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Overlooking Arbutus Ridge and beyond from King Edward Ave. and Arbutus St.

Homes, home, homes and more homes, That's one strong impression you get looking over the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood. The other impression is that it all appears to be comfortably well off if not flat-out wealthy.

This impression of comfortable hominess continues for several kilometres in three directions beyond the Arbutus Ridge neighbourhood, south into Kerrisdale, west into Dunbar-Southlands and north into Kitsilano.

[caption id="attachment_10555" align="alignnone" width="497"] How he rolls. Looks like Hansen's statue is about to run the barricade.[/caption]

As I rode west along 10th Avenue I happened to spy a big hunk of something behind barricades and yellow caution tape in the little parking lot beside the Blusson Spinal Cord Centre. It was a very impressive statue of the famous wheelchair athlete Rick Hansen.

This was not a new statue; it had previously been featured on the grounds of Rogers Arena in downtown Vancouver. I had no idea why it was parked here, but here it was in stall 2524.

The larger-than-life size granite sculpture was carved by sculptor Bill Koochin in 1997 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the completion of Rick Hansen's Man in Motion World Tour.

[caption id="attachment_10540" align="alignnone" width="497"] The scene as I was getting up: unusual snow and the typical snarl of poorly-driven SUVs.[/caption]

Thick fluffy snow has been falling steadily at least since I got up early this afternoon. Because the temperature has stayed above zero the snow has only been finding a foothold on lawns, parked cars and garbage bin lids; it hasn't stuck to roads or sidewalks.

[caption id="attachment_10541" align="alignnone" width="497"] This bottle depot has spare shopping carts for binners. Why aren't the boys taking this one?[/caption]

I skipped my usual weekday morning coffee because it was Saturday and I'd slept right through the morning. Instead I made my way through the snow to the bottle depot. The trip was uneventful; the snow was no more inconvenient than a light chunky fog.

The bottle depot wasn't very eventful either. When I arrived at Go Green there were only six other binners there -- at 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon! The staff watched the big open entrance of the bottle depot and complained about the snow.

This was the first of several photos I took this morning looking straight up through the glass "awning" at the Canadian Western Bank building on the northwest corner of West Broadway Avenue and Birch Street.

Water from overnight precipitation was making pretty on the glass and I wasted effort capturing the effect. I say wasted because nothing nailed the surreal look like my first quick zoomed shot. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10466" align="alignnone" width="497"] Late shipment of winter. Wet snow at 10 p.m. this evening.[/caption]

Don't you just hate it when one of your Christmas presents arrives late?

As I type this inside where it's warm and dry, the weather outside is trying frightfully hard -- to snow.

I know what it looks like from the photo; it looks like it's raining drinking straws -- it isn't. It's snowing, but only above street level, no lower than, let's say three storeys. All that's hitting the street is cold rain.

[caption id="attachment_10409" align="alignnone" width="497"] Not quite the cat's meow, but I respect the thought that goes into any stencil graffiti.[/caption]

Yesterday I saw another version of the stencil graffiti of the Cat on a Pedestal, this time in on the edge of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

I was making the first leg of my journey westwards from the bottle depot through the alley on the north side of West Broadway Avenue. It was in that lane, west of Columbia Street, that I saw the cat. I'm quite sure it wasn't there even a few days ago.

[caption id="attachment_10393" align="alignnone" width="497"] Not fit for man, woman, or duck -- maybe salmon or trout.[/caption]

The entire morning was bright and sunny. I guess Nature needed good light so it could perfect its evil plans for the rest of the day.

By 4 p.m.the heavy rain had washed away all thoughts of sunshine.

People are happy to say that the rain falls on the rich and poor alike. Aside from wanting to amuse the rich, I don't know why people say such silly stuff. They also say of an especially rainy day like today that it's a great day to be a duck, and I always want to know if anyone has bothered to actually ask ducks about this assumption.

