Camping and Teppanyaki: Together at Last!

Today is an occasion that generally happens once in a son's lifetime - my parent's 25th wedding anniversary. We celebrated in style as my mother, father, Kayla, Lina, my Oma, and my Opa paid a visit to Ichiban, Winnipeg's finest teppanyaki-style restaurant. The food was absolutely top-notch, with my dinner combination of filet mignon, baby lobster, and terriyaki chicken being close to perfect. The atmosphere at Ichiban is fantastic and you'd be hard-pressed to find a more entertaining dining experience. Our excellent chef decided to pick on Kayla in particular, making her flinch a number of times as he threatened to hurl sharp objects in her direction and actually hurling some dull ones. A word to the wise though: laughing uncontrollably at your sister while trying to eat dinner with chopsticks is a challenge unlike any other. A great night it was, full of great food, great laughs, great sake, and holy awesome (!) ginger ice-cream.
 
Weekends allow you to do all sorts of fun things, so I've been enjoying them immensely since I started the new job. There's this little change in you that happens when you take up a 9-5er. Though the evenings are nice, the weekend just screams with possibilities. It's hard to decide what to do and what to leave for the next opportunity, but that just helps you to value your spare time that much more. Those in the same boat as me right now will attest that there is varying degrees of acceptance with this kind of situation and the sooner you embrace this system, the sooner you start getting the most out of life. 
  
This past weekend was a weekend of camping fun in the Whiteshell, some of the most gorgeous country until you hit the Rockies and the West and Europe in the East.



See what I mean? This is one of the highest points in the park, directly overlooking our campsite at the foot of the hill and offering a wonderful view of the expansive forest that is the Whiteshell. Of course, you can't see much because of the tree cover, but you'll have to take my word that it is down there somewhere.
 
Lina, Burtonium and I left on Friday night after work and had a little trouble coming up with a decent and available site that would be suitable for two tents. We finished pitching the tents just before sunset and settled in for the weekend. We spent most of Saturday morning hiking around and visiting various waterfalls in the park, returning sometime in the mid-afternoon. Burtonium had decided not to spend the second night in the park (having remembered to bring his guitar along, but neglecting to enhance his stay with luxuries like a sleeping bag and clean clothes), so he departed shortly thereafter. Cooked to a crisp, Lina and I took a dip in the uber-frigid lake Nutimik and pretty much spent the evening lazing around and drinking coolers before turning in early. Sunday was pretty much reserved for cleaning up the site and saskatoon picking and we arrived back in the city around 3:00ish.
 
Of course, there were two factors that I could have done without. 1) I have never seen so many horseflies in my life. They swarm around vehicles like sharks around a bleeding swimmer, waiting for you to step out so they can take a chunk out of your skin. The persistent buggers really made the afternoon uncomfortable, but disappeared in the early evening. 2) Crows. Dozens of crows. There was obviously no West Nile out there, because they were there each morning making racket at 6:00 am right outside our tent. Good Lord, that was irritating!
 
I also noticed a weird little phenomenon this weekend while camping. There seems to be an unwritten rule that firmly states that you must greet each person you pass them when on a camping excursion. It's friendly and all, but I just find it rather strange. Having grown up entirely in the city, I have a hard time grasping such behaviour. Courtesy? Unheard of!
 
All in all I had a great weekend and I'm looking forward to at least one more trip to the Whiteshell this summer and a return to my storied cabin. Oh, the grandeur!
 
qotp: "Living's impossible; a full-time job trying to change
ourselves into something we love before we're gone.
We can't catch our breath. No wonder we stare."
- David O'Meara, from the poem The War Against Television
 
- Colin (invincibleironman@hotmail.com)