Tuesday, May 24, 2005
Aaaand we’re back, again.
I am so conflicted I don’t know where to start. We made it back from camping, yay. But now I have to be here at work, boo. I enjoyed parts of the camping, yay! Some of the camping was, as I had predicted, not really fun, boo. We got back to our nice little house, yay! But the house is an abject horror of a mess, boo. I re-acquired the cats from my parents’ place, yay! But now I worry that the cats were too spoiled there and will be brats now that they’re home, boo.
I got home around 3-ish on Friday. I found Rob in packing mode, getting all ready to go. I joined him and threw as much stuff as I figured I’d need into the camper and the Jeep. We evaluated the situation and in order to avoid the rush-hour traffic, cooked a nice dinner and ate it together. I figure we were on the road by around quarter to six, with a couple of quick stops on the way out of town, and we were rolling. We get out our two-way radios so we can communicate, and all’s well.
However, when we got to Okotoks (small town South of Calgary between us and the campsite), we encountered a road closure due to accident. This must have been a whopper, because the whole damn road was shut right the hell down. Blockaded by numerous police cars (so many that I wondered if anyone was actually AT the site of the accident doing anything at all, or if they were all hanging around the McDonalds’ parking lot where they conveniently closed the road), we weren’t even given the option of asking about alternate routes. And of course, we had no map. So what do we do? Well, I called the Map People – kind of like Onstar, but a little less well-informed, certainly well-intentioned, but lacking the concise communication skills to direct you based on your progress unless you stay on the phone with them. These Map People have served me well in my career of driving all mapless around the City, and these Map People are my parents.
My father gets on the phone and says “where the hell are you going?”, so I ask Rob, and am told “Longview”. My father gets right into it. “Well, you just get back on the highway and find High River, and then the 543, and you follow that to the 22. No problem.” Sounds easy. Only he neglected to add in this teeny, tiny little piece of information that you have to take the 2A, in High River, over to the 543 in order to get to the 22.
We make it to High River no problem. We head West right through the little town. I see a bunch of vehicles taking the 2A, and ignore them, because my instructions were to just go straight West through High River and hit the 22. We end up on this gravel road, heading West and zig-zagging South, and figure, well, we’re probably going in the right direction because the 22 is South West, right? Wrong. We traveled about 15 minutes down this very scenic road right to the very end, and encountered a “NO EXIT” sign as the road dwindled off onto acreages and farms. I call the Map People again and am told to then look for the 540, because the 540 goes right to the 22. I consider telling them we’re completely lost and that there is no 540, or I would have seen it on the way down this god-forsaken road, but then figure there’s no point in that. We make our way BACK to High River and take the 2A to the 543, and voila, there’s the 22, and a big sign saying “LONGVIEW” and a nice big arrow. No problem. Right.
Once we got the right road, we did fairly well. Until we got to the turnoff to the campsite road (another gravel road), and were then stuck behind people who were going approximately 40 km/hr down this road. I inhaled probably three pounds of dust this weekend, most of that was on the way in. The rest was on the way out, but that’s another story.
Finally, the slow-goers turn off. We kick it up and barrel our way down this rickety, gravel road, sided by slides and cliffs, and come to the campsite. Once there, we have to traverse a bit of a field that has a sort of a pathway cut into it, only I’m pretty sure that if we had just driven over the grass, the ride would have been smoother. No matter, I say, we’re nearly here! Yay! We find the group, park the truck & camper and the Jeep, and the dogs join the pack that is there already, and everyone seems pleased. We unload the camper and get going on the drinking.
I’m not sure if it was because I was already dead-tired, or that my stomach was then empty, having had dinner at least five hours earlier, but the rye kicked my ass that evening. I woke up the next morning at around 6a with the sort of headache I haven’t known for at least ten years. And it’s not like I can’t drink, oh, I can drink. I can drink ten or fifteen rye & cokes in an evening and feel absolutely fine the next morning. But Friday evening, I had four drinks and was dead. My spirit, having left my body, ascended through the camper roof and up into the sunny morning sky over the mountains and hills and campers below. But no, then there was Tylenol and water, and somehow it was yanked out of the ether and forced back to live out the rest of my life. Which included sleeping in until 10:30a, eating bacon for breakfast, and then lying in the hammock, ensconsed in the feather duvet, reading a book for a large part of the next day.
Rob, of course, went off on a quad ride, after what should have been lunchtime, but since we had just had breakfast, was not. I read for a while, went into the camper and read some more, and napped briefly, and cooked myself lunch at around 3p, which is around when the guys got back, so I threw another smokie on the barbecue for Rob. All was great. All was fine. Except for the fucking cold and bitter wind blowing through the campsite and through my spine. The sun would appear briefly between the clouds and we’d warm up a little, and then it would disappear and all the heat it had created would dissipate in about fifteen seconds. As soon as I put on a jacket, the sun would come out. As soon as I even thought about taking off the jacket, the sun would go away, and I would have to find something else to wrap around me.
