Number Two (15 page)

The previous evening I had my very first ever book signing for
Anchorboy
at the massive two-story Indigo bookstore on the corner of Bay and Bloor in downtown Toronto. When promoting
the appearance on my Instagram account I made an off-hand comment that I would bring ketchup chips to the signing for everyone to snack on. “You do realize this means you actually have to bring the chips, don't you?” said my wife's best friend, Christina, upon seeing my Instagram.

She was right.

Luckily my publicist, Kelsey, was more than happy to round up the tasty Canadian snacks for me. When I arrived at the signing she had ten bags of ketchup chips there waiting, and when I walked into the main hall, I handed them out like Robin Hood tossing bags of coins to the poor.

The whole evening went spectacularly well. My friend and former TSN colleague Matt Cauz, co-host of
Macko and Cauz
on TSN Radio, was kind enough to come down and interview me in front of a packed house, and I answered such hard-hitting questions as “Have you been to the Brass Rail strip club since you returned to Toronto?” (“No, but I will go later tonight”) and “Why did you leave us and take a job in Los Angeles? (“Money”). I signed books and took pictures for almost two hours, and any bad feelings about the day were swept away.

The next night I did another signing at the Chapters in Etobicoke—the home of, you guessed it, Rob Ford. As promised, my old friend Dana McKiel showed up and waited for two hours until everyone else had gone home
.
I wasn't mad at Dana or anything; in fact, looking back, the idea that he would crash
The Social
kind of delights me. When it was all over, I realized I had barely eaten all day, so Doug, my editor, put me in a car and we headed back toward the city along Queensway Avenue. Doug wanted to take me to a place he'd been going to for years: Mamma Martino's—just your classic North American Italian red-and-white checkered cloth family-style joint. The food was good, but after those rain-soaked
and bizarre days it tasted better than good. I had dreamt of doing my own book tour and I had gotten my wish. Driving back downtown to my hotel after a wonderful meal, I couldn't help but think that the whole experience might make a nice little story for a future book.

“W
ould you like to come up to my cottage for the weekend?” Are there twelve better words that you could possibly say to a Canadian?

There doesn't seem to be any real logic to Canadian vernacular when it comes to vacation properties. For some Atlantic Canadians and Northern Ontarians the term used is “camp,” even if they are heading to an actual home with four walls and a roof over their heads. Growing up in Alberta, we called them cabins. And for Ontario and Quebec it's all about cottage country. Either way we are all talking about the same thing: taking advantage of the fact that our country has the most freshwater lakes in the world and staking our own personal little slice of heaven beside one of them.

A few years ago I started thinking it was time to buy a cottage of my own. But before I did anything rash, I figured it might be
a good idea to test the waters by renting a place for a week in the summer and doing nothing but sit on the dock, drink Caesars, barbeque, and swim. If I was bored after a week of cottage activity, then maybe it really wasn't a good idea to buy. Or maybe I would love the experience so much I would be convinced to buy right away. The possibilities were very exciting!

I should have just asked around to friends who either had cottages or knew someone who might want to rent one, but instead I went the Kijiji route. For those unfamiliar with Kijiji (Americans), it is essentially Craigslist, but for whatever reason more popular in Canada. There were a ton of places for rent, but eventually I settled on what appeared to be a cute little cottage on Lake Muskoka about two hours north of Toronto. Chobi and I made the trek north on the 400, past Barrie to Muskoka Lake country to begin our cottage adventure.

That's when things started to go wrong.

Somewhat predictably, the place was older and smaller than it had appeared in the preview pictures. But this wasn't a major surprise for me as I already knew that every single vacation place anyone has ever rented online has turned out to be smaller than expected—at the very least. Anyway, the place might be tiny and much closer to the neighbouring cottages than we'd have liked, but it would certainly do for our purposes.

And then we discovered there was no running water.

I thought maybe it was my responsibility to turn on a lever or gauge for a pump somewhere, so I called the real estate agency and they informed me that, no, the cottage should in fact have running water. This was a genuine problem, and we would have to call the cottage owner to come fix said problem. I dialed the number of the cottage owner and he immediately picked up.

“Hi, I'm renting your cottage out in Muskoka,” I began.

“Oh, great! How are you enjoying it?” he asked.

“It's just fine other than the fact that we don't seem to have any running water.”

“Oh, that's a problem,” he said without much emotion.

Unless you want us to take a shit on your kitchen floor!
I thought, then said, “Yes, it's a bit of a problem.”

“My wife and I just sat down to dinner. It's our anniversary,” he stated.

I wasn't sure what to say. That was a real bummer and I obviously didn't want to interrupt their anniversary dinner. At the same time, I had already paid for this cottage, and there was no way we were going to stay there without running water. Or should I say, there was no way
my girlfriend
was going to stay there without running water. Chobi was already busy searching “Muskoka Lakes Area Hotels” on her iPhone.

