oh-sweet-pea
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July 31, 2003 - 4:58 pm
i have boundless energy! i came home from work speeding my bike past the green-haired couriers, dodging construction baracades and the whole time my skirt fluttered over my thighs. when i got home with nary a sweat touching my brow, i boogied away to the cramps with c as i ate a homemade lime/orange popsicle. mmm!!! energy is great!!
but how did i get this way? well, lemme tell you in the most roundabout way (of course!).....
saturday c and i woke up and we decided that we should finally take that bike trip that we've been talking about for ages. we thought somewhere in the gulf islands would be nice. the movie theater called and asked if i could fill in for the evening and so before i headed to work, we had a lot of planning to do. we headed to the kind of stores that i would normally not go into. our first stop, mountain equiptment co-op where i got a water bottle holder for my bike. we then headed to another outdoor store and i ended up buying a pair of super-sale hiking boots and a pair of shorts. i was feeling ready for adventure! but first i had to ride to the ridge for my evening shift and ended up watching that stupid folk-music mockumentary and ate a lot of popcorn. when i got home at midnight, it was too hot to sleep, so me and c made ourselves tall glasses of icey tom collins and sat outside in the park and made our camping plans.
sunday i begged and borrowed a sleeping bag and a thermarest from a friend and managed to come home and find my friend carley at my front door. we ended up having a picnic in the park with blender drinks, baguettes, brie, salad, and licorice whips. and when it got too hot out, we splashed around in the waterpark like little kids. in the evening, me and c got some chinese from 'hons' and watched the larry sanders dvd from the library. we packed and headed to bed way too late.
monday we headed out early to catch the bus and hoped there were no other cyclists wanting to catch the same bus as us (as vancouver buses only have space for 2 bikes on their racks). we were lucky and we got to the ferry on time. on the ferry ride i was a little freaked out cuz although i ride my bike everywhere i need to go in this city, i had never undertaken an actual "bike trip". on my bike i was carrying one panier filled with the minimum amount of clothes and toiletries i would need for 3 days. i also had a stuff sack for my bike rack filled with my sleeping bag and thermarest. considering the most i've ever carried on my bike was a wicker basket filled with fruit, i was taking on much more extra weight. i was nervous about my bike riding abilities. but as soon as we got on the island, all of that insecurity disappeared.
yes, the island was hilly but it was beautiful and with kisses that greeted me from c on top of every hill, i made out okay. we stopped off to wade in the ocean and pick the wild blackberries that grew everywhere. we saw a buck and a doe and herons seemed to be everywhere. the first night we camped at the marine campground on south pender. i had mistakenly read that the campground was a 20 minute hike -- it ended up being very steep and we had to climb to the top of the tallest mountain on pender and back down again. it ended up being close to an hour to get to our campsite, but once we did reach it we had beaches and sunny views and sandwiches to keep us happy. the next day we hiked out and camped at the provincial campground and ended up drinking away most of the day at a pub.
the next day after much biking around, we caught the ferry home and assumed our adventure had come to an end. wrong! the bus stop at the ferry terminal had about half a dozen bikes wanting to get on the bus, so we decided to ride our bikes from the terminal to ladner to catch another bus. the ride was pretty flat so the 12 km was like nothing. we caught the bus we needed and headed to the skytrain in surrey. however, once we got to the station, we were told that bikes would not be allowed on the skytrain because of the fireworks downtown. i was pissed off. angry. on the verge of tears even. there were no bike-carrying buses heading even close to downtown from surrey and the only way to head home was to bike to new west and catch 2 buses home. so we did. we crossed the fucking scary putello bridge -- a bridge i had only heard about on the morning radio traffic reports. there was one small sidewalk with a high curb and no fencing to prevent me from colliding with furiously speeding oncoming traffic. i was a fucking scary experience and the bridge was so long i thought it wouldn't end. yes, a whole whack of adventure in the greater vancouver region. bah!! but we got home safely even if it was a few hours later that we had expected. we stunk, we were tired and yet we felt pretty amazed. or at least i did. c has ridden his bike across canada. i can now say i have at least ridden my bike across an island and a few greater vancouver cities.
so this really long story can be boiled down to this: riding my bike home from work is nothing now. i've made a small accomplishment and i'm happy and excited to take on more. this is a pretty great summer.
one more thing: and completely unrelated, i've got some work (ie. the non-paying kind) for a super-famous lady....she's kinda like an idol....a muscian, filmmaker, video artist, cool hipster. i could go on. i have to design a flyer for a show she's doing and i'm excited as hell and freaking out like crazy!!! eek! more later.