Mike picked me up around 2:30 – wearing his kilt. Ten minutes later we were at Suzanne’s; she was waiting downstairs after I called her to come on down, and you should have seen her mile wide grin as she saw Mike’s ride pull up. They introduced themselves. We had a gorgeous, rather warm ride in Mike’s Mustang convertible. We spent about ten minutes gossiping about family members – neither of us being too pleased with the respective number two childer in our families, nuff said, and then dispensed with further whining for the rest of the day.
The stairs down presented no problem. We walked over to Stormin’ Norman’s and got settled, and promptly got booted off our piece of real estate by a vendor, who said he needed more space. So we moved, after chowing down a sandwich. (I made Italian cheese bread and turkey or beef and mustard and lettuce sandwiches, which were awesome). I brought three Stellas with me and proceeded to crack one open and give it to Mike. I also picked up kettle corn and it was hilarious how we chowed through that at a great rate too. Suzanne brought the best Greek Salad EVER… ENOUGH olives and ultra fresh feta cheese, om nom nom. Suzanne and Mike went for a splash in the water and came back about 45 minutes later all exhilarated and refreshed, while I lazed under the awning thingy and listened the waves of voices around me, the occasional guitar and singing, the low friendly calls of the vendors, and the susurrus of the surf. Eagles and swallows flew past. The sand was burning hot – I couldn’t take two steps without my sandals.
Mike’s iPhone (a very recent acquisition) was used for geography lessons, tracking how fast we got a GPS fix (does instantly count?) and for impressing the living crap out of Suzanne, who’d never inspected one. I of course am blasé seeing as how Robof9 had a cracked phone six months before they were ‘available’ in Canada so I’ve already been dragged through the “I don’t think you can handle the frozen nitrogen style coolth of my awesome technological wizarding toy!” gauntlet numerous times.
Cops busted a vendor named Terry; I saw him walked off the beach in cuffs. As we were sitting close to a group of vendors, we heard their calls of support as he was taken away.
I got up and splashed in the surf a bit but my left foot started cramping as soon as I went in so I didn’t stay in that long.
Mike encouraged Suzanne to have le complet Wreck Beach experience and to go buy a dress. As I had deliberately brought no money with me (my last Wreck experience left a smoking hole in my finances for days, which is why I packed beer and food, which I don’t normally do) I tried to just lie there but Suzanne invoked Girls’ Rules and made me come with her to the vendors.
The sun had moved across the sky just enough that the sand was now cool enough to walk on barefoot, and I said to Suzanne as we walked, “The sand is now deliciously the right temperature” and the woman immediately behind me and to my right said, “I’m convinced!” and whipped off her sandals, which pleased me no end. I laughingly told Suzanne that there’s nothing I like better than people taking my advice.
As August 3 was the craziest busiest day for the vendors all summer, all of the booths were set up. Each year the GVRD bulldozes them down and each year they put them up again, every single pole moved by hand. It’s nuts, and it’s the GVRD. We went to the clothing boutique closest to the stairs on trail 6 and went straight to the $5 rack. The first dress Suzanne held up was gorgeous colours on her, and had a fabric that reminded me irrepressibly of the house dresses that the Portuguese housewives used to wear hen I first moved to Toronto. Like sexy-NOT. (Suzanne is slender and pretty). Next one, same thing. Then she held up a spaghetti strap dress in a discreet floral pattern in shades of pale green and grey that announced I am sexy but demure and I said “Try that one on”. Once I adjusted the straps it fit PERFECTLY. No, really. You don’t expect a five dollar dress to fit perfectly around the armpits and everything. It draped beautifully. She tried on another one, but I discouraged her; strangely, though it covered the same amount of skin it was markedly less modest.
She paid, and while she was paying, a pretty and curvaceous blonde 19-something girl who had been bopping around modelling a dress while she and equally bodaceous gf shopped, abruptly stopped admiring her gf, who was trying on every top and dress that was there, to wail, “Where’s my dress?”
Suzanne just looked at me and we burst out laughing. Then we realized we were being cows and went into mom mode. “You can’t find the dress you came in? Where did you last see it?” After frenzied searches through a couple of piles of clothes, chica found the solid grey sundress she’d arrived in, and solemnly thanked us for our support during a trying time, at which point Suzanne and I were just about doubled over because this time she was trying to make us laugh, and succeeded.
Suzanne carried the dress back to our little camp in triumph and was immediately forced to don it so that Mike could tell her how awesome she looked, and then we waited, while the drum circle got louder and louder and more insistent, for the orange red sun to be smothered in a blanket of purplish grey clouds. As the sun touched the horizon, the moon – one day from full – freed itself from the branches behind us and moved serenely into the otherwise cloudless sky. We stayed until we had just enough light to finish packing up, and then commenced our assault on the stairs.
The can pickers sang parodies of Doors songs on the way up; Suzanne (who has mobility issues) grimly managed the climb in five separate stages. I think I could have done it in three, but I think Suzanne did an awesome job. Then …. I drove home. Mike had asked me to do the driving late in the afternoon so I had been minding my p’s and q’s regarding staying sober.
Oh, the joys of driving a convertible through a velvety sky full of moon, the night air cool and refreshing, as the impressive hedges of Marine Drive whispered by, while The Tragically Hip pulsed from the speakers! Oh, the joys of learning a completely different standard car on the fly! Mike complimented me on my driving (I was trying to go for smooth rather than fast.)
As we sped along Stewardson Way, having navigated the f*ckwitted abortion of urban planning that is the insanely snarled undulating mess at the bottom of 20th Street in New West, Suzanne said, “You said you’d have me home by 10:45. It is 10:28!”
“I have a plan, I work the plan.” I said austerely. I have long given up on trying to control everything, or even thinking that I can; the most important two things to know about planning are that a) you can actually make things happen to plan and b) sometimes there is no contingency.
We dropped her off with many mutual protestations of fabulousness, and then a quick dart up 6th St to Planet Bachelor to feed Kira, (thank you Mike for that indulgence) and home, where Jeff was still up and all I could say about the day was that it was great. And I took notes before I went to bed, because I wanted to share.
Now I must dress, get out the bike, and go feed Kira. Later today I have to spend the afternoon there to let the Telus guy in. I think I’ll pack the laptop and possibly the mandolin and go work on tunes someplace where there is no internet.
