OH CANADA
We made it across border control to Canada, onto a boat to Vancouver Island and up into the mountains to camp. We‘d managed to steal an unused keg of beer from the event to take on our trip. What could possibly go wrong? As we climbed higher, the beauty of the landscape shone through. Amazing trees surrounded our secret little site with trails and cool little hikes all around us too. We set up our encampment and tried to get a fire started in the rainforest. Good luck with that one! However, a group of windsurfers finally found something useful about kiteboarding – the pump. Used as a pair of bellows, we kept our feeble fire burning throughout the evening. As the beer flowed, so did the tales, getting more and more entertaining with stories old and new. I recounted the legend of a trip to Tahiti with Jason Prior, where we saved some pearl divers from dying in the mast high surf. It was a fun night.
Then our party grew. A group of people approached our outpost and we were like “Oh boy here we go – some Red Necks are gonna to kill us.” Luckily, it was just a group of drunken teenagers on summer holiday. In Canada the age limit for drinking is 18. Not that I knew that they were 18, but they looked close enough. But we had been holding up the keg for a while, so it was all in good spirits. About 20 miles down a logging road is a great place for any first time drinkers. I can’t imagine what they thought: “There we are in the middle of nowhere and we find some old dudes, drinking around the weakest fire I have ever seen – with a keg of beer!” We invited them to join us and they brought gifts in return in the form of dry wood pallets. We went from weak green forest wood to a blazing fire. They went from getting some guys to buy them a 6-pack to all the beer they could possibly drink. What a trade! I definitely heard some puking going on once I was safely inside my tent.