Pinery Camping for May 24!!!!!

Allie's cousin invited us camping at the Pinery to help with the costs of a site over the May 24 weekend when prices are higher.  Of course we accepted.

The plan was to keep everything minimal: eat only hot dogs, sleep on mats instead of air mattresses, etc. to keep costs and space in one vehicle as low as possible.  The problem with this, is that when it rains all night and morning on the first day, there's nothing to do cooped up in a tent and everything that sat on the ground is wet. So Brent and Allie spent the morning polishing off a bag of goldfish crackers in the most inventive ways possible.

This is the smiley-fish-killer

And the three-fish school attack

The first night was filled with guitar playing, card games, and philosophical chatter over various alcoholic-type beverages smuggled in in water bottles due to the alcohol ban. Brent has a story to continue that later ahahaha. 

That night, one of the girls fell asleep at the picnic table after everyone else had retreated to tents. Out of the darkness you hear one of the guys: "I'm coming to save you! Don't move! You're surrounded by raccoons!"  And sure enough, the campsite was marauded all night long by a whole pack of the little rabid beasties. And a squirrel accomplice who fell in the garbage bag after the ruffles chips. 

Aside from Allie's cousin's girlfriend who ate granola bars and rice chips all weekend, everyone else feasted on charry hot dogs till their hearts and stomachs were content. Sunday and Monday, however, the sight of another dog or a jalapeno and cheese sausage was enough to make anyone vomit. Enough hotdogs already!

Good thing we brought some canned stews and chef boyardee, which we happily indulged in at room temperature... on the beach!

All the hot dogs and chips and May 24 celebratory beer were easily worked off by Brent and Allie who were really the only ones in the group that wanted to DO anything except sit around the fire all weekend. We hiked almost thirteen kilometres of trails, but the Nippissing was our favourite.

It had more stairs and sandy hills than you can count!

But we stopped to hug trees in the regrowth forest.

And there was a really cool promontory with a view to die for. 

Where we left our mark among the thousands of others before us, then headed back to camp... but not before eating a wildflower or two!

Amid all this hiking, and running up and down some huge sand dunes (those pictures are on Brent's phone....) we stopped a bunch of times at the beach. The one night, after making friends with some rowdy kids from Watford and doing a bit of a polar bear dip in the freezing, calm water, we decided to head back to camp before we caught the chills. Unfortunately, everyone else had abandoned us, and we were left to navigate our way back to camp in the dark. 

As Murphy's law would have it, every turn we made was wrong and the twenty-minute walk turned into almost three hours of stumbling, blind, down some service roads outside of the campground. Cold, footsore and a little freaked out at the strange noises one can hear in the brush in the night, we FINALLY made it back to camp at 2:30 in the morning after mentally drafting our own version of the Blair Witch Project done as a zombie flick with post-apocalyptic abandoned toll-booths and discarded trucks and possibly set in a campground very similar to the one we were in.... okay, so the pitch darkness gets to you a little.... lol....

The rest of the weekend can be summed up in a whole bunch of shenanigans including bug gladiator battles:

(you can't see them, but there's a nest of red ants going at a caterpillar in the "ring" and Brent is, to no surprise, provoking them with a stick. )

Wrestling and jumping down dunes taller than small apartment buildings:

Lots of peeing in the bushes, too many hot dogs, and Brent and Allie licking a slug which was reported to make your tongue go numb -- and it did!!!! Videos of that to come...

And Brent acquired himself a whole slew of new names:

Meet...

 

Brent, Derek, Christian/Paul, and Dick Cheese (don't ask...) 

Monday morning, before we headed home, Allie won out and got to go canoeing like she'd been begging to since the snow melted.  Once we hauled ass beyond the boring touristy folk and left Allie's cousins behind to search for turtles along the bank and not paddle at all, we created a natural obstacle course including over logs, under logs, between lilies, across sand bars, speedy 360-degree maneuvers, and a game of chicken with a goose which we actually lost. Goofing around like that, the hour of rental time really wore out our arms! But we got some good pictures, so it was worth it.

We thought life jackets would make us look like Iron Man, but it's more like the Michelin Man...

And now that this entry is getting ridiculously long and full, we'll let you go dream of your own camping trip now... we have mugs to wash and sleeping bags to dry out!

Brent can... Garden?

I know, I know, it's hard to believe that brent has the capability to care so tenderly for other living things like worms and lilacs, but he proved himself worthy of a green thumb as he helped us "earn our keep" in Allie's parents' garden the past few days.

