This weekend we went to Vancouver Island to participate in the quint-annual reunion of my mother and her cousins (on her mother’s side.) All of my mother’s cousins have sons. There is one daughter – out of 9 kids – but the daughter is in Argentina on a student exchange. All of the sons are between the ages of 17 and 25 and all of them like to holler and throw things and tell the others to shut up.
While we were waiting for the food to barbeque on saturday night, the sons rigged up a jump for a mountain bike. One son got a nice running start on his bike and drove himself up a ramp and headfirst into some hay bales. I think he intended to perform a spectacular flip over the bales but after three tries where he ended up with a mouthful of straw and dried animal dung – much to the delight of the other sons – he walked away from it, 1/3 of his dignity still intact.
One of the sons is pictured here in his “will wheelie for boobs” t-shirt.
We HarbourLynx’d to Nanaimo on Saturday morning. The HarbourLynx is a passenger ferry (no cars) that goes from downtown Vancouver to downtown Nanaimo in just 80 minutes. It’s a catamaran. Not sure if it was a rough crossing or if we are giant wimps but Saint Aardvark and I were green with the seasickness by the time that 80 minute Playland ride was over. It was like being inside a really really big speedboat, you know, the way they bump up against the waves? Either that or we hit a lot of harbour seals.
We stayed in a motel called “The Old Dutch Inn” in Qualicum Beach. This place ruled! There were pictures of Dutch painters, philosophers and children on the walls. The room numbers were painted on 3D wooden shoes that were stuck to the doors. The restaurant staff wore little Dutch caps and pinafores. There was a pool but I didn’t get to it because we were right across the street from the beach.
We walked along the beach for a bit, past the pebbly parts and down to the sandy part. The tide was on its way back in but there was still a stretch of sand left before the ocean. We had to plow the sea debris out of our way before we could comfortably swim and the ocean floor was shag carpety in places. I tried to avoid the white blobs that looked like spit or seagull poop, Mom swam far, far away and kept hollering, “It’s clear out here!” and Saint Aardvark encountered a couple of jellyfish and a sand dollar or five. The water was warm. We swam and swam and I nearly got dragged by my hair to the bottom of the ocean to be a mermaid but at the last minute managed to yank free of the seaweed that had snared me. Whew!
After a stop for ice cream, where the girl who scooped confided she can’t wait to leave Qualicum Beach because most of the people who live there are sort of older and there isn’t much to do, we were on our way to dinner.
We dined and laughed and visited on a piece of property that my mom’s uncle bought in 1948. He convinced his city-slicker bride it would be a good idea to leave Montreal and try raising chickens in rural BC. She went for it. Now two of the cousins live on the 18 acres of property with their sons (in separate houses).
We ate freshly fished salmon and prawns, corn on the cob, salad and chips. And 5 different kinds of pie for dessert. There was sun and then beer, a game of “extreme bocce” (you bowl overhand) and then mosquitoes appeared, followed by stars. We drove lazily down dark country roads back to the Inn.
The next day we had a breakfast picnic catered by Tim Hortons in a park called Englishman’s Bluffing Falls Park. No, that is not its real name. It contained a waterfall, trails to hike and cliffs to jump. The sons jumped off the cliff into the river, while their parents looked on, unable to reprimand because 30 years ago, it was them jumping off the cliff into the river. No one ended up with a spinal cord injury and only a couple of boys bruised their behinds.
There was also a heron in the park. It stood upon one leg and watched for bears.
Saint Aardvark, mom, dad and I said goodbye to the cousins and drove to Parksville. We had lunch at Poppa’s Pizza and walked for 17,000 kms across the sand before reaching the ocean. It was the lowest tide of the day. An older couple on their way back to their beach cottage told us we should have packed a lunch. Then the man showed us his water walking shoes. They had slits in the soles for the water to run out of and they were made of magic rubber with an insole that was removable so the sand wouldn’t collect. We were very impressed.
We saw another jellyfish and because it wasn’t floating at us in shoulder-high water, we stopped to take a photo. With SA’s foot for scale.
At the end of the sand there was ocean:
We turned around and walked back, holding on to our hats and losing our words to the wind. And this is how it ends.
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