“I am so sorry to interrupt your dinner”—and I meant it—“but we were told to call this number in case of emergencies. The rental office is already closed for the day. We have absolutely no running water and we paid for the place. I think this qualifies as an emergency.”

He sighed a defeated sigh and paused a second before saying, “Okay, I'll be right out.” Ugh, sorry dude.

Not surprisingly, at this point the concept of renting out a cottage that I owned in order to cover the taxes and costs of upkeep started to seem less appealing. I could just imagine myself out for dinner with Chobi at our favourite restaurant, several drinks in, only to get a call from some disgruntled couple because the cottage stove didn't work, and could I come out and fix it, and no I don't know how to fix a stove. The realities of cottage ownership were starting to set in. The previous summer, I had witnessed my friend Rob spend a good portion of the time he had at his wife's cottage at
Stoney Lake in the Kawartha Lakes region re-shingling the entire cottage by himself with his own two hands. I asked him if he was left with an incredible sense of accomplishment after maintaining and fixing the cottage all by himself. I wondered if there was some sort of sense of manliness that came from doing it on your own. But when he answered, “If I could do it all over again, I would just pay someone else to do it and relax on the dock,” I honestly wasn't that surprised.

Chobi and I sat drinking the wine and eating the cheese we had brought up from Toronto, forgetting the fact that when the cottage owner said he'd be right up, he meant in approximately two hours.

When he finally arrived things had taken a turn for the worse as the whole area was in the early stages of a heavy downpour. The owner of the cottage was absolutely massive, and I mean fat. There's really no other way to describe the guy. I felt uncomfortable just looking at him. I felt even more uncomfortable when he determined that it was indeed part of an ongoing problem: A lot of leaves and seaweed had been gathering near the shore at his cottage, and as a result the water system that pulled from the lake was completely clogged. The poor guy was going to have to wade into the water and unclog everything by hand. By the time he had come to this realization the rain was coming down hard. We're talking Biblical hard, “the Bishop having the best game of his life” in
Caddyshack
hard—so hard that he had a tough time just opening the shed to find his hip-waders so he could wander out into the lake. Waiting until the rain died down was simply not an option. This man had an anniversary dinner to get to! By the time he drove out to meet us, fixed the water system, and drove back it would be a total of five hours. I'm pretty sure when he walked in the front door of his Markham home later that night his wife would be long gone.

The whole process took an hour. I watched the man the whole
time but could offer little help. Well, in hindsight, I suppose I could have joined him and stood waist-deep naked in the rain, but I was on vacation. Instead, Chobi and I stayed dry in the comfort of this man's tiny cottage while he unclogged the pipes handful by disgusting handful. Eventually, he waded back to shore, took off the hip-waders, and came back inside absolutely soaking wet. We tried the tap, and after a few gasps and wheezes it sputtered to life and out came relatively clean water that we would use for nothing else but shitting and showering. He apologized for the pipes, we apologized for ruining his anniversary, and we all said an uncomfortable goodbye before he stumbled back to his sedan soaking wet for what was likely an even more uncomfortable two-hour ride home. This was cottage ownership.

The next day we awoke to sweet Ontario sunshine that made the previous evening seem like a bad dream. We were determined not to let our bad start ruin our entire week's vacation, so after coffee on the dock—one of the very best parts of being at a cottage or cabin—we relaxed in a set of Muskoka chairs (Adirondack chairs to you non-Ontarians) with books we hadn't even cracked the spines on yet. After about an hour of peaceful reading we heard laughing and screaming from the cottage next door, then witnessed a group of younger adults, five guys and five girls, no older than twenty-four, all pile into a large cabin cruiser boat and take off down the lake to spend the day tubing and wakeboarding. Good, I thought, those rabble-rousers are out of our hair for the day and we can relax! How old was I getting anyway?

That evening, I was excited about barbequing; I love to fire up the barbeque and grill. Such a cliché. Man, fire, food. I buy into it wholeheartedly. When it comes to men and grilling I am happy
to live and eat the stereotype. I had a couple of beautiful steaks from Sanagan's butcher shop in Kensington Market and potatoes sliced and patted with butter, salt, pepper, and green onions that I had wrapped in tinfoil. Chobi was putting together a Caesar salad in the cottage kitchen. It was such a pleasure to be cooking with her just by ourselves and away from everything in the city. Maybe we just needed a few days to acclimate to the surroundings. The gang of twenty-somethings next door was having fun, but not in a disrespectful way—we had no complaints about the neighbours, however close in proximity they may have been. The sun was going down and it was beautiful. It was one of those idyllic Muskoka sunsets you hear about, as if this natural wonder alone was reason enough to rake two yards of leaves, mow two laws, re-shingle two roofs. All the practical arguments for
not
owning a cottage—the extra work, the hassle, the taxes—they just melt away with your first look at a Muskoka sunset. That's what they say anyway, and they may very well be right.

