So last night i was at a friends house for a barbeque.  It was a nice barbeque.  We had got the best barbeque food. Instead of going out and buying hot dogs or hamburgers like one might think of doing, i had gone out and bought some lamb and Italian sausages.  Good meat to fill up the bun.  That was the first course.  The second course was to be lamb and beef shish kebabs which, added to fresh tzatziki, feta and tomatoes, on a bun would be our Greek style hot dog.  Very tasty. 
   The dynamic was a little odd there.  We were the first people to arrive at the barbeque, we settled in, met the two housemates that we don't know there and began to amuse ourselves in conversation.  A little while passed and we put food on and ate it.  Other groups, soon after this started to trickle in.  After a while there was somewhat more than 20 of us there and things were humming.  Only...a little strangely.  There didn't seem to be any inter-group conversation happening at all.  I say not that members of the group i arrived approached anyone and were snubbed.  It just seemed, rather that no one wanted to meet someone new.  Talk to each other or anything like that.  Maybe it was the day, who knows.  
   But this didn't hamper our efforts to have a good time.  The cool thing about going places with your friends is that you are there with your friends and you have a good time like that.  
   
   And then things got just a little bit strange. One of our group was reading a magazine, or flipping through it idly while talking is more like it.  The mag...um, metropolitan homes, i think, i shall check...yup, that's it,or home rather.  You can see it here.  Sort of a home design mag for the very very well off.  Well, it is a NYC mag but there was an article about a house that is here, in Vancouver, or West Vancouver, rather.   It was a very nice home, outside and in, with a kitchen to absolutely die for.  All of a sudden, without warning, someone had said, let's go find it, and we were all in a tizzy, getting ready to go and make a road trip off on our way to find this house.  Or rather, this first comment piqued our interest, it was the additional comment, made by yours truly of, and we can get a slurpee that really got us moving.   Our only semblance of a plan to drive around the city of West Vancouver looking for this house.  It seemed like a grand and fun thing to do.  
   And don't get me wrong, any adventure that can gather that kind of spontaneity and enthusiasm around it is well worth pursuing.  The only drawback that wasn't so good?  Well, we ditched my friend's party.  It was the first party i can remember her inviting us to and we left early.  I hope she understands that we weren't actually 'ditching' her but rather riding the wave of our excitement.  At the time she indicated that she understood.  It wasn't the party that we were leaving it was the will-the-wisp of our excitement that we were pursuing.  Anyways, sorry J.

   But back to the important thing, the roadtrip....  None of us know West Van much at all, but did this stop us, did this daunt us? No, not one bit.  We didn't' have a map, did this make us hold back, not a whit.  Onward we went, singing along with....no wait, it was the beastie boys, some of their non-sing-alongable stuff, but we did go onwards, if that means anything.  As we drove down the highway each of us had our heads out the windows of the car looking out, and mostly up (this did turn out to be a bit of a problem as we had to continuously stuff the driver's head back in the car so he could watch the road).  We interspersed this with close scanning of the magazine, looking now, not so much at the house but out the windows of the house.  We had to see the view that they were seeing so that we could find where they were.  Once we had the same sort of view then we would be in the right area at least.  
   After a significant amount of head craning, scanning and driving we arrived at a plan, we would go to horseshoe bay and start there (it is the farthest point north in West Van that the house could have been).  We would make our way back down the coastline searching.  We were yet to be daunted.  Our spirits high, we were on a quest to find the magical mystical house.  
   We were not surprised that at first we did not meet instant success.  After all there are a a hundred thousand people living in West Van, at least.  We kept finding houses that we loved.  West Van is basically only populated by rich folks and their houses really do seem to indicate this.  And then something happened that is truly a testament to the fickleness of the nature of a mob.  We were driving along looking for the house when we spotted a park that is along the water.  It looked kind of interesting so we yelled at the driver to pull over.  If we were truly dedicated we would have realized this was the worst time to do such.  After all, we had only started our quest at the start of the onset of dusk.  But we didn't, out we got, to clamber down to the rock strewn beach.  We walked across a tidal rock bridge to a little island, climbed it to look around and bascially had a fun little hike.  
  I grant you that one of us did stand at the top of the island and shout that he could not, indeed see the house.  Of course, this was not something that the rest of us had even still had on our minds and there was nothing about this island to indicate it would have been a good vantage point for seeing the house.  When we finally did get back to the car, we did return to our quest, but it was now quite dark and there was not much chance of seeing anything.  This did not stop us from trying.  'Could those lights be it?  How about those?  Those over there?'  We were like the ancient conquistadors, on our quest and could not be turned from our search for the far east, you know except by, gold, naked native ladies, fresh fruit, silver, fountains of youth....you know, important things. 

  On the way back into town we were once again turned aside from our mission.  Once by ice cream and another by a mild case of car sickness.  We would make such good heroes.  We would!  For true!  Upon leaving West Vancouver, none of use even noticed that we had not found the house, we didn't seem to think this was of importance.  Although we did plot together to make up a little story for the friend whom we had ditched.  An exciting one.  

   We had all but given up on the house and then we found ourselves lost.  We stopped at one home to ask for directions and it was not until the owner had opened up the front door that we saw the paintings from the magazine's photo spread.  We had found it at last by accident, not by design.  After relating our little adventure story she let us in and gave us the tour.  While in the kitchen we took over and whipped up a little dessert for us all.  Conveniently the choco-addict in the car had stocked up on chocolate and the pixie had bought marshmallows to throw at us.  We had smores.  The kitchen was obviously quite a dream. 

   I'll let you know how the story pans out.  Lying is the basis of all great friendships.