Tony C. McCray Blog: April 2017

Sunday, April 30, 2017

Cambie62 By GD Omni

GD Omni introduce their new development Cambie62 located on the corner of Cambie and 62nd. This 6 storey concrete development will have 27 units consisting of 1 and 2 bedroom condos. Situated within walking distance is the lovely Langara Golf Course and Winora Park.

Floor Plans for Cambie62

Floor plans have yet to be finalized.

Pricing for Cambie62

Please register and join our VIP list for early access and be the first to receive information on plans and pricing.

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Cambie + 31st – New Luxury Cambie Corridor Development by Cressey

Coming soon to the very popular Cambie corridor is a stunning concrete development by Cressey. This spectacular project will consist of two six storey buildings located opposite the amazing Queen Elizabeth Park.

There will be 65 units consisting of 26 – 1 beds, 27 – 2 beds and 12 – 3 beds. Cressey develop quality products and we can expect to see top class finishes throughout each unit.

Floor Plans for Cambie + 31st

Floor plans have yet to be finalized.

Pricing for Cambie + 31st

Please register and join our VIP list for early access and be the first to receive information on plans and pricing.

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Wilmar Residences Vancouver – Redevelopment Project

Vancouver’s stunning Wilmar Residence located on a 1.95-acre site is going to be redeveloped and will consist of a full renovation of the current mansion along with 5 luxury single family homes.

Each of the 5 units will range in sizes from 3,600-3,800 sqft. The main mansion will be converted into a duplex and will consist of one 4,500 sqft home and one 5,200 sqft home.

Floor Plans for Wilmar Residences

Floor plans have yet to be finalized.

Pricing for Wilmar Residences

Please register and join our VIP list for early access and be the first to receive information on plans and pricing.

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Willow – A Boutique Townhome Development By Coromandel

Coromandel Introduces a new townhouse development called Willow. This development will consist of 20 3-storey townhomes ranging in size from 1,279 – 1,416 sqft. Each townhome will have 3 bedrooms and come with its own private landscaped patio.

Floor Plans for Willow

Floor plans have yet to be finalized.

Pricing for Willow

Please register and join our VIP list for early access and be the first to receive information on plans and pricing.

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Blixt, Smith Team Up to Lead Zurich Classic

Winds gusting to 36 miles per hour haven’t slowed down the team of Sweden’s Jonas Blixt and Australia’s Cameron Smith, who have yet to score a bogey in the Zurich Classic, leading by four strokes through three days.

Alternating shots, the duo shot a 4-under 68 on Saturday.

“It’s like going back to playing as a kid,” the 33-year-old Blixt said. “I don’t feel like there’s any stress at all out there.”

“Feels like back in the amateur days,” Smith said of playing in the first team event held on the PGA Tour since 1981, about 12 years before he was born. “It’s just nice to go out there and relax and have some fun.”

The four-stroke advantage is over the pairings of Kevin Kisner and Scott Brown, and Nick Watney and Charley Hoffman.

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Saturday, April 29, 2017

Golf’s Greats as “Faces in the Crowd”

One of Sports Illustrated’s most long-lasting and popular features is its “Faces in the Crowd” section which highlights amateur athletes from across the United States whose accomplishments in given sports are particularly note-worthy. Over the history of the magazine, many professional golfers have appeared “before they were famous”. Here’s a look at the write-ups that have accompanied some of them.

September 2, 1957: “Jack Nicklaus, husky 17-year-old homebred, made up two-stroke deficit, soon after start of final round but had to hang on grimly in face of determined challenge by John Konsek to win (294-296) international jaycee junior golf title at Columbus.”

September 24, 1990: “Tiger Woods, 14, shot a two-under-par 286 for 72 holes to win a national youth golf tournament at Ridglea Country Club in Fort Worth. He has also won five Junior World titles including the Optimist International in San Diego last July.”

December 28, 2009: “Jordan Spieth, a junior at Jesuit College Preparatory, was named the American Junior Golf Association’s male Rolex Junior Player of the year. A two-time All-America, he has held the top spot in the AJGA rankings since July. That month Jordan won the U.S. Junior Amateur with a 4-and-3 victory over Jay Hwang; in 2008, he lost in the semifinals.”

