Scott Bush

After another nice breakfast—this time cin­na­mon toast with honey from cousin’s apiary—we had a vis­i­tor for cof­fee: my great uncle Len. It was fun to talk with him and to have Crys­tal get a chance to meet him. He’s very laid back and we were imme­di­ately hav­ing fun shoot­ing the breeze and try­ing to com­plete elec­tronic New York Times cross­word puzzles.

Inspired dur­ing our first day’s tour around PW, Crys­tal and I decided to take advan­tage of the beau­ti­ful day by hik­ing up Mt. Valen­tine. Com­pletely gor­geous… a peace­ful wood of Aspens, then a steep climb up rough-hewn steps to a boul­dered, grassy bluff over­look­ing the paper mill below and the Straight of Geor­gia beyond that. We spent a relax­ing, soli­tary half hour or so enjoy­ing nature before return­ing to our car and dri­ving to Marine View drive to check out the stores.

PW’s retail-industrial com­plex grinds to a halt on Sun­days, it turns out. Not many stores were open; a few knick-knack/local goods stores, a thrift shop, and a used-book seller. One gem was Robbie’s Hemp Shop and Juice Bar. We strolled past the door, then kinda stopped and looked at each other. “Wanna check it out?” I asked. “If you do,” Crys­tal replied. So we did. Pretty neat actu­ally! We ended up spend­ing about 30 min­utes there talk­ing to the propi­etor and her friend (we were the only cus­tomers that day, we found out; Sun­day is slow in Pow­ell River!). Crys­tal enjoyed the juice spe­cial: carrot-beet, a real steal at CAN$2.50 for 12 ounces. We watched her throw big car­rot after car­rot and beet after beet into her juicer—along with half an apple for sweet­ness. The result­ing juice was good and very healthy. I even took my first shot of wheat­grass (on the house, too!). Not bad, but I def­i­nitely would pre­fer it mixed in with other fruit.

We had lunch at Rocky Moun­tain Bak­ery, which sold sand­wiches, soups, and pizza, before round­ing out the day at the afore­men­tioned used book shop. The weather was gor­geous and really made the town sparkle… we couldn’t have asked for a nicer afternoon.

But our evening was even bet­ter! After return­ing home and clean­ing up (and refresh­ing with a lime cor­dial in the gar­den) we exchanged cars with my cousin Mike so we could later pick up fam­ily friends Bill and Snookie Amos and head out for din­ner. But first we toured Mike’s beau­ti­ful new home, which they’d just fin­ished build­ing about a year ear­lier. Amaz­ingly beau­ti­ful place.

For­give my use of clichéd adjec­tives, but our next stop at Snookie and Bill’s “estate,” for lack of a bet­ter word, was incred­i­ble. They have the most exsquisite gar­den I’ve ever seen. I remem­bered it from my child­hood vis­its, but it’s come a long way since then. Shrubs define var­i­ous sec­tions of the gar­den, each with well-kempt beds of bright flow­ers and mag­n­fi­cient trees. A clear brook runs through it, and a pretty wooden gazebo offers a rest­ful place to sit and enjoy it. Snookie told us what each of the trees and flow­ers were and offered a his­tory of the garden’s growth over the years. They’ve sold the prop­erty and are mov­ing shortly, so it was a real treat to be able to enjoy (and take pho­tos of) it before they left.

Din­ner was my “birth­day treat” and was at The Laugh­ing Oys­ter in Okeover, which is about a half-hour out­side of Pow­ell River. What a meal! I had gun­pow­der prawns, while the rest of the din­ers had steak. There was a bit of a wait for the food to arrive, but it was well worth it: grilled aspara­gus and pep­pers, fried yam cro­quette, and rice pilaf accom­pa­nied my prawns, which were as spicy as promised and served on a large shell. I even got a slice of “choco­late choco­late crazy choco­late,” a secret desert. It was quite a meal, sur­passed in taste only by the com­pany in which I enjoyed it.

We rounded out the evening by dri­ving out to the end of high­way 101, which ter­mi­nates in Lund. It’s a pretty lit­tle place, with not much but a hotel and a marina but is appar­ently a well-known tourist spot. The drive back to PW was pleas­ant; Bill even spot­ted a deer in a field as we stopped at an over­look to see Savary Island.

A long, event­ful day… but still one of the most relax­ing and enjoy­able days I’d had in a long while. It was a nice change of pace, and made me real­ize how nice a slower-paced lifestyle can be.

The sec­ond day was sec­ond in name only; first in every­thing else! Well, except the weather, which was over­cast with some sun breaks. Since this day seemed to revolve around food, so does the blog entry.

