With the weather forecast predicting sunshine for Saturday, March 20 -- the first official day of spring -- it is the perfect opportunity to be outside, stretching those legs and thinking green.

Vancouver Light Rail Rally

Rail for the Valley, a growing group of people who agree that the Fraser Valley needs passenger rail service are organizing a Light Rail Rally and Ride at the Olympic Line Station on Granville Island tomorrow, Saturday, March 20 from 2:00pm to 3:00pm. With the Paralympics ending on Sunday, March 21, the Bombardier light rail will be dismantled and sent back to Belgium.

This could be your last chance to ride the free state-of-the-art streetcar. Even if you have already checked it out, the rally is an opportunity to show your support for this alternative transit option.

Vancouver has a new connoisseur -- the craft beer drinker.

They arrive at parties with bottles of beer you have never heard of, stouts, ales and lagers with names like Dogfish Head, Anchor Steam and Polygamy Porter, cases brought back from a trip to the States and recycled glass jugs they get refilled by their friends who work for local watering holes and breweries. They have beer memberships, wear beer pins and forgo music festivals for ones about beer.

You can't blame them though. With specialty beer stores popping up all over and existing stores expanding their craft beer selection, it is actually becoming more difficult to make a decision about what to drink each night when faced with rows upon rows of heady deliciousness.

In this city of ours, we are home to a helmet-wearing Mayor who arrives to meetings by bike and whom you can see pedaling around town dressed in business attire. He has promised to make this city the greenest in the world and when it comes to championing transportation of the two-wheel variety, he is cycling in the right direction.

On March 10, 2010 Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson officially opened the Dunsmuir Viaduct bike lane with a quick cruise on what was a typically rainy Vancouver morning. The protected two-lane bike path, lined with cement barriers, finally provides commuters with a safe cycling route from the Adanac Bikeway into downtown Vancouver.

Today marks the 100th Anniversary of International Women's Day and if it weren't for a quick news scan this morning, I would have had no idea.

Where it was once cool to loudly champion women's rights, many women now balk at being labeled a "feminist." In many eyes, the feminist movement should have ended with emancipation, the right to work outside of the home, university degrees and the rise of the mini-skirt. "They have equality and jobs, what can they possibly want now?" some ask. There are men and women who feel the gender equality campaign has made "enough" progress.

But when we witness the Canadian Women's Ski Jumpers in court numerous times unsuccessfully fighting to have their sport instated in the Olympic Games, when journalists comment on the fashion sense of our female politicians before their political abilities, when women are still struggling to make the same wages as men, and girls still feel a boob job will get them happiness, it is hard to be satisfied with this so-called level of equality.

It has been seventeen days straight of excitement, spending, gorging, drinking and screaming for Vancouver. For those that embraced this cross-country party, there was a little emptiness felt when the Olympic flame was extinguished during the closing ceremonies as our homegrown boy Neil Young sang Long May You Run. The red and white, the camaraderie, the revelry and festivity will be missed.

It felt good to come together and focus on joy; to let our worries slip away. But now it is back to reality and the daily grind. The bills, debts, problems, issues, complaints, grumbles and grieves of our daily lives. This isn't the kind of hangover cured with Tylenol. This is more like a hot-air balloon deflating.

So what do we do now?

Last week I waited in a line for an hour and a half at the Atlantic Canada House, stationed in the Backstage Lounge on Granville Island, waiting for a taste of Canadian food. With free samplings three times a day during the Olympic Games (11:30 a.m., 2:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m.), and line-ups that wind all the way down the block, I was expecting good things.

After the much-hyped wait in the chilly shadows of the Lounge's awning, with stiffly cold legs I was finally allowed to climb the stairs up to the tasting room where I received five bland mussels, Solomon Gundy (a cracker with pickled white fish), a shot of a blueberry smoothie and two fairly undercooked scallops. It was over in seconds.