Friday, September 21, 2007

Meteorological Dissonance


Thursday I had my first real taste of the Burnaby Mountain weather syndrome. You're going along thinking you know what the weather is, then you get exactly half way up the mountain and you're inside a cloud. It was very wet and clammy at the top of the hill.

Unfortunately, Thursday was also the annual Terry Fox Run (although most people walked). This is a very worthy event raising money for cancer. Terry Fox came from nearby Port Coquitlam and attended SFU. I stepped out of the library to run an errand on the other end of campus, and found a hundred adorable children singing to about 1,000 people who were signed up to run. You couldn't actually hear the kids over the canned music pouring from the sound system, but they sure were cute. I'm guessing they came from Terry Fox's old elementary school.

It turns out that rain is the B.C. analog for "mad dogs and Englishmen." British Columbians go running in the pouring rain, yes, carrying umbrellas when necessary.

They were urged on their way by a bagpiper, an SFU tradition. There he is by the statue of Terry Fox. SFU has had the world champion bagpipe team for as long as anyone can remember.

The statue of Terry Fox isn't the only art on campus. A short distance away I came across this enormous avocado, which put me in mind of the Geostationary Banana Over Texas, which, sadly, appears to have been stalled for about a year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

mad dogs and englishmen
go out in the midday sun
to drink their tea
and stroke their bums

greetings from nypl. we miss you.