BUTTER CROSSED THE LINE

"Don't get brioche, it has a ton of butter."

That was all it took to turn a long-awaited kayak camping trip into a public correction in a little restaurant after a ferry ride. The poster and their roomie had already spent years living together, and by the poster's account, they were close enough to count as family. Both were pushing 30. The roomie had a digestive condition that made even a little dairy brutal, causing severe stomach cramps. She didn't eat meat, but could have eggs and some fish, and that made cooking at home simple. The poster says she was always grateful.

Out in the world, though, things had gone sideways before.

The pair camped together a lot, and on several trips the pattern had been the same: stop for food on the way, then by the time they reached camp, the roomie was doubled over with cramps. More than once, the trip ended there, with them packing up and heading back. Years earlier, during one of their first meals out together, the poster had flagged dairy in a dish to a waiter and explained the roomie couldn't eat it. The roomie had asked them politely not to do that again, and they had stopped.

So when the two of them, plus another friend and the poster's girlfriend, set out for a major trip to Posey Island, the stakes were high. The tiny marine park off Friday Harbor in the San Juan Islands had only two campsites, and both were reserved for two nights so the group would have the island to themselves. One day lined up with the lowest tide of the month, which meant good tide pooling. To get there, they had woken up at 2 a.m., driven five hours, paid $70 for a two-hour ferry, and then geared up to paddle a few miles across the harbor in the early morning cold. They had all taken time off work. They had taken the early ferry on purpose, hoping for fewer boats, because the roomie was afraid of kayaking near large vessels, and the others didn't love it either.

Then came breakfast.

At a small restaurant after the ferry, the roomie ordered something on brioche bread. The poster immediately told her not to get it because it had "a ton of butter." The roomie shot them a dirty look, asked the waiter to check with the chef, and confirmed it did in fact contain butter. She got a substitution.

And then she was annoyed.

She didn't like being corrected in front of the waiter, especially after she had already asked the poster not to do that before. The poster said they weren't willing to turn the whole trip around over being told, again, that something she'd ordered contained dairy. With the ferry schedule to the San Juans, missing that reservation could have meant waiting days. They had already come too far.

In an edit, the poster added that these trip-ending dairy incidents were rare, fewer than 1 out of 10 trips. They said that in about five cases, two-thirds weren't even the roomie's fault, because she had ordered vegan food. They also noted they camp basically every weekend in summer and many weekends in spring and fall.