Unreasonable

Naomi (bartender at Garneau): What's your last name?
Me:
Naomi: You're Philip ?
Me: Yes?
Naomi: You used to live at

.

Me: Yee..eees???
Naomi: I have a letter for you. Wait here.
[5 minutes pass]
Naomi: Here it is. I found you on Facebook and tried to get it back to you!
Me: Wait! You're Naomi ? When I went to the house to get it, nobody knew what I was talking about!
Naomi: Yeah, sorry, that was my roommate.  The letter looked so intense, I... we opened it. It had a wax seal! We waited so long to open it! We read it many times. We read it in different accents. When people came to the house, we said "you want to see something cool?" and we read it to them. I have read this letter so many times. Pippa will be excited to meet you.
Me:.... ..... ..... ................ I'll be here again.

Tone Deaf Shoulder Tumors

I didn't take a picture Thursday, so here's a video challenge for you: if you can watch more than 10 seconds of this, you've outlasted most of us.

Last Day at Camp

So, the reason I wasn't sure yesterday's hike was in a rainforest (until I got expert confirmation from K*) is that today we hiked through a place that was actually called a rainforest:It was a short hike, but we got to see more effects of winter storms:
and horrifying manifestations of primal evil:
We decided to catch the ferry back instead of driving all the way around Puget Sound, and it turned out to be a good move. Also, cucumber sandwiches:
Yum.

Olympic Proportions

Olympic National Park is great. The trail to the alpine meadow is snowed in? How about a temperate rainforest instead?
Actually, even though there was wall-to-wall moss and giant purple trees:...I'm not sure it was an actual rainforest. The trees certainly were tall, though:
In fact, they were tall even when they were on their sides - here's the root system of a big one that had just come down:
The winter storms that knocked down that tree also washed out the bridge we were supposed to use to cross these rapids:
So, we took the natural course of action: lunch.
Two plans came out of our meal-time strategizing: Steve and I tried to throw enough stones into the river to make a bridge (we figured we had enough), and Vinai looked for (and found) an alternate route across the river:It was well worth it. The other side was like a cathedral, a big spongy yellow cathedral that I won't do justice to here.
It took more time to cover less distance than we expected in the cathedral, and we were running short on time, so we decided to ford the river on the way back:
In the picture above, Steve makes it look as the the water were not SO INSANELY COLD THAT YOU IMMEDIATELY REGRET STEPPING IN IT. I literally ran across the river, because the pain of running across wet stones was less severe than the pain of being in water that cold. It was so cold that when I dropped my boot in the river on the way across I thought, for a second, that I would rather continue hiking with one boot than walk back 10 feet in that water to pick it up.

Oh, and Steve did it TWICE. The picture above shows how far he made it when trying to find out if it was too deep to cross.

Anyway, we all made it back to camp alive where there was roast pear enough for everyone.

Morale

When we discovered that our 16 combined years of post-secondary education were inadequate training for making a fire from damp wood in the dark, we went to bed cold, wet, and somewhat miserable. The next morning we discovered a magical secret (hint: you can light paper on fire!) that led to a dramatic increase in morale, and the most delicious instant ramen I have ever tasted:As you can see, we had a sort of live-off-the-land approach to cutlery. I had a good feeling about fresh twig chopsticks, but Vinai found more success with the chopsticks he pulled off of one of our logs: We were still in good spirits when we got to Lake Louise, where the typically majestic emerald lake turned out to be covered a more mundane layer of ice and snow.
Still it was worthwhile, since it made for this great snowman shot I took for Steve:
By the time we got to the hot springs things were back to being just plain lovely, thanks in part to sunshine and cucumber sandwiches:
Not to mention road signs advertising extremely bad ideas:
...and idyllic mountain towns like Golden, B.C.:
...home of the first Gurdwara in North America and plenty of intimidating wildlife:
All in all, a great day for morale. Unless you were driving, I guess, in which case it was kind of dangerous and unnerving:

Westward Ho!

Vinai had a grand idea for a vacation: he takes a week and a half off of Doctoring, flies to Edmonton, and drives out to Vancouver with me to see Steve. Our first stop was Jasper, which he'd never seen before.The Jasper Park Lodge was under construction, but they had some pretty cool Canada Geese:

From there we headed down the Icefields Parkway towards our campsite in Banff. As we went, the mountains got snowier and colder looking:
So of course we decided to get out and walk on one:
We pulled off at the trail for the Athabasca Glacier. We naively believed the sign telling us it would take us 20 minutes to get to the glacier, despite the fact that the actual trail was completely hidden by snow, I was wearing my stupidest shoes, and the glacier and its canyon were producing enough wind to generate hundreds of kiloWatts of MADNESS:

Well, anyway, we made it to the glacier (the big white thing behind Vinai here:)... from which it was surprisingly difficult to get a cab.

Lookin' Swell

You would be amazed at the range of anachronistic activities at which Vinai's shirt looked perfectly appropriate.

Stupid Phone Camera

This is the only shot I got of the wedding ceremony itself on my phone. The good news is, I went through two sets of batteries and two memory cards on Vinai's and Steve's mom's cameras, so some pictures I've taken are around somewhere. The other good news is that the whole ceremony was professionally photographed (by the guy squatting) and videographed (by the guy standing by that tripod) so I should have been spending my effort on protecting those shoes instead of taking crappy photos anyway.

How to Get Married, Day 3

First, pray.Next, make sure your nephew's turban fits. Use pruning shears if you have to. He's gotta look good up there on that horse with you.
Next, get anybody in your party who consents into a kurta pajama.
Then, head out to see Ganesha. This is an auspicious day.
Then, drive to Hamilton, and wait for the horse.
Then bring out the beard patrol.
...and recruit them for shoe defense. Especially the vicious bear-man beard patroller.
Then, get married, eat, drink, dance, have songs sung and played for you, speeches made for you, slide shows describe your life and embarrass you, sing a song, make a speech, carve a cake, and kiss your bride. (not pictured.)

By the way, we lost the shoes. We (Vinai) had to pay (cash) to get them back. How much cash? That depends on the arm wrestle. We agreed on a base amount, and offered $275 on top of that if they could beat us in an arm wrestle. They chose the combatants. For our side, the man they empirically determined to have the smallest biceps:
For their side, a professional carpenter. I won't say how it turned out, but the bartender lost cash on a bet.

How to Get Married, Day 2

First, by evening, recover from your bachelor-party hangover enough to practice the Hindi song you wrote for your bride-to-be: Next, gather your friends and family at your house, feed them, and mentally prepare for what follows: Get them to smear turmeric-infused grease all over your body:
Then, get them to put that red fabricover your head and have the more distinguished members put cash money in it. You'll need the cash for your shoes later.
Then get fed by your parents. Like old times. They love you.
Then sleep. Big day tomorrow.