Life in General

I ask you this; Is there anything better than a nice relaxing weekend camping along a river in the summer? Well, although we only managed to get out for a single night of camping over the past weekend (and entire summer so far!), it was really nice. Jody and I headed out to Calabogie to camp on Jim’s property along the Madawaska river last weekend, with Jonah in tow. The idea was just to get away from the city for a quiet night on the river, with a nice campfire, some camp chow, and watery fun in the river. Mission accomplished. Although I had grander plans, which included night biking trips, maybe trail running, and hiking, we really didn’t move too far from our campsite. The only trips we made were up the hill to the cabin to visit our ‘neighbours’, Jim, Allie and Xavier. They were up for the weekend getting some additional work done on the homestead and just generally enjoying their property. Who can blame them? After his recent trip to Utah for Primal Quest, I would imagine Jim thoroughly enjoyed his beer, cigar and scotch under a starry sky by the campfire. I know I did 😉

After the dust settled from our crazy Canada Day weekend festivities, Jody and I decided to get to the next order of business in our Ottawa summers. The Bluesfest! This event is the second largest Blues festival in North America (after Chicago), and probably one of the largest overall festivals in Canada. Essentially, the party goes on for 10 days, and plays host to over 150 different acts. This year was another stellar year for performances, and we definitely got more than our fill of many different musical stylings, not just Blues. If you’re curious about this years’ performances, you can still check out the listings on the website. Of course, if you’re reading this after 2006, well, you’ll be out luck, but will see who’s supposed to be on in the current year 😉 I’d love to get into full details of all the shows we saw, but there are far, far too many to list. Personally for me, some of the highlights were on the smaller stages, which often have a more intimate setting, and you get to see some great acts. A partial list of my faves would be Chicago Blues Reunion, Detroit Women, Dickey Betts & Great Southern, Elmer Ferrer Band, Eric Lindell, Etta James, Jake Shimabukuro, Michael Franti & Spearhead, Sam Roberts Band, Solomon Burke, Walter Trout & the Radicals, and finally Wilco. Click any of the links to learn more about them, or check out their music.

Whew! Where has the time gone? By checking the ole time stamp on my posts, it would appear as thought it’s been exactly a month since I’ve posted anything here. Shame on me! Guess I was just too busy basking in my relative glory for the Quest race. Where would I go from there? Well, apparently, the answer is nowhere in particular. The past four weeks have been spent recovering and revelling. I’ll try to put up a few short posts and pictures to bring y’all up to speed on all things Steve for the month of July. To start with, the week after Quest for a Cure was really a resting and recovery week mainly for me. It was also a preparation week for July 1st, which as usual, would undoubtedly bring forth the traditional debauchery and celebration. This year’s main goal was just to party, and possibly to make sure that Rob didn’t make a return trip to the local drunk tank, of which some of the details are still quite foggy to Mr. Sample.

So, a couple weeks back we finally had the official Nanaimo Bar wetting party. This was a combination grand opening of the bar that I built, along with a birthday party for me. Yup, I’m another year older. 31 years old and it turns out I still know how to party! Good for me, right? Hee hee. At any rate, it was great to finally have a party with the fully renovated basement, and what a great excuse to invite people over, and see some people that I haven’t hung out with in a long time. I’d like to say a big thanks to everyone who made it out at various points in the evening, and a special thanks to those who brought some tasty additions to the liquor cabinet! It was totally unexpected but highly appreciated. I started the night off a little grumpy, as my sister will attest. I was very hungry, and had been training earlier in the day, and suddenly felt rushed to get everything set up for the party. Luckily, after a couple hot dogs and some gin, I settled down quite handily. From that point on, I pretty much moved to behind the bar, which you can see in the picture to the right. If you’d like to see more shots of the party, they’re all over on Flickr (as per usual). If you go through the pictures, you’ll probably recognize some faces from long ago, and you might even notice some eerie differences between this party and parties past. Yup, it’s true, we’re all getting a little older, and it seems the invasion of the little people is upon us all! The first half of the celebration night was happily punctuated by several of our friends’ babies, including my own niece Helena. At one point, I looked around and asked myself what happened to the raging keggers, throwing forks at rare earth magnets on the fridge, while dressed in crazy outfits. Now, it’s all about toddlers pulling themselves across the floor, and laughing at the older ones who are now already getting lippy with us 😉 Crazy stuff. As a result, we had to keep Jonah off by himself till the latter portion of the party, which was the appropriate time to release the ‘party animal’. You know when that is of course. It’s when Matt and Rob started throwing random beer and liquor in the blender, expecting to come out with a delicious drink! Such was not the case. However, it did prompt the transformation to the type of party I’m more used to.

To finish off my marathon of blogging today, I thought I’d share with you a picture of my completed bar. As most of you know, I’ve been working away for the better part of 5 months on my bar project. It was an on-again off-again sort of affair, with me putting in any free time I could find into the crafting of this mega piece of functional furniture. Well, all the hard work has paid off! The bar is officially complete! The only thing left to do now is decorate the back wall with some pictures. I’ve filled in the cracks and varnished them over. I’ve also stocked the shelves with delicious booze, hung all the stemware on my recently-completed stemware rack (designed and built by me), bought a new blender for the bar, and I’ve even fixed the door that Matt broke over the weekend when he was watching Jonah! (I knew it needed fixing before though, so I’m not mad) I’ve got to say, I’m extremely proud of my accomplishment. When I started this project, I had a stack of papers, a stack of straight boards, and a dream. I’ve had to teach myself a lot about woodworking, and endure the inevitable slip-ups that go along with it. At the end of the day, I won’t even hazzard a guess at my total project cost (especially when you factor in the tools I had to buy!). Needless to say, you can’t really put a price on it. I suppose a carpenter could custom build a bar for you, and a solid oak bar like mine would cost you thousands of dollars. However, it would never be the same as knowing you built it yourself, with your own two hands. I know every detail, every flaw, every grain in the wood. It’s a cool feeling. To see the whole progression of the project, you can of course head over to the bar folder on flickr. I guess I like the sense of ownership and accomplishment on completing a big project. In the past, those projects would have been our deck, the shed, the roof, and the CDs I’ve recorded and mixed entirely on my own in the studio for my past bands, the Picklecatz and Comfort Station. Looking forward, I’ve got my 6-month bike odyssey in New Zealand and the Southern Traverse to look forward too. I don’t like sitting still too long without something big on the go I guess. I think I’ll take the next while off though, and try to actually enjoy this bar. Anyone up for a drink? 😉