Break­fast

We spent a nice morn­ing over a break­fast of organic, local eggs whose shells were so thick I really had to smack’em to crack’em. That’s from healthy chick­ens who get a lot of cal­cium in their diet, apparently.

After break­fast we headed out to Pow­ell River’s local mar­ket. Not quite as large as those in Edmonds or Everett, but just as nice. Lots of soap, candy, can­dle, and plant ven­dors, though not much pro­duce yet. The mar­ket is right next to Pow­ell River’s “ther­a­peu­tic rid­ing” association’s horse facil­ity. Pretty inter­est­ing, really—children are helped onto the horses and given rides as a way to help them phys­i­cally and men­tally. There’s a large corps of vol­un­teers to help these kids (my uncle included) from through­out the com­mu­nity.
On our way back we had a tour of the area. It was a ver­i­ta­ble fam­ily his­tory! We saw Mowat Bay, where my pater­nal grand­par­ents lived on a float house, as well as a few other homes through­out Pow­ell River built by fam­ily as early as the 1950s. Uncle Owen also gave us the his­tory of two of the trees in his yard, which he brought over from Nova Sco­tia as saplings in 1954. Amaz­ing to think about that as I stood look­ing up to the sky at this huge tree… talk about hav­ing roots to a place!

Lunch

After a deli­cious lunch (sand­wiches on kala­mata olive bread with organic greens from the mar­ket) we had a nap! it’s a very rare occa­sion for me to have a nap, but it was nice; we are, after all, on vaca­tion. The weather was a bit nicer that after­noon so we took trip to Marine Drive, a street full of quaint retail and din­ing places (most of which were closed at 5:30 on a Sat­ur­day). But, the Break­wa­ter book­store and inter­net café was open, which allowed me to post about our first day. It was a pleas­ant sur­prise to find the cof­fee was excel­lent, too.

Din­ner

Our sec­ond day seemed to largely revolve around food and din­ner was no excep­tion. We feasted on local prawns we’d bought from a woman ear­lier that day and had been caught just days before (Pow­ell River is well known for its prawns). This was accom­pa­nied by an organic greens cae­sar with home­made dress­ing; fresh-baked focac­cia bread; baked pota­toes with green onions from their gar­den; and a healthy dose of melted gar­lic but­ter over the whole thing. A top-shelf meal if there ever was one. The best part of it all was the fact we were joined by my cousin Linda who is an absolute delight. She brought us three jars of honey from their very own api­ary. She also gave us a queen bee, which looks like a peanut shell or a peach pit. I was fas­ci­nated by it all and resolved to keep bees when we get a house with a yard, assum­ing there are still bees around—seriously.

A brief walk around the neigh­bor­hood rounded out the day. It has been a most relax­ing day and we’re look­ing for­ward to tomorrow!

As rare as a blue moon or steak tar­tar, we enjoyed a four-day Memo­r­ial Day week­end. Crys­tal and I decided to take the oppor­tu­nity to travel to Pow­ell River to visit my fam­ily there. It’s a beau­ti­ful trip, though long—about six hours with two ferry rides, but we were look­ing for­ward to the time together and the weather cer­tainly cooperated.

Day one

We headed north up I-5 about 11am and were at the Cana­dian bor­der near Blaine/Surrey by about 1:30. The truck cus­toms were a bit busy but we were through and up high­way 15 shortly after­ward. Next we hit high­way 1 and went west through Van­cou­ver to Horse­shoe Bay. We’d missed the 1:55 sail­ing, but were early for the 3:30. We slept a bit in the car, but it was too hot so we wan­dered around the ferry slip and enjoyed the weather until the ferry arrived.

The ferry was huge; by far the biggest I’d ever been on. Very nice, too. We sat on the upper deck and read our books and snacked while watch­ing the small islands and not-too-distant moun­tains pass by. The cross­ing to Land­ing­dale was short, and we were soon on the road again.

We took a brief stop in Gib­sons at Prime Min­is­ter Tim Horton’s donut shop, where Crys­tal eval­u­ated his “dou­ble dou­ble” leg­is­la­tion; I reviewed his sin­gle. Good stuff, espe­cially accom­pa­nied by a donut.
The road from Gib­sons to Earl’s Cove, where we were to catch the 6:25 sail­ing to Saltery Bay, is—in a word—curvy. Sports car com­mer­cials should be filmed here, and a future edi­tion of Project Gotham Rac­ing must include it as a track. What fun! We had a ferry to catch, which gave me rea­son to speed along the twisty road to the best of Crystal’s car’s abil­ity. Made me wish for a nice road­ster rather than the aging four-cylinder we were in, but Crystal’s white knuck­les kept me from really find­ing out how well we could take a hair­pin turn. Luck­ily there was no other traf­fic save for a BC Hydro work truck that actu­ally passed us on his way to the ferry. Luck­ily, we arrived in time, thanks to the ferry run­ning behind schedule.

