Going to the old family stomping grounds (Egmont)
Meeting new old family members and associates
Unintended Pub Performance
Mom (of FishingForCod) Likes Her Fishing...
So.. on with the show
Going to the old family stomping grounds (Egmont)
Thursday morning I drove my brother to the Langdale ferry and stopped in to say hi to my grampa. I was going to pop in for a brief visit however I ended up staying until almost 5pm (I dropped my brother off for the 12pm) and instead of returning to pick him up the next morning or having him drive up to Sechelt we just left together that night. The next day we drove up to Egmont and met up at the old house with my mom and Tom who'd brought the boat up from Sechelt. It's been many years since I was last at the old Egmont house. It's owned by my mom's cousins cause it's their old house. The house my mom grew up in is next door. Other people live there now. In fact, as we were returning along the coast from one of our fishing trips my mom started naming off all of the relatives who used to live in which house. It was pretty cool.
Meeting new old family members and associates
So my mom, Tom, and grandpa went to visit a guy down the beach and I was left to watch the dog. I sat down and cracked open my book to read but Kato (the coolest dog) wanted to go for a walk. I resisted the beast for a few minutes.. but then I took him for a walk. We went for almost an hour and a half. I don't think Kato is used to walking that far.. the tongue was hanging out. He was no longer trying to drag me up the hills. It was a great walk and I was expecting to return to my mom and Tom waiting for us. Instead I returned to see some people I didn't know unloading stuff. But they'd moved on into one of the buildings there so I went back down to the dock to unclip Kato, let him drink some water, and read. Well these guys turned out to be my mother's cousin's husband's brother's sons. I think that's right. So hey we're related and I hopped into their boat to go drop some prawn traps and drink some beers. We then went into Egmont proper to hang out with some other guys from around there. They had this "Salmon Ginger" stuff. After investigative tasting some doubt had been cast upon the contention that the canning contained any salmon. No doubt that it had ginger! It was quite lovely, excellent, ginger tasting, but the salmon? No clue. I don't even think there was really salmon, and if there was? They've committed one of the greatest offences in my books. Mistreating eating salmon. Salmon tastes so good as salmon. Don't be too aggresive with the flavouring! Hello! Feel free to accentuate if you must. A little lemon on it on the BBQ? Beauty! A little pepper? No problem. Totally dominate the taste with some cream spread? Some ginger concoction? Blasphemy. I'm not a violent man. But dominating the salmon gets me right riled. So be forewarned. Treat the fish right.
Anyhoo.. so I met the brothers, and other family. One bro (we'll call him D) went down early with the excuse of "Jet Lag" as he'd recently returned from a trip to Turkey. That was ok. But the rest of us hung out with a little fire on the patio, some fresh cod (lemon, a little dusting of bread, corn meal, and whatever else my mom uses to accentuate the experience) some red wine, white wine, beer, some of us did these wonderful shooters with Sambuca, Tequila, and Irish Cream. So good. (please remember to drink responsibily) and it was a good evening of chillaxation.
Saturday was much like Friday. We did some yardwork, kicked around the hacky sack (ok I did... as the youngest present it was important that I did some zany things) and I was going to drive Gramps home and stay in Sechelt. Till Uncle Bob (Wilson) not Uncle Bob (Gill) told me I had to be back for dinner. So I drove Gramps back to Gibsons (he of course had to go plunk around the garden and return with several cucumbers to take back up ;) ) then cruised back to Egmont. Saturday night after we ate dinner we watched some of my Africa experience DVD. And then tried to wake up "jet lag" brother. He'd been up that day earlier and had decided to lay down after dinner (8:30-9pm?). Of course his brother and I were going to head over to the Backeddy Pub to check out the live music and see what was happening. We tried to wake him up but he said he'd stay at home. Of course this sleepyness had alot more to do with the tequila they'd been drinking earlier that day up the inlet at a guys place they knew up there. And apparently there was a rather fetching french-canadian girl up there too. But I didn't inquire too heavily and we left D on the couch and headed for the Backeddy
Unintended Pub PerformanceSo we arrived around 10:40 to find out that Niel MacKenzie, who was that evening's performer, had already packed up as it was fairly dead. Basically there was my ?cousin?, the chef, his fiance, Niel, Iris (the waitress), and myself. So we were having some more soda pops and Niel decided to take out his guitar and give us a little performance. We were talking around the table and figuring out who was who when the ?cousin? mentioned that my grandfather was Ben Vaughan. Well it turns out that when Colleen (chef's fiance) was a little girl they got their kitten from my grandpa and named it Ben Vaughan. Small world when in idle conversation you discover that this person you've never met had a cat named after your grandfather... ;) So then the chef, Kelly, made some comment and Niel offered the guitar but Kelly turned it down. So I figured "what the hell" and asked if I could have a go. Well I did and even though I didn't have my song book or really remember a whole lot they were all pretty impressed (to my suprise). It was quite the rocking fun though. And Kelly asked me if I'd be interested in playing at their wedding. Well I don't know about that, but it was a nice offer. Well at 1pm we shut it down and were gonna head back when a fellow who'd turned up near the end by the name of Mushroom Mark invited us to his place for a couple more beers. So we walked to his sweet set up. He's a waiter up at the fancyish wilderness resort there in town and they let him set up his little casa down by the water. It was mostly just framed up with scrap wood and some lower sheets of wood for the bottom half of the wall and then surrounded with mosquito netting and stuff like that. It was very cool, very neat. It almost had an arabic tent feel to it. Very roomy and with a hammock to sit on and some stools. I think Mushroom Mark would get along with my friend Troy pretty well. They're both pretty ingenius when it comes to accomodations. Then in conversation with Mark I discovered that he knew another friend of mine who lived a bunch of years in Whistler (Pemberton). So we got back to the house around 2:30. It was a good day and I hit the pillow thankful for a good nights sleep. Until....
Mom (of FishingForCod) Likes Her Fishing...
On account of Tom's starting work early in the morning him and my mom are both rather earlyish risers. So they got up Sunday morning and went out fishing. And she'll probably write about it on her blog, but the short of it is that she caught a decently huge cod (18lbs) and was so excited that she of course had to come and wake me up and drag me down to the float to see it before Tom cleaned it. It was a pretty sweet fish. And I was awake.
So yah.. all in all it was a great weekend. Lots of family, cod, prawns, beer, wine, laughs, and great weather.
Funny Quote comes from the older of the brothers after we got back from the first pub night "I totally misjudged you, I thought you were like a boyscout leader, but you can really hold your liquor !" I'm not too sure what that all is sposed to mean but I found it amusing and complimentary I suppose. Be carefuly with judgements.. they can bite you in the arse. ;)
Gotta jet,
Ciao for now,
Jordan
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