went gift shopping, but were going to have to pick up Stephan, who would probably still be walking home once we got to University Avenue.

~Sure enough, as soon as we got to the corner of University and Belvedere, we saw Stephan waiting to cross the intersection. At the red light, we yelled at him, but he had his headphones on and he could not hear us. I swung my car into the Burger King parking lot, got out of my car and ran to the intersection in time to meet Stephan as he crossed the street. I guided Stephan back to my car, and we headed for Stephan’s house.

When we pulled into Stephan’s driveway, Marc was already there. He was dressed in a black suit that made my blue suit jacket, grey pants and Tim Horton’s tie look like casual wear. Ryan was wearing khakis, a black v-neck sweater and a blue jacket. Stephan was not dressed yet.

_ We decided to go buy gifts before Stephan got dressed and so we all packed into Marc’s car and drove two blocks to the liquor store to buy the President a bottle of wine. To commemorate the beginning of the journey, I took the lense cap off of Stephan’s video camera, put it inside coat pocket and recorded our visit to the liquor store.

Marc and I were going to pay for the wine, since Ryan already had pickles and Stephan was going to bring one of the many scented candles that his mother has hoarded away for special gift- giving occasions. Knowing very little about wine, Marc and I picked out a white wine with a depiction of Cape Breton on the label, in honour of Stephan’s homeland. Having no cash on me, I left Marc _ to pay for the bottle while I followed Ryan with the video camera as he selected a case of beer for his father’s birthday present.

Once the present gifts were paid for, we piled back into the car and headed back to Stephan’s house. We had about forty-five minutes before we had to arrive at the President’s house, but since Stephan is notoriously slow at doing just about anything, I knew we would probably be short on time once Stephan changed. Sure enough, it took Stephan ten minutes to change. During that time, Ryan, Marc and I stood waiting in the small entryway to Stephan’s side door and watched Stephan’s sister make spaghetti. We got rest- less and tested out The Cadre’s digital camera on Stephan’s dog.

By the time Stephan had changed (he wore the same pants, but a different shirt, a tie and a blue jacket) we were still a little early. I asked Stephan if he had the certificate and he said that it was still posted on the bulletin board at the Cadre office and so we head- ed there so that we could present the certificate to him. When we arrived on campus, I ran to the office and pulled the certificate off the bulletin board and grabbed an extra video tape, just in case.

Still a little early, we tried to take a photograph of the four of us sitting in the front seat of Marc’s car using the timer on the dig- ital camera. Even though the sky was overcast, there was too much glare coming off of the windshield and we decided to head toward the President’s house and try again later.

During the voyage to the President’s house, I gave Marc the directions that were written on the fax that we had received the day before. I was also videotaping as much as I could. As we got nearer, we were still early and before we made the last turn toward Stanhope, we stopped at the Brackley Beach drive-in.

The drive-in was closed for the season and we had the place to ourselves just at the time when cars would be flooding in to see the latest Martin Lawrence opus. We were losing light fast and it was beginning to rain, but we set up the camera on one of the posts in front of the screen and took a couple of pictures of us holding the gifts we were bringing for the President.

Before we could get any more pictures taken, we had to get back in the car to take shelter from the rain. We were still early.

And so, on the final stretch of road that led to the President’s house, Marc drove ten kilometres per hour so that we would not be too early. Driving that slow, we had a lot of time to observe the President’s house from afar. Sitting on the top of a cliff on the edge of the sea, it seemed a lot like Xanadu to me. We wondered if Wade was watching us approaching at a snail’s pace, but in the end it did- n’t matter. We arrived on time.

As Marc parked his car next to the President’s car, a thought