The Five Ms Run Amok in Vancouver

Sunday, Aug 1

Allan was working, so Cheryl and all the kids came downtown, just in time to catch the Pride Parade. Cheryl was reluctant to allow the kids to watch the parade at all, but to her credit she let them... granted, some costumes are somewhat risqué, but they will see stranger public spectacles in their young lives -- best not to shield them from it and make them think parades are sordid events. I chose not to narrate anything, though, as the Pride Parade always starts out with "Dykes on Bikes"... "Hey Attie Gail, look at those motorcycles!" -- and they're too little to query why some of the women are so huge.

Megan

After most of the parade went by, we went to get some food for the kids, then stopped for bubble tea before heading to Kits Beach to take the kids to the wooden playground there. I shouldn't have been surprised to find there was no parking, so I took them to the playground near the Rose Garden in Stanley Park, instead. We hadn't been there since Melissa was small, but at least I remembered how to find it. Stanley Park has playgrounds all over its 1,000 acres.

One day I must draft a map for parents that plots the location of playgrounds in the Lower Mainland. I haven't, by any stretch of the imagination, visited them all, but I've been to loads of them, and I don't think such a map exists. How valuable would that be? I would grade each playground according to safety, categorise them by level of difficulty, and display photos of them (of course).