Paolo Gaspar

The forecast on Saturday the 17th called for temperatures into the high 20’s and low 30’s. Given this, I thought that it would be very busy, so I suggested that I pick up Meg at 830a. She agreed. I was very excited.

I woke up at 600a to get ready for the day. I packed up the tent, the bbq, and some other food. I took a shower before I left and I was out by 705a. It took a little longer cuz I was double- and triple-checking, and I also booked a room for 6 Cobras in Whistler, but I’ll save that for another entry. I picked up breakfast at Timmy’s on Marine as it was on the way.

We got to Jericho beach (turns out it wasn’t Locarno) at 9am or so. There wasn’t anyone there and we got the absolute best [free :-D] parking spot. We were quite full from breakfast, so we refrained from eating for the time being. I got my charcoal bbq ready for lighting, then we went into the tent to rest for a bit cuz we got up so damn early. hahaha.

There was one lone park ‘ranger’ there and she was kind enough. She told us that the homeless people in the park are harmless. We had only encountered one homeless person (or at least he looked homeless). He just rode his bike past our spot and that was about it.

We passed most of the time by watching Eddie Murphy’s RAW on my iPod using Meghan’s speakers.

It was around 1145a or so when we decided to start cooking. Apparently it was a mistake to leave the self-start briquettes out for so long as the lighter fluid on the surface had evaporated. It was a bit of a pain in the ass to get it lit, made worse by the fact that we were getting hungry, but we eventually got it started.

We didn’t have a whole lot packed, but we packed exactly what we wanted. I four steaks cut from a tenderloin that I bought (filet mignon, if you will), five hot dogs, and potato salad. The steaks were seasoned using a seasoning that Meg’s mom had bought. The first pair was made the best … we cooked it to about medium rare and it was absolutely perfect. The seasoning had crisped seared nicely and the inside was nice and juicy. We couldn’t stop praising it.

The second pair of steaks were less impressive. We learned that salt-based seasonings should not be left on a steak for too long before grilling. It saturates the salt which gets into the meat making it extremely salty. It was still good for what it was worth. The potatos and hot dogs were … just potatoes and hot dogs. They were ok.

We rested for a little bit more before putting all our stuff back into the car to take a walk on the beach. The beach was ok. There were a lot of shells and stuff on the beach. The water was brown and cold. That’s ok though, as I am willing to forego blue water and white sand for everything else that Vancouver has to offer.

Jericho was a fantastic choice, I must say. As we drove down Cornwall on the way to Kerrisdale, we caught a glimpse of English Bay at 200p and it was CROWDED. Jericho, on the other hand, afforded us a TON of room for ourselves.

After the beach, we went to Kerrisdale Cameras (the one in Kerrisdale) to look at cameras. Meg ended up leaving the store with a Canon XTi! To play around with the new equipment, we went to English Bay for a bbq shawarma dinner and to watch the sunset.

We also had dessert at True Confections, but it wasn’t all that good for me. I had a slice of Mud Cake and she had Strawberry Shortcake. I liked her’s a lot better. I think I’ll just stick to pies there. They can’t really go wrong with those.

We were going to watch SNL later that evening, but we were both so tired that we slept right ’till 230a. Despite that, it was an awesome day. This summer is going to effing rule!