Eve left us much too early,
Sunday April 5, 2015
Sunday April 5, 2015
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Our passport photos, certainly not good examples of photos that flatter. They always make you look like criminals.
I hate that they do that, and I think these ones really suck. But on the upside, it is kind of cool to be able to look back and... remember....remember....remember.... It was 1975, we were about five or six years into the hippie phase of our lives. Up to this point as young adults we led a normal conventional family life, nothing really out of the ordinary, just the regular day to day routines, with the exception of a concert once in a while and a few joints from time to time. It wasn't a boring life but it did leave something to be desired. We had never done anything that would have been thought of as wild crazy or overly exciting. We had just never really stepped outside the box of our regular everyday life. That was all about to change; big time... |
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Beware, occasional tripping over improper punctuation and grammatical errors may occur
We couldn't have stepped any further out of the box than going to Morocco. This was a trip that we never thought in our wildest dreams we would ever take. Little did we know just how far out it was really going to be.
I'll do my very best to give an accurate account of the events of our trip.
Eve kept a journal of events that she updated daily, capturing many of the finer details of what we did and where we went; and also some of the shit we found ourselves in at times.
I was grateful to have the journal to work from, as memory sometimes is just not enough.
While reading through the pages of the journal, what seemed like thousands of details large and small started popping into my head, many of which I hadn't thought about in almost forty years.
It was an incredible return to a yesteryear moment for me.
I was so thrilled by the prospect of writing the story that I was finding it hard to contain my excitement.
With so many memories of the Morocco trip dominating my thoughts at the time, they've suddenly given rise to a somewhat different feel about the trip, for me.
Having Eve's journal to work from was a doorway into all of those memories from an earlier time in our lives.
So much so that for me the trip was no longer just a trip to Morocco; it has now become something so much more.
My remembrance has now elevated the trip to what I see as "an incredibly exciting Moroccan adventure".
This is how I feel about it now, so from this point on I'll always see that way.
My new found overview of how I see and feel about our "incredibly exciting Moroccan adventure" is the perspective the story will be written from.
Due to the nature of some of the things that occurred, Eve purposely omitted logging some of them, simply because she didn't want our kids to get their hands on the journal and read about some of the things we did; they were only ten eleven and twelve years old, and we didn't feel they were old enough to know about some of the activities we engaged in.
Well they're not little kids any more, they're men in their fifties, old enough to know what Mum & Dad did during their Moroccan adventure.
This is the first time the story of our adventure has been told in full detail. I've thought for a number of years that I would love to tell the story, but I just never took the time, and of course I would never do it without getting Eve's approval first, given that this story is about her also.
I asked if she would be okay with my publishing the story on the website, she was perfectly fine with that.
She said "Tell it just like it happened"; so that's what I'm going to do.
Most of the pages have photos of places we've been and things we've seen. Although the quality of our shots wasn't very good, and we should have taken many more pictures. So here's what I've done to supplement in a number of places.
I've download some photos of places where we had been, but old ones when I could find them, and posted them with our photos included in the mix.
Now, before I tell the story, I just want to say that in no way is it intended to brag or boast about anything, nor is it about glamorizing or glorifying any of our activities, or to legitimize any particular behavior.
The intent is just to tell you the story of our adventure, just the way it happened.
I hope as you read the story you find things that make you smile, maybe laugh a bit, maybe even a little shock or surprise. Anyhow, enjoy the read.
click on any photo for larger view
[Extreme Language Alert]
The story begins:
The Plan:
We couldn't have stepped any further out of the box than going to Morocco. This was a trip that we never thought in our wildest dreams we would ever take. Little did we know just how far out it was really going to be.
I'll do my very best to give an accurate account of the events of our trip.
Eve kept a journal of events that she updated daily, capturing many of the finer details of what we did and where we went; and also some of the shit we found ourselves in at times.
I was grateful to have the journal to work from, as memory sometimes is just not enough.
While reading through the pages of the journal, what seemed like thousands of details large and small started popping into my head, many of which I hadn't thought about in almost forty years.
It was an incredible return to a yesteryear moment for me.