No matter. We survived that and it started to get later and I napped again to get out of the wind, and soon enough, Terra came to wake me up. It was dinnertime, and Rob and I cooked home-made hamburgers. Those are the best kind. We make them at home with ground beef, egg, oats, barbecue sauce, onion, Bovril flavouring and mostly-cooked chopped bacon. Unbelievable!! Dinner was had, and the fire was going, and we sat around the fire talking.
Rob has rigged-up these seat-warmers for our campfire chairs. He has a converter thing that steps down power from a generator to a 12-volt device so we can run the seat warmers intended for car seats on our campfire chairs. In a car, of course, those things really heat up your ass. At the campfire, they do a pretty decent job, but the main intent is that you don’t lose any heat through the back of your chair, so we weren’t cold at all. The guys chatted about a lot of things we ignored, because the girls were having really in-depth conversations about the most atrocious things! The word “scrotum” was discussed at length – what kind of word is it, really? Why couldn’t they call it something better? Well, that led to a discussion on the actual thing, a scrotum, and its purpose and attributes, and we giggled and shrieked with laughter late into the night.
And the next morning, we got up and made cinnamon buns with cream-cheese icing for breakfast. The benefits of having a camper with an oven, I guess, is that you can have baked goods if you so desire. It was a similar day, weather-wise, to Saturday, and the sun came and went. We played ball with the dogs, chatted amiably with the friends, and relaxed a little. Rob took me for a short quad ride and the dogs followed. We stopped by the river down on some rocks and laid out in the sun while the dogs rested up to head back. The NoodleDog got to chasing things in the water, sticking in first his nose, then his whole muzzle, then his entire head, much to our amusement. We drove back and I finished my book, and we cooked dinner and went back to the fire in the evening.
I think, though, that two nights are enough, and that the third is just a bit too much. I could easily have gone home Sunday evening after dinner. As it was, we went home as early as possible on Monday, and although we did get home just after noon, we were too tired to do much in the way of cleaning up after the trip. We napped, and then I retrieved my cats from their weekend at the spa. We fixed an easy dinner (more burgers, left over from the trip), and spent most of the evening on the sofa doing nothing. I had intended to garden when we got home, but didn’t make it. Now, the gardening is waiting for me, ominously, half-done with grass and dirt. The house is asking to be cleaned by sending little tumbleweeds of fur rolling across the floor when doors are opened or closed, I suppose as a polite reminder.
So while the weekend was enjoyable, it doesn’t seem like it was very relaxing, except for Saturday. I know I have a lot to do at home in the way of chores, and I know Rob has a long list of things to do at home as well, like working on vehicles and getting the yard-work done. We seeded the yard with grass seed where the dogs have worn it to the dirt, but it hasn’t started to grow yet. And we’re back into the week, which does have a sort of loose routine to it, with work and going to the gym and chores and meetings and eating and sleeping.
I can’t wait for the next long weekend?
I got home around 3-ish on Friday. I found Rob in packing mode, getting all ready to go. I joined him and threw as much stuff as I figured I’d need into the camper and the Jeep. We evaluated the situation and in order to avoid the rush-hour traffic, cooked a nice dinner and ate it together. I figure we were on the road by around quarter to six, with a couple of quick stops on the way out of town, and we were rolling. We get out our two-way radios so we can communicate, and all’s well.
However, when we got to Okotoks (small town South of Calgary between us and the campsite), we encountered a road closure due to accident. This must have been a whopper, because the whole damn road was shut right the hell down. Blockaded by numerous police cars (so many that I wondered if anyone was actually AT the site of the accident doing anything at all, or if they were all hanging around the McDonalds’ parking lot where they conveniently closed the road), we weren’t even given the option of asking about alternate routes. And of course, we had no map. So what do we do? Well, I called the Map People – kind of like Onstar, but a little less well-informed, certainly well-intentioned, but lacking the concise communication skills to direct you based on your progress unless you stay on the phone with them. These Map People have served me well in my career of driving all mapless around the City, and these Map People are my parents.
My father gets on the phone and says “where the hell are you going?”, so I ask Rob, and am told “Longview”. My father gets right into it. “Well, you just get back on the highway and find High River, and then the 543, and you follow that to the 22. No problem.” Sounds easy. Only he neglected to add in this teeny, tiny little piece of information that you have to take the 2A, in High River, over to the 543 in order to get to the 22.
We make it to High River no problem. We head West right through the little town. I see a bunch of vehicles taking the 2A, and ignore them, because my instructions were to just go straight West through High River and hit the 22. We end up on this gravel road, heading West and zig-zagging South, and figure, well, we’re probably going in the right direction because the 22 is South West, right? Wrong. We traveled about 15 minutes down this very scenic road right to the very end, and encountered a “NO EXIT” sign as the road dwindled off onto acreages and farms. I call the Map People again and am told to then look for the 540, because the 540 goes right to the 22. I consider telling them we’re completely lost and that there is no 540, or I would have seen it on the way down this god-forsaken road, but then figure there’s no point in that. We make our way BACK to High River and take the 2A to the 543, and voila, there’s the 22, and a big sign saying “LONGVIEW” and a nice big arrow. No problem. Right.