July 15, 1963: “Lanny Wadkins, 13, of Richmond, shot a 69 and 70 on the par-72 Rio Pinar course in Orlando, Florida, to win the 13-15 age division of the National Pee-Wee Golf Championship, an easy victory for Lanny, who has often held his own in grown-up tournaments.”

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Kevin Chappell Rises to No. 23 with First Win

You can tell just how well Kevin Chappell has been playing over his first 180 starts by the fact that with just one win he’s suddenly ranked No. 23 in the world.

He jumped 18 spots from No. 41 with the victory, giving the United States 11 of the top 25 players in the world.

Fellow American Brooks Koepka, who finished second to Chappell at the Valero Texas Open, climbed from 24th to 19th this week. His was the only movement inside the top 20 of the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR).

Shenzhen International winner Bernd Wiesberger jumped 13 spots from 43rd to 30th this week, putting him one spot behind the man he beat in the Chinese tournament’s playoff. The UK’s Tommy Fleetwood rose from 33rd to 29th, and has climbed 70 places since the end of 2016.

FedEx Cup Standings

Chappell’s win launched him from 113th to 21st in the latest FedEx Cup standings. The top 17 positions in the standings remained the same from a week ago, with Valero runner-up Koepka jumping from 37th to 18th.

Race to Dubai

Tommy Fleetwood moved into second place with his runners-up performance at the Shenzhen International last weekend, and is just shy of becoming the second player to reach 2 million points for the season. Fleetwood has amassed 1.911 million points in 2017 in nine events, placing him second behind Sergio Garcia (2.441 million points in four events). Shenzhen winner Bernd Wiesberger climbed to sixth in the standings with 932,691 points, followed by Top 5 finisher Charl Schwartzel, who has 881,520 points.

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Kevin Chappell Scores First PGA Win at Texas Open

You know what they say; the 180th time’s the charm.

Such was the case for Kevin Chappell last weekend as the American won for the first time in 180 PGA starts, slicing in a birdie putt from 8 feet out to win the Valero Texas Open in San Antonio.

His first runner-up position came at this exact tournament back in 2011. He has collected five others since then, including four in 2016 alone.

“I felt like I had some unfinished business here,” Chappell said. “… A lot of hard work went into this, and I don’t think I would have had it any other way. Those people that know me [know] I do everything the hard way – and 180 starts later, that’s pretty hard.”

He had to hold off charges by Kevin Tway and Brooks Koepka to win.

“You look at all the stuff he’s done, it’s pretty impressive,” said Koepka. “It’s kind of amazing that he hasn’t won, how good he’s played.”

Chappell finished 69-68-71-68 – 276 to defeat Koepka, who was 68-74-70-65 – 277.

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Bernd Wiesberger Scores Playoff Win at Shenzhen

Germany’s Bernd Wiesberger held off a remarkable closing kick by England’s Tommy Fleetwood to win the Shenzhen International at Genzon Golf Club last Sunday.

Wiesberger was three shots ahead of his closest competitors and eight shots ahead of Fleetwood after 54 holes. However Fleetwood fired a 63 on Sunday to tie Wiesberger at 16-under after 72 holes.

It was Wiesberger’s fourth victory on the European Tour and his first in a playoff format. He was previously 0-3 in playoffs.

“I’m feeling a bit relieved now I have to say,” said Wiesberger. “I’ve had a stretch of really good events the last couple of months and it’s really nice to have a trophy again. We have really good players out here, all up for it, playing well and throwing a lot at me. At the end of the day I’m just glad I got myself into the spot where I could play for the title.”

Fleetwood’s final round was one for the books. he birdied No. 2, No. 6, and No. 7, then chipped in an eagle on No. 9 to reach the turn at 5-under. He added birdies on 13, 15, 16, 17, and 18 to take over the lead, forcing Wiesberger to birdie his final hole to force the playoff.

