8,000 Visitors !

After writing trip reports for various web groups I belonged to, such as the Full Size Jeep club and the BackRoads Driver group, both on YahooGroups.com, I decided that I wanted to have my own site where I could post trip reports and stories that crossed multiple interests.

I was originally thinking of having my own web site, but decided that a blog was easier to do and would fill the need. On Oct 2 2006 I launched my blog and added some trip reports and pictures from my "archives".

Here we are, not quite 3 years later, and I now have 74 entries on my blog, and have had over 8,000 visitors! WOW, that's more that ever thought would visit...to be honest I don't know how many I was expecting to visit when I entered the online world.

Things I did foresee; my still writing of trip reports and putting pictures up on my Flickr site so every one could "come" along the trip with me, in the virtual world if not in the real world.
I expected some family members and a few close friends and a few 'Net friends to visit over time.

Things I did not foresee? I certainly did not envision having people from around the world take an interest in my site; I did not foresee hits from over 40 countries on my counter; I did not foresee myself getting into video and making short films about geocaching, off-road exploring and other exploits I get myself into.

What really amazes me is how my simple plan of having a web presence has morphed into a larger world of videos, pictures, and stories supported through various media such as a Video editing tool, a Web blog, two web sites to store pictures, and an account on a video web site.

Not to mention the various web groups I belong to and have posted messages to and uploaded my media presentations to. I have even had one of my pictures of England used on www.Schmap.com This is a web site that is a combination map and picture site...

So here's to the next milestone of 10,000; which now doesn't seem that far away...

PS If you want to know how far back I go with my trip reports on the web, here's a clue. I found one of my original stories archived on a friend's web site; the date I wrote the story is May 26, 1997. Have a look at the early web days of Ed at http://wagoneers.com/FSJ/rigs/Eddie/

Thanks for visiting, and if you've enjoyed the site, please leave a comment at the bottom of this article or any other article you've enjoyed.

Ed Pedersen AKA tjguy98

Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver

ABOVE: Lonsdale Quay

Annette and I spent a sunny afternoon wandering around Lonsdale Quay in North Vancouver as a way of enjoying a slow day of holidays. The weather was perfect, nice sunshine, just a little bit of clouds, and not too hot.

The Quay is a great place to visit as it has many food shops located on the lower floor where you may buy fresh ingredients for tonight's dinner. If you want to take home your dinner, or enjoy a lunch now, there are plenty of kiosks in the Food Fair area. As well, there are two levels upstairs that offer higher end stores stocked full of cute and unique gifts, games, and clothes. They even have a "Kid's Alley" devoted to shops just for the rug rats.

We have a family friend who's daughter just had a little boy a month or so ago, and Annette is going to the baby shower in a couple of days; we picked up a cute little jumper in Baby Blue with writing on the front. The writing states: "All Mommy Wanted Was a Back Rub"!

When we seen that, we couldn't stop laughing and just had to buy it as the perfect baby shower gift!

ABOVE: The yacht Attessa owned by Dennis Washington

We went outside to meander the Quay dockside and walk the Burrard Dry Dock pier. We opened the door to go outside and the first thing that filled our vision was this HUGE yacht!
This thing was massive, and we could only begin to dream about what it must be like to cruise on this vessel.

We walked over to the Burrard Dry Dock pier, which was the old grounds of the Burrard Shipyards were over 450 vessels were made, many of the BC Ferries came from here as well.
The pier runs for 700 feet out into the waters of Burrard Inlet, giving you an excellent view of the Vancouver waterfront on the south shore of the inlet. It also gave us an unobstructed view of the Attessa, in all it's glory.

We walked back towards the Quay just as a twin prop 10 passenger float plane came in for a landing and taxied towards the Attessa. We waited for a few minutes and snapped off some shots of the plane landing and then docking next to the Attessa. It was no coincidence that the plane's colourings matched the Attessa, it was also from the Washington group.

We watched as two older gentlemen and one younger man deplaned and headed up the ramp towards the street. We managed to come around and meet them out on the street; we were very interested to see if we recognized anyone.

Well, we didn't, but Annette managed to snap a couple of photos of them anyways just in case. The young fellow looked like he should be a hockey player; about 6'2' with a good build ready to play the position of a tough defenceman. The older gentlemen we did not recognize, sad to say.

We finished up our walk around the piers and shops in the quay, then joined the rush hour crowd back to Maple Ridge. When we got home, the first thing we did was download the pictures, and then start googling the Attessa.......here's what we found out.

First, one of the older gentlemen we passed was Dennis Washington himself, presumably just back from the island resort.
The Attessa is 225 feet long, the 16th biggest yacht in the world; it is owned by Dennis Washington out of Seattle. The billionaire owns, among others, the following enterprises: The Washington Marine Group, (who owned the Fast Cat ferries and just sold them to a Middle Eastern buyer), he owns Seaspan Tugs, which was why he was docked there, and he owns a private island on the BC coast complete with a golf course and guest resort. He also owns several airplanes, one which mainly flies in BC ferrying guests and owner from Vancouver to the island resort and back.

The man loves to live in the luxury he can afford, all the power to him!
With dreams of yachts and private islands dancing like sugar plum fairies in our heads, we uploaded a few pictures to our web sites, looked at each other, and sighed....."ahhhhh, if only".