Pumpkin Pull

I didn't grow up with Halloween so I missed Canada's annual excuse for a costume party. This year, we celebrated Halloween in Victoria, the weekend coinciding with Victoria Ultimate's Halloween tournament, Pumpkin Pull. (Pumpkin's the obvious metaphor, but for those outside of ulti circles, a pull is the throw that begins a point, the kick-off of ultimate.) Sarah and I were members of a team created especially for the tournament, drawing largely from players of Comox Valley's ultimate league and including a number of our Campbell River friends. Pumpkin Pull is a costumed tournament. We decided to replicate Bill Murray's crew in the 2004 Wes Anderson film The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. We were Team Zissou in baby blue and red beanies. Easy enough costume to put together and visually identifiable. Sarah created the Zissou flag which flew on the sidelines of our games.


We played six games over the weekend, four on Saturday and two on Sunday, against teams from Portland, Seattle and Vancouver, as well as Victoria and Nanaimo. We lost all six, but improved through the tournament. We lost our first game, 13-1, and our last, 10-9. (Admittedly, our Sunday opposition was closer in experience and strength than Saturday's.) Team Zissou was low on tournament experience but made up with tonnes of good cheer and attitude. Ninja's jellies contributed to the spirit.

Sarah's sister Katy was there to document a couple of our games. Her photos capture something of the tournament.

Disc is up.

Break that force, Sarah.

One flick coming right up.

So close, Alana.

Sarah on Nude Crayon; nice feel.

Trevor flinging the disc.

Sarah to Dax, disc poetry.

Quinton playing mighty defence on White Crayon.

Yellow Crayon's forehand release, like some kind of Jedi tai chi. Darrin shuts down the break-force side.

Tired of the cup: let 'er rip.
(Cup is a form of zone. We encountered both three- and four-person cup zone, with the cup closing down the disc handler, and defenders upfield operating in their respective zones.)

Extension.

Our third game of the weekend was against Like A Box Of Crayons, from Vancouver. Our team became more comfortable playing against their zone defence, and we put points on the board. They were one of the more creative costumes we played against. Others included Tweedle, dressed in black and white stripes a la Tweedledum and Tweedledee (depending on how well they were playing, they cheered "Tweedledum" or "Tweedledee"); Tight & Bright, in 80s fluorescents; Dirty Banjo had bales of hay on the sideline, but disappointingly no banjos.

In ultimate, opposing teams have a little get-together after playing. Teams sing a song or play a game. We fed our opponents Eric's sublime alcoholic jellies. Like A Box Of Crayons played a version of Pictionary, using a "Crayon" to draw an image we had to guess. Hilarious.

Dave's pull: game on. (Spot Duffgirl in the background.)

Ninja on the disc; my peripherals hard at work.

Trev taking a beauty, thumb and two fingers on the disc.

Jon swooping in.

Saturday done and dusted.

Team Zissou.

Time to alleviate our ills.

All in all, a great experience and for most of us a huge learning curve. Our team gained a greater appreciation for tournament play. By the end of the weekend we'd put ourselves in a position to win a game (and we should have won that one). We also had the chance to watch a high quality final, between Smitten Kittens of Victoria and Pandamonium from Seattle. The level of play was high, with huge hucks, massive layouts, a wickedly tight Panda man/zone defence and great spirit. Craziest of all, we saw a Greatest result in a Callahan (translation: Smitten guy diving out-of-bounds, caught and passed disc in-bounds before touching out-of-bounds = Greatest; unfortunately for Smitten, passed to Panda guy standing in Smitten's end-zone = automatic Panda point = Callahan. Got to love the distinctive language of sports.). Both rare plays, on the same play. Next tournament is April, Udderbowl in Nanaimo. Will we have a team there?

Year 3

Drunken Woman lettuce.

