gabriola island camping trip: a summary

Just got back from a few nights on Gabriola Island. We were busy so I didn’t have time to journal like I like, and I’ve still got a ton of things to do but I want some kind of point form recounting of the trip so here goes.

• Left here around noon. Hot has hell. What’s with this fucking weather, it’s mid-October for fuck’s sake. Stopped at The Country Kitchen for lunch because we’d never tried it before. First took Stella down to the river, found a beautiful spot and saw tons of fish spawning and jumping like crazy. It was awesome, couldn’t believe we just happened across that. Seems awfully early in the season for it to be happening though, usually it’s in November I think. Anyway, finished that, went for lunch and it was really fucking good. Best chicken and waffles I’ve ever had, hands down, and Jenn’s halibut tacos were also excellent.
• Hopped on the ferry to Gabriola, they go frequently and it’s a short trip so that’s nice. Saw hordes of Gabriola high school kids heading home after school, one boy had THE grossest hair we had ever seen. Most of it was straight and long-ish (down past his shoulders) but the front looked like it just wouldn’t grow (that unfortunate thing that some people get, crazy uneven hair growth) so it was only several inches long, and wispy and curly. It was all greasy beyond description but somehow simultaneously dry and fried. It looked like a haven for lice. He was already balding at the crown, despite probably only being 16 or 17. He clearly loved his hair, kept playing with it, patting it down, smoothing it out, flipping his head around. He did it non-stop. I was horrified and fascinated but Jenn was so grossed out she had to look away so she wouldn’t puke.
• Got to Gabriola without Jenn puking. The island had lousy cell service so we used some shitty maps we had and found our campground. There was barely anyone there so that was nice. Dropped off the travel trailer and set up camp. This was the first time in years we’d taken the trailer out due to work we took forever to complete on it, and wow, we were rusty at camping routines. It was great though, we quickly remembered why we moved on from camper vans to travel trailers. Grabbed a locally made lasagna from the resort for later.
• Went off and checked out Drumbeg Provincial Park. Fairly nice. Saw an owl in the trees. Then hit Degnen Bay, totally depressing. Just dilapidated mobile homes and gross people living on boats. Met an old guy with two very friendly, stinky, large dogs. He walked back down to his boat and we could just imagine the smell of him and his dogs in his filthy boat.
• Back to campsite, made lasagna. Was not worth the $24 it cost. Walked around, met an American man who kept leaving the door to the bathroom open and letting all the fucking heat out, and an annoying drunk boat man. Checked out the bio-luminescence in the ocean and that was awesome.
• Jenn slept like shit because her armpit was all swollen and painful from her third COVID shot. I slept great.
• Yesterday went all over the island, checking out shit. Downtown Gabriola was cute. Good breakfast at Ground Up. Tons of hiking trails on the island, some were nice, some were blah. The Malaspina Gallery was incredible, a real sight worth checking out. Walked back to the truck along dirt roads and looked at the cool old cabins and houses, bought cherry tomatoes from The Wonky Wagon and wow, they were insanely tasty. Sandwell Beach was ok, foolishly took the beach route before we realized the tide was coming in which meant we had to climb over giant slippery boulders and up the steep hill. Brickyard Beach was neat, caught a nice sunset there. Went for dinner at the Surf Lodge, it was a very cool old building. Food was really good. Went to their pub next door and saw some terrible local music. Drummer was ugly and utterly incompetent, bassist was only slightly better. Out of tune, poorly executed, repetitive blues jams. 20-something hipster girl playing acoustic poorly and singing stupid words. The grey-haired islanders seemed to eat it all up, inexplicably. Got back to camp, had hot chocolate and listened to a Dateline podcast. Now it was my turn to sleep like shit, while Jenn slept great.
• Today we found a ton of neat old petroglyphs on the island. Tried to find the “Meeting Tree” on some hiking trails, not sure if we did or not but if we did it wasn’t much to look at. Went to a cidery that Jenn really wanted to try, it was nice and she liked a lot of their stuff. The woman working there noticed my Twin Peaks shirt and we had a convo about that before yakking about all kinds of other stuff. She was really nice and interesting. Stopped at another store for a Gabriola sticker where another woman noticed my shirt and initiated a Twin Peaks convo. I was in heaven.
• Went back and got the travel trailer and headed to the ferry to head home. Got in line and got take out food from Skol Pub. Holy hell, what a dump it was. We loved it. Like The Black Swan but way older and shittier, in the best ways possible. Made me wish we lived there so we could be regulars there. Rotten old building, shitty sign, surly bartender, place stinks, food wasn’t great but what do you expect from a dirty old dive, the parking lot was literally a steep, slippery slab of a rock face. Like, I don’t know if a lot of cars can even get up it, let alone navigate down without sliding out of control into other cars. Terrifying. Loved it.
• Got on the ferry, listened to This American Life on the way home. Traffic in Duncan was the pits, and it was hot as hell out again. Cripes, I’d kill for some gloom right now.