The only ducks I have ever seen in Vancouver are from Anaheim, California and they only like water when it's frozen. I don't think ducks like a rainforest climate one little bit, whether they're the poor kind of ducks or the rich kind from Anaheim. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10394" align="alignnone" width="497"] Water cascading down the side of a building off South Granville Street on 10th Avenue.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10380" align="alignnone" width="497"] George Vancouver stands his ground in a torrential downpour. What a sea dog![/caption]

Two days ago I posted that I couldn't find the Pride flag that was supposed to be flying at Vancouver City Hall. Well I found it today in the pouring rain.

I was still thinking the rainbow flag would be conspicuously flying amongst the gaggle of flags on the southwest corner of city hall where it would have maximum visibility but no, it still wasn't there. This time I walked all the way around the building. And when I got to the north-side entrance, where I was positive it wouldn't be, Captain George Vancouver was kind enough to point it out to me.

[caption id="attachment_10361" align="alignnone" width="497"] Totally bodged blue Toter-brand recycling wheelie bin.[/caption]

Most people in my little corner of the world call this crumpled little thing a "blue bin." Some, if they work in the local waste-hauling business, likely call it a "Toter" after the company that made the bin. Beginning in the late 1990s Vancouver invested in hundreds of thousands of Toter-brand blue bins for recycling and grey bins for residential garbage.

But in the UK -- the cradle of the English language -- people would almost certainly call it a "wheelie bin."

Apparently all the real heavy lifting, language-wise, was taken care of ages ago by their ancestors. These days the British people just have fun with their language.

And not just people in the UK but also people in Australia and New Zealand. Together they share a subset of English I call Ukanzish.

Outdoor tennis courts in Vancouver's Fairview neighbourhood -- the three courts I saw -- were empty of people.  It must have been the rain.

Apparently tennis player don't like to get their balls wet. Well their tennis balls, I mean -- they seem to absorb water which naturally makes them heavier and affects their bounce but it doesn't sound like they recover their performance even after they dry out. But I also read that tennis balls have an active tennis life measured in hours. Their afterlife as dog chew-toys is at least measured in days. Click the animated GIF to see a less annoying large static image.

[caption id="attachment_10350" align="alignnone" width="497"] Bad panorama of the rainbow at 4 p.m.. I was jostled by disembarking 99 B-Line bus riders![/caption]

On my way in the to bottle depot at Ontario Street and 7th Avenue I deliberately ended up at 12th Avenue and Cambie Street -- on the south side of Vancouver City Hall.

Previously I snapped a photo of the giant Canadian flag on the north side of the hall. Today I wanted to photograph the Pride flag flying in front, as reported in yesterday's item in The Province newspaper on a grumbling B.C. Pavilion Corporation agreeing to occasionally light Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron during the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia:

"At Vancouver City Hall, a large Canadian flag is displayed on the north side of the building, while a Pride flag is flying in front of city hall to support LGBTQ rights in the face of Russia’s anti-gay laws."

I saw several Canadian flags and two provincial flags but I didn't see a Pride flag. I was looking on the south side of city hall, specifically for a rainbow flag. I might've just missed it. I'll look again tomorrow, Saturday, February 15 -- National Flag of Canada Day. Click the image to enlarge it.

[caption id="attachment_10335" align="alignnone" width="497"] Used cigarette butts don't taste any worse and they might even be healthier![/caption]

This evening my friend Florida Pete showed me the latest thing in "safe smoking" apparatus for street people: a short length of clear plastic tube.

Pete was wearing at least two too many jackets to be comfortable when he came to visit me this evening in McDonald's. It wasn't long before he was so dozy he had to go back outside -- to look for a place to crash. But first he put on a bit of show and tell.

He started with a nifty little LED flashlight some one had dropped. It also doubled as a red laser pointer. Neat!

Then he showed me what he said a community health nurse had given him earlier in the day outside the Kingsgate Mall at East Broadway and Main Street. At first glance it looked like the sort of glass tube used for a crack pipe but no, it was about two-and-a-half inches of flexible plastic tubing. It was the simplest of devices for "safely" smoking used cigarette butts.

