Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2006 22:29:18 -0500
Reply-To: Greg Potts <Greg@POTTSFAMILY.CA>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Greg Potts <Greg@POTTSFAMILY.CA>
Subject: TCWBC Trip Report
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On 22-Feb-06, at 5:35 PM, quoi2lov wrote:
> Hey Greg, any pics or reports yet?
Hi Volks,
The Canadian Camping Season is now officially open. TCWBC 2006 saw
the attendance of 6 buses and at least 5 carloads of bus enthusiasts.
Personally, TCWBC came at the end of a VERY busy week. The evening
before the campout had me driving 4 hours to get home from a sudden
business trip to Almonte, which seriously impacted my ability to
double-check my prep lists and arrange everything to run smoothly. So
I delegated, and trusted to fate. For the most part it went very well.
They say God is in the details. So here's the celestial particulars:
WEATHER:
Environment Canada is a pack of Lying Bastards. Or incompetent. Or
both. The website brought to us by our tax dollars at work said that
Cambridge would get something between 8 and 16 inches of snow within
24 hours of TCWBC. In actuality we got less than a quarter inch. It
was cold at night, but not too windy, so there was lots of good
places to sit around the campfire. At night the temp dipped to about
16 Celsius degrees below zero, but when the sun was up it was more
like a balmy -10C.
Once again my cross-country skis were packed in the bus for no use
whatsoever. Sigh.
ATTENDANCE:
We had six buses show up, down one from last year. Some people had to
work, others had sustained injuries that kept their buses at home.
Joel and Alex Mercado drove up from Buffalo to attend their first Bus
campout and are already planning to join a Carabus to EB2006 in
April. The Long Distance Bus Award goes to Joel, and the Long
Distance (Other) award goes to JDD who came with Lynne in his Golf.
Thanks to everyone who came out, it was great seeing you again. If
you missed it, you missed it. See you down the road.
MEALS:
The deep fried turkey was a definite success. Crisp on the outside,
moist on the inside. The 15 lb bird was fully cooked in an hour, and
tasted as good as any I have ever eaten. Dennis said that he would
have liked to have been there when I learned to deep fry a turkey,
and I told him that Today was his lucky day. There was a tense moment
for a while when the burnt stuffing started to float to the top of
the oil, but it was nothing to worry about.
Note: Next time I will make sure to tell Colleen not to buy a
butterball, as a pre-stuffed turkey is not good for deep-frying. Now
we know. But it's not her fault... I delegated the task of poultry
acquisition to her on Thursday and did not think to mention the
butterball prohibition.
The Breakfast Burritos Sunday AM were spectacular as usual, and the
challenge of cooking them in the cold made them taste all the better.
Yum.
PICTURES:
I left my camera in the bus all weekend, but I did manage to get some
good shots with Dad's camera. Then yesterday I decided to let iPhoto
unload the camera, and it was almost obscenely easy to build a
gallery page with iWeb. Enjoy:
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/The_Bug_Pack/TCWBC2006pics
INCIDENTALS:
Thanks to Steve, Chris and Joel for bringing firewood.
We missed out on Ice Carving and Bocce-ball, but we can do that some
other time.
Happy trails,
Greg Potts
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
1973/74/79 Westfakia Conversion **Bob the Tomato** LY3H
1977 Sunroof Automatic L63H/L90D
http://www.pottsfamily.ca/westfakia
http://www.busesofthecorn.com