Our third year of growing food saw a renewed focus on the health and fertility of our soil. During the fall and winter Sarah and I collected maple leaves from the local park (with invitations to rake yards from passing pedestrians) and seaweed from the shore. We dug both into our beds for them to decompose over the winter. Along with a couple of truck-loads of well-composted horse manure spread in the spring, our soil was primed for planting. We had a decent growing season this year, marred slightly by a cool spring.

Radishes were our first crop of the year. This year we stuck with a favourite variety, Pink Beauty, and ate large, fleshy, moderately spicy radishes.

Healthy stalks of garlic.

The final product.

One major focus this year was on Allium species. We devoted an entire bed to garlic and a new crop for us, onion. We planted a couple of onion varieties, Walla Walla and Yellow, which produced mostly small but solid specimens. French shallots weren't a great success. We devoted a large section of the backyard bed to potatoes. We planted Yukon Gold, Russet Burbank and Red Pontiac, and had a better crop than the previous year when we experimented with tyres. We mounded up diligently, but didn't feel our crop yield matched our efforts. The soil in the back bed was some of the poorest on the property - very sandy - but our improvements should have made more difference to the quantity of potatoes yielded.

Spuds.

Beets, beans and peas were all great successes this year. Three types of beet seed were sowed, a cylindrical variety, a Golden Beet and Detroit Red, a popular cultivar. After last year's beet debacle, we were happy to get a bumper crop. Sliced beetrot on the barbie and roasted beets from the oven (perfect tossed with goat cheese and splashes of olive oil and balsamic vinegar) have been a dose of natural sugars through the summer and fall. Most of our cylinder beets are still in the ground: we haven't decided if we'll pickle them or eat them through the rest of the fall into winter. Three varieties of pea flourished this spring. Sugar Snap were best straight off the vine. Carouby de Musane snow peas added colour and texture to stir-fries. Usui is a snow pea grown specifically for its tender pea shoots, great for salads and Asian dishes. Our only problem with peas this year was spacing. It's hard to visualize the mature crop when you're laying out rows. We ended up with a solid block of pea vines, which limited our yield. Four varieties of pole beans (the climbers) and one of Maxibel bush beans were sown this year. We built a solid trellis for the climbers and a couple of the varieties - Fortex and Purple Peacock - were especially prolific.

Sowing beet seeds with worm castings and kelp meal. Pea shoots are on the move.

Two months later.

Booming block of peas. Tomatoes and beans are yet to peak.

One of many bean harvests.

Carrots were more productive. We planted three varieties: Nantes, Berlicumer - cylindrical carrots with less of a taper than more commercial varieties - and Round Romeo, a whimsical bite-sized sphere of orange. Leafy greens enjoyed the cooler spring. Drunken Woman lettuce, an Italian heirloom butterhead variety, flourished, along with arugula, and two types of chard (NZ trans: silverbeet), Fordhook and Yellow.

We delayed the planting of our tomato seedlings as a result of the cool spring, and their progress was about a month behind schedule. We produced a tonne of tomatoes but most were picked green and ripened indoors as the summer waned. Ribbed and meaty Costoluto Fiorentino were prolific, as were our cherry tomatoes, Black Cherry and Snow White. The tomato plants were dark green and lush, thanks in part to a new technique we used this year. We chopped into chunks freezer-burnt salmon from our neighbours as well as the heads and entrails of fish we caught off Hornby this year and buried them in the soil, placing a tomato seedling over each chunk. The nitrogen released by decomposition boosted plant growth. We've sauced a good proportion of our tomatoes, roasting them in the oven with multiple cloves of garlic and healthy glugs of olive oil.

Spring salmon, Ford's Cove, Hornby Island.

After being overwhelmed by Cucurbitaceae (zucchinis, squash and cucumbers) the last couple of years, we set aside less space on some of our more marginal soil for them. We planted pattypan squash and yellow zucchinis and a couple of varieties of cucumber, a pickler and an eater. They didn't get as much love from us as in the past, but we still had enough zukes for barbecues and cukes for tsukemono (made with a Japanese pickling mix of miso and beer).

Mixed crop, with pattypan squash prominent.

