a wander down to the beach to watch the surfers and take some pictures in the haze.

The best hostels always have a friendly cat around. This one was no exception.

It was Karaoke night. Chris the driver showed us the local bar with the sticky floor and the interesting locals. The guys mostly played pool while the girls sang woo-woo-woo-wee. Chris sang "Save a horse, ride a cowboy".

Next day we stopped to look at and play with some large trees. There was a lot more jumping going on, and some gymnastics.

We had ice-cream at a place where goats live on the roof. There are road signs to "Goats On The Roof".

I've been to Victoria before, so I didn't take a lot of pictures. I went for a walk along the harbour wall and did a bit of rockpooling, finding anemones, barnacles, crabs and a few fish. Also, a human-powered sundial where you stand in the right spot so your head shows the time.

The hostel in Victoria was very laid-back.

On the boat to Vancouver, the three Mandys posed on the deck.

Teaching at SFU

Then we all flew to Vancouver. Patrick and I spent a couple of days working on our course in the Applied Sciences department. Nice building.

We were teaching spatial statistics at a summer school to mainly PhD students and researchers. There were also sessions on global climate modelling and forest fire simulations. As usual there was lots of discussion during coffee breaks. And the food was good and plentiful.

Patrick's teaching technique can be a bit forceful at times.

The SFU campus can be likened to Lancaster's - built in the 60s on a hill, concrete, underpass for the buses, modern art sculptures, permanent building site. Lancaster gets the occasional buzzard flying over, but I've never seen an osprey. This one was checking out the giant carp in the pond.

You can leave campus via one of several mountain bike paths of differing difficulty - just watch out for bears and mountain lions.

On the other side of campus is Burnaby Mountain Park, where there are views across the water to the distant hills, and also some totem-like sculptures with distant Vancouver as the backdrop.

After teaching was over, Patrick had some family time in Vancouver, and I went off on a coastal adventure.