It was nearly a huge playoff as England’s Ross Fisher had a share of the lead headed to 18 but blew his chance with a bogey on three putts. George Coetzee of South Africa birdied 16 and 17 to share the lead as well, only to land in the water twice and shoot a horrific 8 on the final hole.

In the anti-climactic playoff, Wiesberger birdied the 18th hole from five feet out while Fleetwood could only manage a par.

For the tournament, Wiesberger shot 67-65-69-71 – 272 and Fleetwood was 69-71-69-63 – 272.

It was Wiesberger’s first win on the European Tour since the 2015 Alstom Open de France. He previously won two other events in 2012.

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Friday, April 28, 2017

Chronic pain: The “invisible” disability

Sometime back in 2010, a good friend of mine from college who had since become a pediatrician posted a complaint on Facebook about “made up” health conditions. “Fibromyalgia, I’m looking at you,” she wrote. At this time, pain was more of an occasional visitor in my body rather than the permanent tenant it has since become. Still, I was offended on behalf of those patients with the disease.

Fast forward to today and my life is all about pacing. This is because everything I do — cook, sleep, work, walk — takes time. This gradual approach to every aspect of my life is not about enlightenment or mindfulness. It is about pain. Or more specifically, trying to evade or minimize it. To minimize is key because I’ve learned it can’t be avoided, at least not entirely, no matter my effort. For me, fibromyalgia became a default diagnosis — a catch-all phrase the doctors slapped on me to encompass all the aches and health complaints that had begun to persistently plague me. I received this diagnosis even as imaging showed degenerative changes and other damage in my spine and hips, even as endometriosis was confirmed to be spreading like strands of spider web inside my abdomen, wrapping its tendrils around my organs with the insidiousness of an invasive plant. When the pain reached the point of making it impossible to work more than on a very part-time basis most weeks, I began to inquire about disability. But my doctors — the same ones who diagnosed me, treated me, and viewed my MRI results — all shook their heads and refused to sign off on any paperwork.

“You don’t seem sick,” they said

This was the same line I was offered in college after extreme intestinal distress caused me to lose more than 20 pounds in a single semester. But the school nutritionist thought I just wasn’t eating enough bananas. “You have such shiny, healthy-looking hair,” she explained, pinching a lock of it between her fingers as though I were a doll on display. “People who are really sick don’t have hair like yours.” A colonoscopy showed nothing visibly wrong, so the doctor diagnosed me with irritable bowel syndrome and treated me as though I was a hopeless neurotic. “Stop being so stressed and eat your greens,” he scolded. Two years later, a laparoscopic surgery would show widespread endometriosis, a large portion of it choking my colon. Its removal eased my GI complications considerably. But by then I learned the hard lesson that doctors often erred on the side of disbelief when they couldn’t see something plainly… or even when they could.

I have heard an extensive list of reasons why I can’t be in as much pain as I say despite my test results… and besides my shiny hair, like: I am too young; I have good teeth; I’m too thin to have back problems. Yet, these haven’t granted me immunity from illness, and they have not prevented pain.

Only recently has medical research started to catch on to what patients suffering from chronic pain have long known. As reported in a New York Times Well column written by Tara Parker-Pope in 2011, a study by the Institute of Medicine discovered that pain can endure long after the illness or injury that caused its initial onset has been treated or healed, until it eventually evolves, or devolves, into its own disease. That is, pain is no longer indicative of another prognosis — it is the prognosis, and a disabling one at that.

Specifically, under the strain of prolonged pain, nerves not only become super-sensitized to pain signals, but begin amplifying them. Once these changes occur, they can be extremely difficult to undo. Meanwhile, most medical students are woefully lacking in training in chronic pain, usually receiving only a few hours’ worth in their entire education. In fact, veterinarians receive more training on how to treat animals in pain than medical doctors do for their human patients. Unfortunately, without an adequate understanding of pain and its mechanisms, many medical practitioners are quick to downplay the experience of their patients as faking or exaggerating. What this translates into is denying a disability because it is invisible to the naked eye.

