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Lake-CATION 2018

My goodness did I ever need a vacation.

By Ash Furrow

July 14^th, 2018

I took two weeks of from work to visit my family in New Brunswick, Canada. My parents, who raised me in a nearby town, now live at the lake. What is the lake? Well, it's going to take a while to explain.

"The lake", geographically, is a thoroughfare between two actual lakes. This thoroughfare (or as my family sometimes calls it, "this furrowfare") and the two lakes that it connects divide the United States from Canada. The photos below show an international border: Canada in the foreground, the United States across the water.

I spent a significant amount of my childhood at the lake.

Relaxing

Ashley and I were pretty excited to go to the lake for two weeks. From our apartment in Manhattan, we looked forward to the lake for months. Immediately when we arrived, the pace of day-to-day life slowed down. No cellular coverage, the neighbours have wifi if you absolutely need it (I avoided it).

I loved it there.

Before leaving, my manager gave me some advice to enjoy my vacation. He said, leave your laptop in New York. So I did. Before leaving, I deleted Slack from my phone and disabled my work email account. I was isolated in a really healthy way – it instantly helped me relax.

I proudly bear the GitHub contribution graph of someone who took their vacation to get away from computers. In fact, I finally finished reading Stories of Your life and Others, re-read and contemplated Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers, and read most of The Three-Body Problem. I cannot recommend that last book enough – I haven't felt this captivated by a story in a long time.

There was frost just a few days before we arrived but we brought the hot New York weather with us, apparently. It was consistently over thirty degrees, with a humidex (look it up, Americans) of forty degrees! So we spent a lot of time at the beach.

Wellllllll, it's not actually a beach since it's on a freshwater lake, or whatever, but it has sand (kind of, it's just really small pebbles) and so we call it the Sandy Beach. It's a few kilometres away, which is a breeze in mom's old VW convertible. Dry off on the way home, woo hoo! (I'm wearing a seatbelt, of course.)

The Maker Pre-Revolution

My dad has always been a hands-on person. He's a skilled mechanic, but he also builds things. A few years ago, I got him a subscription to Make Magazine. He later told me "the maker revolution? I was early to that!"

For instance, here is my parent's portable fire pit. Portable so you can put it where you want to keep the mosquitos away with smoke (on days where fires are allowed in the province).

The building that makes up the older half of the camp's structure was built at my grandparents when I was little. Years later my parents moved it to their new lot and expanded. Here I am in a photo with my dad building the camp in it's original location. I'm wearing a helmet, a characteristic aversion to unsafety I still exhibit.

The Old Camp

My great grandfather originally purchased land and built a camp in the 1950's. Since then, five generations of my family have spent time at the lake, expanding the camp with new sections or new buildings, learning where all the rocks in the lake are, and making friends with the neighbours.

As a child, my dad would help with the constant efforts to jack up the camp (to make it level), and I would play with a BB rifle. I even saw the same wall I would pin my targets to for practice, and you can even see the very thumbtack I used to pin them up. Going to visit the old camp, which my uncle now owns, was a trip down memory lane for sure.

The Lake Proper

Outside the thoroughfare (which is a no-wake zone but boats zip through a full-speed anyway and it's annoying as heck) the lake really opens up. It's huge, this photo below is only a tiny bit of it. I spent every summer of my childhood swimming in this water.

I don't have a boating license so I can't drive the neighbour's boat, but fun fact: you don't need a boat license to drive anything less powerful than ten horsepower. So I took out the, er, well our friend from New York who dropped by to visit us on vacation called it a floating lawnmower, for a few trips.

My dad, safety-minded as he is, gave me a refresher course on driving the little boat. He tells me to flip the lever that lowers the motor into the water; I can't see the lever because it's on the back of the motor, but I know where it is instinctively. I've been driving this boat for as long as I can remember.

July 4th

So a cool thing about living on an international waterway is that the Americans really like fireworks. We were visiting over their Independence Day and took the boat out for an evening trip to watch the fireworks over across. I couldn't get any decent photos of them, but it was pretty cool. Different camps would sort of compete, I guess? Like one person would light up one firework and that would set off a series of calls and responses from other Americans.

Maybe they weren't really competing, but it felt like they were. As we watched the fireworks, we made up a story about the rivalries between the different camps setting them off. It was wonderful.

To The Other Beach!

Okay so the Sandy Beach is a beach that you drive to, but there's another beach that you can only get to by boat. We borrowed the neighbour's boat and loaded it up with three adults, two dogs, two New Yorkers, and a baby. We set off for my niece's first ever boat ride.

I was looking forward to leaving New York, but the thought of spending two weeks without a guitar was frightening. A few months ago, I sold my telecaster and bought at small travel guitar. It fits into the overhead compartment of airplanes and it sounds all tinny and folksy and I love it. When packing for the beach, I made sure to bring the guitar.

Reunion

I borrowed mom's car and drove to Fredericton, the city I went to school in. Some of my closest friends – classmates from university – still live there and we went out for supper at The Lunar Rogue, an old favourite of ours. It was so amazing to see everyone and catch up, and I also walked around the downtown and reminisced.