We weeded, turned over soil, and transplanted.   When Allie found a cute little worm to save, Brent began throwing big, juicy dirt-honkers at her. Good thing she can catch okay.. poor little dirt-lovers....

Cute little worm. Saved!

 Then we set to the task of transplanting a tree. A very stubborn tree with thick, deep roots and prickly leafy bits.

 

Then Brent dared Allie to lick the shovel, which she did. 

Allie's mom served up some delicious punch with ice cubes, and make your own ham, lettuce, and tomato sandwiches on yummy little buns.  MMMMM that was sooo tasty after such hard work!

On the truck front, (I know I always start that way,) just the last of the ebrake work and alignment, and it should be good to go, which is VERY exciting!  Allie's dreaming of trail riding on horseback or canoeing, and Brent's dreaming of renting ATVS or parasailing. Anything's possibly when Truckkie works!

At Partsource (our new best friends... we filled out 12 customer satisfaction surveys from our receipts for chances to win $1000 lol) Allie saw this flyer and took a pic. Tropical rock music? $25? Sounds like something we might even try on our super-tight budget.

Allie also wants to repaint the truck. Again, I know. But for REAL. With compressed air and real automotive paint. She knows how now. Problem is, it's about $250 for paint, so unless someone out there knows of a black market for auto paint.... ouch.

But that dream of black-and-lime-green-ness-with-baha-lights may become a reality.  Here's time to BREAK THE NEWS!!!!

I know all of you thought we were going off on wild adventuring all summer, but, as fate would have it, safetying this damned truck has drained all of our fund. We won't even have the gas to make it to the Ottawa Valley, let alone north of there lol. But there is hope of a fun summer yet, and, because Sarnia isn't far from London, we hope it can include some of you. 

Allie is starting a residential pressure-washing company with no start-up funds... we'll see how that goes.... especially with three summer courses on the go....

BUT BRENT IS STARTING HIS OWN LEGITIMATE COMPANY!!!  Through the Summer Company program, he';s getting a start-up budget and business counselling for marketing and budgeting to do his little car flippy thingy. AND he's got a little VW in mind. AND he gets a three thousand grant at the end for being such a good boy. Yay?!

More to come once all the approval comes through. VERY EXCITED!!!

Oh, and going camping this weekend! Woooooooooo!!!! Allie's cuz Smallville asked us up.. donno where, or we'd invite y'all to tag along.  

BIKING FRENZY with a touch of SUNSHINE!

In lieu of Allie's massive bike ride, we decided to head out to bike across town to Lambton Ford for some stupid piece of bent-looking metal. That's 14 km unto itself. Then we biked to see our now great friends at Partsource who laugh every time we pull up. One day, we'll actually drive up in the real truck.  That's four more kilometres.

Then we stopped for lunch and Brent sampled lamb shwarma (sans anything pickled or chickpea in origin... booooring....) but wouldn't try Allie's falafel, or the Aloe drink she wanted to get.

THEN we biked home to get swimsuits, then to the LCBO for four tallboys of canada's finest... another 3.2km...

THEN to the park to check out the new BMX trails that are being build there.  Unfortunately the guy with the shovel was a sure signal that they weren't finished, but we found some of the old mountain biking trails to explore.

Then our bikes got tired, so we let them go down to the beach and have a rest in the sunshine. 

Aaaand... we had a lot of trouble coordinating expressions and movements for a pic together... but here's the best results HAH!

Please note the delectably warm and flat Canadians disguised in water bottles lol. There was NO need for that.. the only other people there were an eavesdropping old man with a book and a couple that were definitely doing it behind some brush.  Not a copper in sight. 

And the only successful one... sorry guys.... don't mean to make you gag.

We spent a long time watching the parasailers and windsurfers. Going to look into rentals and instructions on that...

This is what happens to hobbits' hairy feet when they forget to trim the scruff...

This is our fortress called HOLE/New Orleans....

And that's the end of our boredom!!! Back tomorrow hopefully to make a real kick-ass sandcastle, then who wants to go theatre hopping to see Robin Hood AND Ironman?

Oh, and good, but secret news... there may be a major change in plans... meetings Monday.. will fill you in!!!

Of Cars and Guitars...

On the Brent front, he's been wildly active lately, working his little ass off to get the truck safetied. Now, it's a stupid fan thing and the e-brake that are making him pull his hair out. Who'd have thunk that a car is considered "unsafe" if the fan fails to work on low and medium, but pumps it out on high?

Yesterday he ripped the heck out of the doors to fix the locks. Derek, sorry you couldn't get out of the back seat that one time... turns out the child safety wasn't just on, it was broken.

