the Bother has a B’day!

Alrighty…I promised I’d write this….and I’ve been remiss….so grab a cup o something…this is going to take a while.

In April the Bother’s lady love contacted the Fadder and I about the bothers ’s 50th birthday – she’d decided on a surprise party and in spite of The fadder and I attesting to the fact that we’re lousy at keeping secrets (case in point the “it’s a teapot” story of Wyz’s and The fadder fame)…she and his friends The bother’s best friend and The bother’s best friend’s wife  (The bother’s best friend who was The bother’s partner in crime in grade school and who now lives in Nanaimo) decided that they were going to go for it.

This was not to be just a regular run of the mill surprise…oh no…it was a surprise of epic proportions and there was a clandestine team of “secret agents” involved in the planning etc. There were lists to be made, people to be contacted surreptitiously and stealth was of the utmost importance. Meetings took place, plans put into top secret effect….there were people were coming from as far away as Thunder Bay and from every walk of The bother’s life.  Because of the going’s on in my life I wasn’t so much involved in the planning stages…but The fadder had lists and was a going concern…

•    Contact the Horne Lake Crew √
•    Contact The bother’s other friend to arrange golfing √
•    Contact the neighbours to arrange parking√
•    Contact the neighbours to warn of noise√
•    Contact the cuz’s clan and arrange for their arrival √
•    Leave the truck behind on the day so The nefew and The nefew’s girl (the nefew’s girlfriend)can use it to pick up tables, chairs, assorted wine glasses and a pail er two of wine, a keg o beer, cases of homemade wine, baron’s of beef, hams to be baked and salads and sweets, there was a cake and gifts etc etc etc
•    √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √
•    The fadder was a dervish…
•    I was to show up to be the designated driver of the evening…
•    The bother’s lady love and The bother’s best friend’s wife were on décor duty with The VOD supervising.

So The bother’s birthday is the 18th… the weekend before was the last weekend another cuz was in town and The cuz’s wife had arranged for everyone who was available to be at their place here in Victoria for dinner…I couldn’t go as I had a previous thing…and The cuz’s wife said that she felt she had to say something about The bother’s birthday if only to throw The bother off the scent…but that when she did so some people at the table had coughing fits thinking she was going to blow the whistle…and we’d have had another “it’s a teapot” situation.

The deal was that The bother’s friend The bother’s other friend had arranged for The bother, The fadder, The bother’s best friend and himself to go golfing…in an attempt to allow The bother’s lady love and The bother’s best friend’s wife the time to get into the house to decorate and allow for all the people to arrive.  As luck would have it – it was a lovely day (probably one of the first really nice days we’d had all summer) and golf they did.  Now anyone that has golfed with The fadder and The bother will know that there’s usually a beer or two…maybe even three imbibed over the course of the course…and The bother’s other friend…he likes to haul a mickey of whiskey just to take the chill off…so here’s poor The fadder…thinking he should probably try to keep The bother sober cos there’s a party waiting to happen at his house…and The bother’s in party mode….he think this is his b’day party.

Team Secret Agent texts The bother’s best friend from The bother’s house around supper time…they now have to keep The bother away from the house till 6:30…The bother’s best friend becomes contrary to his usual “going with the flow” personality and demands that they go to a pub up the road and close to the base…we now know that he was trying to waste time…but at the time The bother thought The bother’s best friend’d lost his marbles on the course.

In the meantime…I got off work at 4 – at 4:40 I was in the lineup for the Brentwood Bay/Mill Bay ferry…a lineup that’s changed since I was last on it…..the wee ferry cuts about 2 hours of rush hour traffic from the peninsula where I live to the Malahat Mt drive and I thought going into it that it would be a time saver…little did I know…

So I’m in the line up and get a text from The cuz’s #1 kid (The cuz and The cuz’s wife’s son) asking for my ETA – there were at that time already over the Malahat…I advise that the ferry is now running about a half hour late and that I can’t get out of the line cos of the changes…turns out that the ferry is an hour late. By the time I get to drive onto the ferry I realize I have a flat tire.  There’s a strange occurrence that happens in ferry lines…it’s like we all become fast and immediate friends cos we’re stuck in this lineup waiting for the next sailing…so when I tried to pull out of the line and one of the ferry employees started to admonish me…the young fellow behind me leaned out of his truck and said “if you have a spare I’ll change if for you on the boat”…so I drove my car very slowly on the rim onto the boat

When I got on the boat the deck hand also offered to help me change the tire.  I start to haul crap out of my trunk to get to my donut spare and all of a sudden the Capt of the boat is standing on his little top deck screaming at us “YOU ARE NOT F*CKING CHANGING THAT F*CKING TIRE ON THIS F*CKING BOAT…I AM THE CAPT OF THIS F*CKING BOAT AND MY WORD IS F*CKING LAW!”  We begin to cough and sputter and I start to ask can I wait till the other side and do it before the next load boards…but he screams right over my comment.

He carried on like that for what seemed to be an hour….but was likely a minute and a bit. Long enough though to cause a crowd to gather and to irk me just enough to want to climb the ladder and smack his mouth….real hard twice.

He was pretty verbal…I was hugely unimpressed (sic madder n hell) He continued to say that should we put the car on a jack and a swell knock it off while we were off shore he’d end up in jail.  (While I see his point…it’s all in the delivery eh?)  I turned to a little girl of about 8 who was standing in the crowd and said “it’s not what you say it’s how you say it…no?” She agreed vehemently so I climbed into my car and locked myself in to keep Wyz’s “May Holler” from putting in an appearance.

