Mostly a bachelorette party

These are pictures from the bachelor/bachelorette party that was organised by Rishad and Marie the Monday before the Wedding. Julia drove in from Cape Breton that day with Calin and Susanne. I drove down from NB with Crystal, Joey and Marlene. It started at 4ish at Rishad's place with an awesome barbeque of several different marinated meats and coordenating dipping sauces; and of course tons of beer, wine and booze.

Rishad (with help from Ian, Rhiannon et al.) truly outdid himself with the variety and deliciousness of the food. This was no frozen burger and hotdog shindig - we had lamb, chicken, and pork skewers, all with their own delicious marinades, with tzatziki, peanut sauce, and a spicy tomato dip served alongside.

It was truly amazing, though I wasn't convinced when he first fired up the grill and had to burn off some of the residue...

Here Ian and Rishad are hard at work with the grilling on the back deck.
And there were lots of people there, many of whom we hadn't seen in months or years. It was sort of surreal, with people we knew from Victoria (Shannon and Robyn) being in Halifax along with a bunch of people we knew from Halifax (too numerous to name) plus all the people we know from New Brunswick. It was sort of like a strange dream where you see people from different places and times, who have never actually met in real life.
Of course there were some games organized, but for some reason only for Julia. First she had to put out a candle with a cork that was dangling from her hips. Quite dangerous in fact, but in the end she was successful. And then she wore the cork all evening, swinging it around while dancing at the bar later.

Then she had to pick me out of a lineup containing several other guys only by touching our bare legs while blind-folded, as seen here. To keep it challenging, we stealthily switched positions on her as she went back and forth. Of course she was successful, despite the similarity of mine and Nick's legs. (She correctly noticed that his were slightly hairier.)

Feeling badly that they hadn't thought of any games for me, they decided to dress me up in Rishad's regular clothes after making me striptease for Julia. A perfect fit.
At this point we were supposed to go for a booze cruise in the harbour but that got rained out, much to the disappointment of party-planning Marie. We didn't let it get us down - we sent some newly-arrived sober guests for a beer run instead. Past this, I'm at a loss for commentary since I don't remember anything but waking up the next day with a bad hangover. I would love to blame it on the tequila...

Okay, so it's Julia now - I'm taking this over as Jeremi has no idea what happened beyond this point. After drinking one or two far too strong Caesars, he thought it would be a good idea to have a few tequila shots with Laffy, Joey, and Susanne (shown above), as well as his brother Nick and Calin. Alas, neither he nor his brother (shown below with his lovely wife Cathy) know when to say no...
But he was having so much fun!
There was a tablecloth with a marker so that people could write us their good wishes - unfortunately Jeremi didn't read this one until it was too late (likely while looking at these pictures days later).

Obviously not heeding this advice, Jeremi ended up in here (in Rishad's bathroom)...

... at around 9:30 pm. Unfortunately he wasn't the only one. His brother was quick to follow suit. Joey was nice enough to tuck him in.

These are a few more pics from later that night where the fun continued at the Lower Deck.

Marie conspired to have the band call me up on stage to sing and dance along with one of the songs, which was great fun.
Here we were trying to cajole the bouncer into letting us dance in front of the stage, as it used to be allowed (Robyn most convincingly of all, I'd say). They'd banned this practice after some drunk woman fell into the band and injured herself, and was currently trying to sue the bar, or something like this. Still, we had fun trying to get them to let us do it...
Me dancing with the band...
All the happy revellers, mostly ladies at this point, which is only fitting for a party that ended up being a bachelorette party after all.
Still, it wasn't all ladies - here's Joey, Jeremi's cousin Crystal's husband.

And Jer's sister Marlene was still going strong, and his cousin Crystal. In fact, the whole New Brunswick crew was still doing great except for Jeremi and his brother, so in the end they did managed to salvage the reputation of the family and the region. (Who knew that so much was at stake?!)

I'm sure Calin is singing me some sort of Dutch drinking song in this one (or so I'd like to believe).


Ian and Rhiannon were able to make use of the luxury hotel room that Marie had arranged for us at the Delta downtown - Jeremi was much too much of a disaster. Afterward we headed home, and ordered some pizzas to Rishad and Anjulee's places, which greatly helped with the recovery the next morning.

And so the next morning wasn't actually all that bad for Calin, Susanne, Marlene, and I. When I woke up around 9:00, I arranged to drive out to pick up the cases of Nova Scotia cider that we'd ordered (in place of champagne), and since the guy lived west of the city anyhow, I thought it would be fun to bring those three along to visit Peggy's Cove. I tried to drag Jeremi's sorry ass out of bed, but he was still suffering quite a bit. And so we headed out, picked up the cider, and took in the misty scene out on the rocks.
With the most photographed of Canadian light houses...
The fresh sea air was certainly restorative for me, and I was having a great time scrambling over the rocks. It was Marlene's first time there too, which was great.
All in all, a nice little detour, and it gave Jeremi some much-needed recovery time.
When we made it back to Halifax, we found out that Joey and Crystal had already left (with a mostly empty van), leaving us to drive back both Marlene and Jeremi (who had neglected to send back anything with them, or to take a ride with them to free up some space in our car). We had a lot of stuff with us, all of our luggage and camping equipment, Calin and Susanne's rather sizable luggage, a few cases of cider, and now five people to drive. I was pretty pissed off at Jeremi, but he was in such a pathetic state, that I had to eventually forgive him. Probably around when we had to pull over around the toll booths on highway 2 for him to throw up - again. Well, I married him anyways, so it couldn't have been that bad...

