Wired Cola

Okay, not the most exciting activity, but Vancouver is going from zero to three daily papers in two months. All will be "commuter" papers, or lite and easy reads.

The first paper out the gate was the Metro, on the streets now for a couple of weeks. Today 24 hours joins it, and Dose arrives next Monday.

Full credit to the Asper media conglomerate, as they had an article that pointed me to a new thing to do. The Vancouver Museum is running a blossom-watching tour.

It sounds quite serene: a 2.5 hour bus tour of trees in bloom, including a stop at the Dr Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden for tea.

All bike racers are mental.

Saturday: I crash just after the first lap, thanks to a really boring instance of pack stupidity. Casualties: hole in shorts, wheels de-trued, minor scrapes all over. Suck level 9.

I promise, TtdiV won't be all restaurant reviews, but I wanted in this case to call out a very specific experience you can have at Tojo's, a restaurant routinely described as the best sushi joint in a city with a reputation for good sushi joints: Omakase.

The Storyeum. Okay, I know I wrote about it before, and not even in very flattering terms. But it's a thing to do, and it is interesting.

What is the Storyeum? In short, a rather complicated multi-set stage show you walk through. The story covers the history of BC. Send your kids, send your visitors. Check the website, as they are closing in mid-April, but they have extended hours for Spring Break.

The Storyeum. See the site for the details of its Gastown location.

Welcome to the series. Today's entry has a special place in my heart, and mostly just bores The Lovely One. Oh well. But it's awesome.

The Trev Deeley Motorcycle Collection is the best Vancouver museum you've never heard of. It's in the middle of Richmond, and it's free, but you have to book the day off because it's only open weekdays from 10-4.

And as usual, I blew it all on cycling. And what a fine thing to do!

OLN Canada has long been a morass of bull riding and trout fishing (fine things, I'm sure, but not of much interest to me), plus three weeks of Tour de France coverage. For cyclists, the galling thing was that the US version of this channel has had much more cycling coverage than that. In past years they have done Tour-grade shows for both the Vuelta Espana and the Giro Italia, plus a great number of the major one-day races.

BC GOLD. What is BC Gold? Why it's a traditional native foodstuff much loved in Japan.

But no, really, what is it?

It's herring spawn, naturally deposited on kelp.

If you eat eggs, you have no right to be grossed out by that. Right?

I have to try this.

Strangely, those two topics are not really linked.

On the weekend, I rode two more training races, again in a category higher than I would normally compete in. The one on Saturday was a pretty standard workout (rode hard, dropped early), but the Sunday race was something exquisite, in its own way.