8:45 a.m. - 2004-06-14

Bike rides and boy bands

I am having the worst time with my page. It take a good 5 minutes to load, and it only seems to be happening on mine. Everyone else loads just fine. Are you having the same problem when you go here?

Anyway - weird weekend on this end. Kinda busy, kinda slow. Kinda a little bit of everything. Saturday morning was overcast and dreary with the threat of rain. T and I were planning on taking the motorcycle up to Nanaimo to visit the in-laws. My father-in-law had knee replacement surgery last week and was still in the hospital. Due to outrageous gas prices T thought it would be wiser to take the bike. (I had my doubts).

I'm still in my cast, but T thought that since I'm down to the last week or so of living with it that I would be safe by just wearing my bike boots. They're pretty solid and tight. I thought it was the lesser of two evils, although I couldn't quite picture me on the bike with my cast on. So - trade it in for a day I did.

As the afternoon and time for departure approached the clouds were getting darker and more threatening. We left around 1:30 and headed north. We hit drizzle and wind all the way up. I was freezing to boot (no pun intended). We have great all weather (water-resistant) jackets, decent gloves, and leather chaps. But by the time we reached Nanaimo - we arrived in a veritible downpour! We were soaked.

Visiting with my dad-in-law was a little strained. He's not very talkative at the best of time (although - when he gets on a roll - look out - you'll never get a word in edgewise), but we'd woken him up from a short, unrestful nap. Because of the variety of drugs and elixrs dad was rather . . . . out of it, so waking up took some time. Nothing like sitting in a hospital room (which he was sharing with 3 other older men), and no one is talking. The moans, groans, and whinning emitting from the bed beside dad was rather entertaining (this man was clearly NOT in the present).

Never-the-less we stayed for about an hour then got back on a wet bike and headed over to the parents homestead. By this time it was a definite deluge of rain.

Thankfully dad's car was a welcome respite as we took mom out to dinner. Besides we could quite figure out how to balance mom on the handle bars . . . . Swiss Chalet was warm, inviting, and very very very busy. We were able to be sat quickly, but by the time we left there was over 30 people waiting to be seated. It's Swiss Chalet - what's the pull? You have a choice of chicken, chicken, or . . . chicken. But you know what's really funny? They don't have a chicken burger! No - I actually had a beef burger, but mom and T made up for the difference in my lack of poultry appetite.

Ahead of us, after a quick visit with mom, was a long trek home, in the rain. I am very confident in T's ability to ride in adverse weather, but all I could think of was "Are we there yet?" Even as an RCMP pulled us over on the Malahat, I stood stoically, wringing out my gloves. Wishing I could take my boots of and pour them out.

Thankfully God saw fit to intervene and T got off with a "verbal warning". I firmly believe that the officer saw me wringing out my gloves and us generally looking like drawned rats, and took pitty on us poor, older, bike travellers.

He wished us off well and safe, and 30 minutes later we pulled into our driveway.

I'm sure the sight of us would have been pretty funny. It looked like we'd both pee'd ourselves thorougly. There was barely a square inch of our pants that wasn't wet. Water was driven down in between pants and chaps, and we were oh so cold.

A warm bed and a hot cup of tea brought the day to a close and into better perspective.

Sunday was definitely going to be a day of rest. Sorta. As alluded to in previous entries, Sunday mornings of far from restful, but at least we didn't go for a bike ride or get rained on.

Sunday evening we thought we would go and support a friend of ours who was leading worship at another church. We had a great time listening to his teen church band. You know - your typical garage band that doesn't understand volume or timing only noise and how fast you can get the notes out. But all in all - they were pretty good, and we were glad to be there to support them.

Thus ends another weekend for this household. Another Monday starts with a whimper, but life is good!! Of that - I can attest!

Cheers - LJ