Tripping

Had myself a little adventure yesterday with the kids. While not a long weekend off like the civilians out there, this Easter "long weekend" did afford me some time to do a small road trip. Since I was planning on heading down to the south shore on a decent looking spring day for good Friday, I did work a solid and promised to deliver a van to our sister property, Oak Island. We are unloading our old catering van so they can use it around the property for body removal, I mean housekeeping services. Since I was driving the bucket of bolts my oldest followed behind in my car should I need assistance....see where this is going?

I was warned that the van has a tendency to shake and shimmy when it gets up around 60 km/h. That was an understatement of epic proportions. After getting the van on to a longer road for me to build up some speed to test out its limits, I saw that the van, between say 55 and 80, shook so violently that I thought my teeth would smash together. Obviously this was going to be a long drive doing 50 all the way to the resort. But lo and behold I found out that once over 90 or so the shaking stopped, so my plan was adjusted and I decided to take the highway.

This is what I was thinking as the van tried mightily to get up and over 100 and past the violent spasms. Well, what a way to die and how crazy will it be to have my kids watch me die? This thing would not need the sign "if this van is a rocking, don't come a knocking" Nobody in their right mind would approach it for fear of getting engulfed in its impending doom. No exaggeration here...it was shaking so violently that whatever was loose in the cabin was flying around smashing into the side walls (later to be determined as a fire extinguisher and tire iron). It was crazy loud and a tad scary but all I needed to do was pass 90 and I would be OK. And I was....I even got the thing up to 120 to see how it handled and it was no problem.

This is what my kids saw driving behind me, also contemplating my death right before their eyes. Not only could they see the disturbing shaking of the van on it's axles but things were flying off the van. According to them I lost at least one hub cap and multiple lug bolt plastic covers, spraying off from the wheels at an alarming rate. To their credit and my pride, they laughed at how silly it looked once I got the thing under control.

Finally safe and sound we enjoyed some lunch at the resort and made our way to Lunenburg for a bit of nostalgia, a footnote for another adventure survived. Which got me thinking about the epic road trips of my youth. Not the ones with my parents and forced confinement in either the Vega or the Nova...no, that all too brief period of time from when I got my licence to when I supposedly grew up a few years later. Road trips, ahhhhhhhhhhh...the memories.

Any of these will probably make it to its own deserving post, I think maybe a wide angle snap shot is in order for today:

Wasaga Beach 1 and 2.0. I laugh out loud at what it must have looked like when the three cars that we were crammed into arrived that first time to that shit hole cottage as we sprang out of the cars at full volume and pent up testosterone. "Oh look, these must be the guys that rented the place for the week....oh my God!!! What the hell are they doing? Oh shit!!!" We were, as a group, loud, crude, without fear and completely devoid of boundaries. Think the Tasmanian devil on crack.

Dave's cottage after graduation. I still have the scar on my ankle from flying over the handlebars on that mini bike. Racing through towns at 150 km/h with a couple of kegs in the back of the Nova and Vernon's Nova right behind us. His was attracting a little more attention for we had soaped it before leaving, meaning we had "painted" his dad's car with bars of soap...wrote things like "don't laugh, your daughter is in here" "drink stupid" and all manner of things that made sense to us alone. I hear he got in so much shit afterwards because we couldn't get all the marking off that his dad may have forbade him to ever hang out with us again. We ran out of the beer from the kegs on the second night of a five night trip...so much for the beer budget boys.

How about driving down to Buffalo to watch the Habs play the Sabres for my birthday one year. Shitty city with a shitty team but pretending to be a drunk French Canadian provided for a laugh or two. You can yell out names of food items in French and sound like you're cursing and still make friends with other drunks...."come on ref, pomme du terre!!!!"

I could go on of course but I think I will save more details for later on. I guess the memories of these glory days will live on forever, maybe the details become a little fuzzy, a little less clear but the general feeling is so very sharp. My friends and I had some amazing times. Surrounded by people you really cared for because, for a moment in time at least, we shared the common bond of being in the weeds together. The time I was pulled over and surprisingly let go from my stunting is something those five other guys in the car will always be a part of. Or the time Ciupa, on his very first time driving his dads car, smashed it with the rest of us drunk fools as witnesses. It was surreal to be in the car behind watching the carnage unfold and all of us say, almost simultaneously, "did he just get hit?" I know almost all of these stories fall into the "you had to be there" category and you know what, you really should have been there. I suppose you were having your own adventures.

That tapestry word comes to mind once again. Those moments in time that have woven together to form what my life is today. I'm still adding to that magnificent piece of art work of course and I imagine today will be looked back upon with the same sort of nostalgia. The only difference being, that I'm not a young kid but an old fuck, and so my perspective is a tad different, coloured if you will by the past 30 odd years of experience and even maybe a bit of wisdom. No less important and probably a little more tame...

Happy Easter
D