IN A FUNK

Can you tell? I last posted on Tuesday?? Well, that would be the day that I got a nasty cold, so that was the start of the funk ... and also the day I intended to post about our trip to Jedediah Island with Michelle and Ken several years ago. Then Sri called on Thursday (he's still in the cancer clinic here in Victoria getting radiation treatment), and reminded me that yesterday would have been Susan's birthday. So ... lots of thoughts and memories of my two friends this week...

I also feel like whatever time I've spent knitting is going nowhere -- still have the same cotton shawl on the needles that I cast on on Valentines Day, and the same socks that I started three weeks ago.

To top it off, I had every intention of taking Hailey back to Whistler yesterday and then staying for the Olympic volunteer wrap-up party on Sunday, which I was really looking forward to -- but I was feeling too crappy to contemplate the trip, and we really couldn't afford it, anyway. We just spent $300 on the van's front brakes this week, AND I haven't managed to get any billable work completed since I got home from the Olympics!!

So Hailey left on the bus without me yesterday, and I'm still feeling crappy physically, and now I'm feeling sorry for myself.

Send chocolate. Or yarn. Or both. :)

I am going to share the Jedediah Island story with you, though, because these pictures cheer me up every time I see them! You can read some of the history of Jedediah here, too.

This is Bull Passage, between Lasqueti and Jedediah, and you can see what kind of day we had for the cruise when Ken and Michelle came with us on the Wind Walker for the September long weekend several years ago.

We anchored in White Rock Bay, and spent the first two days hiking and exploring, and relaxing ... sometimes together, sometimes Ken and Michelle would go off by themselves. Typical of Michelle, she wanted to hike up the mountain on the Island, where apparently there was a guest book in a cairn for anyone who made it up.... she did!

You can access most of Jedediah on foot (after dinghying in from the anchorage) but not all of it -- so we had told them that on our last evening there, we would circumnavigate the whole island in the inflatable, so they'd get to see anything they missed on their hikes.

After supper on that last evening we were a bit late getting started, and I was a little concerned because we would have to negotiate this narrow unlit passage back to the Wind Walker before it got dark...

But away we went, anyway, with our coffee and dessert in hand, to set off around the Island. It was a lovely warm evening, and the water was calm. We wove in and out of every little cove and bay around the island just checking out the scenery and looking for wildlife, and as we entered Sabine Passage (between Jedediah and Texada, the next big island to the east) it was already dusk, and we still had a long way to go.

But the sunset, over Lasqueti, was amazing, so we slowed the boat down anyway to just enjoy it ...

None of us spoke for several minutes ... and then Michelle tapped me on the shoulder and pointed back behind us -- the harvest moon had just come up over Texada!

As we all turned to see it, Michael shut off the motor of the inflatable, and we simply drifted in Sabine Channel, silently, with the sunset on one side and the giant moon on the other, for several minutes. It was one of the most magical moments of my life ... and Michelle's, too.

When we finally, reluctantly, headed back to the anchorage, we did, indeed, have to negotiate that rocky, narrow passage in the pitch dark (except for the moonlight!), and it was a bit scary ... but we didn't care!