Just a Gwai Lo fun within prescribed limits [?]

Last night I spent about an hour going through photos on Flickr tagged with 'skytrain'. (At some point I'll move on to another obsession, but until then... ) Not to be mistaken with photos of the elevated light rail in Bangkok with the similar title "Skytrain" (note the miniscule 't'), only ever having taken the Vancouver system, I had gone through the photos wondering which were the best ones. The ones I liked the most fit into two categories: photos of tracks and photos of blurry trains and/or tracks as the trains were in motion, using long exposures as well as a copule of photos of empty SkyTrain cars. Here are the highlights, with people I know personally disclosed.

Blurry or Long Exposure

• SkyTrain streak from hudrednorth
• CeeBee's "SkyTrain Vancouver
• "skytrain front seat (retreating)"
• Bill Stillwell's b&w photo
• Eldon Whalen's "G-Force"
• Terry Forrest's motion blur series
• if SMeaLLuM wins the award for coolest blurry SkyTrain tracks photo, who has a just as cool underground shot and another above ground he also wins the award for most annoying capitalization
• Will Pate's "Skytrain Under the City" wins the "Hey I Know That Guy" award (Roland, easily with the most photos tagged with 'skytrain', comes in a close second
• PoYang wins best use of stationary object (in this case, a human) of a train whizzing by
• Christopher Chen's "Bombardier SkyTrain" makes the train look like a white glob
• Eastbound train at an empty-looking Main Street Station, with a westbound train at the same station
• also at Main Street-Science World is "Expedited Parallels", with Pacific Central in the background

Tracks/Guideways

• "Commercial looking up..."
• "Tracking Over" in New Westminster
• "SkyTrain Tracks" (taken near where I took the elevated guideways shot)
• hundrednorth wins the "Hey I Know That Girl" award with what looks like a tree between the tracks (the photo appears to the right as well)
• Roland's in July 2004, one of the earliest posted to Flickr, of tracks near Gilmore Station
• a photo that makes the tracks seem higher than they are
• Travis Smith's photo of a train over Commercial Drive Station got entered in the "Hey I Know That Guy" category (he didn't win)
• Jonathan Schwartz posted multiple photos of tracks as did Stephanie (she wins the award in the "Person Other Than Me Or Roland to Have Photos Tagged With 'skyte'" category)
• two photos (1, 2) with sky between the tracks
• two more from Zoomlens (see the "Expedited Parallels" photo linked above), both involving a shopping cart: one with it as a central figure, another with it off to the side

Empty

• MK I (older SkyTrain)
• MK II (newer SkyTrain)

The award for most interesting thing done on SkyTrain (other than kissing, of course) has to be playing board games (from another perspective).

Are there any photos, posted on Flickr, that I might have missed?

Photos I missed, including photos submitted to Flickr after I originally posted this:

• after seeing Dave Elton looking at a blurry SkyTrain, I check out his other photos tagged with 'skytrain', which includes a blurry SkyTrain in November 2005 near Stadium Station, and another colourful blurry train. More time passes, and he posts, on May 20th, 2006, a blurry SkyTrain near Quebec St. and another.
• Some great photos of SkyTrain arriving at Commercial Station: original and b&w version.
• A photo below the tracks, blurry, heading towards Main Street station.
• Brassy 1 posts the blurry lights of a passing SkyTrain

On Saturday I took the walk around the Main Street-Science World SkyTrain station as suggested by John Atkin in his book SkyTrain Explorer: Heritage Walks From Every Station, and created a section for it here on Just a Gwai Lo. My favourite photos are Green Empty Benches, the signs at the end of Ontario St. (seen to the right) and the elevated SkyTrain guideways. It took a few minutes to spot the Seeds and Feed advertisement, but I found it after walking to the westernmost side of the block behind the building.

The neighbourhood surrounds False Creek, which, from the book, we learn “got its name from a notation made on a map by one of Captain Vancouver's crew who thought the body of water might be a river but turned out to be a 'false creek'.” Various sources, Discover Vancouver among them, say the member of Vancouver's crew was Captain George Richards.

I hear parts of Main Street south of Broadway are nice too. Almost 10 years in this city—at least the regional district—and I've never been to Q.E. Park. During the summer I shouldn't have any trouble finding an excuse to go.

A couple of weeks ago, while looking in the library for recent books on Vancouver's elevated light rail system, I came across SkyTrain Explorer by John Atkin. After flipping through it a bit, and reading some of the books descriptions of Vancouver neighbourhoods surrounding SkyTrain stations, I decided to give it a try by checking out the area around Nanaimo Station, and documented it with photos and commentary. I've even created a section for SkyTrain Explorer (it uses the 'expanded book' PHP snippet found on Drupal.org) in case I go on more heritage walks outlined in the book, and I plan on doing at least one chapter a month.

The author's website, Vancouver Walking Tours, though it looks like a 'static' website, upon close inspection he appears to update it frequently with the walking tours he conducts, not only in Vancouver but in other cities. If I can steal some time from work and other pursuits, I'll try to go on some and document them, possibly using a friend's video camera.

I've been living in this city for 10 years now, and don't really know the place. Walking around on guided tours—either self-guided or tour-guide-guided—should help shake the feeling that I'm missing something really great.