Monday, April 24, 2006

Saturday: BLT and Eggs

Okay, here's the weekend update. Taryn just finished exams and finally we had a weekend together, rather than a weekend of me serving tea to the Hunchback of Quingate Place.

Our mountain bikes arrived from Vancouver a little over a month ago, and Calvin and I assembled them while he was visiting. The weather was forecast to be sunny and possibly even warm, so we decided we'd give them their maiden voyage this season. Our route? The Beechville-Lakeside-Timberlea trail, formerly a railway. Nice and flat, and should give us at least a 30km round trip.

Here's our path:


Of course, you can't ride on the BLT trail and NOT eat BLTs!!


Later in the day, we went to Ritchie's place and helped him in his attempts to concoct egg tarts, which has caused me to spin off a new blog solely devoted to food, Baking in Binary.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

What happens in Spring...


Is that apparently you get friends to come and visit! Or at least, friend. :)

The week before last, Calvin (our friend from Victoria/Nanaimo, which really should be called Vicmo, Nanaimoria, or prehaps just "The Island") came out to visit us. Of course he and I got up to all sorts of shenanigans while Taryn was forced to sit huddled in her little room studying hard for her exams. Ah the life of a student.

Anyways, Calvin and I did a bit of exploring, hiking (even a bike & hike multi-modal expedition), and chowing down at Pete's Frootique.

Finally on Taryn's day off, the three of us and Ritchie took part in what is a very eastern (but not necessarily East Coast) activity: visiting a Maple sugar camp.


Our experience starts at the cabin, where we were sat down and fed a glorious meal of sausage, maple baked beans, maple brown bread, and all-you-can-eat pancakes smothered in, of course, maple syrup. Someone at McDonalds must've been to this place when concocting the maple-baked-in-flapjack-sandwich-artery-clogger called the "McGriddle".



I must say that the food was fantabulous, simultaneously slowing me down with fat and pepping me up with sugar. My poor body had no idea what hit it.



Once we were able to drag ourselves back outside, we did a bit of exploring of the premises (unfortunately they weren't boiling the sap that day) and helped ourselves to some maple taffy we poured in snow.




We even got the chance to play with the farm's cute little springer spaniels, which apparently enjoyed picking large rocks up with their teeth and wandering around. Sure, why not?


Finally, today's Halifact: The Maritime Museum has recently acquired a live cockatoo which it has on display. When it's not squawking at teenagers that taunt it, you can usually coax it into saying its name. We couldn't, however, get it to say "Polly want a cracker". Arrrr!