Big horse camping diary entry

Prepare to be bored. Sorry.

***

Thursday. I drive to Port Alice to buy two used Apple HomePod speakers. There are some nice sights on this drive but there is still something about it I hate. It’s kind of the drive equivalent of Port Alice in that it’s got some cool aspects but is overall still too shitty, kind of gross and sad. Get to Port Alice, what a dump. Lots of cool 70s houses I’d love to root through and find cool light fixtures and shit but the community is too depressing even for me. Get to the seller’s house, car port has a mobility scooter and a bunch of detritus everywhere. Buddy answers the door, strong animal odour wafts out. Smells like a pet store, like full litter boxes and bird cages. Two little yappy dogs come to the door with buddy, they must shit and piss in there. Buddy looks about 30 yrs old, is very friendly in the way that white trash are that I consider a red flag. It’s a thin veneer. He is wearing a maroon-coloured housecoat that looks like one your grandfather would wear, and it looks like it smells like his house. He brings out the speakers, turns them on, Slipknot starts blaring from them. “Oops, hehe, just my Slipknot there, sorry about that…” You just know he relished that moment and thought I’d be like “WHOAH what is that psychotic scary music, why is he yelling so much?” I spend too long there figuring out how to connect my phone to the speakers to test them. I only manage to get one working with my phone but I’m too annoyed to spend any more time there so I say ok and buy them despite them costing way too much to be this blasé about the price. I’m immediately angry at myself for being so impatient and worry they won’t work and I’ll have to eat the $450 loss. The drive away from Port Alice sucks just as bad as the drive in.

I get to Hyde Creek and grab a sandwich and a tea at the gas station. I enjoy this ritual.

The drive down to Campbell river is uneventful. My shitty car stereo is acting up so I can’t listen to music and am forced to listen to a few podcasts. The Dateline one is ok, the Stuff You Should Know one about widowhood is boring.

I get to Jenn’s horse camping site where she is already. I help her with a few things then head into town to do errands. They go pretty well, surprisingly. I exchange a riser for a septic tank lid, and return two truck batteries at Canadian Tire for the $40 core charge refund. I go to Home Depot (one of the nine circles of hell in my opinion) and grab a bunch of shit we need. Most of the staff is surprisingly helpful here, I can’t believe it. I go to Superstore and grab dinner for Jenn and I (a chicken taco kit) and some Celebration cookies (Jenn’s favourite). Then I pick up bubble tea from a pho place in town. I am furious with myself once the lady hands them to me and I realize I forgot to specify NO ICE. Too late now. I bring them back to jenn, she likes them despite their obviously inferior quality (the drinks and boba, not just the ice). We have tacos and listen to a true crime podcast and hit the sack.

Friday. We wake up early, have some ok muffins for breakfast that Jenn got yesterday. Jenn does horse stuff, I walk the dog and immediately come across two small bears scampering up a tree. I wonder if they’re small enough to indicate a mama bear being somewhere close by, then hear huffing and crashing foliage near the base of the tree. The dog starts barking, I tell her to can it and we vamoose, opting for a less exciting but safer route. We finish packing the horse stuff and leave for Courtenay.

Nice short drive south by comparison to all of yesterday’s driving. We get to Courtenay, I help Jenn set up her stuff. Once I’m free I begin today’s list of chores/errands. A very nice guy brings his ride cymbal to me, I try it and buy it even tho I feel like a hoarder with all the fucking cymbals I currently have that I need to sell. I go buy a large shag rug from a very nice woman but as I load it in my car I notice a big stain mark on the underside. Then when I get in the car with it i notice an overwhelming dog smell. Great. I’ll probably use the pressure washer on it at home before I put it in the house. I go to Price’s Locksmiths and get a key for the Tercel made from the code on the lock cylinder. The old key was so worn down that it could slide out of the ignition while the engine was running, but this fixes that. I didn’t expect it would actually work so I’m surprised and pleased at this affordable, effective fix. I go to a grocery store to get lunch at their deli, find the deli has one of those cafe/restaurant areas that you used to see in department stores way back when. It’s deliciously sad and empty, with only one old woman sitting in the vast space, surrounded by countless unused tables and chairs. It’s perfectly liminal. My wrap isn’t bad. I plan on coming back here in the future. I go to Value Village, don’t find anything on my thrift store shopping list. I visit Boba Island for the first time after years of wanting to try it and am very pleased with my mocha bubble tea. Far superior to yesterday’s boba experience. I leave them positive reviews online.