I was so thrilled by the prospect of writing the story that I was finding it hard to contain my excitement.
With so many memories of the Morocco trip dominating my thoughts at the time, they've suddenly given rise to a somewhat different feel about the trip, for me.
Having Eve's journal to work from was a doorway into all of those memories from an earlier time in our lives.
So much so that for me the trip was no longer just a trip to Morocco; it has now become something so much more.
My remembrance has now elevated the trip to what I see as "an incredibly exciting Moroccan adventure".
This is how I feel about it now, so from this point on I'll always see that way.
My new found overview of how I see and feel about our "incredibly exciting Moroccan adventure" is the perspective the story will be written from.
Due to the nature of some of the things that occurred, Eve purposely omitted logging some of them, simply because she didn't want our kids to get their hands on the journal and read about some of the things we did; they were only ten eleven and twelve years old, and we didn't feel they were old enough to know about some of the activities we engaged in.
Well they're not little kids any more, they're men in their fifties, old enough to know what Mum & Dad did during their Moroccan adventure.
This is the first time the story of our adventure has been told in full detail. I've thought for a number of years that I would love to tell the story, but I just never took the time, and of course I would never do it without getting Eve's approval first, given that this story is about her also.
I asked if she would be okay with my publishing the story on the website, she was perfectly fine with that.
She said "Tell it just like it happened"; so that's what I'm going to do.
Most of the pages have photos of places we've been and things we've seen. Although the quality of our shots wasn't very good, and we should have taken many more pictures. So here's what I've done to supplement in a number of places.
I've download some photos of places where we had been, but old ones when I could find them, and posted them with our photos included in the mix.
Now, before I tell the story, I just want to say that in no way is it intended to brag or boast about anything, nor is it about glamorizing or glorifying any of our activities, or to legitimize any particular behavior.
The intent is just to tell you the story of our adventure, just the way it happened.
I hope as you read the story you find things that make you smile, maybe laugh a bit, maybe even a little shock or surprise. Anyhow, enjoy the read.
click on any photo for larger view
[Extreme Language Alert]
The story begins:
The Plan:
A mid week evening in late January 1975. It's a bitter cold night, but it was about to get a little warmer. Two of our friends, Mel and Aileen had come over to the house for a visit.
They had something exciting they wanted to tell us.
Aileen had brought a bottle of home made strawberry wine she scooped from her fathers supply; really good wine as I recall.
We were just hanging out, listening to some tunes and chatting. We rolled a few joints and drank some wine and talked about Mel and Aileen's decision to take - "an exciting wild and crazy trip somewhere".
It didn't take long to finish off the wine so we decided to go to the bar and have a few more drinks and continue celebrating the news of their upcoming trip
We smoked another joint, grabbed our coats and its off to the bar to continue talking about how excited they were.
We got a couple more drinks, and now we're catching a pretty good buzz. We're all kicking around a few ideas as to where they might to go.
The two possible destinations they talked about were primarily Mexico and Jamaica, typically the most common winter vacation spots for most Canadian's at that time, but I think Mel had the idea of someplace more exotic.
After giving a little more thought to a destination, they decided on Morocco. Well, as soon as they said Morocco my interest spiked.
Marrakesh Express was one of my favorite -non Pink Floyd- songs, [most people over fifty know the song] I said, "Morocco would be an incredibly exciting place to go, I'm envious". All of a sudden Mel says, "hey, why be envious, why don't you guys go to Morocco with us".
I was surprised by the invitation, I thought he was just pissing around with me.
He said "no man, I'm serious, come to Morocco with us, it'll be a fucking blast"
Well wouldn't you know it, this would turn out to be a temptation much too powerful for me to resist. I was totally into it, but Eve, not so much. She said we could never do it because.... then she began stating her reasons, to which I gave work around solutions to each of them.
Now, I didn't really want to put Eve in a position to do something she really didn't want to do. However, while she was stating her reasons for thinking we couldn't go on this adventure, all of us could see that she was struggling with hesitation, mentally searching for reasons to not go. Knowing her as well as I did my thought was, maybe she just needs a little encouragement, so I was going to offer that.
