So I’ve got this cramp… more like a pinched nerve… some kind of sciatic weirdness that’s arisen over the last 24 or so hours that’s making me more than a little crazy, and I’m hoping like hell that it resolves in the next few days before the planting season starts. Between now and then I’ve got a trip to vegas coming up (Ariella’s best friend Cassie is getting married, and I’m among the lunatics heading down to witness the event and deplete the state of Nevada’s bourbon supply), and our hotel’s bound to have a jaccuzzi somewhere, so I should be able to work it out.

It’s truly a tough life, ne?

The last two weeks have been a mixed bag of task-execution, ranging from buying a car (a 1985 Volvo that we picked up for about $500), to picking up and reassembling our bikes in Vancouver, to filing taxes, to getting the rest of our touring/camping kit sorted out, and a billion other odds and ends that needed tying together before we veer northward towards the cutblocks that we will soon be reforesting. Luckily most of the running around was accomplished towards the end of last week, and we managed to spend the weekend and the front-end of this week booting around the island, camping in some of the most breathtaking locations I’ve ever seen in this country (one of which involved a 16km drive down a pitch-black logging road pitted with foot-deep craters at 1:30am in the pouring rain), and most importantly (for me), taking A-Botz out surfing for the first (and second) time, and soaking in a few sunsets on the Pacific… it’s been FAR FAR too long since that’s occurred, lemmetellya.

Almost equally as good was spending a few evenings chilling out with Bram and Chelsea (two blokes that Woji and I know from our year of absurdity in Australia) in Victoria, where Bram’s finishing up his degree at U-Vic.

Yep. All in all, life is good. And goddamn, is it ever great to be united with A-Botz. She smells nice!