"Oh, honey, anyone could miss Canada. All tucked way down there."
If you go all the way up to the city of Alpena and go east into the water, eventually you'll be so far into lake Huron that you won't see anything but the sky above you and the water below you. Keep going east and eventually you'll find small pleasure boats, then wave runners, then wind surfers, kayaks, tall swimmers, short swimmers, and eventually you'll wind up on the crystal clear beautiful shores of Sauble Beach, a 7 mile long stretch of what Readers Digest Canada honored as the "Best Beach in All of Canada"
Welcome to my summer nightmare.
Yeah, it's a great place, but not when you're locked up with your family for the whole week. From Saturday to Saturday, I spent the whole week isolated in a old cabin with my family, and we weren't lucky enough to take some magic hover vessel over from Alpena, no, we took the painfully long, painfully boring route through back roads Ontario. For a week my mother bitches, my sister complains, and my father lacks any refined communication skills. God bless the Duty Free store in Port Huron, where I got the booze I'd need for this ordeal.
I don't want to sound like a lush, but a night surviving my family is a four drink minimum, I've concluded.
The cottage has been in my family for over half a century. It's driven family members apart, sucks money from us like a leech, and is even the final resting place for two family members. It's across the street from the burial site of an ancient Native American princess, Bimadashka, and is on the edge of a forest home to smell skunk, ferocious fox, and man eating bears. Honest to God. Threat-down bears.
The entire town, a tourist trap in the summer, and frozen wasteland in the winter, has gone from cozy little cottage town that sorta had a suspicion it was a popular place, with lots of small gift shops, free nature parks, and wholesome entertainment, has become a growing resort town that's grown cocky with it's popularity, teaming with over priced clothing stores, charging people to park on the beach, and this year, the introduction of a tattoo parlor and a new arcade and Subway sandwich store combination.
"Is Dan," you may be pondering, "really complaining about an arcade?" Yes, because it's not the Pac-Man, Golden Axe, Area-51, Air hockey and Off Road Fury arcade of my youth, with the antique bubblegum machine and employees with knapsacks filled with coins, but a sterilized DDR hall, with a machine to take your bills and a wide screen TV to watch sports on. Next to a fucking Subway.
I've accepted that the place is changing, but it's going to be hard for me, going from one extreme to another. It will no longer be the small cottage town of my past, but it will still be a while before it becomes the Cancun of Canada. Nearby Wasaga Beach, which doesn't boast a rock-free beach, has a Burger King right on the beach.
I'm thinking of starting a Taco Bell up there and making a killing.
I was up there with friends some many summers ago. And I had fun. My mom didn't, so she doesn't like the thought of me going up there with friends. She tells me I'd have to rent from one of the new, expensive motels.
She can go kiss my ass.
I don't think I'll clearly be able to transpose my feelings of the weekend. But lets just say, on any given stroll down the beach, you'll see an old person playing with a child, and I'm reminded that I no longer have a childhood, and I no longer have grandparents. And you'll see a group of guys walking down the beach, laughing and throwing a Frisbee around, and I'm reminded that I don't have friends up here, only family. You'll see a gaggle of girls on towels on the beach, bearing flesh and boasting bikini's, which don't get me wrong, it awesome to see, but the girls remind me that I don't have my own girl back home.
Ah, the girls.
The cute, short redhead that serves ice cream at the place where we watch the sun set on Lake Huron. My dad and I went to the driving range, and I was hitting the golf balls pretty well, until a girl with a perfect behind took up residence two tee's down from me. My game greatly suffered. And finally, the tall, dark haired girl who I saw three times this week, with eyes that hinted she was an innocent vase, ready to be shattered, with big, large curves in all the right places a woman should have big, large curves. The last night I saw her, I was tempting to run in after her into the ice cream shop, and tell her to meet me a quarter after midnight right there on the beach.
