February 10-11, 2018:
Some people like to make a big deal out of their birthday and some don’t. In fact, some people go as far as celebrating the whole week as a birthday week. Ok, I actually only know one person, who suggests such a thing. “It’s my birthday week, let’s celebrate!” [Anne].
I just wanted to do something that does not require much planning and makes the people involved happy. It was my birthday, I got to chose! Since I love taking the ferry and I like biking as a means of transportation, I decided to go to one of the Gulf Islands. Taking the ferry with a bike is so cheap and once you are on the other side you can just bike off and explore, no waiting in traffic!
On Saturday morning, we parked the car at the Tsawwassen Park & Go and hopped onto the ferry towards Long Harbor of Saltspring Island. We had breakfast and coffee on the ferry.
At Long Harbor, we biked off the ferry and started towards Ruckle Provincial Park. I had only scanned the route very quickly beforehand and told Hanna and Todd that I estimate it is around 10 km to our campground. It was a little bit more than that. Also, island biking can take you longer than in the city due to its sometimes hilly nature :).
But we are all fit, so we made the 23 km just fine and arrived at our beautiful camp spot when the sun was just starting to go down. I think Todd pointed out repeatedly that my estimate was quite off. He was quite correct.
We had enough time to set up our tent and Hanna cooked us a beautiful Orzo Coconut Dinner with smoked Tofu. I loved it, but Todd was worried it does not have enough calories. I am not sure when this calorie-concerned Todd exactly started evolving.. Recently, Todd is often worried that he does not get a high enough fat intake. I am not blaming anyone here, but I think that our friend Noriko is to blame, who we skied with over New Years. “Hmmm, BUTTER, makes you feel warm, warm in my belly, sooooo goooood, you have to add butter, hmmm…!”
So without adding any extra butter, we enjoyed a great dinner and some birthday cake and went to sleep pretty soon after. The camp spot was beautiful and it was so calm.
But then, when I woke up in the middle of the night, it was not so calm anymore. The wind had picked up and the poles and fly were bending inwards almost touching us. I think I listened and watched for a good half an hour and wondered how Hanna and Todd could even sleep through this. Then I woke them. Turns out they had not been sleeping but were cold and tried to ignore the wind, so that they don’t have to get out of the tent. So I pushed them out, kind of, and we moved the tent further back into the trees. Todd pointed out that he is cold because there was not enough fat in the dinner. I gave him a granola bar and we went to sleep.
The next day, we biked back to the ferry with a small detour to get some delicious goat cheese from the Cheese Farm. We also stopped for some proper ugly birds (sorry turkey!).
When we arrived at the ferry terminal we were surprised to see that there were too many foot passengers for the ferry. I never thought about having to hurry to get a spot as a foot or bike passenger. We were lucky and got on as the last passengers. Did I mention it was the last ferry for the day?
So lucky…
