Date: Fri, 23 Feb 2007 16:12:06 -0500
Reply-To: Greg Potts <greg@POTTSFAMILY.CA>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Greg Potts <greg@POTTSFAMILY.CA>
Subject: TCWBC 2007 Trip Report
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I now declare the Canadian Camping season open.
TCWBC 2007 has come and gone, and a good time was had by all. A huge
thanks to ALL who attended; it's the people who attend that make it
so much fun.
For the pics, go here:
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/The_Bug_Pack/TCWBC07pics/
Friday night, 11PM:
The bus is mostly packed. Colleen and I are enjoying dinner out at a
friend's. Suddenly my cell phone rings; it's my son's buddy Ross on
the line:
"Hi. Are you guys far from here? Will you be home soon?" (Ross is
staying overnight at my place, since he's coming with us to camp).
My spider-sense is on overdrive as I answer. "Not far. Soon. What's up?"
It turned out the Matthew had cut his hand, and had laid open the pad
of his thumb, deep enough to eventually require 4 stitches. Colleen
and I bailed out and headed home; I took one look at the wound and
knew immediately that prefessional medical attention was required. So
Colleen, Matt and Ross headed off to the hospital and got back at
about 5:30 AM. As you can imagine, this did have an impact on our
departure time.
The drive to Valens commenced at about 11:45 AM, and went quite well.
Dennis Jolliffe and I arrived at the park, registered for a campsite
and got camped. Unfortunately there wasn't sufficient space next to
the bus from Ohio, so we retreated back to the usual pull-through
campsites we have used in the past. After that it wasn't long until
Joel Cort arrived from Rochester in his horizontally-opposed 4-
cylinder subie-powered waterboxer and set up his westy side tent.
soon after we had Dave Ireland and Jamie Rivers there, and IIRC the
next bus after that was my brother Brent driving Dad's sunroof
Vanagon. We also had lots of "day pass" visitors, and everyone was
able to find room at the fire. We also met a new bus this time out,
Erwin and his girlfriend arrived in his purple 72 showed up just in
time for dinner
To keep it short, I'll focus on the highlights:
THE FIRE:
We had a really nice fire this year, fueled with a large volume of
"oriented strand board". The stuff is now commonly used in place of
plywood, and we had tons of it. Some of it was in 2'x3'x1/2" sheets,
and some of it was in strips about 4" x 24". A cubic foot of the
smaller pieces dropped on the fire raises flames about 10' tall.
THE FOOD:
As usual, we were very well fed. There were lots of snacks all
afternoon, and the turkeys hit the boiling oil at about 6:25PM,
emerging just after 7PM. After the turkey sandwiches were served up
there were baked potato skins and deep fried mars bars. One important
lesson learned was that it's MUCH easier to skewer a mars bar when
it's at room temperature than when it's frozen solid. At the same
time I also discovered that a human hand is not nearly so hard to
skewer as a frozen mars bar. You learn something new every day,
doncha? I'm healing nicely, thanks for asking.
THE FOLKS:
There was a good showing of the usual suspects; but 2007 also saw an
upswing in attendance in both day-pass visitors and overnight
campers. Everyone was surprised at how much easier winter camping was
then what they had been expecting, and we had the biggest winter
crowd yet.
THE FORECAST:
In a word, the weather was Perfect. Not extremely cold and very
little wind is exactly what we hope for in a winter camp. About 2
inches of fresh powder fell on Saturday, which made the XC ski-trails
a 10 out of 10 on Sunday.
THE FUN:
Aside from huddling around the fire, there were some other
activities.... Some people went skiing and skating, others went
toboganning. At 8PM EST we had a linkup by cellphone with the
campfire crowd from Arizona at the "Land-of No" campout, the uplink
lasted several minutes before the battery in my blackberry succumbed
to the cold. On Sunday we played a quick round of "Winter Bocce"
using ice-coated snowballs dyed with food colouring. It was the first
round of Bus Bocce for 2007, since the snowballs didn't hold up quite
as well as I had hoped. Next year we will have to find a way to cast
the Bocce balls out of solid ice.
A good time was had by all, and already I am counting the days until
EveryBus.
Happy Trails,
Greg Potts
1973/74/77/79 Westfakia "Bob The Tomato
www.pottsfamily.ca
www.busesofthecorn.com
