Monday, June 04, 2007

Lake Eerie

It would be so much easier to stick up a few photos and comment on them re: the weekend at Lake Eerie, but seeing as I forgot the camera, I no longer have the easy option. Mutter.

So, our weekend was fantastic. I really am getting old. Gone are the days where a weekend involving no sleep, bars, clubs and half the population of a city could entertain me. Now I want a comfortable chair, lights out at a decent hour and three square meals. I got just that for two whole days. Ian and I left chez nous on Friday afternoon with the car packed full of food and underwear. Seeing as I am new to the whole Canada experience, Ian and his parents discussed which expressway to take to the Lake. There are multiple options, the common one being the Road of Terror, aka the 401. However, seeing as it was a Friday afternoon, it was assumed that the 401 would be a nightmare and so it would be prudent to take the Toll 407. So off we went, 407 bound. Turns out we sat on a glorified parking lot for an hour. Traffic around Toronto at any point of any day is completely and utterly insane. So insane, that if there is a single little hiccup at any point on the expressway, all lanes suffer. Ian compares it to the Butterfly Effect. If someone brakes suddenly 20 miles ahead, the effect will vibrate its way back to the last car, increasing strength as it travels. In our case, there was a minor accident on the 407 involving a slight dent to one car from another. Both cars had pulled over to the side, freeing up traffic access, but because humans are nosy, everyone kept tapping their brakes to slow down for a look. The result was traffic slowed to almost a complete standstill adding an extra hour onto our journey. We moaned and complained but we still made sure we got a good gawk at the scene of the accident.

Once at the lake I regained my love of the countryside. Until all the bugs came at me. Seeing as it was dark when we arrived, we had no option other than to sit down and indulge in an Entourage marathon. I aspire to one day be as obnoxious as Ari Gold.

The following day I bossed Ian into making breakfast and afterwards we went for a walk on the beach. It was sunny and 32 degrees and Ian seemed convinced he was immune to skin cancer. He sat out in the sun for three hours and then ambled along the beach for another hour followed by another two hours just sitting on a chair in the sun. My pleas with him to put on some sun block were met with snorts of disgust. Was I not aware that his reddened arms would turn a golden brown? Did I not know that Ian isn't going to succumb to skin cancer?

As you can imagine I got in quite the snot with him. I understand that he naturally tans, but correct me if I am wrong here, but scorching your skin to turn brown makes zero medical sense whatsoever. I was pretty pissed with him for being so irresponsible, but of course, there was no talking to him. Instead I sat in the sun LATHERED in factor 45. I actually glowed with all the block I applied.... of course sand kept sticking to my lathered skin so I had quite the odd look going.

After breakfast we went for a walk on the beach. Never, ever, have I seen so many fish and bird skeletons as I saw on that beach. It was like being on Animal CSI. While ambling Ian found a bone in the sand. I can assure you that Grissom's job is quite safe as neither one of us could determine if it was human or not. We decided to lump it on Ian's Aunt's deck. Maybe she can determine what it is.

That night we continued our Entourage marathon. Aren't box set DVD's the best thing ever?

The next day was, unfortunately, grey, damp and not very sunworthy. Ian and I enjoyed breakfast, stuck our heads outside the door and pulled mine back in pretty quickly what with the dramatic increase in the mosquito population. Bleurgh. Seeing as there wasn't much point in sitting out in the rain, we started to clean the cottage and while doing so turned on the TV. On it was a show called "Are you Smarter than a 5th Grader?"The concept of this show is to have adults answer questions relating to school subjects for those in Grade 5 and under with the potential of winning $1,000,000. It sounds very simple, but not so for some of the parents... and if I am being truthful, even myself. Most of the questions are pretty simple, but some can leave you in quite the pickle. Take for example the contestant I saw yesterday. She was asked what country has the largest border with the United States. The woman said Mexico.

Has she ever seen a map of North America? Really? How ditzy do you have to be to get that one wrong. How do you not know about the second largest country in the world to the north of you?

Gah.

Anyhoo, after that Ian and I returned to Toronto. With Ian almost having a child seeing as traffic wan't going to the speed he would have selected. Once home, I scratched all my bug bites and made them worse than they were.

1 comment:

Jenny said...

Your notes about traffic sound like a typical day in Los Angeles! There's always discussion about what is the best freeway/route to go and, inevitably, it's never fast because there's always an accident or whatever. Or sometimes there's just so many people on the road that it's just slow regardless of whether there's an accident.

I am one of those people who will burn first (badly) and then will tan for the rest of the summer. But you are right! Regardless if you tan, you should put sunblock on because you can still get skin cancer even if you tan.

Sounds like a fun weekend!