Your moment of idiot zen for the day
With apologies to Jon Stewart, of course.
Anyway, today we’re up the coast near Gibsons checking out the ocean (or offshoot of the ocean if you want to get technical about it) and to get there from Vancouver proper you have to take a ferry. They’re generally packed so people line up in their cars about an hour early and wait for it to arrive so they can load up and leave on time. This is the generally accepted common practice by the thinking people of the world. Now, obviously an hour gives you some time to kill while you hang out outside the car and have a smoke (if you’re into that sort of thing) or take pictures of the scenery or whatever. However, today we experienced the greatest thing ever: Hungry Asians. Keep in mind, this is a true story.
So we pull up to wait for the 7:20 ferry and along side our car is a pair of other cars from what is presumably a group camping trip — a sedan and a mini-van, both loaded with what had to have been 15 people total. As the parking lot fills up and we near the loading time of 7:00 PM, people start getting into their cars, what with the announcement from the PA system that now would be a good time to get back in your cars and all, and the family beside us has a better idea — supper! And what better time and place to cook supper than the lineup of cars waiting to get into the ferry, so of course they pop the trunk of the sedan, revealing an entire box of instant noodle bowls and chopstick sets, and then proceed to produce a pot of what had to be very cold water and a portable propane heater. So with people hurrying to get going, the patriarch of this clan of brain surgeons starts attemping to BOIL THE WATER with what has to be 1/4 less heat than what is in a typical hot-plate, while seated on a cooler in the middle of the road with his kids lined up with their noodle bowls and chopsticks in hand. Finally, after TEN MINUTES of attempting to boil two liters of water with a low-powered blowtorch, they realize that ferry officials are waving entire lines of traffic around them and feebly try to figure out what to do with their pot of what can only be lukewarm water, by which time we had already driven past them and onto the boat. Sadly, I don’t know if they ever got their noodles, but I can only hope for my own sanity that they did. Because otherwise, what hope is there for any of us?
The question I ask myself is this: why didn’t they buy something from Crappy Tire that would facilitate the boiling process a little better? The answer, of course, comes from two facts about my people (assuming that the group was Chinese) - we’re cheap and we’re patient.
I went to Seattle last summer and almost ferry’d my way to Vancouver as well. However, it would have required getting up at like 4 a.m and taken the entire day, so we vetoed that idea. We instead crossed the border into White Rock, ate a hamburger and played on the beach and came back. I also feared getting shot at the border, as I got out of the car to go ask for a passport stamp (they wouldn’t do it). That’s all I got here, other than saying I miss Ramen noodles from my college days.
I hate Ramen noodles, and if they’re being cooked in my vicinity, they smell even worse than they taste. There is a little spot in Hell reserved for the person who “perfected” the Ramen noodle.
Also…I hate emo’s. Little poser bastards.
I do remember the noodles being super-salty, and sometimes giving me heartburn. But hey, they were like 15 cents on sale, you can’t beat a meal like that. I’m sure for me it’s just nostalgia for good times and would disappont now. Much like when I rewatched Goonies a few years ago.
AHHUH!!! Blasphemy!!! You take it back about the Goonies immediately…
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY YOU GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYSSSSSSSSSSS!!!