Wiser doctors needed

What would help me at this point would be to have practitioners who are not only more well-versed in chronic pain, but are willing to acknowledge its disabling impacts on their patients. In other words, doctors should start believing their patients when they say they are hurting. Validation is the first step toward a solution, or at the least, toward offering alternative adjustments and treatments that can accommodate a pain patient and bring them a better quality of life in the absence of a long-term cure.

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Thursday, April 27, 2017

London’s favourite urban and road cycling event is back

Spin London Cycling Festival

Europe’s fastest-growing bike event Spin Cycling Festival returns to London for its fifth edition from the 12^th – 14^th May!

Having grown from a small cycling event established in 2013 to filling its new home at Olympia London, tickets are selling like hot cakes. Whether you’re a road cyclist, weekend warrior, super commuter, fixie fanatic, art-lover or coffee aficionado, you’ll find an event that is jam-packed with hundreds of the newest cycling must-haves across road, urban, fashion, tech and accessories, all in one location!

Expect the usual and unusual with 150 brands exhibiting new tech, cycling art, bike film premieres, the Giro d’Italia on the big screen, craft beer, coffee & street food all back dropped by live music and DJ’s.

Don’t miss a unique and inspiring day out – event highlights throughout the weekend include:

The Summit – listen to Olympic medallist and cycling campaigner Chris Boardman who is back at Spin for the second year running. Chris will be joining inspirational experts, comedians, makers, authors, designers and pros from the cycling world and beyond.
Red Light District – witness a spectacular showcase of the finest bikes and frames from the world’s best brands and frame-builders.
Day-Night Test Track – get a feel for your new wheels on the atmospheric indoor track, featuring light installations and music.
Makers’ Lounge – checkout the finest framework from international bike builders like Donhou Bicycles, King Frameworks, Alba, Quirk and many more.
Art Hub – find something unique for your walls with some of the best cycling prints and artworks on the market.
Platform – discover the latest start-up brands evolving cycling with amazing new concepts and technology.
Complete – a brilliant day out with street-food, artisan coffee and craft beer – available on tap throughout the Festival.

Full details are listed on the Spin Cycling Festival website.

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Disposing of your expired or unused medications gets a whole lot easier (and safer) this weekend

Saturday, April 29^th is National Drug Take Back Day, which means you can drop off any unused or expired medication no questions asked. It’s easy to lose track of medications, especially if you’re caring for someone else. But if those medications fall into the wrong hands — say, a child or a pet — one dose could be fatal. So, it’s better to dispose of your excess medication in a way that is safe to both those around you and to the environment.

Why does it matter how you dispose of your prescriptions?

Prescription drug abuse is a big problem right now, and even something as small as correctly disposing of your medications can help keep that under control. According to the Health and Human Services Department, almost 2,000 people in Massachusetts died from opioid overdoses in 2016.

Use this link to find the drop-off location nearest you. Collections will begin Saturday morning at 10am and end at 2pm.

What if there is no collection site near you?

Most medication can be thrown in the trash, but there are some things you can do to make sure no one finds them once they’ve been discarded.

Mix the medications with something that tastes terrible, like cat litter or coffee grounds.
Place this unsavory concoction in a sealed bag or an empty can so that it doesn’t leak.
Throw the whole container in the trash.

Also, make sure you mark out any personal information on your prescription bottles with a permanent marker to ensure the privacy of yourself and your health records.

These tips don’t apply to strong painkillers or sedatives, so the FDA recommends you flush those medications down the toilet. While that is not the best solution for the environment, it’s better than any accidental fatalities. You may have received instructions for disposal when you picked up your prescription, so check that before flushing. If you would like to know if your medication should be dropped off at a collection site on National Drug Take Back Day or flushed down the toilet, check this list.

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5 South London parks worth cycling to (for a picnic)

Many Londoners found themselves rubbing in dollops of after sun lotion in the aftermath of April’s freak heatwave. Despite having to nurse red raw skin and deal with dodgy tummies from hastily organised BBQs, the city welcomed the sunshine with open arms. Summer is finally on its way (crossing my fingers right now!).

Whether you’re meeting friends for a BBQ or kicking back with a new book, spending a glorious day in a London park is the ultimate inexpensive escapism.

