Bike Ride - Hers and His - May 19, 2018
Bike Ride Hers
The look that the office administrator at the auto repair shop gave us when Laur thought he’d put down his car keys and I said, “Laur, those are the bike lock keys, not the car keys!” was one of – “Seriously, these folks are allowed to drive a vehicle?”
OK, this was the second of two idiotic moments this woman had had with us within half an hour. The first was a panicked phone call from Laur, “Um, we were supposed to have the van to you by 8:30 am but we forgot...” (It was 9 am of the same day, thankfully.)
What came before this was actually a leisurely morning – a little too leisurely as it turns out. I went for my morning jog-walk. We had planned to ride our bikes to Port Colbourne and have lunch at the Smokin’ Buddha and then cycle back – a nice 80 k ride over mostly flat ground. OK, there is the escarpment of 300 feet, but other than that…
But around 8 am when Laur looked at the wind direction and force, he wondered if riding 40 k into that might be a little much for our first real ride of the season. That didn’t bother me, but what did was finding out that the Smokin Buddha is closed on Monday. If you know me, you’ll know that I do not do well without food. I get “stangry,” as my granddaughter Emma puts it. Starving and angry.
Laur set about planning another bike route and I started getting restless. I have a lot of energy in the morning and that doesn’t fit well with small-apartment living. There is a reason I jog-walk and go to the gym. By 8:45 am Laur had a new plan; by 9 am he was about ready to leave when he said, “Oh no! I was supposed to have the van in the shop by 8:30 am!”
Gah! Now I knew this too and was equally responsible for forgetting, but I chose to neglect that part. “Laur, are the tires in the van already?” “No!” he yelled, “And I have to take them out (from our storage locker) one at a time!”
Being ever helpful, I said, “Couldn’t you load them all up on our dolly?” Laurence by this time had worked himself into a lather. “No! Don’t give me any more suggestions! My brain is exploding.” OK, I settled into slow burn mode on the couch with my trusty computer, looking up chest freezers…
By the time Laur got to our storage locker and saw the dolly, he thought to himself, “You know, that would work!” So he piled all of the tires on it and was able to bring them out on one trip. I watched unhelpfully from the living room. Next, he got his bike out of storage. (I keep mine in our bedroom – a story in itself.) I helpfully called out, “Did you have to make 4 trips?!” Good thing Laur doesn’t have laser beam vision – I’d be a crispy critter.
Bless his heart, Laur has to load the tires and the bikes into the car by himself. Yes, I’m actually very strong – but I have bad arthritis in my wrists, so I am inclined to drop things. Having a 25-pound tire fall onto your foot – not the best way to start (or in this case re-start) your day.
Time to get into the car. Normally Laur places the bikes on my side of the car because I’m a small person and don’t mind, as the non-driver, being a little crunched up against the dash board. Being discombobulated (a word we use often to describe ourselves) he has shoved the bikes up against the driver’s seat. This meant that he had to drive with the steering wheel almost pressing into his backbone.
Finally, we got there – no wheels or lungs punctured, and this is when Laur handed the office gal our bicycle lock keys instead of the car keys.
The rest of the morning went better than the first part, but not quite as planned. The wind was doing its best to blow us to Toronto. A path that Laur thought looked good from google maps turned out to be deep gravel. And that Holland road? How we enjoyed the coast down! - forgetting about the climb back up until it hit us – I won’t say like a transport truck – but we sure got winded.
And poor Laurence, half way up the hill his bicycle seat slid down so every time he sat down to pedal (taking a break from standing to pedal) he looked like a circus monkey on tiny tricycle. Once we got to the top of the hill and Laur had adjusted his bike seat, he said we could cut the ride short by ten km if we wanted to, thinking I would say, “Are you kidding me? In for a penny, in for a pound!” And I said, “That sounds like a good idea!”
Laur was shocked. He said to me with a disappointed tone, “You’re really not into this today, are you!?” There was no safe response to that question. And we did cut the ride short and went back to our mechanic’s. The office manager is actually very helpful and took our van for its “e-test” – to save us the bother (and perhaps, in her mind, to save lives.) Our beloved van failed and I suspect our attempts to resolve this will be another story.
And our day went uphill after that.
Hmm, as a wannabe cyclist, that almost sounds doomful.
*****
Bike Ride His
Some days the best laid plans go awry, like today: May 14, 2018
We planned to cycle 42 km down the canal to Port Colborne, have lunch at Smokin' Buddha, and then cycle back. But the weather changed...from upper 60s and a 10 km breeze in St. Catharines to barely 50 degrees and a wind of 20+ km in Port Colborne. While we tried to talk ourselves into it anyway, Jan checked the restaurant--and it wasn't open on Mondays. That ended the Port Colborne jaunt. So, what to do? I figured out a nice 56 km loop out to Allanburg, across to the Fonthill/St. Johns area via trail and country roads, back into St. Catharines and out the Merritt Trail to Port Dalhousie, and then home via the lakeshore and Walker's Creek. I was feeling charged up and ready to go when out of the recesses of my brain came an amber alert: VAN IN SHOP it beeped, VAN IN SHOP! Whaaa...is this Monday? YES, of course it's Monday! OH NO, we forgot the appointment! I checked the time; we were already 10 minutes late to get our summer tires on. Which meant I had to get them out of storage, and out to the van, and then put the bikes in as well. We got to the shop 30 minutes late, and began our ride from there. And then we had to cut off the last quarter so we could get back to pick up the van.
We still had a 2.5 hour, 39 km ride. But we'd hoped for 84, then down-sized to 56. Jan said 39 felt like a warm-up. Hmmm...today, once we were finally out on the canal trail, with the big boats going by, it felt like therapy.