I miss it there. Fredericton's tagline is "What a City Should Be", which is debatable, but also arguable. It's a nice place and I plan on spending more time there the next time I'm home.

Warning! Picture of a Bug!

One thing I'll make clear is that this is the first trip I've done using only my iPhone as a camera. I brought a camera, but I didn't use it. In fact, the battery had been dead for so long that all the factory settings were back to default and I couldn't even remember how to use it.

I don't plan on giving up my cameras, but I've been delighted with the quality of the iPhone X camera system. It's got really bad performance in low light, of course, but it's still my go-to day-to-day camera.

BBQ

A childhood friend of mine was home at the same time we were – he lives in Taiwan now. Mom organized a BBQ of friends and family, and friends who feel like family. I didn't get many photos because I was too busy having a great time and catching up with everyone until the wee hours of the morning. I managed to get a few: you'll see my dad chauffeuring a family friend, and my grandfather Ashley with my mom and niece.

That's right! My grandfather Ashley! I'm named after him, but also I'm also married to someone named "Ashley", so it gets confusing sometimes!

I, uh, closely resemble my father. Growing up, it was a constant thing I heard from adults: "oh! you look so much like Peter! Re-Pete!" Well I certainly can't fault their logic, here's a photo of me and my dad around the same childhood age.

Consider The Skidsteer

As a hands-on person, my dad has a few pieces of heavy machinery. Each one has a story, and the most recent addition to the family is his skidsteer, pictured here configured in Forklift Mode™️.

Dad says that, configured with a scoop attachment, it can be used to plough snow. He said something that baffled me:

Moving snow, the skidsteer is quick but not fast.

Despite trying to clarify what this means several times – with mom too, so you know it's not just a dad thing – I'm still trying to divine the deeper metaphysical meaning of "quick but not fast."

The WOrkshop

My parents have a workshop – you know, a workshop? It's like a small building with all dad's tools, a deepfreeze, some storage space, a wood stove for winter, a workshop. Dad's workshop is decorated; it would be the envy of even the most ostentatious bower bird. There's my Scouts Canada hat, the circuitry cheatsheets I made as a nerdy teenager, a license plate from 1915, and even a little metal figurine my grandfather made that can be used to cook hotdogs (I'll let you figure out how).

I spent some time looking around the workshop and looking it all over. I asked my dad about it and he said that some things are sentimental, and some things are just things. Then he said "they're all just things, really."

DOGS DOGS DOGS

We visited my uncle at the old camp and wouldn't you know it, he's got three dogs! We had a great time while they all played, chasing each other around the yard. One was very large – large enough to fetch logs instead of sticks – and the others were very small. It was a riot.

My uncle showed me around the camp and we talked about how the structure had evolved over time. I brought a piece of the building back with me to New York to remind me about the lake.

The Golden Unicorn

The Golden Unicorn is a gallery and cafe in deep rural New Brunswick. It's run by two fascinating people who have travelled across the country. One is a painter and I bought a painting of his on my last trip home. This time, I got to visit their studio.

I was sorry to hear that the artist is now battling cancer in Saint John, which is a significant drive away from the cafe. While I was home, my parents volunteered at a community breakfast fundraiser for him. My wishes are with them both.

Guest Photographer

My wife borrowed my phone briefly and took some photos – I need to let her borrow my phone more often!

So this dog, Charlie, really likes to go in the boat. If he thinks you might be going out for a boat ride, he will plant himself in the boat. You will not trick him into staying in the camp – again – nosiree! He'll sit on that boat, believing with every fibre of his being that he is about to go for a boat ride.

I caught a cold at the end of my trip. It sucks to get sick while you're on vacation! And the plane ride back wasn't fun, either. But the one upshot is that my voice is all mellow and deep and smooth, so I got Ashley to take a few videos of me singing along with guitar. Here's one of them, I moved the capo down two frets and I kind of like it there. I'll revisit it once I finally get over this cold!

Tilly

The other dog's name is Tilly (as in, Chantilly Lace). She's younger than Charlie and has the energy level to match. But she's also a sweetheart.

We stopped on the way to the airport at a restaurant. Mom's keychain was on the table, and I saw that it only had one key tag on it: her library card. I realized that I hadn't visited a public library in years – Ashley and I are getting library cards at the New York Public Library now. I'm going to see if they have the sequels to The Three Body Problem.

Leaving the lake is never easy, but it was particularly difficult this time. Why are we living in a foreign country? Why are we so far away from parents, babies, friends, and dogs? All these questions were accentuated by my niece and by the political climate in the world today. In many ways, I want to move home.

I can't speak for my wife, but for me, I want to stay for Artsy; for the community of people I help here in New York; for the opportunity to make a huge impact on the software industry, hopefully on the world. The work I'm doing now is so important to me, I can't imagine walking away from it. I hope my family understands. And I'll be back at the lake this winter for Christmas.