Gabriola, BC

Well one of the perks of shopping at the road sidestand, versus something that you might pick up at the big box stores from half way around the world, is the character that goes with it.

When I stopped by to check out the stand at the corner of Thompson and South Road, I found this sign. I would have been happy to pay 50 cents for my new Greek Oregano seedlings, but thought the marked down price of 25 cents was great. I wasn't really planning on any more herbs for the garden, but what the heck !

I got a free laugh out of the deal as well and thought it was a great marketing approach, a little different then we see in our Real Estate promotional material.

In January, the BC government announced that as of the 31 March 2009, home inspectors will need to be licensed. BC is the first province in Canada to license home inspectors to better protect buyers & ensure qualified inspections.

In January, one of my girlfriends signed me up for a facebook running group, a group of 6 of us that have been through the good times and the bad during our 20 year friendship (and I’m young). How could I resist joining these friends when I looked and saw the picture of the girls running a race in heels, I knew this was going to be fun and another one of our group adventures.

Three of us live close enough to join the Running Room in Nanaimo together, close means I’ll hop on the ferry once a week and that one of us drives 1 hour to get there. The training we get at the Running Room is definitely worth the effort, we listen to the informative speakers and learn effective and safe ways to run, apparently not in heels! We finished our last group hill run last night, there is nothing like the pressure of a whistle to get you moving up and down the hill 16 times and of course your running with about 30 others. Next week we start our speed training, and we will continue until we complete the Vancouver BMO half-marathon on May 3rd.

There are lots of trails and roads on Gabriola that offer great training potential, I prefer to stick to the trails when I can as I love the adventure of turning down a new path and find it easier on the body. Gabriola Lands and Trails Trust (GALTT) has a website that is an excellent resource for Island trails and has a trails map http://www.galtt.ca/ .

Over the years several homes to Gabriola have come as reclaimed homes from various areas. As real estate values have soared in parts of the Province, the land value is so great in some cases that it affords home owners the opportunity to build new. But with all the “green” and recycling initiatives, the idea of relocating homes, instead of demolishing them, has had a strong appeal.

Many of our relocated homes to the island have come from the mainland, via a barge, allowing a home to be relocated a greater distance than by trucking it. It’s quite the site to see from the shores of the island, a home floating past, and coming into Descanso Bay, where it is then put on a truck and delivered to a property, usually in the middle of the night.