On top of WhistlerAbove the clouds from the top of Whistler, BC.

In fact, it was well below freezing here… -6°C when we arrived last Sunday, but thankfully warming through the week up to a pleasant 0° and bringing snow finally, towards the end of our 5 day stay. And what spectacular mountains Whistler and it's next door neighbor Blackcomb are... with a mile of vertical drop, the longest runs are about 7 miles! Great village, too, with lots of excellent restaurants and shops and space to walk.

Canada is also wired... lots of free WiFi everywhere. I'm sitting now at Vancouver International Airport on a free WiFi connection with over 56 Mbit of bandwidth!

Picture: Panorama from the top of Whistler, above a sea of clouds.

Every now and then my habit of hanging around for a little while after an event, just to see what happens, pays off. This time I was treated to an impromptu solo concert by cello maestro Rushad Eggleston. Included here are a couple of deftly rendered instrumentals mixed in with some of Rushad's wonderfully wacky songs, including the future classic 'I Peed on a Bird'. Unfortunately there's a lot of background noise, but I hope the fun and spontaneity of the performance shines through. Recorded on May 6, 2013 at Burton High School in San Francisco.

Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books with over 7000 exhibitors, 100 countries 280,000 attendees over 5 days. It's overwhelming, to say the least, especially to a newcomer. And it's an event with major history, dating back 500 years, to the time of Gutenberg, although it apparently lost significance in the late 17th century with the Enlightenment and re-gained its stature as the most important book fair in Europe after WWII. 

The variety of booths never ceased to amaze, with oddities like the Manga Guides to Science and 'Vorsicht: Buch!' (Danger, Book!) with a video camera that captured kids in montage with a shark video, that was then printed to a flip book, while you wait. Pretty cool!

I was there with Apptology, showing off ReadyEdition, our new product for publishing periodicals to iPhone and iPad and talking to many vendors about digital publishing strategies. The migration of print into the digital world is complex and overwhelming. It may seem like a simple matter of offering books digitally on tablets, but digital publishing brings a huge range of options that can create new and exciting products or make a total disastrous mess of technology. We witnessed a little of both in the making. 

It's October in Frankfurt, so we got our fill of bratwurst, schnitzel and beer while the weekend brought in hundreds of teenagers in role playing costumes, inspired by their favorite books. It was like a giant Halloween party! 

Just doing like the Frankfurters do.

On our way home from Vancouver, we stopped near Seattle to visit cousins Jane and Hansel at Sunshine Cottage, where they provide the sunshine when the weather doesn't… meaning usually. (Hey, it's Seattle where 'the sky looks like bad banana baby food'*.)

* Stolen from my favorite Tom Robbins book, Skinny Legs and All.

Hiking the Treetops Lynn Canyon suspension bridge, just north of Vancouver and about 50 meters up.

Actually known as Burrard Inlet, this view is from the Third Beach Seawall in Stanley Park. (Yup, the same guy who they named that hockey championship after.)

So today we finally get around to taking a little tip from my cycling pal (and Italian eyeglass purveyor) Gianguido and visit Musette Caffe, which is supposed to be some kind of bike themed coffee joint in Vancouver. We drive around downtown Vancouver looking for the place only to get lost in a series of one way streets and back alleys and suddenly, we're there. And we are not let down. This is a serious bike cafe… I mean it's more like a bike shop or some kind of church of bike aficionados with a cafe inserted in the middle. It overwhelms with bicycle everything as soon as you step in. Fancy racing bikes along with some vintage ones are parked in the entry way. The Vuelta de España is playing on at least 3 screens of various sizes. Musettes (of course!) hang everywhere along with vintage pro jerseys and various display cases packed with all kinds of imaginable bike games, tokens, doodads, paraphernalia and weird stuff like a Lance Armstrong lunch box (signed by Lance) and a set of tiny toy pro bike racers that come in packs of 50 so that you can set up your own mini peloton on the table. Little bike details permeate the place, like the handlebar mounted iPad cash register with celeste (Bianchi green) handlebar tape and the celeste colored cappuccino cups and saucers and a fabulous La Marzocco cappuccino machine, custom painted in, you guessed it, celeste. There's even a 3 tone celeste phone! Inner tubes populate the shelves behind the counter, alongside the coffee. I almost had a panic attack because I didn't have my bike with me and I wasn't wearing any bike clothing. Never fear… there's a hip little bike clothing boutique in the back corner of the cafe, complete with a 6 foot tall sepia toned poster of Fausto Coppi towering over everything. One of my favorite touches, as a photographer and cyclist, was the picture wall at the back of the cafe, which featured a few of Stephan Vanfleteren's stunning and haunting photos of famous Flemish cyclists (including a really sly looking Eddy Merckx). I finally calmed down enough to order a cappuccino, which was expertly made and perfectly topped with a leaf pattern (not sure why it wasn't a chainring pattern, but I guess there are still a few little bike nerdy details to work out.) Meanwhile, I ignored my wife and daughter some more while I chatted with some locals, just back from a ride, wearing their Musette Caffe kits. Turns out it was a father and son (Ian and Christopher) and we related well, both of us fathers having been dragged around the hills by our young racer sons. Apparently there's a lot of great riding around Vancouver… next time we don't leave home without the bikes! Berkeley needs one of these cafes. Seriously.