After a few minutes or persuasion and probably another drink she said, "okay, let's fucking do this". Realizing that this could really happen was an absolute mind blower.
But before it could happen many details would have to be taken care of first, and that was going to be a tall order.
For Mel and Aileen the trip was just a matter of time and economics. They weren't working at the moment so their time was all their own.
But I was working and needed to figure out a way to get time off of work and still get paid,
hmmm.....need a plan for the plan.
The idea I came up with was going to be a long shot. I didn't really know if it would pan out or not, but I would pitch it wearing my very best game face.
Within the next day or two I called my Doctors office for an appointment, expressing urgency. I got my appointment for that afternoon.
I arrived about forty five minutes before my time slot and took a seat in the waiting room. As I sat there I began tensing my body, plus squeezing and releasing the arms of the chair, as well as holding my breath on and off for the whole waiting time.
All this stressing drove my blood pressure up, my body was trembling and my lower lip was quivering, reactions that could be interpreted as the look of someone having an anxiety or panic attack. I probably looked like a complete wreck also.
When I got in to see the Doctor, the same one I've had for ten years, so he knew me quite well, saw there was something visibly wrong.
The nurse took my blood pressure, which now was quite high. The Doc asked me to explain what the hell was going on... So, game face on and into character I go.
I told him: everything in my life sucks, I'm never happy at my job anymore, the new supervisor hates me and is constantly on my case, and no matter how well I do my job he's critical of my efforts 100% of the time.
The stress issues from work are now affecting my life at home, which presents a whole new can issues to deal with. It's all becoming more than I can comfortably deal with, and no matter how hard I try to make things better, either at work or at home, nothing seems to work out for the better.
I feel like my life is going down the toilet, I needed to get away from all this shit for awhile, maybe taking a trip somewhere.... yeah, a trip.
A trip might be just what I need. Getting away for awhile just might help me calm down enough to take a better look at what was happening to my life and hopefully get it back on track......
I stated all of these things and more in a matter of what seemed like just a few seconds and one breath, I was so completely wound up.
After a very brief question and answer period, he agreed that given my circumstance I could really use some time off. He said he would start me off with a six week medical leave using a severe anxiety state as my condition. He said I would have to agree to see a psychiatrist in order to authorize medical reasons for time off, to which I agreed.
Had I been an actor, this may have been an award winning performance. However, giving a little more thought as to my acting ability, maybe it wasn't as good as I thought., simply because...
My Doctor was a pretty smart guy, a well thought of medical professional, and a very analytical person.
So just maybe he had me figured out right from the get go, or at least from when I said something about taking a trip. Knowing me as well as he did, he may have figured I just wanted a holiday, which I did.
He filled out some paperwork to give to my employer, which they were not very happy about. Oh well, why should I care whether they were happy or not. I'm happy, and now had the time off I needed to follow through with the rest of the steps to complete the plan.....
When I left the Doctor's office I was met in the parking lot by Mel and Aileen, and possibly Al, another friend, but not sure if he was there or not.
We were absolutely thrilled that I got the time off. Now we could move forward and take care of the next step in the plan.
At some point during this phase of the plan, our friend Al had decided he would join the rest of us and go to Morocco also.
He was on leave from the Army, his paperwork was in order and he had the time off, so why not go.
However, neither Eve or I could remember the details of the timeline of just when Al came into the picture.
Eve phoned her sister Dorothy and asked if she would be willing to stay at our place and look after the boys so we could take this trip, which she agreed to. Wonderful I thought; thank you Dorothy.
Next would be the money.
We went to the bank and said we wanted to go on a vacation and would like to borrow some money. They were more than happy to lend us whatever we wanted.
They transferred a portion into traveller cheques for us, the rest was deposited into our bank account. Now with the money taken care of it's on to the next step.
With cheque book in hand, its off to the travel agency we go.
We went to Pauwels Travel, got two round trip tickets from Toronto to Casablanca, $734 for the pair, which included a dinner and breakfast. [unbelievably cheap by today's standards] They told us that we would need passports with photos and proof of inoculations.
