blogx
Bowen Island, B.C., Canada

Quiet little morning around the Cove today with a minimum of people getting on the ferry because of the Easter holiday, and slept in to almost 8 o’clock. Just a coffee this morning, can’t afford more than a few times a month to eat breakfast as the cafes around here cater to a mostly well-to-do crowd and can command premium prices for the barest of commodities.

Glad to have the rechargeable razor now, heat has been turned off in the ferry washroom for the season and much easier shaving dry than wet. One of those odd weather mornings, clouds scudding across the sky have it warm in the sunshine for a little while, then the rain comes along and a few minutes ago a little hailstorm. It’s back to sunshine quickly and the chill goes away, could be worse, elsewhere on the island yesterday it was snowing while Old Man Winter had one (hopefully!) last kick at the can.

In the end the clouds went away for good and the first tourists are showing up already. The taco shop owner was on hand doing a little painting and sprucing up for a target opening date five weeks earlier than the traditional Victoria Day (May 24th) holiday. Not sure herself that there will be enough business to justify it, but the gift shop owner is already making sales in the sunshine. One thing for sure needing sprucing up is all the left over lumber from the dock repairs, have checked with the owner and most certainly he wants the lumber from himself and have stopped someone already from carting off a truckload.

Back to the part time job in the morning for a couple days, instead of long weekends the schedule gives me two regular weekends, twice a week. Borrowed a Best of Steve Martin DVD to watch tonight and sitting outside the Snug Cafe beforehand doing a little surfing on the intertubes and catching up on the gossip. Should be a nice cool night, and quietly still hopefully, it gets real noisy when it rains or the wind brings down the pine cones from the trees above. Starting to notice a few little dents in the roof because of them too, probably should change over to another parking lot without so many of those types of trees above.

After somewhat of a rainy night, Easter morning is all sunshine and lollipops in Snug Cove. There are some threatening dark clouds to the east but they are for now moving away instead of towards the pier so soaking up lots of vitamin D. Didn’t get much of a breakfast, ordered and paid for some scrambled eggs, hash browns and dry toast without butter easily enough while the order was written and placed up for the cook, gave my name and sat down to read the paper a bit. The “ferry rush” was over and lots of choices where to sit and settled in for a nice little, albeit expensive, breakfast.

At the time, mine was the only order hanging above the cooks prep area and was served up quickly, perhaps too quickly as the toast was soaking in butter. Not the first time it’s happened and usually just go with it and squeeze some oil out before biting in, but this was Easter Sunday breakfast and it would be nice to have it right, so asked for a replacement. I waited, and waited, and waited some more while the eggs turned cold and wondered if my toast would ever arrive. About ten minutes later with great apologies from the waitress I had some toast to go with the now cold eggs, and to make them edible again asked to have them heated up in the microwave. And there they sat and so did I waiting, and waiting again some more and eventually just gave up on breakfast being served and left a little poorer and hungrier than going in.

Headed down to The Pier and the kayak shop has already started their season with a couple intrepid adventures standing by for instructions from the owner, along with the gift shop owner continuing her preparations for the summer tourists. The dock repairs are coming along nicely, after the fingers were done last fall the main deck is near completion with about one more load of timbers to go. Shoring up where the old path meets the dock is still not done, a separate project on it’s own due to the complexity of timing for low tides to make concrete forms and pour. I moved a defunct refrigerator display placed in front during construction, to around the corner for the gift shop so won’t be long now until the colorful display she creates will greet travellers coming off the ferry.

Really good wi-fi around the kayak shop, have got myself plugged into his power supply for the afternoon so there’s a good charge for watching a movie tonight. Those dark clouds keep reappearing and the temperature drops a lot in the shade, not full on spring but you can feel it and see the buds just beginning to make their appearance.

Blogging from the parking lot of the marina tonight, it was home last night too after staying up at the chicken ranch a few hours and discovering that it really wasn’t a place for me after all. Did manage to get her pellet stove operational again so there is hot and cold running water, and now heat too.

Nice to be away from mid-island, the weather here is always warmer and there’s more people to watch but of course no place to keep food cool when it gets too warm, and nothing to cook it on anyways, lol. Nothing but praise for Eureka brand tents, the one I left up all winter survived just fine and on the lookout for a new location for it through the summer. Although the Mazda Motel is not as comfortable sleeping as the tent, once the time change happens in the fall it’s too dark to make it out of the woods easily to get to work in the morning but when the early daylight comes can stretch out a bit again at night.

Amazing wi-fi reception with this HP Pavilion laptop, a long, long way from the router and still manage to get a couple bars and the Google page showing up. Doesn’t stick around very well, amazed that it even works though.