It was my nightly strolls (and Smirnoff) that helped me remain sane during the week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I took a midnight walk down the beach, illuminated the moon growing slowly full be week's end. Sound carries well on the night beach, and along with the distance screams of fun from people throwing parties, and the gentle crashing of the waves, I could hear the sinister burning of the cheap cigars I brought with me and smoked, puffing poison into a sky only occupied by the stars.
It was while at the beach I checked my voice mails, because that's when I finally got any signal. Calling someone is an arm and a leg up there, because Cingular becomes Rogers, and free nights and weekends become your pinky and a length of intestine. But checking my voice mails was free, so I prevented homesickness by listening at length to each of them, from a girl foolishly concerned about me not talking to her, to a drunken friends response to a drunk dial, to an invitation to go to Windsor, the cool part of Canada, to a friend almost explaining why he's mad at me but getting cut off by a call from his girlfriend. My service only allows a voice mail two weeks to live, if I save it or not. So it goes. But even the most mundane voice mail is a treat, so thank to all those to left one, and will leave one in the future.
Another thing that kept me sane was book and my Nintendo DS. Over the week, I finally finished The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks, read Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn because my Aunt left it the and recommended I read it, unfortunately, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the same copy my father read when he was in college, and I re-read The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, because it's my favorite book. I also tried writing more of my book, but didn't get too far. Can't rush awesomeness.
New Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo DS gave me something to do on car ride, something to see in the pitch black darkness of a Canadian night, and something to keep my sister off my tail for minutes on end. She was always on edge this week, paranoid that I would ruin Deathly Hallows for her. I only made one small slip of the tongue and informed her of Lupin's demise, which she took rather harshly when she read it for herself.
Funny how a week in a beautiful place like Sauble Beach is only capable by things I brought with me, like booze, cigars, video games and books. I could have done all that here, with friends, and the internets, and fast food, and my car, and my cats.
But alas, the beach is a tricky bitch. On my last afternoon up there, I went into the water to wash off the sweat I accumulated from closing up the cottage. And there, in the sand, where five girls sunning themselves on the beach, some on their backs, some on their stomachs, all of them oblivious of me relishing in the beauty of the female form decorated in a two piece.
Touche, Sauble. Touche.
Welcome to my summer nightmare.
Yeah, it's a great place, but not when you're locked up with your family for the whole week. From Saturday to Saturday, I spent the whole week isolated in a old cabin with my family, and we weren't lucky enough to take some magic hover vessel over from Alpena, no, we took the painfully long, painfully boring route through back roads Ontario. For a week my mother bitches, my sister complains, and my father lacks any refined communication skills. God bless the Duty Free store in Port Huron, where I got the booze I'd need for this ordeal.
I don't want to sound like a lush, but a night surviving my family is a four drink minimum, I've concluded.
The cottage has been in my family for over half a century. It's driven family members apart, sucks money from us like a leech, and is even the final resting place for two family members. It's across the street from the burial site of an ancient Native American princess, Bimadashka, and is on the edge of a forest home to smell skunk, ferocious fox, and man eating bears. Honest to God. Threat-down bears.
The entire town, a tourist trap in the summer, and frozen wasteland in the winter, has gone from cozy little cottage town that sorta had a suspicion it was a popular place, with lots of small gift shops, free nature parks, and wholesome entertainment, has become a growing resort town that's grown cocky with it's popularity, teaming with over priced clothing stores, charging people to park on the beach, and this year, the introduction of a tattoo parlor and a new arcade and Subway sandwich store combination.
"Is Dan," you may be pondering, "really complaining about an arcade?" Yes, because it's not the Pac-Man, Golden Axe, Area-51, Air hockey and Off Road Fury arcade of my youth, with the antique bubblegum machine and employees with knapsacks filled with coins, but a sterilized DDR hall, with a machine to take your bills and a wide screen TV to watch sports on. Next to a fucking Subway.