And finally, by popular request (okay, really just Jeremi's insistence), here's the video that Susanne took of me dancing with the band. It's sideways, and we're too lazy to figure out how to fix that, so if you really want to watch me dancing, you'll have to tilt your head. Enjoy!

10 year high school reunion

The weekend Julia went to Cape Breton with Calin and Susanne was my 10-year high school reunion. We rented out the community center in LA (Little Aldouane) and did it up like we were 18 again. By that I mean we hung out outside drinking the beer we had brought until midnight even though we are all now legally allowed to by it inside.

Here are Cindy, Richard and I doing... something.

I saw a lot of people I hadn't seen in a while, caught up or made pleasant conversation, danced and sang, and had lots of fun.

My cousin's band was actually playing and I didn't know until I met him in the bathroom when I first went in. I seem to have acquired a tambourine in this picture. I remember it got passed around a lot.

Here's me and Crystal.

Hope to see them all in another 10.

and on to Cape Breton

From Pomquet, Calin, Susanne and I headed east to Cape Breton, around the Cabot Trail. We had great weather while in Pomquet, and equally beautiful weather for our first whole day on Cape Breton, for which we considered ourselves rather lucky.
We stopped in Cheticamp, stopping in at the church both to have a look inside as well as to use the bathrooms.

We also stopped there for lunch, where Calin and Susanne had a lobster each, and I had a giant snow crab, on the first day of the season (see the plate in the foreground).
From there we continued onward, into Cape Breton Highland National Park, and on toward Pleasant Bay.
I had called ahead and reserved us some spots on a whale watching tour out of Pleasant Bay. The weather couldn't have been nicer, as even out on the water it was warm enough to be wearing shorts and short sleeves, and the sun was just brilliant.
We had some pretty good luck with the whales as well, seeing a large Minke whale soon after leaving the harbour, and after that dozens of pilot whales, surrounding the zodiac and frolicking with each other.
Here you can see me enjoying the sunshine (wearing my glasses, for better wildlife-spotting capabilities), and Gilles, our charming Acadian fisherman-turned-tour guide.
Here you can see lots of dorsal fins, right next to us...
And here was a seal, out sunning himself on a rock.
There were also some lovely rock formations along the shore. We went in close to this beach, because the tour before us had seen a bear cub walking along the shore. Alas, we were not so lucky.
We also went into a little cave, where the water was just filled with big purple jellyfish (you can see them here a little)...
There were lots of interesting sea birds as well, particularly the Northern Gannett, which had a really distinctive bright yellow head and bright blue eyes. They'd circle way up above the water and then dive in after fish. Gilles said that they actually dislocate their wings before hitting the water, as otherwise they'd break with the speed of the impact, and that some percentage of young die every year because they hadn't mastered the trick yet.

The flocks of birds also made it easy to find the whales, as they were feeding on the same schools of fish, and sometimes on the scraps left behind.All in all, we were more than satisfied with our tour!
Finally, to give you some idea of how great it was and how happy we all were, here's a short video that Susanne took on the ship. At about 2 minutes in we completely got sprayed by the spray from one of the whales, leaving us all with a fine sheen of whale snot as a souvenir. (No complaints from us!)

And then we were back in at the harbour, and ready to continue our drive.
We never did manage to see any moose while on Cape Breton, though we did see lots of signs warning us about them. Jeremi and I did see one moose while driving across the Renous Pass on our way from Vanessa's wedding to New Brunswick at around midnight, before Calin and Susanne arrived, and it was a little scary - it was in the middle of the road of course. While I was hoping Calin and Susanne would get to see a moose, at least we didn't meet one in that most unfortunate of ways.

While we had originally thought of camping along the way, and had all the supplies with us, I was coughing like crazy while suffering from a summer cold (damn you, summer colds!), and we thought it might be best that I sleep somewhere warm and dry, rather than getting pneumonia the week before the wedding. And so we drove onward to Baddeck, where we knew we'd find hotels at least.

We opted to take the ferry across from Jersey Cove to Englishtown, as it saves a bit of driving, but we hadn't counted on the wait for the ferry. Still, it was a lovely evening, and it was quite pleasant to wait on the peninsula with water on either side and sea birds all around as dusk settled.Finally we made it onto the little ferry, just as the sun was setting.

The guy collecting the tickets was incredibly friendly (okay, normal for Cape Breton), and stopped to play with the dogs in the back of the truck in front of us. Calin and Susanne were also impressed that well over half the vehicles on the ferry were pick-up trucks - as tourists we were definitely in the minority still at this point in the season.

And so we made it to Baddeck, and were able to get a room at the Telegraph Hotel, where I'd stayed with my parents one time that we were there. Here Calin is testing the (very comfortable) beds, before we headed out to find something to eat.


I was worried that we might be too late to get anything as it was after 10:00 by then, but we managed to get some delicious pizza and calzones at the yellow cello, as well as some casual live music.
Here, amidst the threatening morning clouds the next day, you can see the Telegraph Hotel in daylight.
Though the next morning did not bring more beautiful sunny weather, we didn't mind the rain so much as our only plans were to drive back to Halifax, and help get ready for the bachelor/ette party (in my case) or meet up with an old friend from Denmark who is now working at Dalhousie (in Susanne's case).