Then I fired up the barbeque.

At least, I
tried
.

I should first point out that this wasn't exactly a normal barbeque—more like a hibachi on a wobbly set of legs with a propane tank propped somewhat dangerously underneath on the ground. I twisted open the gas on the propane tank, and using a long wooden match I made a feeble attempt to poke the long stick into the top of the grill and fire up the cooking contraption. First attempt unsuccessful. I tried lighting another match. Still no go. As dumb as I am, even I knew this was the time to shut off the propane and let it dissipate a bit before giving it another try. What if I couldn't get this barbeque going? Was I going to have to cook all this delicious food on an old cottage stove? The horror!

I waited a few more seconds, then cranked on the propane tank
again. I tentatively lit another long matchstick, covered my eyes, reached out my arm, and gingerly tried to mate gas and flame. What happened next could best be described as a towering fireball in the night sky. A flame shot straight up into the air like I had set off the pyrotechnic show at a Monster Truck rally. I looked around to see if anyone had witnessed my attempt at singeing off my own eyebrows and face, but thankfully the party next door was already in full swing and they certainly weren't interested in the comings and goings of the renters next door. It's a good thing. We were clearly out of our element up here.

Once satisfied that I hadn't suffered any third-degree burns, I peered into the grill and discovered that despite the fact that I nearly re-enacted Michael Jackson's Pepsi commercial from the '80s where he lost half his scalp, the barbeque was only half lit. Or should I say there was only a flame flickering on one side of the tiny contraption. The other side was still as dark and cold as the lake. The listing on the cottage rental said, “BBQ.” I took this brief description to mean “working barbeque.” I guess I should have inquired to see if that barbeque wasn't a death trap that would heat only a portion of the grill big enough to cook one small sliced zucchini. I threw the potatoes on top of the tiny flickering flame. At this rate they would be ready in two days. The steaks, seasoned with salt and pepper and olive oil, and practically begging to be thrown on top of hot iron, sat there pathetically doing nothing.

Then the shitstorm arrived—an absolute shitstorm of mosquitoes.

Now, I have had some experience living in parts of Canada that were badly infested with mosquitoes: my family's summer cabin on Baptiste Lake near my hometown; summer nights on golf courses in Athabasca; the entire city of Winnipeg. In Athabasca “lake country,” much like lake country all across Canada, you basically have
four months to use your cabin, cottage, or camp. This is limiting enough, but then consider the fact that in most parts of Canada those four months are interrupted by about eight weeks of heavy mosquito infestation.

I remember following my last year of high school a couple of guys in town decided to start renting “soft-sider” hot tubs that they would bring to your lake cabin and set up for you. It was all the rage in the County of Athabasca in the summer of 1992. One weekend my parents decided they had better start spending some nights out at the cabin so I convinced them it would be a good idea to rent one of these soft-siders that the whole family and their friends could enjoy. We invited some store employees, and my sister and I each had a few friends over. We fired up the barbeque and started grilling, and we had plenty of Kokanee on ice. Even though the mosquitoes were biting they weren't
too
bad, and we were all kind of looking at each other thinking the same thing:
We have our own getaway cabin; we need to be here more often.

Then the sun went down.

The soft-sider hot tub had been filled up and heated sufficiently that we could all jump in. Probably a dozen or so people just squished into this oversized kiddie pool. No one cared. This was great! Until that fatal moment when the mosquitoes really started to emerge.

The sun had gone down and this was their time to feast. Suddenly, those of us whose shoulders were exposed were jolting and swatting every couple of seconds, desperately trying to keep the bugs at bay. It was no use. People started to flee back to the cabin, and the rest of us who decided to tough it out were forced to submerge ourselves in the water so that nothing was exposed but our eyes and forehead. If someone had walked up to us at that moment they would have thought we were a theatre group all doing impres
sions of Marlon Brando as Colonel Kurtz in the climactic scene of
Apocalypse Now
.

Point is: I know mosquitoes and how to deal with them.

But these mosquitoes were different. They were positively relentless. I thought maybe if I stood close to the tiny, flickering flame underneath the grill the little skeeters might be scared off, but I was terribly mistaken. The sun had set, and in the dark of night on the edge of the lake it was feeding time. Swatting and slapping like a total idiot, I was getting attacked on all fronts and there was no letting up. Chobi came outside to check on me, and they pounced on her like she was a baby deer in the forest who had wandered into a wolf's den. “What the hell?” she screamed and ran back into the cottage, slamming the fragile screen door behind her. I grabbed the uncooked steaks, twisted off the gas on the propane tank, used tongs to lift the barely warm potatoes off the grill, and fought through a haze of bugs in the ten or so steps to that fragile screen door, which we proceeded to keep closed for the remainder of the night, quietly munching on our Caesar salads and wondering if uncooked potatoes might satisfy the hordes of bloodthirsty insects outside.