[caption id="attachment_10325" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Plaza's golden facade at about 1 p.m. this afternoon.[/caption]

The Broadway Plaza has been a striking visual landmark on West Broadway Avenue since it was completed in 1980. Not only is it 51 metres tall but the tower is dramatically planted at 45° to the street grid on the northwest corner of West Broadway Avenue and Ash Street.

That means both its southwest and southeast-facing facades -- gold-tinted, glass curtain walls -- are very visible to east- and west-bound traffic on West Broadway, presenting motorists and pedestrians with a constantly changing golden reflection of the sky and the surrounding skyline. It's still impressive after 34 years.

The "Plaza" part is ground-level retail and is topped by a 14-storey tower of prime office space, something Vancouver routinely runs short of. According to Wikimapia tenants include the Consulate of Slovenia on the fourth floor.

The plaza features a fountain -- very nice -- but I can't remember the last time there was water in it.

In the above photo we can see more clouds than cars but this is 4 p.m, the start of rush hour -- I've just caught it during a lull.

Above the east- and west-bound traffic on West Broadway Avenue -- way above -- we can see a north-bound cloud bank steaming through at a fair clip.

What we can't see are the passenger jets.

Day and night commercial airline pilots flying into and out of Vancouver use West Broadway Avenue as a sight line. If you're situated on West Broadway at Granville Street and you follow their flight westward you'll see the big jets eventually peel off south, probably following Alma/Dunbar Street straight to the Vancouver International Airport located on Sea Island in Richmond.

Two large panorama photos from this morning at about 8 a.m.

It looked like the start of a beautiful day and it was, I guess, until about 2.pm. That's when the dark clouds were rolling in from the south. No surprise it's raining this evening.

This morning, as you can see, it was an altogether different picture. The top photo is another shot north over Alder Street with me looking towards downtown Vancouver. The bottom photo is in an alley on the east side of South Granville with me looking forward to my first coffee of the day. Click the images to enlarge them.

[caption id="attachment_10300" align="alignnone" width="497"] Panoramas stitched from many photos (this one uses 24) can have odd perspective shifts.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10294" align="alignnone" width="497"] Couldn't tell you which was which on a bet. Click the image to enlarge it.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_10282" align="alignnone" width="497"] Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron looks a lot like this arrangement of drinking straws.[/caption]

Apparently the big story today is how the Calgary Flames beat Vancouver. But this isn't a story about ice hockey it's a story about Olympic legacies and keeping them alive.

Vancouver's Olympic Cauldron is so far not being lit during the current Sochi Winter Olympics. That was the lead story in The Province newspaper this morning.

In contrast, the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta, which hosted the 1988 Winter Olympics, has lit their Olympic Cauldron. And on February 1, Lake Placid, New York, relighted the Olympic Cauldron from their 1980 Winter Olympics, to celebrate both the current Olympic Games in Sochi as well as their own Olympic legacy.

Vancouver hosted the previous Winter Olympics in 2010. Its Olympic Cauldron is located downtown on the waterfront at Jack Poole Plaza, adjacent to the Vancouver Convention Centre.

What's weirder? The "deer in headlights" look, the un-deer-like posture or the fact it's wired for electricity? Maybe all of the above. Click the image to enlarge it.

Now the rain is back our environmentally-minded City Hall might be catching up on some laundry but more likely this display has to do with Canada's Olympic team at Sochi. If so, shouldn't one of them be a rainbow flag? Click the image to see a larger static image.

[caption id="attachment_10201" align="alignnone" width="497"] The Lovers II by Gerhard Juchum, a 1973 sculpture in concrete on the grounds of City Hall.[/caption]

As I was passing City Hall on Friday, on the Cambie Street side, I glanced eastwards over the grounds and spied these two naked guys in close embrace. My first thought naturally was that they must have been freezing their, ba... um, tuckuses off.

On closer inspection the duo turned out to be a sculpture. According to a plaque affixed to the base, it's called "The Lovers" by Gerhard Juchum. And the pair wasn't entirely naked; they were partially covered by dirt and moss.