Hot People Move (or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation): Part 3, Bike

As I'm sure any faithful reader has gathered, I like to cycle, and despite being in the hilly Canadian Shield, I'm finding these hills much more manageable than the ones in New Brunswick that begin at sea level. Again, make no mistake. I am not a "cyclist" (except, of course, when it makes me seem extra heroic or athletic to say so). I don't own any fancy shorts or spandex tops. I can't cycle 100km/d ad nauseom and I don't have one of those super hero-shaped helmets. Mostly, again, I like to go fast...usually downhill, because it's less work that way.

Cycling around here also comes with lots of scenery, and wildlife...especially if you don't mind seeing two-dimensional chipmunks and rabbits (helpfully flattened by the tire of a local F150), with occasional partial internal anatomy, or Jackson Pollock-esque renderings of leopard frogs. Sorry. That was gross.

Anyway, I've been cycling a lot here, training for my 20km commute to work this fall (yay bike paths!) and attempting to undo all the dessert-eating I've been doing with my grandmother. My greatest feat thus far has been a 37km loop. Hardcore cyclists (such as those I allude to in my illustration of the sort of cyclist I am not) will scoff at that, but it's my longest ride to date and I'm proud of it (so nyeah).

It was, however, not without incident. The trip started with some pretty, and familiar scenery. However, just before I turned into new territory, I heard a loud and unfamiliar sound. I soon realized I was being chased by three (rather angry sounding) unleashed dogs who appeared to believe that my ankles looked like they might be tasty. I had to ride for my life, and I outrode them! When I was sure I was not going to be eaten by a pack of rabid dogs (three's a pack, right?), I stopped for a rest and admired this cabbage patch.

I soon turned again into even less familiar territory, at which point the pavement ended. The dirt road that followed seemed to be covered with looser and looser sand...to the point where I amused myself with the notion that I was riding through the Guinness World Record holder for longest outdoor sandbox. Seriously, you could have made some sweet castles with that shit. My amusement was also tempered with the fear that at any moment I would be met by an Ed Gein or Michael Myers lookalike, brandishing a chainsaw, who would drag me to some cabin in the middle of the forest to carry out some sinister and unspeakable deeds on my person. Houses on this road, you see, were few and far between, so only the trees would be able to hear my scream (and, presumably, the rabbits, chipmunks and frogs not yet dispatched by the tire of a pick-up).

Fortunately, I emerged from the forest unscathed to the intersection of Rockingham (I say intersection rather than village or community because it consists of a stop sign and an historic church) From there I continued my thereafter mostly uphill battle (which I gave up on the last leg of the UP). While the view at the top suggested I'd reached lofty heights, the ensuing downhill, though fast, was not as satisfying as I'd hoped, and when I'd reached the last intersection of my trip, (upon which a stand of red pine once stood, until obliterated by the great tornado of aught-seven), my legs were more or less ready to fall off, despite (or perhaps because of) their knowledge that there were only five more or less flat kilometres to go.

Anyway, I reached home with the knowledge that this feat was also achieved...and it feels pretty good to have been a country girl driving on the 401 through Toronto without fear, and to have sailed my grandmother's Laser without falling out or getting stuck in a reef, and to have taken my longest bike-ride ever despite the (real) threat of hungry dogs and the (imagined) threat of chainsaw-wielding homicidal maniacs.

My return to a city (an unfamiliar one) is impending, and if my quest for hotness (I achieved some goals, right? Hot people do that...) seems to be going too successfully, I am sure my new habitat will provide me with plenty of opportunity for blunders and mishaps on the road to being hot. Fear not.

Hot People "Dear John" Their Vices

Dear Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream,

I don't know how to put this gently; it's over. We have to stop this on-again-off-again thing we have.

You have to stop "accidentally" meeting me in the freezer aisle while I'm looking for frozen blueberries. You have to stop pretending you need a ride to the check-out aisle in my basket. You REALLY have to stop showing up in my life during moments of weakness and depositing your life in my freezer, taking up door space and using up all the cold air.

Being with you is bad for me. You encourage me to lie on the couch all evening and watch Top Model reruns. You suck me into your lazy game.

Tell your friends Fuzzy Peaches and Chocolate Mint Rosettes to leave me alone too. I mean, at least they have the decency to be gone the next day, but they're toxic too and all they leave me with is empty cardboard boxes and torn up cellophane bags.

