FORWARD
This summer has been a bit difficult for our traditional 'duck dinners'. No, they're not the kind where anyone eats duck. It's our quirky routine whereby three couples hand over rubber duckies to signify the receivers will host the next dinner. It's been going on for most of the millennium. Now, however, retirements seem to have made getting together more difficult!
We ended the 2023 swap season with an October Canadian Thanksgiving in Richmond. The ducks were handed over to the downtown gents. However, after getting back in March 2024, Jay and I had the gang over for a movie night as one member was not back in town. Then, after we we noticed the potential, future scheduling difficulties, we tried to have a duck dinner a bit out of turn so we could all meet before the summer was half over. The gang had a number of overlapping trips. Unfortunately, on May 11th, Jiwan was sick after getting back from Nepal.
The first official swap occurred on June 30th when we accepted the ducks from Tim and Jiwan. Schedules kept conflicting to prevent a meet up for the remainder of the summer. So, the ducks were still in New Westminster when Ed and Shinji put on their magnificent Thanksgiving dinner again. All that work always counts as a duck swap, even though we still had the ducks. We made a deal that the ducks could 'catch up' today.
After tonight's meal at our place, we temporary passed the ducks to Ed and Shinji and they, in turn, ensured the ducks moved to their rightful keepers in Vancouver's West End. The yellow quackers made the loop just once during 2024!
This does mean we'll get to kick things off in 2025 in downtown Vancouver.
It was nice having the guys over for a final time this year. We talked, used the hot tub and sauna downstairs, and eventually had dinner and dessert. The dinner consisted of just vegetable-fried rice, chicken curry and fish salad. Desert was pumpkin-spice Swiss roll pudding with cherry ice cream.
We got rid of the ducks and they eventually ended up with Tim and Jiwan as shown above.
Even though the clocks will go back, everyone left rather early.