Victoria Air Horn !

Believe it or not this weekend was yet another long one with a statutory holiday monday granted for remembrance day !

Being November in BC this of course means one thing ? It is raining !

Raining like you have never seen before ! It is hard to explain but I am yet to see any form of drizzle or light spitting in these parts.
When it rains here it comes in one galactic down pour that feels like the man upstairs has spilt his pint ! And it can last for days ! So with the snow not having arrived yet, four (very immature you will soon agree) blokes at a very loose end decided to go to Victoria !

As you do ?

Jumping into the rear windowless Hudson battle jeep (remember the one that only gets out off second gear once the transmission has warmed up) Teams England and Australia headed down to Tsawwassen (yes that is spelt correctly) to pick up the ferry over to Vancouver Island and the province capital of Victoria !

Our plan ? Well not a very expansive one I grant you. As it was raining cats and dogs we elected to stay in the Strathcona hotel which is famed for having 5 bars within the building including the infamous 'sticky wicket' and a roof top mounted beach volley ball court, which of course is lots of use in a BC wet autumn !

Why go out doors when you can mount a pub crawl within one building ? With team Australia in room 307 (Will and Leigh) and team England in room 308 (Stig and Garry) all roll calls were announced not with a call on the phone but by use of an air horn, that had been found in the boot of our transport. Not very adult I accept - but bloody funny at the time.

Moving out onto the toon Saturday evening we stumbled upon a very lively spot called D'Arcy's where hyperactive Hudson (who we decided by the end of the weekend suffers from an acute case of alcohol induced attention defficit disorder that renders him unable to sit still or stop talking for anything more than twenty seconds at a time) set about introducing himself to the local population - in a Sir Les Patterson, Australian cultural attache stylie.

Several schooners later and having confirmed the Australian stereotype of weak drinking legs with plenty of enthusiasm applied with scant decorum, we staggered back to the Strathcona via various pizza and smokie vendors minus Gazza who had mysteriously gone MIA some thirty minutes before.

Our concerns as to where he had dissappeared to were answered as we entered the corridor of our hotel rooms that were still some twenty metres away. Even from that distance ear defenders were required to blank out the fog horn snoring volume of Garry's cavernous hooter !

As you can see the wonders of drink will render an astute, respectable and able professional such as me with the maturity of a six year old when presented with such opportunity to perform mindless gags at some one else's expense.

So - yes - you got it. Gazza got a full blast of the air horn at a range of about three feet. That he woke up and damn near spat his false's out goes without saying. That Will and I damn near split our sides laughing at his comletely innocent and confused face also goes without saying.

That we woke the entire hotel as well is probably safe to assume !

Day two saw much of the same antic having at least taken a cultural walk of Victoria to clear heads prior to the next onslaught.

Observations from day two:

1. Will is impervious to Jack and coke and likes his AC/DC
2. Hudson turns into Mr Tickle after two days on the grog.
3. Garry snores even louder after two days on the grog.
4. I can still find a nasty food hit at three am regardless of how many days I have been on the booze.