Marooned

Day 30

This morning began as many do: head spinning morning chats, and epic breakfast cooked over the one burner of the whisper lite, and a light conversation about how to spend the day. We decide that it's high time the Girl had an oil change, and there's a fish shop we heard was the best on the island over in North Rustico. We make a plan to dress as though we're heading out for the day, but pack our pool stuff, just in case.

One of the issues with getting the Girl's oil changed is that the Pirate doesn't have most of his usual mechanics accoutrement with him, nor do we have a handy place to recycle the used oil. Cue Trent, the husband of Cindy, matriarch of our campground. Trent works oil rigs in Alberta most of the time, but is home for the week. He is also a mechanic, and just so happens to have everything we need to tend to the Girl. This campground already recycles a lot of oil, with all of the lawn care machinery and whatnot, so he offers to recycle to oil for us and go into Charlottetown to get us some cheap new oil. He said he's be leaving shortly, so we went ahead and drained the oil from the Girl. It's a good thing it was such a lovely day, because we ended up waiting until about 8 pm for the oil.

So, we spent the day poolside, doing our usual. All of our food is kept in the community fridge, which is just beside the pool, so we cooked lunch and managed to make everyone drool with our grilled cheese with raw garlic and bacon sammies. The biggest plus of this day is that we didn't spend a dime.

Once the evening rolls around, all of the campers collapse down their canvas camp chairs, throw them over a shoulder, grab their beers and their big spray and head to the back of the campground. This is kind of where our site is. We call the area around the office/kitchen/pool where the RV's are “camp town”, the area across from the playground and washrooms is “kid town” and in the back of the campground where we are is “couples town”. No one ever walks all of the way back to our neck of the woods, so it was odd to have everyone marching past us with their beers, chairs and bug spray.

It's a big night in the campground. In what they call the “back field” there is a concert (free to the campers). The band Cosin, a trio of young ladies from PEI who do Celtic and Irish tunes. It's very sweet. We meander over to check it out, since we have nothing better to do, and hang out until the mosquitoes chase us off.

On the off chance that the oil has been left beside the Girl where she's been draining down in camp town, we walk down to take a peek. Sure enough, there are four quarts of brand new oil waiting there. As the sun sets over the bay and the sky turns orange-y salmon and turquoise, we do the oil change. The Pirate sits on the ground with a funnel while I hold a flashlight so he can see. Then, I sit on the Girl and pull her up level so the Pirate can top her off. Once she's all full, we tidy up and ride her back to the campsite.

It turns out that the concert is still going on, and we can hear it all just fine from our tent, and in fact, it's better with a little distance. Snow Falling on Cedars has a soundtrack tonight.