So off to the health unit we go.
We had to have three shots for whatever and they suggested we spread them out over several days, to which we replied, "we're leaving in a few days and didn't have time to wait", so they gave us our shots all at once. OUCH!
Next were the passport photos, but I don't remember where we got them.
We had to fill out applications for passports and get signatures on them from a minister or doctor as proof that we were who we said we were.
With those steps completed, Mel and I took all the paperwork to the passport office in Toronto for processing.
We went to Toronto on the train and decided to, as we came prepared for, have a party day. We had a bite to eat, {some of my home made brownies, no further explanation needed}
The passport lady said it would take about an hour and a half to process all four passports. Oh well, the brownies are going to kick in long before we get through this process.
Sure enough, forty five minutes goes by and they're coming on like gangbusters; and we're going to be heavy duty high.
We did what we had to do to suppress the perma-grin and laughter and the water fountain took care of the extreme dry mouth.
We're pretty high at the moment and only a couple of minutes has gone by since the brownies kicked in, although it seemed like a hell of a lot longer.
We're now being called up to the counter.
Oh Oh, my first thought was; because we've been here for less than an hour there must a problem with one of the forms, but no, get this, they were just being efficient and the processing was now complete. What a treat that was, and I'm pretty sure it only cost five or ten dollars for each passport as well.
We thanked and paid the lady and out the door we went laughing all the way. This whole deal was working out perfect, we couldn't be happier.
Now with the passport business finished, we hopped on a bus and headed for the Toronto Science Centre for an afternoon of play.
We had a blast throughout the whole afternoon, playing with a number of exhibits, laughing our asses off and expressing our excitement about the trip; we were so pumped, and really high.
I don't even remember how the hell we got home, probably the train, or maybe a bus, don't remember, didn't care,
I only remember it was a hell of a great day.
.............................................................................................................................
Eve and I spent the next couple of days gathering up all the things that we would need for our trip: sleeping bags, backpack, a four man tent, toiletries and a few clothes.
We weren't going on some typical bullshit charter vacation at some big fancy hotel with bus trips to all the local tourist traps, no way man, that wasn't for us. We're going to backpack around the country and see what it's really like, and of course, wait for it........................................................................................>
take a ride on the Marrakesh Express....this was the major biggie for me man,.....the biggest biggie.
It was now Feb. 6, departure day. Everything that had to be done was completed in nine days, it was a scramble but we got it all done.
Mel, Aileen and Al came over to our place about 1 o'clock; we're all so excited in anticipation of our trip.
With all our gear together, we're now ready to rock.
Two of Eve's sisters, Dorothy and Marge are driving us to Toronto airport. We loaded all our gear into the station wagon and headed off.
We got to the airport at about 3pm, thanked and said goodbye to Dorothy and Marge. Went inside to find our departure gate.
Our flight wasn't leaving until 5:45pm so we had time to kill. We went to a restaurant and had something to eat.
Aileen called her sister who lived in Toronto, she came to the airport and hung out with us for awhile. After a bit she said goodbye and wished us all a safe trip.
It was now go time, time to shit or get off the pot......
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They had something exciting they wanted to tell us.
Aileen had brought a bottle of home made strawberry wine she scooped from her fathers supply; really good wine as I recall.
We were just hanging out, listening to some tunes and chatting. We rolled a few joints and drank some wine and talked about Mel and Aileen's decision to take - "an exciting wild and crazy trip somewhere".
It didn't take long to finish off the wine so we decided to go to the bar and have a few more drinks and continue celebrating the news of their upcoming trip
We smoked another joint, grabbed our coats and its off to the bar to continue talking about how excited they were.
We got a couple more drinks, and now we're catching a pretty good buzz. We're all kicking around a few ideas as to where they might to go.
The two possible destinations they talked about were primarily Mexico and Jamaica, typically the most common winter vacation spots for most Canadian's at that time, but I think Mel had the idea of someplace more exotic.
After giving a little more thought to a destination, they decided on Morocco. Well, as soon as they said Morocco my interest spiked.
