A Dirty Weekend Away - Part 1

It has been a dirty and a clean weekend away. I met hubby at his work and we made a run for it at 4:15 in “the Toad”, driving roads we haven’t used before to escape the valley.

We stopped in Princeton for the naughtiness of Doritos and a DQ milkshake that’s so good for you, you can’t get the fruit up the straw. There are no badly spelt coffee shops here to choose from. It’s a mill-town where every man and his dad works under the cloud of cellulose steam rising from the dry kilns and all the women, I suspect, have left. We chugged on up the mountain passes and the full moon came out from the clouds. Now that the sun had set on our early escape, we congratulated ourselves on the choice of weekend for this drive as we enjoy the light of the moon illuminating the snow in the mountain gullies and on the trees.

We stop for a pee-break in the end of a snowy logging road and hubby draws a heart in the snow.

As we approach our overnighter destination, I am drifiting in and out of nod-land so we check into the first motel in town, the appropriately named, “Colonial 9000”. It just happens to share a parking lot with a good greek restaurant so we both have a drink with our meal then return to the motel to watch James Bond on cable and I fall asleep in the arms of my 007.

We are woken only by children thundering around in the next room and the sounds of someone taking a shower at 8am next day.

We drink appalling instant coffee then stop for the real thing en route to the objective of our journey: Art’s place - a specialist car parts dealer in Langley. Hubby found him on the Rover Landers club website. Art has recently purchased a desirable gearbox to suit the toad’s new engine conversion and give us higher, quieter gear ratios than the existing army-duty box.

When we pull off the highway I have some real, serious “grass is always greener” feelings. Y’see, although it’s rained here for the last 25 days, we brought the Okanagan sunshine with us and all the green stuff was shining in the sunshine. This was looking more and more like Ambleside all the time.

The houses along the road were a classic Canadian Country melange ranging from million dollar faux-stone edifices to tiny, rotting shacks that leave you wondering if anyone really lives there, and how *much* that land is actually worth. After a long straight section of road we found a bend – a rareity in this land of 90 degree angles and NSEW numbered streets navigation. The bends took us plunging down the hillside into the Fraser river flats – flood country. It’d have me saying “this green and pleasant land” if it weren’t for the towering fir trees.

We turn onto another rural street and pass a winery on one side, a field of sheep on the other. We’re looking for a warehouse, a big shed or at least a Land Rover sign. We look at house numbers but find ourselves drawn to a billboard, which turns out to be a real estate advert, just as we notice a Range Rover parked in a driveway that we’ve passed. This doesn’t look like the place but the house number is right so we pull in.

We go to the door of the shack of a house, past the crumbling TVR and I hang back a few steps. The ghostly whistle of a train echoes in the valley and its engine roars. We’re greeted by a burly man with a trendy haircut and a big blue check shirt covering his belly.

“We’re looking for Art”.

He’s in the washroom but will be right with us. We stand quietly in the hallway as the other two men go back to drinking tea at a large dining table covered in books, horse and land rover magazines. The living room through the archway looks tiny with two armchairs cosily facing an inviting woodstove (at least it would be if it were cold outside). The kitchen is ancient and messy. There’s a giant fabric chicken on the sideboard, more magazines and newspapers.

I’m a little intimidated by the unknown silent men at the table. This place has all the markings of a well defended bachelor pad or some kind of safe house. Finally Art appears and offers us tea, which, very Englishly comes from a teapot concealed beneath the giant chicken. It’s proffered with real milk and tastes so good I’m not even inclined to ask for the sugar. I doubt they have any. Art is a small, roundish man with wild hair and an even wilder beard that he strokes as he thinks. Thankfully it’s a clean beard. Many aren’t.

We go outside to look at “the beast” since we’ve driven it all this way. Art picks, prods, hums, checks, offers alternative ideas, lifts the hood and shares knowing tidbits about oil leaks, viscous couplings and battery voltages. It becomes apparent that what I thought was “one of Art’s boys” is the owner of the Range Rover. The portly man is an Aussie and the first customer in line. He’s also, I found out later, the vice chair of the RoverLanders club. The boys gather around his engine and I take a cue to go for a walk with the camera. I investigate a collection of rural condos on the hillside. They’re built to look like massive single family dwellings but there are so many and they’re so big so close together I can’t believe anyone would, “live in a house like this”.

My “grass is always greener” feelings grow... To be continued with visual...

Awesome light. No photoshop required

(c) Andy