The Afternoon
Sleeping in a van on the highway is hard. Sleeping in a van that is perfectly square on the highway is next to impossible. I managed to get in about a half hour of sleep during the two hour drive to the ferry. The rest of the time was spent gazing out the window at civilization. It’s amazing that some of it you have missed…..and the rest you look at confused, wondering why people put their houses so close together and why the highway is full of five passenger cars with only one person in them all traveling the same direction. I lusted after the restaurants we passed. I don’t mean the junior high lusting either. We’re talking one hundred percent unadulterated lusting. As each restaurant passed I imagined myself stuffing my face with its food. I may have actually made Homeresque sounds while doing so.

Matt and Jasmin were now driving behind us in a smaller cargo van. Jasmin was driving. Matt was sleeping. What do you do when you have people you know driving behind you? You make funny signs of course. My cold was still hanging around. Nights were the worst for congestion and breathing. I decided to use my back window real estate as a petition for Neo Citron. Jasmin pulled up as close as she could to the back of our vehicle and her and now-awake Matt laughed at my sign. I gave them a stern “I’m frigging serious” look. They made simultaneous “we’ll try our best” shrugs. How cute.

We managed to get on the ferry we had planned to be on. For those of you who have traveled a lot by ferry you know that this is often hard to do. Our Crummy was either so large or so ugly that it was put in with the trucks. This got us on the boat a little faster so we all dashed up the stairs to do one of two predetermined things: Get in line for cafeteria food or head to the bathrooms. As I had eaten a little bit earlier I opted for the latter.

After wiping your butt with rocks and sticks for ten days a bathroom is a wondrous sight to behold. I decide to grab a stall and make myself comfortable. Judging from the graffiti on the back of the stall door passed inhabitants included: Nazis, drunks, a guy named Jim who wrote his phone number down, and an angry person who wrote limp bizkit type lyrics. I seriously considered stealing the toilet paper.

I emerged from the stall to find myself the only person in the bathroom (think what you will). I decided to “wash up” as the girls would say. I grabbed the corner sink and started “washing”. This involved me being shirtless in a public washroom and using a copious amount of paper towel. The icing on the cake was that the soap was in those little dispensers you push with your hand and a little comes out on your palm. To make it even more hilarious it was this new fandangled foam soap, not the liquid kind. It’s hard to lather up with that stuff! I washed my face, body, and finally my hair. Anyone who knows me knows my head is huge, literally. It is a gargantuan planetarium of a dome. Trying to squeeze it into those bed pan sized toy sinks was a challenge. After covering my side of the bathroom with water and paper towel I went back into the real world a slightly clean man.

I grabbed a chicken wrap and some ice tea (it was at this exact point that I made a conscious decision to not drink pop/soda anymore) at the cafeteria and went to find the crew. The crew had a few booths in back of the sitting/eating area. Not too many people were around us as you can imagine. I downed the wrap and the ice tea. Delicious. I also downed some of the sandwiches Outward Bound so graciously provided us. Everyone was looking cleaner, the bathrooms had had good use. Jasmin, out of curiosity, did a quick survey to see if everyone had cleaned up. Everyone had, except for Ernie……There was a silence of sorts that fell over us all…..Do you tell him to? He smells pretty bad…… We all privately decided in our brains to not tell him.

I slipped into the gift shop and bought their entire stock of Halls. Our mini-SARS was spreading like wildfire so I thought they would be useful for the second half.

We piled back into the crummobile and started the drive up to Pemberton from Horse Shoe Bay where the ferry lands. It was Jacquie’s mom’s birthday so she called her left a voicemail happy birthday.

We stopped in Squamish to do a bit of rock climbing. The sun was shining and we were in good spirits from our brief encounters with civilization. Back in the crummy for the final driving lag of the trip.

We arrived in Pemberton an hour and some later. The Outward Bound food Manager met us outside the HQ’s with a plate of cookies just out of the oven. Nice touch. We continued on to Outward Bound’s base camp. To get to said base camp we must drive for about 10 minutes on roads that seem narrower than the crummy. The bumps were the worst though. We held on for dear life.

Base camp has a large tent with picnic tables in it, outhouses, and propane cooking stoves. It may as well be the Ritz Carleton to us. A place to sit while you eat! Who would have thought! We cooked up a large delicious veggie stir fry and gorged ourselves while regurgitating stories from the past 10 days. We’re starting to bond. Strangers are turning into friends and because the pleasantries are now being put aside all of those lovely group dynamics are starting to appear.

We clean up and head to bed. We sleep for the first time in many days on flat soft ground.

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