The long awaited, slighty belated, extremely overrated, story of Tofino trip 2006 ----> PART I

Ok...I know I promised this waaaaaaaaaaaaaay earlier, but I thought if I made "ya'll" wait long enough, it would be that much better. Ok, thats a total lie. It's actually because I don't think any of you can handle all of the fun I have to talk about that we managed to stuff into one weekend. Ok..Lie #2...its really just because I have been slightly lazy and lacking on the motivation to write such an tale of EPIC porportions. But, none the less, here it goes. (oh yeah, and this story is going to be cut into three peices so I don't get carple tunnel, and for the safety and well being of the world. Or..the country..the province? ok..like 3 people that read this, but I can dream right?) ALRIGHT ALREADY. I can hear you yelling at me to get on with it, thats not very nice you know...WHAT?? TURN DOWN THE SUCK? ha. yeah right, i think im about to crank it up a couple hundered notches, brace yourself kiddies.

So the weekend started just like any other. Being 2 and a half hours behind schedule. Yup...just another normal day in the life of me. It could have been because we were out until approximaltey 3am the morning prior, spending a big night out in Victoria only to be followed by a start time of 7:30 am, but we will never really know. (4 hours of sleep is TOTALLY sufficient don't you think?)

Before I go any further there are 2 bens in this story. For simplicitys sake we will call Ben #1 Bengj and Ben # 2 Bmock..no offence boys, but its all I could think up.

Sooo, Bengj, Bmock, Minn, Alex and myself started out our journey to the wonderful land of Tofino. Alex had an awesome idea of stopping over in good ol' Coombs, which I like to call "the land of opportunity..and goats on the roof.". 80% of the car was feeling pretty hungover from the adventures of the night before, so we figured we could use a break and a bite to eat. Well...being the middle of winter here (I know, its easy for one to forget which season it is here on the island) almost every store in Coombs was closed. And we were all so totally let down by the goat-less grass-less roof of the promised land, that we decided to drag our butts into the only store open...in the whole town. It was a story of many fine 'a thing. It had beads..and incense...and a harmless, slightly creepy old man. I walked around the corner (and by corner i mean 2 steps away because this store was almost as small as my closet) I noticed a very interesting artifact lying on the ground. Yes, it was in fact, a raw wiener. A hot dog. lying there on the ground completely untouched and unscathed. Now does this seem a bit random to you? I'm just not sure if it is completly normal for people to "forget" and leave hot dogs lying around, but maybe I am the one out of the loop. So of course I asked Minn to remember what I told her about leaving her raw wieners lying around, we mustered up a few tiny painful laughs and headed out. The store owner did not seem to find my joke quite so humourous, as I am sure none of my friends did either but they are at least trained to laugh.

We countined on down the road and came upon the only restaurant open in town. ( I actually think it might be the ONLY restaurant in town....regardless of the season.) And it is so appropriatley named "Coombs Family Restaurant." perfect. So we headed in and all ordered the lunch special of the day "Grilled Cheese and Split Pea Soup." Sounds harmless. Alex being a vegitarian and Minn not in the mood for meat, proceeded to ask the waitress if there was any meat products in the soup. We were pleasently informed that it was a vegitarian/tomato base with vegtables. (now that I look back, this sounds nothing like split pea soup at all. sounds more like veggie soup...) Our drinks came around and I'm sure we were all a bit more excited then normal to be drinking something other then an alcoholic beverage, so we all downed them pretty fast. All of us, except for Alex. She was the lucky winner to recieve a huge clump of scotch tape in her iced tea. The waitress didn't even seem somewhat suprised about this find. I know, tasty right? You would think that would make us get up and leave, but we decided to endure.

After downing our drinks at light speed, it was time to use the washroom....except when you went to wash your hands, the handle was COMPLETELY broken off. The first thought that came to my mind was "DOES ANYONE IN HERE HAVE CLEAN HANDS? IM GOING TO GET H5N1." I spent about 5 minutes trying to get whatever water i could catch from the dribble of water leaking out of the side of the tap to sanitize my hands. Each person one by one returing from the washroom with the same petrified look on their face, but we endured.

Finally our food came. And you guessed it. The split pea soup had huge chunks of H-A-M in it. I Know NOW that thats basically what split pea soup is, but we aren't soup experts!! The waitress once again didn't seem suprised by her misinformation at all....and minn ended up eating her 1 tiny peice of garlic bread and alex her grilled cheese (the rest of us had pretty decent meals..so i guess we were lucky there) we left no tip and took off.

- stay tuned for part II of III airing tomorrow..March 07/2006 sometime after I get off work and get home from photography class...