This post puts the spotlight on South London’s best picnic spaces that you can reach on bike, away from the tourist traps. So, pack the pannier with your favourite sandwiches (classic cheese and onion, please), a lightweight blanket, a good book and a big bottle of water.

Peckham Rye Park

The calmness of Peckham Rye Park is a welcome relief after battling through the craziness of Rye Lane. Do be aware that it is still a bit of a high-risk area due to the amount of footballs flying around. If you’re not joining in a game, there’s plenty of space to settle down and set up a £1.99 disposable BBQ from nearby Khan’s Bargains. Burn off the burgers by taking a stroll through the Japanese Garden and the pretty Sexby Garden, then around the pond and community garden. Pubs line the Rye ready for you to pop in for a craft beer; head to The Rye, The Clock House or The Ivy House. You can also take a detour to Nunhead Cemetery, one of the seven Victorian Magnificent Cemeteries in London. It’s only a five-minute cycle away from the park but you’ll have to demount to explore the eerily fascinating site.

Battersea Park

Any Made in Chelsea fan (please say I’m not the only one left?!) often visualises a picture-perfect date in Battersea Park. Cycling is allowed on the carriage driveways and you can rent out bikes from London Recumbents on site. Park patrol is often out to catch anyone cycling on the footpaths – you have been warned! BBQs are also banned, so stick to cucumber sandwiches and some cheeky Champagne in plastic cups. The park is very nearly as beautiful and Instagram-ready as the whole Made in Chelsea cast put together. There’s a huge lake with a fancy tea house and you can imagine Noah and Ally casually rowing along while getting caught in a storm (this reference will only make sense to fans of The Notebook). In fact, you can recreate the scene yourself by renting out a boat or pedalo. The Peace Pagoda is also super cool and it sits just south of the river, so you can carry on cycling into the city or along the Thames path.

Dulwich Park

Cycling around Dulwich Village is a pleasure. The tricky roundabout isn’t enough to deter me from enjoying the quaintness of it all. Even the sign posts are nice to look at – where else can you say that about? The park is a green garden of good vibes, with a lake and rowing boats for you to carry on re-enacting The Notebook around London (I’m really sorry if this reference is going over a lot of people’s heads). Visit nearby Dulwich Picture Gallery if it starts to get cloudy or if you’re feeling all, like, cultural. Otherwise, cycle a few laps before deciding on the right spot – harder said than done because there are so many. Oh and treat yourself to an ice cream at the Pavilion Café, you probably deserve one.

Burgess Park

Burgess Park is gritty, with its cityscape surroundings and proximity to the hellish Old Kent Road. But that’s the appeal of it – a proper urban park in the centre of all the madness. Hordes of people come together for community BBQs on a weekend, complete with heavy beats courtesy of a friendly local’s portable sound system. Cycle through on a quiet weeknight and you’ll catch its duckling-to-swan moment, as the water fountain provides a calm soundtrack to the sun setting over the city. If you’re really lucky, you might even get caught in a blizzard of blossom and magnolia petals from the trees that line the wide paths. This happened to me last week and I felt like I was in Kyoto dream. The shouts of a rowdy group of youths soon brought me back to reality. Lots of commuters cut through this park on their route. If you’re one of them, spare five minutes to demount, sit down, close your eyes and feel the love.

Crystal Palace Park

It’s all about the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Park, even if they do look a bit naff. Erected by the Victorians, they don’t exactly scream Jurassic Park but they’re fun because, well, they’re just so…random. Once all the novelty of them wears off in around, oh 12 minutes, you can continue the 1.5-mile lap around the park. There’s a maze, a boating lake (sorry but you really need to watch The Notebook to understand my obsession with lakes) and even a little farm. It has ponies and reptiles and alpacas. YES, ALPACAS. Instead of packing a picnic for this one, I recommend the veggie Sunday roast dinner at nearby The White Hart pub.

This is only a handful of South London’s sweet spots but hopefully it’s got you in the mood to get the bike out and hit your favourite sunny patch. Let us know your suggestions for where to go in the comments box below.

And remember to WEAR SUNSCREEN.

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