I come back to the horse show grounds and help with setup for the show. That’s surprisingly nice. I met a lot of these horse people in the last year or two and it’s pleasant to see them again, and it feels good to take part in their event and be positive and productive in a community. Jenn and I take the dog for a walk and get dinner from an El Salvadoran food truck. Our order is up fast, and it’s fantastic. We meet a nice woman and her daughter walking their dog and talk with them for a while. We get back to our camp and spend a relaxing evening chatting with Heather and her daughter Mia. I sleep well despite someone walking their horse around the grounds at 1:30 am which riles all the other horses up. I wake up to horses calling and the sound of horse hoofs on gravel so my first thought is that one got loose. I wake Jenn up and she goes to check on Marvel and finds all is fine. Phew.

Sunday. Get up at 6:00 am. Take the mutt for a walk through the woods. Go to town to get breakfast for Jenn and I, and head to a coffee shop called The Mudshark Cafe because it has good reviews but I hate it. My tea costs about $4 (which is almost the cost of a box of 20 at the store), their calorie-free sweetener situation is a messy joke, my Earl Grey tastes awful and nothing at all like Earl Grey, and the breakfast bagel sandwiches I order take so long that I wonder if someone else has taken mine by mistake. On top of that, the tip prompt on the debit machine pisses me off — my light breakfast order already costs over $30, and there is zero table service, yet the minimum recommended tip is another $3+? Hogwash. Balderdash. I tipped $1, and after how bad the overall experience is I’m glad I didn’t tip more. Not over-tipping is about the only part of my Mudshark Cafe experience I am satisfied with.

I return to the horse show. Now Jenn has to call the tests for other riders and can’t eat the hot breakfast I got her until it’s cold. I hate hot food getting cold. I move the dog’s pen out of the sun and right then another dog walks by and our dog takes a run at it. I’m on her instantly, she doesn’t actually touch the other dog but still obviously terrible. I hold the dog on the ground for a few seconds, then when I go to put her back in the pen she won’t get up, and keeps yelping when I tug on her collar to try to get her up and in to her pen. I can’t reach her leash so I’m stuck looking like the worst dog owner in the world, like I have an aggressive dog that I abuse. Wonderful. Jenn asks me to help tally the scores for some of the riding tests so that some of the other volunteers can have breaks. I’ve never done this before so I’m nervous but it turns out to be quite easy, and I’m once again happy to be contributing to this event. Next time we do this I will volunteer more time for marking tests.

It’s now 11:15 am and I have to leave so I can do all my errands for the day and catch the 4 pm ferry home. Right then, Sebastian texts to tell me a bunch of the electrical stuff we need for building the next barn is in at the electrical supply shop. I planned my day pretty tight but if I don’t get it now it will be a week and half before I can get it again and that’s no good so I begin racing around like a maniac. I get that stuff and jam it into my already very full car, then get gas, then back to Canadian Tire for a light fixture part, then to Superstore for groceries, and then I begin the trip north. I get to Port McNeill right on time and am able to pick up some stuff I ordered at the auto parts store and get cash at the bank before getting in line for the ferry.

It was a great trip, and I’m happy to be home. I spend forever trying to figure out the fucking HomePods, I finally get them working and they sound great. Thank goodness.

***

Epilogue: that was my first time “coming home” to Sointula. I wondered if it would really feel like “coming home” after only being here a month, and no, it didn’t quite feel like that. In that realm, and obviously on its way to becoming that, but it’s just too soon and there are still too many things I’m still just getting familiar with for it to feel completely like home yet. In time.

I leave no tip for a lousy server

The other night, Jenn and I went for dinner at a pub. We walked in, the early 20-something girls behind the bar looked at us but said nothing so I asked if we seat ourselves, to which they replied in the affirmative. So we sat down and waited. Took a long time but our pretty server eventually came over and took our drink orders. When she came back with those we said we’d like to start with an order of very saucy, messy wings. For sure, no worries, she said. We waited way too long but finally the wings came. She dropped them off on one plate, with no plates for the bones, and most notably, no napkins. We kept waiting for her to come back with those but she never did. Never even walked by because she was busy sitting at another table with her friends, playing on her phone. Eventually I went to the bathroom and grabbed some paper towels to use as napkins. Just as I got back with those, she finally walked by the table so Jenn asked for napkins. “For sure, no worries.” When she came back with those she saw the paper towels I had grabbed and didn’t acknowledge them, no sorry or anything. She tried to run back to her friends and their table but we said we now wanted to order the rest of our meal. “For sure, no worries.” We ordered, and waited. And waited and waited and waited while she sat with her friends. At long last the calamari and nachos arrived, but sans cutlery for the calamari. Took a while and yet another “for sure, no worries” (as if she was doing us a favour by bringing us the basic fucking utensils required to eat this food) but we eventually got forks. We asked for more tzatziki for the calamari, she never brought it but she did charge us $1.50 for it.