I've accepted that the place is changing, but it's going to be hard for me, going from one extreme to another. It will no longer be the small cottage town of my past, but it will still be a while before it becomes the Cancun of Canada. Nearby Wasaga Beach, which doesn't boast a rock-free beach, has a Burger King right on the beach.
I'm thinking of starting a Taco Bell up there and making a killing.
I was up there with friends some many summers ago. And I had fun. My mom didn't, so she doesn't like the thought of me going up there with friends. She tells me I'd have to rent from one of the new, expensive motels.
She can go kiss my ass.
I don't think I'll clearly be able to transpose my feelings of the weekend. But lets just say, on any given stroll down the beach, you'll see an old person playing with a child, and I'm reminded that I no longer have a childhood, and I no longer have grandparents. And you'll see a group of guys walking down the beach, laughing and throwing a Frisbee around, and I'm reminded that I don't have friends up here, only family. You'll see a gaggle of girls on towels on the beach, bearing flesh and boasting bikini's, which don't get me wrong, it awesome to see, but the girls remind me that I don't have my own girl back home.
Ah, the girls.
The cute, short redhead that serves ice cream at the place where we watch the sun set on Lake Huron. My dad and I went to the driving range, and I was hitting the golf balls pretty well, until a girl with a perfect behind took up residence two tee's down from me. My game greatly suffered. And finally, the tall, dark haired girl who I saw three times this week, with eyes that hinted she was an innocent vase, ready to be shattered, with big, large curves in all the right places a woman should have big, large curves. The last night I saw her, I was tempting to run in after her into the ice cream shop, and tell her to meet me a quarter after midnight right there on the beach.
It was my nightly strolls (and Smirnoff) that helped me remain sane during the week. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I took a midnight walk down the beach, illuminated the moon growing slowly full be week's end. Sound carries well on the night beach, and along with the distance screams of fun from people throwing parties, and the gentle crashing of the waves, I could hear the sinister burning of the cheap cigars I brought with me and smoked, puffing poison into a sky only occupied by the stars.
It was while at the beach I checked my voice mails, because that's when I finally got any signal. Calling someone is an arm and a leg up there, because Cingular becomes Rogers, and free nights and weekends become your pinky and a length of intestine. But checking my voice mails was free, so I prevented homesickness by listening at length to each of them, from a girl foolishly concerned about me not talking to her, to a drunken friends response to a drunk dial, to an invitation to go to Windsor, the cool part of Canada, to a friend almost explaining why he's mad at me but getting cut off by a call from his girlfriend. My service only allows a voice mail two weeks to live, if I save it or not. So it goes. But even the most mundane voice mail is a treat, so thank to all those to left one, and will leave one in the future.
Another thing that kept me sane was book and my Nintendo DS. Over the week, I finally finished The Zombie Survival Guide, by Max Brooks, read Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn because my Aunt left it the and recommended I read it, unfortunately, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, the same copy my father read when he was in college, and I re-read The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, because it's my favorite book. I also tried writing more of my book, but didn't get too far. Can't rush awesomeness.
New Super Mario Bros on the Nintendo DS gave me something to do on car ride, something to see in the pitch black darkness of a Canadian night, and something to keep my sister off my tail for minutes on end. She was always on edge this week, paranoid that I would ruin Deathly Hallows for her. I only made one small slip of the tongue and informed her of Lupin's demise, which she took rather harshly when she read it for herself.
Funny how a week in a beautiful place like Sauble Beach is only capable by things I brought with me, like booze, cigars, video games and books. I could have done all that here, with friends, and the internets, and fast food, and my car, and my cats.
But alas, the beach is a tricky bitch. On my last afternoon up there, I went into the water to wash off the sweat I accumulated from closing up the cottage. And there, in the sand, where five girls sunning themselves on the beach, some on their backs, some on their stomachs, all of them oblivious of me relishing in the beauty of the female form decorated in a two piece.
Touche, Sauble. Touche.