And he's spent some time wailing on my brother's guitar, too. We got the kid a cool fire-printed strap and some wicked metal picks for his birthday that Allie thinks Brent's jealous of.

(that's not beer, it's diet coke...)

Self-inflicted Punishment over a Weeny Little Tantrum Regarding a Hat

So while Brent does the more technical work on the truck that Allie has no hope of comprehending, she has decided to get on a bit of a health kick while the nice weather is here (sorry about your tree, Derek!)

Doesn't lunch look yummy? No Brent is not being subjected to the dietary confines of pure yumminess!!!!

And to ward off a very juvenile temper tantrum over a missing hat, Allie went out to punish herself with a 25km bike ride... in the rain! Note: don't buy those skinny little bike seats that make you look like you're going to go faster. They hurt!! 

Here's some pics of the lovely, albeit rainy, scenery just outside of a little town called Bright's Grove. Today, it was not so bright.

To Keller or not to Keller?

We have so many topics to write about today that we thought we'd write individual posts for each one.

For the first highlight of the week, is our favourite topic: BOOZE

We decided to start a wine journal, much inspired by that weird wine tasting Brent and Mike do.  We rate, describe flavours, list pricing, etc.  So far there's only one dry white in it, but it will grow! There's two on the list for tonight's wine menu.

And then we decided to list the beers, too, since the LCBO here has some weird ones. The first one, pictured, that was foreign to us got a rating of BLEAHHHHH in spite of the cool satin-finish can that enticed us to purchase (and the low price)

Just so you know not to buy it.

Kids do the strangest things....

This chilly Monday evening, Brent, Allie and little brother Luke decided to treat themselves to our annual Dairy Queen fix. As Brent learned, at $13 for three small blizzards, it's annual for a reason! As we were fending off the brain freeze and staring out the window, we noticed a funny thing -- get this: a little girl with a giant walking cast on one leg, a furry slipper on the other, trying to ride a bicycle in big circles while alternately talking and texting on a cell phone. That's what we decided to call an accident waiting to happen!!

Stones 'N' Bones 'N' Cobwebs

So Wednesday Allie decided to take Brent to the museum she used to work at. The museum, which looks like a teeny little room from the storefront, is actually over four-hundred square feet and houses a slew of exotic taxidermied animals, 4.3 billion year old fossils, glow-in-the-dark gemstones, record-setting bones, pickled sharks, and (the newest editions), a room full of dinosaurs. Needless to say, Brent was wowed by the massive scale and scope of the collection and proved himself gullible to the owner's jokes about Tim Hortons and deer.

Then we got wrangled into volunteering that Sunday while the museum played host to almost four-thousand people on some tour group. We got a free lunch out of it (including beer!), so we can't complain.

As we biked in for the Sunday tour groups, Allie told Brent that the owner had a tendency to over-exaggerate and that there would probably be a lot of people, but not four-thousand. Boy, was she wrong!!!! The whole place was a sea of slow-moving people and camera flashes for the next six hours. We directed traffic, running around with brochures and parking information, we manned the dinosaur room and Brent learned all the right things to say, and Allie got herself in Monday's Sarnia paper with a picture (not shown below because the computer is being fussy) bleahh... Overall, it was an impeccably eye-opening day! We learnt a lot about the museum, about the amazingly optimistic nature of people, and we ran around till our feet felt about ready to fall off... then biked home.

Here are the pictures of Brent's dinosaur experience:

A full-scale cast of a complete hadrosaur skeleton

a juvenile hadrosaur skull

dinosaur eggs (empty, as the xray shows)

Albertosaurus skull

On the truck front, Brent spent some time learning how to bleed out the new brake lines, we learnt just how amazing Armor-All Wipes are (and Allie wiped down every slightly non-shiny surface till it shone), and that acetone is the all-purpose paint remover that cures all of one's overspray worries. Allie was still pissed that the spray paint cans of gloss wouldn't cover in an even shine, so she bought a jug of gloss with the idea that it could be rolled on with the small foam rollers. We didn't think twice that it looked like a sparkly oil slick in the can, and rolled on like cobwebs as it melted the foam rollers. Baaaaad idea. Lesson Learned: always test on a small area first.....

We hauled out the compressed air tank and managed to figure out how to work the foreign-looking object with the spray gun. The sparkliness of the gloss really helped cover, though weirdly enough all the trim and roof-rack bits look like they're covered in cobwebs. Weird stuff. Always test in a small area first!!

Then for an adventurous and exotic dinner, we cooked Allie's family some fried rice and spring rolls.... MMMM..... Brent really has a flair for seasonings! Except ranch....