Marrakesh Express was one of my favorite -non Pink Floyd- songs, [most people over fifty know the song] I said, "Morocco would be an incredibly exciting place to go, I'm envious". All of a sudden Mel says, "hey, why be envious, why don't you guys go to Morocco with us".
I was surprised by the invitation, I thought he was just pissing around with me.
He said "no man, I'm serious, come to Morocco with us, it'll be a fucking blast"
Well wouldn't you know it, this would turn out to be a temptation much too powerful for me to resist. I was totally into it, but Eve, not so much. She said we could never do it because.... then she began stating her reasons, to which I gave work around solutions to each of them.
Now, I didn't really want to put Eve in a position to do something she really didn't want to do. However, while she was stating her reasons for thinking we couldn't go on this adventure, all of us could see that she was struggling with hesitation, mentally searching for reasons to not go. Knowing her as well as I did my thought was, maybe she just needs a little encouragement, so I was going to offer that.
After a few minutes or persuasion and probably another drink she said, "okay, let's fucking do this". Realizing that this could really happen was an absolute mind blower.
But before it could happen many details would have to be taken care of first, and that was going to be a tall order.
For Mel and Aileen the trip was just a matter of time and economics. They weren't working at the moment so their time was all their own.
But I was working and needed to figure out a way to get time off of work and still get paid,
hmmm.....need a plan for the plan.
The idea I came up with was going to be a long shot. I didn't really know if it would pan out or not, but I would pitch it wearing my very best game face.
Within the next day or two I called my Doctors office for an appointment, expressing urgency. I got my appointment for that afternoon.
I arrived about forty five minutes before my time slot and took a seat in the waiting room. As I sat there I began tensing my body, plus squeezing and releasing the arms of the chair, as well as holding my breath on and off for the whole waiting time.
All this stressing drove my blood pressure up, my body was trembling and my lower lip was quivering, reactions that could be interpreted as the look of someone having an anxiety or panic attack. I probably looked like a complete wreck also.
When I got in to see the Doctor, the same one I've had for ten years, so he knew me quite well, saw there was something visibly wrong.
The nurse took my blood pressure, which now was quite high. The Doc asked me to explain what the hell was going on... So, game face on and into character I go.
I told him: everything in my life sucks, I'm never happy at my job anymore, the new supervisor hates me and is constantly on my case, and no matter how well I do my job he's critical of my efforts 100% of the time.
The stress issues from work are now affecting my life at home, which presents a whole new can issues to deal with. It's all becoming more than I can comfortably deal with, and no matter how hard I try to make things better, either at work or at home, nothing seems to work out for the better.
I feel like my life is going down the toilet, I needed to get away from all this shit for awhile, maybe taking a trip somewhere.... yeah, a trip.
A trip might be just what I need. Getting away for awhile just might help me calm down enough to take a better look at what was happening to my life and hopefully get it back on track......
I stated all of these things and more in a matter of what seemed like just a few seconds and one breath, I was so completely wound up.
After a very brief question and answer period, he agreed that given my circumstance I could really use some time off. He said he would start me off with a six week medical leave using a severe anxiety state as my condition. He said I would have to agree to see a psychiatrist in order to authorize medical reasons for time off, to which I agreed.
Had I been an actor, this may have been an award winning performance. However, giving a little more thought as to my acting ability, maybe it wasn't as good as I thought., simply because...
My Doctor was a pretty smart guy, a well thought of medical professional, and a very analytical person.
So just maybe he had me figured out right from the get go, or at least from when I said something about taking a trip. Knowing me as well as he did, he may have figured I just wanted a holiday, which I did.
He filled out some paperwork to give to my employer, which they were not very happy about. Oh well, why should I care whether they were happy or not. I'm happy, and now had the time off I needed to follow through with the rest of the steps to complete the plan.....
When I left the Doctor's office I was met in the parking lot by Mel and Aileen, and possibly Al, another friend, but not sure if he was there or not.
We were absolutely thrilled that I got the time off. Now we could move forward and take care of the next step in the plan.