We're behind schedule for fall planting, but have good intentions to get garlic in the ground for harvest next year. Plenty of seaweed has been tossed ashore with the Pacific frontals that have hit the island the past week and the maples are shedding - time again to replenish our soil and prepare for another spring.

Return to Desolation

Last year, after our wedding, we kayaked out to the Curme Islands in Desolation Sound with a few Kiwis and camped one night. One night wasn't enough: Sarah and I made plans to return to Desolation. Last week we put into Okeover Inlet once again. With us this time were Eric, paddling a Current Designs single, Grayson and Alana, and Clay and Michelle, both couples in double kayaks. Clay and Michelle are Australians and teachers on a one year exchange in Campbell River. Grayson and Alana are teachers as well. Grayson teaches outdoor education, which includes guiding students on overnight kayak trips. He destroyed his knee in a skiing accident earlier in the year and his rehabilitation has been frustratingly slow. The Desolation trip was a great chance for him to exercise other muscles and enjoy the freedom and mobility of a kayak. Grayson and Alana's double was an old white behemoth they'd borrowed from friends. We dubbed it Beluga.

Okeover, loading the kayaks.

We left Powell River Sea Kayak's Okeover base before a large group of twenty one (parents and kids) and overtook a guided group of day paddlers as we headed out the inlet. We stopped for lunch in Malaspina Inlet, the waterway connecting with the sound, before crossing an open stretch to Mink Island in the middle of Desolation Sound. Clay and Michelle exclaimed at every seal we encountered, including a number of young pups. We followed the rocky coastline of Mink to its northeastern tip. Floating offshore were the Curme Islands, hunks of granite topped with pine and arbutus and manzanita, a small evergreen shrub with red bark, a miniature version of an arbutus tree. The Curme Islands are a tight cluster of three islands with a fourth island to the south and a few rocks poking out of the water at low tide. We camped on the smallest of the islands in the cluster - the same island we hit last year - with a sheltered nook to pull out kayaks and great spaces to set up camp. The islands were empty when we arrived. On the day we left, every island had one or two groups camping on the available space. We were lucky to secure what I think is the superior island for camping.

Paddling out of Malaspina Inlet.

Hubba Hubba on Curme. The fly went on early Monday morning as a scattering of rain fell. It came back off the evening of this photo and stayed off.

We made camp, with the intention of basing ourselves on Curme and day-tripping around the sound. Then we swam. Last year, we swam in pretty frigid September waters. I was expecting the ocean temperature to be somewhat similar in August, but the water was closer to lake temp, warm and comfortable. Clay and Michelle cooked up a stew and we enjoyed our first sunset on the island. Each kayak crew prepared a dinner to share. Eric made a rice pilaf with miso soup. Alana and Grayson fried up falafel wraps. We dehydrated Jenny Ko's chili recipe (sweet Korean-Paraguayan woman with the wickedest accent) for the journey - our first dehydrated creation - re-hydrating and serving with polenta. Sarah also made fried cookies which were an awesome treat.

Australian stew.

Next morning Alana dished a pancake breakfast and Eric served fresh oysters on the half shell. We put kayaks in the water and had a leisurely cruise up to Otter Island and along the coast into Tenedos Bay. Eric set his crab trap in the bay and we beached our kayaks and walked in to Unwin Lake. At the ocean end of the lake was a massive log jam, with some logs fixed in place and others floating free. We negotiated our way across the logs to a rocky outcrop, where we swam in very warm water - noticing the lack of buoyancy - and ate lunch. After, we pulled Eric's trap (empty) and returned to home base on Curme in the late afternoon. Beers were shared in a sun-trap on the island opposite and we jumped from the cliff face there. Later that night, Sarah rallied us for night swimming in vivid phosphorescence. Michelle took a little convincing, but had a blast once she was in.

Clay on Curme, East Redonda Island in the background.

