Thursday, September 11, 2008

You know what they have a lot of in BC? Blackberries. Also, fossils.
They also have a lot of this plant called Devil's Club which tries to kill you -- much like blackberries, but not actually like fossils, which are quite benign and mostly just quietly lie around inside hard round rocks called concretions which you have to hit really hard with a hammer to open -- and which is much-beloved of sheep.  Further proving that sheep are crazy.

They also have hazardous trees.

See?

So, I have been in BC for a week today, and have spent most of it, if not all, with Jason and his family.


They are very cool, his family.  His brother Daniel and I spent a lot of time giggling over obscure science fiction references and quoting stuff at each other and then we all had an argument.  The two guys were shouting about the ethics of free speech when it pertains to those anti-abortion signs that mention Nazis and lynching when Cheryl, Jason's sister-in-law, came back from somewhere and heard us all shouting and gesticulating.  (She actually didn't hear the gesticulating, unless she has superhuman powers, which I wouldn't put past her)

"How did this start?" she whispered to me.

"We were talking about cheetahs," I whispered back.

"Ohhh," she said sagely, as if that conversational train had not missed a few stations, hopped the track, skittered sideways through a shopping mall and come to rest in someone's grandmother's geraniums.

"It was when we got to talking about snow leopards that it all went downhill," Daniel shouted in the background.
We went to this tiny town called Coombs in an up-island camping extravaganza; Coombs' main attraction, despite the kitschy touristy shopping stores that sell beaded handbags and Tibetan purses, is that they have goats on the roof.  Really.  The main store has a sod roof and there are goats on it.  Imagine that being your license plate slogan: "Coombs: Goats on the Roof."  I can't decide which is better, that or "Famous Potatoes", which has long been dear to my heart.


We actually saw some beautiful landscape -- trees and rocks and rocks and trees and trees and rocks and water -- and did some great camping and hunted for fossils which I have never done before.  We investigated Metchosin, BC and bought some fudge.  We went berry picking and bought some fudge.  We went to Coombs and bought some fudge.  Like fudge?  Come road tripping with me!

Also, do you like sitting in small, loosely-constructed driftwood huts?

I also spiced things up by breaking the driver's side window of my car somehow; now it only goes down.  It doesn't go up.  We took the door apart to try and shove it up so I at least wouldn't have all my worldly possessions stolen, but instead succeeded only in losing the screws that hold stuff on, so that now my driver's side handle pops out of the door when I shut it.  I'm finding a mechanic tomorrow thus continuing my newly-invented tour: Car Repair In All Fifty States And Some Provinces.

Today, however, I got a behind-the scenes tour of the BC Museum, in the invertebrate section. Fossils! I also got to fondle dinosaur bones. I like paleontologists. They keep me well-stocked in things that are old.

They also keep me stocked in things that are weird.

I want to get this chair so that I could make people's parents sit on it.


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