At some point during this phase of the plan, our friend Al had decided he would join the rest of us and go to Morocco also.
He was on leave from the Army, his paperwork was in order and he had the time off, so why not go.
However, neither Eve or I could remember the details of the timeline of just when Al came into the picture.
Eve phoned her sister Dorothy and asked if she would be willing to stay at our place and look after the boys so we could take this trip, which she agreed to. Wonderful I thought; thank you Dorothy.
Next would be the money.
We went to the bank and said we wanted to go on a vacation and would like to borrow some money. They were more than happy to lend us whatever we wanted.
They transferred a portion into traveller cheques for us, the rest was deposited into our bank account. Now with the money taken care of it's on to the next step.
With cheque book in hand, its off to the travel agency we go.
We went to Pauwels Travel, got two round trip tickets from Toronto to Casablanca, $734 for the pair, which included a dinner and breakfast. [unbelievably cheap by today's standards] They told us that we would need passports with photos and proof of inoculations.
So off to the health unit we go.
We had to have three shots for whatever and they suggested we spread them out over several days, to which we replied, "we're leaving in a few days and didn't have time to wait", so they gave us our shots all at once. OUCH!
Next were the passport photos, but I don't remember where we got them.
We had to fill out applications for passports and get signatures on them from a minister or doctor as proof that we were who we said we were.
With those steps completed, Mel and I took all the paperwork to the passport office in Toronto for processing.
We went to Toronto on the train and decided to, as we came prepared for, have a party day. We had a bite to eat, {some of my home made brownies, no further explanation needed}
The passport lady said it would take about an hour and a half to process all four passports. Oh well, the brownies are going to kick in long before we get through this process.
Sure enough, forty five minutes goes by and they're coming on like gangbusters; and we're going to be heavy duty high.
We did what we had to do to suppress the perma-grin and laughter and the water fountain took care of the extreme dry mouth.
We're pretty high at the moment and only a couple of minutes has gone by since the brownies kicked in, although it seemed like a hell of a lot longer.
We're now being called up to the counter.
Oh Oh, my first thought was; because we've been here for less than an hour there must a problem with one of the forms, but no, get this, they were just being efficient and the processing was now complete. What a treat that was, and I'm pretty sure it only cost five or ten dollars for each passport as well.
We thanked and paid the lady and out the door we went laughing all the way. This whole deal was working out perfect, we couldn't be happier.
Now with the passport business finished, we hopped on a bus and headed for the Toronto Science Centre for an afternoon of play.
We had a blast throughout the whole afternoon, playing with a number of exhibits, laughing our asses off and expressing our excitement about the trip; we were so pumped, and really high.
I don't even remember how the hell we got home, probably the train, or maybe a bus, don't remember, didn't care,
I only remember it was a hell of a great day.
.............................................................................................................................
Eve and I spent the next couple of days gathering up all the things that we would need for our trip: sleeping bags, backpack, a four man tent, toiletries and a few clothes.
We weren't going on some typical bullshit charter vacation at some big fancy hotel with bus trips to all the local tourist traps, no way man, that wasn't for us. We're going to backpack around the country and see what it's really like, and of course, wait for it........................................................................................>
take a ride on the Marrakesh Express....this was the major biggie for me man,.....the biggest biggie.
It was now Feb. 6, departure day. Everything that had to be done was completed in nine days, it was a scramble but we got it all done.
Mel, Aileen and Al came over to our place about 1 o'clock; we're all so excited in anticipation of our trip.
With all our gear together, we're now ready to rock.
Two of Eve's sisters, Dorothy and Marge are driving us to Toronto airport. We loaded all our gear into the station wagon and headed off.
We got to the airport at about 3pm, thanked and said goodbye to Dorothy and Marge. Went inside to find our departure gate.
Our flight wasn't leaving until 5:45pm so we had time to kill. We went to a restaurant and had something to eat.
Aileen called her sister who lived in Toronto, she came to the airport and hung out with us for awhile. After a bit she said goodbye and wished us all a safe trip.
It was now go time, time to shit or get off the pot......
Page #1
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