The following day we headed north-east, cutting between Otter Island and the mainland and continuing up the coast, navigating between islands and entering Prideaux Haven, a popular sheltered moorage for yachts and cruisers and sailboats. There were millions of dollars floating in the coves of Prideaux Haven. The water quality was terrible, the result of boats dumping feces in enclosed waters. We paddled further, past Roffey Island to a shelf on the edge of Homfray Channel and swam. Later we followed a route barred earlier by the low tide, crossing between Eveleigh Island and the mainland coast. Back in the sheltered channels of Curme, Sarah and I practiced a wet exit and re-entry. Eric tried to roll and ended up practicing a wet exit as well. After dark we watched the Perseid meteor shower. Sarah and I saw the longest, brightest shooting star of our lives: it streaked across half the sky, leaving a dazzling tail which flickered like fireworks as it disappeared. It must have been quite the chunk of space rock.

Anemones on a log at low tide.

Prideaux Haven

Beluga alongside Otter Island

Our last full day we crossed the open stretch of water between Curme and West Redonda Island. Beluga's rudder broke as we were leaving the islands and Alana and Grayson battled across the sound. We rounded Marylebone Point into Roscoe Bay. There were a number of sailboats anchored in the bay. We paddled to the head of the bay, where we beached kayaks, studied Beluga's rudder (major design defect with the central pivot constructed of plastic) and found a spot along the shore of Black Lake. We swam in the warmest waters yet. Eric made sublime burritos. We sunned. Did I mention how hard kayaking is? The weather was fantastic - pure August heat, little wind, few clouds, just the few drops of rain Monday morning. The crossing back to Curme was windier, so we tightened our formation and aimed into the waves. After returning I borrowed Eric's kayak and cruised around the Curme islands, enjoying the solo paddling and my feet - rather than Sarah's - on the rudder pedals.


Next day we returned to Okeover via a choppy crossing from Mink Island. Back in the inlet we rafted up and used Eric's tarpaulin as a sail, letting the wind carry us in, even as the tide was ebbing out. Our group split at lunch, with the teachers wanting to make the Powell River ferry back to Vancouver Island. Eric and Sarah and I cooked up some ramen on a little island in Malaspina Inlet and collected oysters from a perfect bed. The large group of parents and kids was making its way through the inlet. We put on some speed to beat them to the rental base and avoid the chaos. Our unloading and exit was muy rapido.



We headed into Powell River to stay with our friends Mark and Megan, and their baby Lindsay, at their new place. They don't call it the Sunshine Coast for nothing. With the smoke haze hanging over Vancouver Island (from Interior fires) we had gorgeous sunsets. Showers were rejuvenating. Mark fed us halibut covered in a creamy morel sauce. A plan to trip out to Savary Island turned into an afternoon at Powell Lake. We ate sockeye salmon sashimi, courtesy of Mark's brother. I found a six of Propeller Brewery's ESB in the local liquor store, Propeller being the Halifax brewery that sponsored the Canadian ultimate championships the year Sarah and I played. Oysters were eaten with lime, barbecued and in a chowder. We discussed landscaping and interior layouts. We visited the town's open-air market, a farmers market with actual produce (Campbell River's trinkety tourist market take note). And then we said our farewells and crossed the strait again, back to the Island and Campbell River.

View west from Mark and Meg's balcony.

Crowd Dynamics

Rivers of humanity. There's a root to the metaphor, the visual quality of a mass of people flowing in one direction. Think of refugee columns or protest marches, not the regimentation of parades. See the emptying of a subway car, the entire train, the flow of people from the platform, up stairs and spilling out onto streets, the melee of the pedestrian sidewalk. Visualize the tidal swirl of humans avoiding an obstacle. There's an organized chaos to our mass movement. We swam, to extend the metaphor, with the flood of festival goers entering the Gorge Amphitheatre at about 1.00 pm the Saturday of the Memorial Day Weekend in the US. Sasquatch. We found a fast current to the left side of a thick cord of queuers and swirled right around the main body of people and rapidly entered the festival. (We repeated the feat on the subsequent two days, reaching our peak on Monday via an unmanned VIP entrance.)