Ack, not as short as I wanted. Oh well, lots to cover. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

i’d rather listen to music than podcasts, usually

This one is for you, Kyla.

Everyone listens to dang podcasts these days. That’s fine but they don’t do much for me. Jenn will put some on when we go for road trips or to the cabin and I generally enjoy the ones she chooses. So far I have liked This American Life, RadioLab, Cocaine and Rhinestones, Revisionist History, Stuff You Should Know, and a handful of short series investigations into murders and shit. Side note, I wonder how typical my podcast tastes are. Am I a basic bitch? Whatever, who cares.

Anyway, despite enjoying those podcasts when Jenn and I are traveling or having dinner or sitting by a camp fire, I don’t like listening to them at other times. I admit I haven’t tried that often but I have a bit, and I haven’t liked it. I just tried again tonight. First I checked out a podcast by a black female fighter I really like (Angela Hill, she’s hilarious, and a great fighter) and her friend and UFC commentator who I also really like. They were talking about topics I’m very interested in so I thought, “wow, this sounds good.” I was excited to check it out. But after 5 or 10 minutes I was bored, disinterested. Pulled the plug. I felt bad because I really do want to support those girls but I just wasn’t feeling it. Then Kyla sent me a podcast she thought I would like, and I didn’t like it at all. I have already thought about this topic a lot but tonight’s events lead me to decide that I needed to blog about this.

Here’s the thing: I would almost always prefer to listen to music instead of a podcast. I love using music to elicit a particular vibe or feeling that I’m seeking, or using it to enhance whatever shit I’m already feeling. I love that, and music is great for it. Podcasts are obviously way better at communicating more concrete information, but I usually just don’t care. And I think this is the big problem, that I’m more of a feeler than a thinker. I’ve never felt like that before, because while I’m no genius I’m obviously not the biggest dunce on the block, but my preference for music and feelings and vibes over learning new shit has had me thinking about this a lot recently.

And that’s a shame, really. I’m jealous of how much Jenn learns from her constant podcast consuming. She frequently teaches me new shit that she has learned from them, and I’m envious of that. I want to learn cool shit too!…but I’d rather listen to disco or chillwave or nihilistic progressive black metal so that I can feel emotional and weird.

As with everything, I think finding a balance is important. I think both music/feelings and podcasts/thinking have equal value so I wish I could dig the latter more than I do. But I also believe that the left and right brain use different approaches to achieve similar things. I mean, they are just specialized in certain types of information processing. One is for abstract info, the other is for veritable info, and both are equally valuable. So maybe I’m not necessarily making myself dumber by choosing one over the other, like I’m afraid I might be.

But I am definitely afraid that I am just sticking with music because of the nostalgic value of a lot of the stuff I like. Nostalgia is fun and all but it lacks depth, I think. It’s pretty one-dimensional. It’s reliving old, safe experiences instead of creating new ones. Seeking new experiences is riskier, there is a greater likelihood of elements you don’t like, and that variety of elements adds more colour, more dimensions to the experience. But fuck, is it really that simple? I mean, when I listen to the right music at the right times, it can bring me to tears. I feel like that is a dead giveaway of deep emotional value, at least for me (I’m not a crier). But I’m also always digging for new music so I don’t think I’m totally obsessed with nostalgia when it comes to art anyway so this is kind of a moot point.

Conclusions:

• This is a really muddled post but I’m tired now and don’t care.
• I think podcasts and music are equally valuable but I generally prefer music.
• The jury is still out on nostalgia — it might be totally vapid crap but I don’t know, it sure doesn’t feel like it to me.

I might have to edit this tomorrow so Tizzy Sliz-a-bing-bong, I’m sorry if you get this crappy version emailed to you and never see the super duper cleaned up version. I just hate having incomplete posts sitting in the drafts folder, they weigh on me heavily.

Night night.

*Inevitable edit* – Ben texted me and pointed out that music is good for passive listens, while podcasts are not. I mean, how much information can you fully absorb from a podcast if you are distracted by whatever else you’re doing? I thought that was a really good point. Meanwhile, background music has tons of value. So yeah, I’m feeling better about my choices for when I listen to podcasts and music. Thanks Benny boy.

why is joe rogan’s podcast so popular?

I really like Joe Rogan as a UFC commentator, and he comes across as a decent and halfway intelligent guy that I like just fine, but man, his podcast super sucks and I can’t understand why it’s so ridiculously popular.