(Note from Jan: You can understand why – living with me – Laur might be in search of therapy.)
The look that the office administrator at the auto repair shop gave us when Laur thought he’d put down his car keys and I said, “Laur, those are the bike lock keys, not the car keys!” was one of – “Seriously, these folks are allowed to drive a vehicle?”
OK, this was the second of two idiotic moments this woman had had with us within half an hour. The first was a panicked phone call from Laur, “Um, we were supposed to have the van to you by 8:30 am but we forgot...” (It was 9 am of the same day, thankfully.)
What came before this was actually a leisurely morning – a little too leisurely as it turns out. I went for my morning jog-walk. We had planned to ride our bikes to Port Colbourne and have lunch at the Smokin’ Buddha and then cycle back – a nice 80 k ride over mostly flat ground. OK, there is the escarpment of 300 feet, but other than that…
But around 8 am when Laur looked at the wind direction and force, he wondered if riding 40 k into that might be a little much for our first real ride of the season. That didn’t bother me, but what did was finding out that the Smokin Buddha is closed on Monday. If you know me, you’ll know that I do not do well without food. I get “stangry,” as my granddaughter Emma puts it. Starving and angry.
Laur set about planning another bike route and I started getting restless. I have a lot of energy in the morning and that doesn’t fit well with small-apartment living. There is a reason I jog-walk and go to the gym. By 8:45 am Laur had a new plan; by 9 am he was about ready to leave when he said, “Oh no! I was supposed to have the van in the shop by 8:30 am!”
Gah! Now I knew this too and was equally responsible for forgetting, but I chose to neglect that part. “Laur, are the tires in the van already?” “No!” he yelled, “And I have to take them out (from our storage locker) one at a time!”
Being ever helpful, I said, “Couldn’t you load them all up on our dolly?” Laurence by this time had worked himself into a lather. “No! Don’t give me any more suggestions! My brain is exploding.” OK, I settled into slow burn mode on the couch with my trusty computer, looking up chest freezers…
By the time Laur got to our storage locker and saw the dolly, he thought to himself, “You know, that would work!” So he piled all of the tires on it and was able to bring them out on one trip. I watched unhelpfully from the living room. Next, he got his bike out of storage. (I keep mine in our bedroom – a story in itself.) I helpfully called out, “Did you have to make 4 trips?!” Good thing Laur doesn’t have laser beam vision – I’d be a crispy critter.
Bless his heart, Laur has to load the tires and the bikes into the car by himself. Yes, I’m actually very strong – but I have bad arthritis in my wrists, so I am inclined to drop things. Having a 25-pound tire fall onto your foot – not the best way to start (or in this case re-start) your day.
Time to get into the car. Normally Laur places the bikes on my side of the car because I’m a small person and don’t mind, as the non-driver, being a little crunched up against the dash board. Being discombobulated (a word we use often to describe ourselves) he has shoved the bikes up against the driver’s seat. This meant that he had to drive with the steering wheel almost pressing into his backbone.
Finally, we got there – no wheels or lungs punctured, and this is when Laur handed the office gal our bicycle lock keys instead of the car keys.
The rest of the morning went better than the first part, but not quite as planned. The wind was doing its best to blow us to Toronto. A path that Laur thought looked good from google maps turned out to be deep gravel. And that Holland road? How we enjoyed the coast down! - forgetting about the climb back up until it hit us – I won’t say like a transport truck – but we sure got winded.
And poor Laurence, half way up the hill his bicycle seat slid down so every time he sat down to pedal (taking a break from standing to pedal) he looked like a circus monkey on tiny tricycle. Once we got to the top of the hill and Laur had adjusted his bike seat, he said we could cut the ride short by ten km if we wanted to, thinking I would say, “Are you kidding me? In for a penny, in for a pound!” And I said, “That sounds like a good idea!”
Laur was shocked. He said to me with a disappointed tone, “You’re really not into this today, are you!?” There was no safe response to that question. And we did cut the ride short and went back to our mechanic’s. The office manager is actually very helpful and took our van for its “e-test” – to save us the bother (and perhaps, in her mind, to save lives.) Our beloved van failed and I suspect our attempts to resolve this will be another story.
And our day went uphill after that.
Hmm, as a wannabe cyclist, that almost sounds doomful.
*****
Bike Ride His
Some days the best laid plans go awry, like today: May 14, 2018
We planned to cycle 42 km down the canal to Port Colborne, have lunch at Smokin' Buddha, and then cycle back. But the weather changed...from upper 60s and a 10 km breeze in St. Catharines to barely 50 degrees and a wind of 20+ km in Port Colborne. While we tried to talk ourselves into it anyway, Jan checked the restaurant--and it wasn't open on Mondays. That ended the Port Colborne jaunt. So, what to do? I figured out a nice 56 km loop out to Allanburg, across to the Fonthill/St. Johns area via trail and country roads, back into St. Catharines and out the Merritt Trail to Port Dalhousie, and then home via the lakeshore and Walker's Creek. I was feeling charged up and ready to go when out of the recesses of my brain came an amber alert: VAN IN SHOP it beeped, VAN IN SHOP! Whaaa...is this Monday? YES, of course it's Monday! OH NO, we forgot the appointment! I checked the time; we were already 10 minutes late to get our summer tires on. Which meant I had to get them out of storage, and out to the van, and then put the bikes in as well. We got to the shop 30 minutes late, and began our ride from there. And then we had to cut off the last quarter so we could get back to pick up the van.
We still had a 2.5 hour, 39 km ride. But we'd hoped for 84, then down-sized to 56. Jan said 39 felt like a warm-up. Hmmm...today, once we were finally out on the canal trail, with the big boats going by, it felt like therapy.
(Note from Jan: You can understand why – living with me – Laur might be in search of therapy.)