You can imagine how peeved I was by all of this. I had been mulling over giving her a $1 or $2 tip — something insulting that says “you sucked” but at least isn’t absolutely nothing — but the fork and tzatziki stuff pushed me over the edge. How can you you serve food to people but neglect to give them the means to eat that food? And how can you charge for something you fail to provide? It’s unconscionable to me. So we asked for the bill, she came by with the machine, and I entered zero for tip while she was off giving more lip service to some other poor bastards in there that night. She came back, said thanks, and stared at the numbers on the machine for a few uncomfortable seconds before storming off without saying a word. It felt very, very good.

Epilogue: Jenn went to the bathroom while I walked out to the truck which was parked behind the pub. As I approached the truck I noticed a guy smoking by a door to the kitchen. I asked if he was kitchen staff, he said yup. I said our server was fucking terrible but the food was good and I didn’t want the kitchen staff to be stiffed on her account so I gave him $10. He was a little weirded out but appreciative, then asked which server it was. I said I didn’t want to single her out but he asked if it was the blond one and said she gets some complaints about her attitude so I admitted yup, it was the blond one. I said it wasn’t so much the attitude as it was just zero service but reiterated that the food was good (the wings are legitimately among the best I’ve ever had, and it makes me sad that I may not be able to go back for them for a very long time) and the guy was chill and grateful, and it was a funny, happy ending to the whole thing.

a totes magotes underwhelming evening at the cobblestone pub

Last night we went to the Cobblestone for dinner. It wasn’t great — not terrible, but mediocre and weird enough that I wanted to write about it, and go off on some tangents.

We were given gift cards to the Cobblestone at xmas and are trying to use them before the place burns down again or everything shuts down over covid-19 again so we went several weeks ago and it wasn’t very good. The service was slow, our server was weird and vaguely rude, and the food was not good. I was really bummed we still had a bunch more on the gift cards to use there but I’m way too cheap to let the pricks get away with our unused gift card money.

So we went back last night to celebrate the end of some boring bullshit I had to do at work and Jenn’s haying season. This time, our server was quite nice and attentive, and the food came quick so those were improvements. The food was somewhat better than before but about half our orders were still not great. I’d give last night’s experience a 5/10.

What I really want to talk about though are the little weird annoying details. For example, our server would occasionally sing along quite loudly to the music being played, and right when she was at our table. It was oddly showy, and not in a “I’m a talented singer, check out my chops” way — she was not a good singer at all, it’s more like she was just trying to appear super chill and comfortable or something like that. Even weirder is I noticed another server did it last night too. I wonder if they’ve been told by management to act like they’re really enjoying the music for some reason. Anyway, they didn’t seem like they really enjoyed the music, it sounded more like someone had a gun to their heads and told them to sing along or die. Very strange.

Also, our server was hanging out with two other servers by their till when one of them complained loudly about a lousy tip left by a previous table. The complaining server exclaimed “…and they only left (mumble mumble) tip on a fucking $107 bill!” She said it loud enough that us and several other tables all heard it, and we were probably 25 ft away. I thought that was brutally unprofessional.

When we paid with our gift card at the end, it was awkward because their system sucks and we had to tell the server how much we wanted to tip her so she could enter it on the gift card. I didn’t like that at all. I want to tip as I’m leaving so I don’t have to see the server’s face afterward. I feel like tips are a way of grading the service your received so if someone did a lousy job, I don’t want to essentially say “I think you did a lousy job” and then have to continue to interact with them for a several more minutes.

The last weird thing was that our bad server from our previous visit had to help figure out something with our gift card last night and then brought it back to us at the end. When she did we said thanks but she didn’t respond. She just put the card on the table without saying anything, turned around and walked away. She’s such an odd, awkward, unlikable person.

On top of all that, the music last night was the worst. It was all modern country. You know, country music with raps in it, that kind of shit. Country music singing about sliding into their baby’s DM’s. They still sing about the other shit I hate like drinking beer and going to church and being staunchly anti-abortion but they add in these other topical details that I hate just as much, and it only serves to make a bad thing even worse.

On that note, I have a special hatred for the term “slide into your DM’s.” Wtf does that even mean? I hate how these phrases inexplicably blow up and become ubiquitous for a while, only to disappear and become lame in a year or two. Remember “totes magotes”? How cool would you look if you said that now? You wouldn’t, you’d look stupid. The thing is, I think it was stupid from the start, and I feel the same way about this DM shit. It’s just the latest annoying fad that will be over in a few months, and I want nothing to do with it, now or ever.

The Cobblestone sucks.