You may have seen the news that Rogoan just signed some deal with Spotify which will be hosting his podcast from now on. They paid huuuuuge money for it, and released some statement about how Rogan is an important host and media figure and blah blah blah. I wonder if they actually believe that or if they just said it because that’s what you have to say whenever you’re hyping some new shit up.

I can’t believe that they meant it because I’ve watched plenty of short 5 minute clips of his podcast and it’s *ok* in those small doses — it suffers from the same flaws as the full episodes but at least in bite-sized segments, I don’t get so annoyed by those persistent flaws that I have to turn it off, which is exactly what happens when I try to sit through more than 10 minutes of it. Joe repeats himself a lot (to fill time, I think?), he gets distracted and goes off-topic on dumb tangents, he always goes on and on about diet and nutrition stuff even when his guests aren’t into that stuff and haven’t brought the topics up, he interrupts his guests and directs the conversation to whatever HE wants to talk about, he brings on interesting guests who he should just ask occasional questions to and let them talk but instead he blabs on for 20 minutes about beans and how good they are for you but how the protein is different than the protein you get from meat and the guest is like, “ok…yup…oh wow…huh.”

Who thinks this kind of crap is high quality shit? What are they getting out of it? Do people actually care about what Joe thinks about this diet and that diet, and do they want to hear him talk about it multiple times per week, even when he has amazing guests on his show who could talk about far crazier things, things we haven’t already heard Joe pontificate on at great length? It’s not even just meat heads who listen to Rogan’s show because he’s also the UFC dude — I’ve met lots of people from all walks of life who dig it. It’s the weirdest thing.

I like Joe Rogan as a dude quite a bit but his show stinks. It’s pretty much just him — an uneducated but fairly thoughtful stoned guy — talking about whatever random shit pops in his head while his guests sit through it. No thanks. I’ll take This American Life, Radiolab, or Freakanomics over old Joe any day.

Sorry, Joseph. And hey, I’m not just bitter because Spotify picked up Rogan’s show instead of my blog. Yeah, we were in talks, but it just wasn’t a good fit for me over there.

what did we do before podcasts and documentary series?

Several years ago, Jenn introduced me to This American Life. I had heard the term ‘podcast’ before that but didn’t know what it was. I assumed it was some weird, annoying millenial thing, and I still stand by that to a small extent — who chose the name podcast, and why? The word ‘pod’ is gross, and makes me think of insects or human clones hatching out of gooey eggs.

Additionally, ‘pod’ was used for Apple’s ipod device — maybe that’s where it comes from, because you would download podcasts for your ipod? I don’t know, and I don’t really care, because ipod is a stupid name too. ‘Pod’ is a gross word, why is it so fucking popular now? And why are we putting i’s and e’s in front of every fucking word these days? Iphone, e-bike, e-cigarettes, fucking hell.

Back on track…well, not really: ‘cast’ is another popular millenial word that I don’t like very much. Podcast, chromecast, ‘cast’ from your computer to another device. It’s like people are obsessed with jumping on the trend of absurd buzz words these days, and also that we forget we already have plenty of words that already describe various things adequately. I think people just like to make new names and words because it makes them feel cutting edge.

You know what, fuck it. While I’m on this tangent, I’m also going to complain about the tech industry and its use of gross or weird words across the sector. Seeders, leechers, raspberry pi, cocoapods (pod appears once again), javabeans, jelly bean, marshmallow — terrible. I guess lots of product names are stupid but tech stuff tends to have a special gross/sweet food thing going on and it really rubs me the wrong way.

Jeez, I really went down a rabbit hole there. What I wanted to say before I got wildly sidetracked is that I was amazed at a lot of the stories Jenn and I heard on This American Life. They were so crazy and interesting that I couldn’t believe they weren’t already common knowledge — how did this shit not end up being front page news back when it occurred, I wondered. Then she got me into Radio Lab, which is also great. More mind-blowing stories and information I’d never heard of was introduced to me.

Then some documentary series started to pick up on the same thread. The genre really blew up with Making a Murderer and was followed soon after by The Keepers, Evil Genius, Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez, and some others I’m forgetting. Now, like the rest of North America, Jenn and I are watching Tiger King, and once again I find myself wondering how a story this bizarre was not already widely covered in the mainstream media. Shit, each of the main cast of characters involved in the Tiger King story could be the subject of their own documentary or podcast, they each have that crazy a history. It’s stupefying that they all ended up crossing paths in the same place, at the same time. Maybe that’s just the southern US though, I don’t know.

This is all to say that I’m really grateful that the people behind those documentary series and podcasts (btw, I vote to call them ‘internet radio shows’ instead, or online audio show, something like that). Truth really is stranger than fiction, and as it turns out there is a mountain of worthwhile, fascinating, non-fiction stories out there, just dying to be shared with the masses. This is a trend I actually like, unlike modern language crazes.