Celebration of Bugs

The opening night of Vancouver's biggest summer event, the "Celebration of Light" kicked off last evening in amazing style. The international fireworks competition got its start at 10:00 pm with Canada's performance, and will be followed by Sweeden on saturday, China next wednesday and the finale the following saturday. Last night more than 350,000 people lined up shoulder to shoulder at Kits Beach and English Bay (the downtown beach) to watch the 1/2 hour show, which was lit from a barge 500m away from shore. 350,000. I need to emphasize this point to you because I don't think it can be adequately stressed. When people talk about how big SARS-Stock was, and how the entire downtown core was sectioned off in TO a few summers ago, that's the same density that was lining up on a beach last night. It's an absolutely incredible sight to see (and the traffic is AWFUL).

This year, my mom and I decided to drive up to the North shore to watch the show from across the inlet. We picked up my brother and his girlfriend, drove out to the swankiest part of Vancouver and hiked down to the beach.


After parking ourselves (and after several failed attempts at trying to use my knees as a tripod to steady my camera) the show started. And you know what? It was really, REALLY small. I'm not usually one to claim that size matters, but in this case it was SO disappointing. When you go and see fireworks, you want them to explode in your chest. You want to lie down on the beach with the sand between your toes and watch the entire sky above you light up. You want to hold hands with someone you love and be reminded of how special they are. Case in point: here is a picture of the show last night, undoubtably taken from the English Bay beach.

Yeah - it's pretty spectacular. Like, it's actually the most beautiful thing I've ever seen and definitely worth the crowds. And just for comparison, here's a picture of a particularly large one that I took from our vantage point across the inlet.



















Pretty impressive, huh? That's what I thought. And in the end, my knees DID end up making a decent tripod (and of course in the set up, my brother casually mentioned that a girl or two had called him "tri-pod" in the past... thanks, Regan. I REALLY wanted to know that). But the punchline of my story is this: while we were sitting on the log, enjoying the show (as pictured below)

It so happened that I was attacked by a vicious storm of mosquitoes, and I wasn't even aware of it. In fact, I spent the entire night bragging about the fact that mosquitoes didn't bite me. I NEVER got bitten. I was motherfucking bite imMUNE.

And then, this afternoon, I happened to look down at my leg and was horrified to see this:
Gross, hey? And well worth it, if you'll refer to my spectacular shot above.

I'll write a more detailed entry later - I'm sailing (well, on a BC ferry) over to Vancouver Island tomorrow right after work and expect the ferries to be NUTS (almost like the high way to cottage country will be in Ontario). I'm gonna get there early, stake out a seat by the window, and blog my little heart out. Another weekend is almost upon us!