Once we got the right road, we did fairly well. Until we got to the turnoff to the campsite road (another gravel road), and were then stuck behind people who were going approximately 40 km/hr down this road. I inhaled probably three pounds of dust this weekend, most of that was on the way in. The rest was on the way out, but that’s another story.
Finally, the slow-goers turn off. We kick it up and barrel our way down this rickety, gravel road, sided by slides and cliffs, and come to the campsite. Once there, we have to traverse a bit of a field that has a sort of a pathway cut into it, only I’m pretty sure that if we had just driven over the grass, the ride would have been smoother. No matter, I say, we’re nearly here! Yay! We find the group, park the truck & camper and the Jeep, and the dogs join the pack that is there already, and everyone seems pleased. We unload the camper and get going on the drinking.
I’m not sure if it was because I was already dead-tired, or that my stomach was then empty, having had dinner at least five hours earlier, but the rye kicked my ass that evening. I woke up the next morning at around 6a with the sort of headache I haven’t known for at least ten years. And it’s not like I can’t drink, oh, I can drink. I can drink ten or fifteen rye & cokes in an evening and feel absolutely fine the next morning. But Friday evening, I had four drinks and was dead. My spirit, having left my body, ascended through the camper roof and up into the sunny morning sky over the mountains and hills and campers below. But no, then there was Tylenol and water, and somehow it was yanked out of the ether and forced back to live out the rest of my life. Which included sleeping in until 10:30a, eating bacon for breakfast, and then lying in the hammock, ensconsed in the feather duvet, reading a book for a large part of the next day.
Rob, of course, went off on a quad ride, after what should have been lunchtime, but since we had just had breakfast, was not. I read for a while, went into the camper and read some more, and napped briefly, and cooked myself lunch at around 3p, which is around when the guys got back, so I threw another smokie on the barbecue for Rob. All was great. All was fine. Except for the fucking cold and bitter wind blowing through the campsite and through my spine. The sun would appear briefly between the clouds and we’d warm up a little, and then it would disappear and all the heat it had created would dissipate in about fifteen seconds. As soon as I put on a jacket, the sun would come out. As soon as I even thought about taking off the jacket, the sun would go away, and I would have to find something else to wrap around me.
No matter. We survived that and it started to get later and I napped again to get out of the wind, and soon enough, Terra came to wake me up. It was dinnertime, and Rob and I cooked home-made hamburgers. Those are the best kind. We make them at home with ground beef, egg, oats, barbecue sauce, onion, Bovril flavouring and mostly-cooked chopped bacon. Unbelievable!! Dinner was had, and the fire was going, and we sat around the fire talking.
Rob has rigged-up these seat-warmers for our campfire chairs. He has a converter thing that steps down power from a generator to a 12-volt device so we can run the seat warmers intended for car seats on our campfire chairs. In a car, of course, those things really heat up your ass. At the campfire, they do a pretty decent job, but the main intent is that you don’t lose any heat through the back of your chair, so we weren’t cold at all. The guys chatted about a lot of things we ignored, because the girls were having really in-depth conversations about the most atrocious things! The word “scrotum” was discussed at length – what kind of word is it, really? Why couldn’t they call it something better? Well, that led to a discussion on the actual thing, a scrotum, and its purpose and attributes, and we giggled and shrieked with laughter late into the night.
And the next morning, we got up and made cinnamon buns with cream-cheese icing for breakfast. The benefits of having a camper with an oven, I guess, is that you can have baked goods if you so desire. It was a similar day, weather-wise, to Saturday, and the sun came and went. We played ball with the dogs, chatted amiably with the friends, and relaxed a little. Rob took me for a short quad ride and the dogs followed. We stopped by the river down on some rocks and laid out in the sun while the dogs rested up to head back. The NoodleDog got to chasing things in the water, sticking in first his nose, then his whole muzzle, then his entire head, much to our amusement. We drove back and I finished my book, and we cooked dinner and went back to the fire in the evening.
I think, though, that two nights are enough, and that the third is just a bit too much. I could easily have gone home Sunday evening after dinner. As it was, we went home as early as possible on Monday, and although we did get home just after noon, we were too tired to do much in the way of cleaning up after the trip. We napped, and then I retrieved my cats from their weekend at the spa. We fixed an easy dinner (more burgers, left over from the trip), and spent most of the evening on the sofa doing nothing. I had intended to garden when we got home, but didn’t make it. Now, the gardening is waiting for me, ominously, half-done with grass and dirt. The house is asking to be cleaned by sending little tumbleweeds of fur rolling across the floor when doors are opened or closed, I suppose as a polite reminder.
So while the weekend was enjoyable, it doesn’t seem like it was very relaxing, except for Saturday. I know I have a lot to do at home in the way of chores, and I know Rob has a long list of things to do at home as well, like working on vehicles and getting the yard-work done. We seeded the yard with grass seed where the dogs have worn it to the dirt, but it hasn’t started to grow yet. And we’re back into the week, which does have a sort of loose routine to it, with work and going to the gym and chores and meetings and eating and sleeping.
I can’t wait for the next long weekend?
