Bye-bye, thanks for coming out. This is where I chase everybody out of the thread because nobody likes to read a....
FRAT:
A little background story to go with this. I came out to BC from Toronto because I was getting into some serious trouble and needed a fresh start. A guy I knew from highschool who had moved away to BC to snowboard a few years earlier returned and was out having beers in the same place as me, talking about this job and how he was working as a foreman on this tree brushing crew...............I asked, "So you're up in the mountains? You see bears and shit like that?" He assured me he did and I pleaded with him to hook me up with a job that coming summer so I could get away and clear my head. I had finished serving a year in jail out of a two year (less one day) sentence and was being pulled back down a very wrong path. I had to ride out my six months of house arrest which was going to expire right around the time his season began out west.
Anyhow, buddy stepped up and landed me the job, and despite my inept ability to get lost on a mountainside during that first season, they stuck it out with me. My wife to be joined our crew from another crew for the final two weeks of the season. I worked alongside her a couple times when we were using machetes and hand tools and we struck up a conversation (something you can't do when the saws are running). After the season ended and we both ended up in the Vancouver area she tracked me down and asked me to join her for a Tragically Hip concert in Vancouver and I happily accepted, not realizing that it was on the same night as Holyfield and Tyson or I likely would have passed, but that's another story.
On our second date we got married, and we did this because the skydiving plans we had for that day fell through that when we realized they had just closed for the season. BAM!!! Just like that, I'm the 26 year old who just the day before would have sworn he would never get married, and now I was married to a girl who had just turned 22. Good fucking luck with that right?
Well, here we are going on 19 years, a couple of kids later and life is good. Never went back east to live, but I love it when I can drop in and see my friends and family in the Toronto area every year or two. However, I'm clearly all about BC now!
Going out for a couple beers that night when I pleaded with buddy to hook me up with a job out west back in 96 was the luckiest thing I ever did. Even though I didn't know him super well at the time he stuck his neck out for me even though he was very familiar with my scene. I live about a half hour away from him and his family today and I talk to him all the time.........nothing I wouldn't do for that motherfucker!
I believe most of these pics were from our third out of the six seasons in the bush together.