We took our yuppie-mobile to Pentiction for the Fest of Ale. Erroneously believing it to be a local beer tasting event we contemplated maybe having to dress up, asking each other questions like "do you spit at a beer tasting?" and "I wonder what we get for cleansing the palate?" In reality it was more of an excuse to catch up with our super fun, talented, and greatly missed (by me!) friends James and Verena who were volunteering for Crannóg Ales. Once we arrived we realised that it was more of a "chug-as-much-beer-as-you-can-before-seven-and-try-to-score" kind of event. The crowd consisting of 'barely nineteen' girls, frat boys, old alcoholics, bikers, and a smattering of uptight looking professionals. We weren't sure which category we wanted to fit into. Attire seemed casual to say the least, as ample skin exposure provided spots to stick "Mike's Hard Lemonade" tattoos and the men wore shirts like "I Like Chicks Who Like Chicks", "For My Next Trick I'll Need a Condom and a Volunteer" and our favorite, "The Liver is Evil, It Deserves to Be Punished".
We hung around the pulled pork vendor so John could get his meat groove on and bought mostly Crannóg ales, as "Backhand of God" stout and "Bogtrotter Brown Ale" were our favorite bevvys. Did a lot of people watching and hung around James and Verena while they worked. All in all, entertaining but as the decibel and drunkenness level rose throughout the afternoon we decided to split before it got ugly(er).
Went back to the Sandman. Napped the rest of the afternoon and realised when James, Verena and Arron showed up around 7:30 that we must have all reached adulthood as our only aspirations for the evening were to eat salad and get a good nights sleep before climbing at Skaha Bluffs the next day.
April 15th 2007
Had a gorgeous day. Enjoyed watching John climb. Also enjoyed getting spanked by the rock my first day out since January. Yep. Gotta love it when you can't make the first move on a 5.7!! Sometimes Gneiss rock is not so nice :) Saw Verena and gang laying the smack down on the routes around us and was entertained by the fact that if you really want to freak V out, try and show her your fallen off toenails! Hee hee. Found some entertainment in nearby climber who was bragging to his girlfriend that he could climb a certain route in his flip flops it was so easy--only to watch him have to be lowered down after 2 moves. Whoops.
On our way out some young lads were climbing one of Guy's routes when we saw a flash of legs and chalk bag to whizzing buy which yells of "dude that was a whipper", "wicked whipper man!" and "dude, did you check my whipper?" Ahhh young 'dudes'.
Dinner with John's sister Deidre, Robert and baby Liam was lovely. A postprandial trip to the park showed me that John can have just as much fun on the monkey bars and slides as a 15 month old can!
At Lennie's urging we bought a bottle of Mateus and had our white-trash-night-out in a cheap motel as gut rot and rumblings did not seem too conducive to camping that night.
April 16th 2007
Got up nice and early, nearly received 3rd degree burns from wired *Bucs barrista who (accidentally) flipped a large cup of boiling water in my direction. After jumping out of the way to only a soggy foot and spray on the joggers she said "well at least it was only water", John mumbling "10000 degree Celsius water". One apology from manager and free coupon later we trucked out to the Bluffs again, only to find it windy, overcast and chilly. So we wimped out and went wine tasting instead!
Mission Hill is swanky and the tasting folks were nice but Quails' Gate Winery was more fun and their Pinot, Ice Wines, and Gewurztraminer all kicked anything we tasted at MH out of the running. We stocked up and headed home. To our favorite livingroom in the world, Anne Marie and Ryan's. John hoping to cash in on a dinner invite proved to be successful and we dined on shrimp tacos, spaghetti squash and chocolate turtles. Couldn't have been a better bookend to a weekend of wine, food, friends, oh...and frat boys.
