Back was functioning. Leg burn healed. Time to re-enter the public domain, such as it is.

Yesterday was ‘market day’ and the usual group of neighbours attending were augmented by a couple of touring boat crews that happened to drop in for lunch. People we hadn’t seen before. And they sat at our tables!

We assembled in pockets off to the side like the standing-room-only crowd we were. Bit weird. But it wasn’t that bad, really. Some of our folks mingled with their folks and the only real difference was that the market did boffo business. Kinda nice, really.

We took pictures of them!

I always find it fascinating to see ‘tourists’ in their new, shiny Goretex-with-integrated-lifejacket and attached-safety-equipment outfits (even on their dog! Honest!) hanging out with locals whose sense of fashion is limited to layering rag-shirts and making sure that not too much bare skin shows. You can tell the tourist from the locals by the glare of newness given off by their clothing and equipment!

We look like cow-birds to what looks like peacocks to us.

This is not to imply that our guys aren’t dressed for the conditions and ready to deal with emergencies. Mostly, they are. But they dress in layers all year ’round so that they can add and subtract as the situation requires and also so that their winter wardrobe is the same as their summer one. It is simply more efficient that way but the overuse does fade and tatter their garb rather rapidly.

We can look a bit shabby at times.

Tourists, on the other hand, go to Mountain Equipment Co-op or score some Costco bargains the day before their two week trip to Desolation sound. A group of them actually ‘crinkle’ as they move. The clothing has not even gotten dirty yet!

Gawd! They are pretty in a day-glo kinda way!

The tourist boats are usually also very clean and shiny and ‘tiddley’ in keeping with yacht club sensibilities and our boats – even amongst the tidiest of owners – tend to have plastic totes, buckets, equipment and broken parts all higgeldy-piggeldy strewn about the bilge. It takes nothing to identify a local boat. See a log dog and a small sledge in the boat? Dead give-away.

Funny, isn’t it? Resistance was futile. I think I have been assimilated.