I called The fadder…who was really weird on the phone…and then hung up….that’s odd??

Back in Courtenay The bother’s best friend’s wife is texting The bother’s best friend over and over and not getting a response…so she and The bother’s lady love and all of The bother’s friends from far and wide are starting to panic…where have those boys got to? Vacillating between worrying and I’ll kill them if they are over partied by the time they get here.

I called The bother’s lady love (by this time it’s 7 – 7:30PM) and told her that I had a flat and one of those donuts and a young man was going to change it for me and did she know anywhere between Mill Bay and Courtenay that would be open on Friday night to fix a tire…the answer of course is no…but consensus of the attendees that were now waiting for The bother (and had no idea where those 4 men had got to) was that I could drive it as far as I needed to go…as long as I didn’t exceed the speed of 80 kms on the way.

The ferry arrives at the Mill Bay dock and I let everyone else disembark and then I slowly creep off the ferry on my flat tire and rim in doing so the tire splits away from the rim.  This ferry terminal is on a hill so I have to virtually crawl up the hill to a place where I can pull off…the young man was there waiting for me…as were 5 other vehicles that just wanted to make sure I was ok. (nice eh?)

So the young guy changes my tire…I try to give him $20 to get himself a beer er two but he refuses telling me that he works for a brewery and doesn’t need to pay for his beer….how cool is that?

And so I embark upon the drive from hell.  80kms is very very not fast on the highway when the speed limit is 90 and little white haired ladies sitting on phone books to read the steering wheel are blowing past ya…but when the speed limit it 110…it’s like walking…..srsly.  However…as the day crept into night I realized that I used to love driving at night and I cranked the tunes a chitty chitty bang banged my way along.

I tried to call The fadder again…something was going on and he couldn’t talk so I told him that I would meet him at The bother’s…to stay there till I got there.  The cuz texted a couple of times and The VOD called to check up on me…and although it was the longest 2.5 hr trip on record…I made it to The bother’s just about before 11pm

The bother’s house was amazing! There were people galore…The bother and The bother’s best friend’s friend Another of the bother’s other friends from Thunder Bay, guys The bother has worked with, played with, gone to church with, neighbours, The bother’s lady love’s family, our family…enough food and booze to sink a rather large ship…and there’s my brother…standing there with this silly grin on his face yelling “FEEDOM!!!”

What?

So…a bunch of stories happened at once…firstly…when I called The fadder the 2nd time and he couldn’t talk…it was because he and The bother had got pulled over in a roadside check on the way to that pub that The bother’s best friend had demanded that they go to in order to waste time before bringing him home for the big surprise. The bother’s best friend and The bother’s other friend in one vehicle, The bother and The fadder in another….and it’s just around the corner from the golf course…so I guess they thought they’d be ok. (you are familiar with the term “10 ft tall and bulletproof”? I find that applies to a lot of people after a few brews.)

Anyway…the law here is that at .05 you have to go in for a full on breathalyzer and if you blow over you are DUI.  The bother…who’d been imbibing all afternoon thinking this golf expedition was his birthday celebration blew at .048.  We can only surmise that there was a malfunction in the machine…cos although he wasn’t as plowed as he was when I arrived several hours later…he was far from sober. And this happened almost right in front of the pub they were going to.

When the police finally let The bother park his truck and go into the bar…The fadder was stressed (all he can think of is how if The bother loses his license his career will be fully fubar’d for a good while), The bother’s best friend and The bother’s other friend are pleased and of course The bother elated cos he’d had visions of his career blowing out the window with a DUI. So they had a few more fast drinks…then one of them had the presence of mind to contact the limo service from the golf course and they got picked up and driven to The bother’s house.

So picture the limo van pulling up in front of The bother’s and as he’s getting out he realizes that The cuz and The cuz’s wife and The cuz’s #2 kid and The cuz’s #1 kid are climbing out of their truck at the exact same moment.  Hmmmm?  The bother hollers “what are you guys doing here?” to which The cuz’s #1 kid (the quickest thinker) returns – “we’re going trail riding on Mt Washington and just stopped by to say hello” and then saunters away. (does kinda make one wonder how a young man developed that skill so advantageously? No? I think The cuz and The cuz’s wife may be watching that skill going forward LoL)

So into the house they go to 50 people yelling Surprise! And then the story telling began…which of course precipitated The bother’s hollering Freedom!.  Lesson learned methinks.

Just as I was pulling into The bother’s driveway my phone rang and it was The fadder.  The whole thing had become just enough stress and noise for him so he went home to bed!…so I visited with everyone till about 12:30 (at one point The bother’s lady love and The bother’s best friend couldn’t find The bother’s best friend’s wife and the stress of the whole thing had made her go upstairs for a quick nap! :o)…and then I headed out to the farm at 80kms all the way. It really is kind of nice when you have to slow down and look at your surroundings eh?

The bother had a blast…made out like a rich man…hung with friends for 2 days, ate himself into a stupor and turned 50…not such a bad thing eh?  Now if we could just convince him to get his eyes tested cos his arms ain’t long enough we’d be good as gold.

Truly…The bother’s lady love, The bother’s best friend, The bother’s best friend’s wife and The fadder did a really good job.  It was a very nice thing to do for him…and we all appreciate it…even with it’s cracks and chips eh?