I think there were more people at Sasquatch than the previous two years. Or maybe we were moving more often with the cooler weather - last year was full too. There were a couple of entertaining bottlenecks between the main stage and the second stage, renamed Bigfoot (formerly Wookie). The stages breathed bodies between set breaks, jamming the paths and the Honey Buckets. The cooler weather helped with people getting on their feet and moving their bodies to the music. More acts got more people standin' and shufflin' at Sasquatch. LCD Soundsystem was a prime example. More beat, less noodly independent guitar.


A quick rundown of my route over the three days. We entered Saturday and I beelined for the small stage, Yeti, for the last song of Fool's Gold. I was happy to get at least that taste. Los Angelenos taking and transforming African and South American rhythms; vocals sung in Hebrew. A brief flip over to Bigfoot for the middle, and flat, section of Mumford & Sons' set, before catching Nurses, a Portland band, enjoying themselves on Yeti. We found a spot on the hill of the Sasquatch stage for a mostly average set from OK Go, famous for the viral music videos.

Broken Social Scene followed up with a scintillating set. They were Exhibit A: see/hear bands perform live. Their live show puts flesh on their albums. They were tight, especially considering the ensemble of players on stage. World Sick, Texico Bitches and Fire Eye'd Boy were strong performances. Kevin Drew bantered easily.

Sarah and I slid into the pit for The National. Matt Berninger, the band's lyricist and lead singer, was a madman on the stage, lurching around, descending for a long period into the crowd - roadie furiously slinging microphone cable - full of emotion. We saw the club version of The National when they played the evening slot on Yeti our first visit to the Gorge. This time around we got the big stage treatment and, from the pit's perspective, they projected. New songs - I'm biased - feel like instant sepia-toned classics. They played Bloodbuzz Ohio, Terrible Love. Old songs were like old friends - welcoming. They played Abel, Looking for Astronauts, Squalor Victoria, Apartment Story. Bryan Devendorf possesses a signature rhythm to his drumming, carrying me throughout their set.

I wandered after The National, catching some of the Hold Steady's shout-rock and failing to find The Very Best (Esau Mwamwaya, of Malawi by way of London, and Radioclit, a Swede and a Frenchmen, also by way of London) in the tent (comedy through the day, dance music in the evening - lamely named the Rumpus Room). Vampire Weekend followed on Sasquatch. They picked the crowd off their feet with a performance full of energy and verve. I think they've played one or two shows since their self-titled album came out in 2008. They were really comfortable on stage and knew how to play to a festival crowd. Giving Up The Gun from Contra comes closest to conveying the propulsion of their live sound. A-Punk was a highlight of their show.

Passion Pit, performing on Monday. The new cladding on the back of the stage made the space much darker, and denied bands a view of the Columbia while they performed.

My Morning Jacket were the final act on Sasquatch. I'm only familiar with a couple of their albums, 2003's It Still Moves and 2005's excellent Z, so I'm not an MMJ authority. Their set started strong, hit some of my touchstones - Mahgeetah, Masterplan, Off The Record - but seemed to mellow in the latter stages. Deadmau5 closed out Saturday night. His light show was sweet, with images and colours projected onto the giant white mouse head he wore. The music was fun too, picking up our feet.

A key to our stamina over the weekend, aside from the lighter sunshine and our broader tarpaulin, was eating a substantial breakfast. We fuelled up every morning (with healthy doses of pre-noon beer) on bacon and eggs, or sausages and beans, hashbrowns and fried tomatoes. Don Herzfeldt's Rejected gave us our festival catchphrases, charging us with giddy infantile laughter.


