So it begins...

With my trip to Lauren's cottage at Sauble on July 14th-16th, my trip was more or less underway, or more accurately it marked the beginning of the end of my time here in Canada. It was at Lauren's cottage that I began to spread the news of my imminent departure, you see I am leaving for South Korea on August first for six months. I know what you're thinking, why am I telling everyone rather last minute? I'll tell you its because I only found out, or rather decided to go to Korea a week prior to the party, and never having done anything of this proportion I didn't have the balls to tell anyone over the phone, which explains why the monday after the cottage I left for Ottawa to inform my family of the decision, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I was excited for this party as the previous year's party was so much fun, and I was feeling nostalgic about my last few weeks here. I was disappointed that Tim and Doug wouldn't be there, and that I wouldn't see them at all before I left. Earlier in the summer they had embarked along with Adam on a little adventure of their own, but that's their story to tell, you can read about that here: http://www.uoguelph.ca/~dhowat/ . I got off work at 5 and immediately began preparations for departure, it took us some time to get on the road, but after some haphazard running around we squeezed all our stuff and a keg of beer into Smythe's little tercel. We rolled off excitedly into the overcast afternoon day-dreaming sun, sand and sweet, sweet babes. It was a relief to get underway as the trip was long and daylight would be short upon our arrival at Sauble, also our original ride backed out a couple of days before leaving some doubt as to our presence at the occasion, though we were quickly bailed out by Carl's generous offer of a ride and by Smythe's last minute attendance. As the car pulled out of the parking lot Smythe queries Bryce and I "so where are we going?" there was a moment of curious silence then a roar of laughter before we realised that he was serious. Which, of course, simply lead to more laughter. "Sauble Beach?! That's where we're going? I thought we were going to like a conservation area or something..." huh, thats strange "So you agreed to drive us there and you literally had no idea where it was? I love you Andrew Smythe."
I had a late night before and had hoped to sleep the whole way up to avoid crashing and burning at the cottage. Of course, Smythe and Bryce were averse to these plans, yelling to me that we were there every single stop light and gas station we stopped at. I 'slept' for perhaps the first hour of the trip before tired of being woken. The rest of the car ride consisted of amusing myself in the back seat with my camera and randomly yelling to cure my boredom, being in the back seat alone with a keg, I had little human interaction to enjoy. It seemed that Bryce and Smythe talked to me more while I was sleeping than when I was awake. Most of the car ride photos didn't escape the delete button. Finally we arrived. It was hot, though it remained overcast for the weekend, which eschewed complaints from downers about the weather, although I remained faithful to the weatherman's predictions and didn't let their complaints sink my spirits, although I was quick to sink into the spirits as soon as we were all set up. The weekend was hot and windy, not sweltering and oppressive like everyone was expecting, still beautiful weather for swimming, drinking and playing around outside. The annual Sauble soccer game on saturday morning left its share of battered feet, and was won by my team 5-4 on golden goal, although some of the goal calls could have benefitted from an outside judge, to me it looked more like 6-3 before the declaration of golden goal. Everytime a couple of guys came over the hill and walked on to the 'pitch' the game got more intense, increasingly more intense than anyone had intended. I sweat entirely through my T-shirt while playing, though it was worth it for the beautiful strike I curled past the keeper from outside the box. It was also interesting to learn that I am absolutely terrible at bocci. I managed to avoid puking in the bunkhouse that I was staying in, and which the previous year I had managed to dub the 'funk'house due to my vomit being evenly distributed on Doug's stuff, and the amount of smoking that took place therein. I couldn't avoid puking saturday though after a full-cup game seven of a best of seven series of flip-cup, which we won, though we lost the next series in six. After I returned from puking I realised that I was way too drunk to play effectively, I proved unable to flip the cup in 3 straight matches. It was a wonderful weekend, full of drunken merriment and swimming, even a small incidence of fire-huck, which left Bryce with some interesting marks, but were soon overshadowed by his decision to paint his skin red with sunburn. I have very little memory after the sun goes down either night, I change when the sun goes down around here, I'm a scumbag don't you know. It was a great kick-off to my weeks of goodbye parties, and good practice for telling my family about the sudden trip.