It was a Saturday afternoon, at the beginning of Summer. Gene suggests that we go to his favourite beach place in all of Nova Scotia. It was a nice day. The kind nobody would want to spend inside. So we get in his car. It starts on his second attempt. After waiting 45 seconds, Gene rolls his kind of ancient Buick out of the parking lot. We’re on our way now, for better or worse. As Gene meanders the narrow roads, several other cars make quick work of passing Gene. He takes offense to this as nobody should be going that fast on these roads anyway. The truth is, these guys were probably going the posted limit. Not ten seconds after the last one of these passing events occurs. Gene comes up on a mini van who is holding him up! Slowly and carefully, Gene maneuvers his big machine of a car into the passing lane and actually passes the van! I have no idea how slow the van was going for this to even happen. Gene is not a passer, and has much more patience than anyone else ever would in pretty much any situation.
There is nothing Gene likes better than to talk about his old trucking days. He got plenty of those stories in, with the amount of time we had. He can’t say we never talk anymore after this.
Eventually, we arrive at the beach. We get out of the car and go across some regular length grass. Then we walk through some taller grass, there are also a few large steps down that we have to take because of the route Gene has chosen. Then we walk over some dry seaweed. Finally, we are where Gene wants to be. The moist, sandy part of the beach right before you get to the actual water. It is quite soggy. I instantly regret not wearing older sneakers. After walking along this for a bit, Gene informs me that there are stairs on the other end. As it turns out, these stairs lead to a boardwalk that takes us right back where the car is parked. It would have been a lot easier to get down the steep hill that way, than the way we came. However, Gene is an enigma.
Upon returning to the car, Gene rummages around in the back to find the food items we had purchased on the way over. We then sit down to eat supper at a picnic table. As we dig into our chicken and, “Greek Salad,” I have no idea what was Greek about it, but Super Store said it was, Gene begins to be attacked by mosquitoes. Usually I would also be attacked, but whenever I travel somewhere with Gene, they like him better than me, so I take my breaks when I can get them. I got bitten all of one time. As for Gene, the mosquito would not heed his cries. No matter how many times he told them directly to “frig off!” they would not listen! I am convinced if he had used the four letter equivalent he really wanted to use, he would have had the same result. After all, English is really hard for humans to learn, let alone mosquitoes.
Once we both had enough to eat. Gene announced that we should get out of here because “these frigging things [the mosquitoes] are bothering me too much!” After we get back to the car, Gene lets out a high pitched scream after discovering that there has been a large caterpillar crawling on him for who knows how long. After disposing of another “frigging thing” we get out of there. The ride home is filled with Gene exclaiming how he can’t believe his rotten luck with insects. During a back road portion Gene discovered that he was “bleeding like a stuffed pig!” I’m guessing that was from all the insect bites. So he pulled over and sorted that out.
We made it home in one piece, with Gene’s hatred for all insects fully documented.