Sunday started with Local Natives on Bigfoot, an LA band touring their debut album Gorilla Manor, one of the more complete albums I've heard recently. The Tallest Man On Earth - vocals and guitar - followed up. Pitchfork have been giving him props, but I was ready for more energy. tUnE-yArDs provided on the Yeti stage. They were my festival find, captivating me for the duration of their set. tUnE-yArDs is Merrill Garbus from Oakland, who plays ukelele and loops her sound, much like Juana Molina. Supported by a bassist and saxophonist on some songs, Merrill performed with unhinged passion, stretching her vocal cords, layering sounds and treating her ukelele like a Stratocaster. After that set we caught a little of Cymbals Eat Guitars on Bigfoot, including Indiana, my pick off their debut album.

The next standout of the day was the xx. They released xx last year, a spacious self-produced effort that belied their years and one of my favourites of 2009. (Sarah introduced the album to a crew of tree planters she was ferrying from camp to the blocks on a shift earlier this spring and they requested the album repeatedly. Beautiful, spare love songs from a group of 20 year olds.) They've been riding a wave of publicity and touring like mad - their live show was competent, but they would have shone brighter in an intimate venue. The two leads, especially Romy, have a reserved stage presence. VCR, Islands and Night Space were highlights.


The 7.00 pm slot was my major conflict of the festival. LCD Soundsystem, Girls and YACHT were all performing. I went with LCD, according to James Murphy, touring for the last time. They played a great show, getting the amphitheatre on its feet, and could have easily played another hour. In my ideal world, Massive Attack would have opened for them, and LCD would have had the extended headliner slot. LCD's new album, This Is Happening, continues their strong vein of form. They played a couple of new favourites, I Can Change and Home. After, I pressed myself through the crowd to the tent and caught the last 45 seconds of YACHT's Psychic City.

Pavement were a victim of scheduling, jammed into a slot between LCD Soundsystem and Massive Attack. They also fell prey to sound technicians, with Malkmus highly impatient with their efforts. Their sound was terrible throughout the opening songs, killing the high created by LCD. Malkmus stopped playing during the band's second song, with Scott Kannberg filling the dead air as they worked to fix the sound. He remarked that the last time Pavement played the Gorge, during the Lollapalooza tour of 1995, they were bookended by Cypress Hill and Sinead O'Connor - clearly indicting the Sasquatch scheduling. Things eventually came together, with Pavement transforming from a band that sounded like they hadn't played together in a decade, to sounding like they hadn't played together in a decade but had a couple of shows under their belt. They never reached any great heights.


We caught the opening of Public Enemy on Bigfoot, who drew a large crowd. Their sound was excellent and Chuck D was in full flow, but they too had technical issues, with the sound abruptly cutting out several times (the band's stage speakers played on, as did Public Enemy). Their audience leaked bodies out of frustration.

Massive Attack closed out the Sasquatch stage, continuing the tradition of big names past their prime filling headlining slots. I'm not familiar with their work post-Mezzanine, and nothing I heard made me want to investigate further. Their early albums are classics of the Bristol scene, and those songs resonated. Horace Andy appeared, as well as Martina Topley-Bird singing Teardrop.


Monday had a slower start to the day, with no real draws until the late afternoon. Bobcat Goldthwait - of Police Academy fame - entertained in the comedy tent. The first significant performance was from Passion Pit, who played the second stage last year. I'd enjoyed their sound but found Michael Angelakos's falsetto grating. They were on the main stage this year and told us they'd been touring since their last Sasquatch appearance. That experience told, with Angelakos demostrating a much better handle on his falsetto. His vocals seamlessly incorporated into Passion Pit's performance, and the band's energetic sound filled the amphitheatre. Again, people were standing, arms were waving - they were a genuine pleasure.

She & Him - the project of M. Ward and actress Zooey Deschanel - followed up on Sasquatch. Japandroids from Vancouver were making exciting noise on Yeti and the Mountain Goats were surprisingly energetic on Bigfoot. I watched Band of Horses's set and enjoyed the energy of MGMT. The crowd buzzed as they closed with Kids. Sarah and I finished our festival with a last dance to Boys Noize, a German electronic producer and DJ making some propulsive music. We returned to camp, for a feed of ramen and early A.M. beer, and then we were done for another year.