The sec­ond cross­ing of the trip took 45 min­utes and we equally beau­ti­ful, though the ferry—the “Queen of Tsawwassen” wasn’t nearly as well-appointed. We enjoyed the last 27 kilo­me­ters from Saltery Bay to Pow­ell River, where we met Aun­tie Val and Uncle Owen. We snacked and caught up for a few hours before hit­ting the rack–in a brand new Mur­phy bed! It was built by Aun­tie Val’s son Mike and is really neat. We’re the first to stay in it.

It’s nearly my birth­day, which is great except I remem­ber two years ago at this time when I learned of my friend Greg Stark’s death atop Mt. Rainier. I was at work at the Small Schools Project when my phone rang; it was Beth Koe­mans. She told me she’d seen a news report about one Greg Stark and his uncle not hav­ing returned from a hike. “It could be our Greg Stark,” she said. “Maybe,” I told her, “But you don’t know yet so don’t worry.” Unfor­tu­nately, as the day wore on we knew it was our Greg who was miss­ing and we had to hope he’d be res­cued. He wasn’t.

I’m post­ing about Greg for two rea­sons. First, it’s the sec­ond anniver­sary of his death and I now have a blog so I can men­tion him. And more impor­tantly, I’ve learned of an event in East­ern Wash­ing­ton called the “Greg Stark Memo­r­ial Youth Fly Fish­ing Event,” put on by a fish­ing shop called The Evening Hatch. What a cool trib­ute! Young peo­ple are taught to fly fish and have an oppor­tu­nity to do so on the Yakima river, all in mem­ory of Greg. If you’re a fly fish­er­man (or is it fisher-person?) I’d ask you to give them your busi­ness if you’re ever over there.

We miss you Greg.

I’m a huge Den­zel Wash­ing­ton fan. Really liked Fallen, Man on Fire, and Crim­son Tide; and I loved his per­for­mance in Much Ado About Noth­ing (see all his movies on IMDB.com). Last evening we watched his lat­est, Deja Vu. Quite a film!

What I enjoyed most about the film was the integrity of the sto­ry­line. (Don’t read on if you haven’t seen it because this will clearly ruin your movie-watching expe­ri­ence.) There are two time­frames in the movie and—assuming you can sus­pend your disbelief—you’ll be amazed at how well they mesh together. It’s very trick. Hav­ing watched Star Trek for years, the time-travel episodes mostly fall apart (Enter­prise’s “tem­po­ral cold war” non­sense is a per­fect exam­ple). That’s why I was sur­prised at how well Tony Scott (or per­haps I should give more credit to the screen­writ­ers?) man­aged to fore­shadow many plot ele­ments. The sec­ond half of the movie we were exclaim­ing “oh, there’s the [what­ever] we saw ear­lier! Cool!” all the time. It also kept the sus­pense because we’d seen some­thing ear­lier that hadn’t yet been explained, so we knew it was com­ing. And the act­ing was good across the board, though I felt Jim Caviezel played his role excellently.

There were also some good Den­zel lines, as with Fallen’s “Put some food on my plate.” Denzel’s sit­ting in the device about to go back in time and his col­league asks how he’s doing. “I’m besides myself,” he says in that wry Den­zel way. Good stuff.

As you may know, I vol­un­teer with Food Life­line when­ever I can. For the past four years I’ve helped with their National Asso­ci­a­tion of Let­ter Car­ri­ers (NALC) food drive event; the last three of which I’ve been a team leader. It’s a great event: let­ter car­ri­ers (the cor­rect term for “mail­man” or “mail lady”) drop off plas­tic grociery bags in your mail­box early in the week. Then on Sat­ur­day they pick them up again filled with donated non-perishable food and take them to their postal sta­tion. That’s where Food Lifeline’s vol­un­teers come in. We trans­fer the food into huge card­board boxes called “totes,” which are then loaded onto a wait­ing semi truck for ship­ment back to the main facil­ity for pro­cess­ing and dis­tri­b­u­tion to local food banks.

This year wasn’t as busy as past years, but it was still a very good turn out. We had 34 (or 36) totes full of food at the North City postal sta­tion where I was (the pre­vi­ous years I was team leader at Bit­ter Lake and Uni­ver­sity sta­tions). We had a good num­ber of ded­i­cated vol­un­teers, so we made short work of trans­fer­ring the food when the postal vehi­cles arrived. All in all, my only com­plaint is the nasty sun­burn across my fore­head I didn’t know I was get­ting. Over­cast days can be dan­ger­ous, so wear your sun­screen kids!