I know we'll both have to be strong these next few months. This hurts me too. I'll miss your creaminess, your bitter chocolate chips, and the slight saltiness of your doughy bits. But it's not meant to be. This has to be goodbye.

Miss T

Hot People Don't Get Lost in Potholes

I'm moving next week to a city I've never been to before. Therefore, my soon-to-be roommate and I thought it would be a good idea to take a little roadtrip up there to get the lay of the land. I'm sure you can imagine what kind of hijynx I could get into on this kind of caper.

The first snafu happened before we'd even left home. I got a call the night before from my soon-to-be roommate saying that her car had stalled in the middle of the road and we couldn't take it the next day. Because my roommate's mother gets a corporate discount, she booked a car in my name, necessitating that my credit card information be used for the most convoluted game of telephone ever (if I see that she's gone to Costa Rica on my credit card - unlikely, since it's maxed out anyway....). I was told we'd be driving a Chevy Cobalt or a Ford Focus, or something of the like...which was fine. Those are run-of-the-mill domestic cars, both of which I've driven before. When I got there, they gave me a Mitsubishi Galant. Hmmm. Instead of a $16000 car that didn't belong to me, I'd be driving at $28000 car that didn't belong to me. That's not the least bit stressful.

I took it on the road and it was a nice drive. You can tell by how excited I am.
The ride to our destination city was pretty uneventful. We checked out our apartment, got directions from our building manager in the smokiest rental office I've ever been in (seriously, we couldn't see each other from two feet away...our airways closed up in disgust!), and then headed to the gas station to fill up. That's when things got...funky. I pulled up to the pump, got out, and then realized I couldn't open the gas cap because there was no little pull-spot on the door. I got back into the car to look for a release in the driver's console...nada. I looked again on the door. I looked again at the console. I pulled away from the pump because, at this point, there was a small line-up of angry-looking motorists awaiting their fill-up while I was fannying about between the trunk and the driver's seat. Then I got the manual out - a trick I'd seen before during an hilarious "Are the lights on, or aren't they?" situation on a previous road trip. While I'm perusing the manual (I'm sucking my finger here because I bent my fingernail back trying to close the door of the car)...my roommate checks out the front console, then heads back to the gas tank to see what's up. She figures it out by accident. Apparently, you push on the wrong side, and the right side of the door opens. Genius. So intuitive.

Once we were filled up, we headed into the greater city to set up our power bill, tenant's insurance and figure out where a couple other essentials were (the gym, the grocery store, Cora's Breakfast and Lunch). Despite having a map and a small arsenal of Google Maps print-offs, we got lost like, a zillion times. To illustrate, we drove over the same toll-bridge twice. Once on purpose, but I thought we were getting on the bridge to cross the river back to our original point, and as it turned out, we had already crossed without my noticing (concerning, when you consider that I was the one driving). It did allow me some practice at tossing my quarters in the bin, though...which I'd never done before and it made me more nervous than driving in a strange city.

After a number of 87-point turns in strangers' driveways, we were headed back to our happy homeland (and we were happy to be headed back...we're moving to a dirty, dirty city...it's going to be a long summer). While I thought the worst was over, driving-wise, Mother Nature had something else in store for me. It had been threatening rain all day, but after a few hours in our destination city, it had seemed to clear up. However, once we were on the highway, we were met with torrential rains the likes of which would decimate a divinely-protected ark (our ark, which only had two of one animal in it, was obviously doomed). My roommate is a nervous driver, and moans with extreme urgency when she's worried we're going to hydroplane (also when she sees dead animals on the road, and when she's excited to see live ponies in the fields next to the road). The moaning surprised me every time, which meant I jumped to alertness every time, which meant I did a small fishtail every time, which meant she would moan again...it was a vicious circle made worse by vicious rains.

Even when the rain cleared, though, we weren't quite safe. Our next trial was to endure the giant potholes of Eastern Canada. Most of them were of reasonable size and depth, but since they're EVERYWHERE, it's useless to swerve to avoid them (otherwise, you'll end up in the ditch or the median). At one point, I decided to put my tires on the shoulder to straddle them - which frightened my roommate because she thought I was driving off the road. "No, I'm doing this on purpose!" I cried, just before a large-ish crater came into view. Totally unable to avoid it, I braced for impact, my roommate screamed - the car dipped - I prepared to be lost forever because surely THIS pothole was a portal to another dimension - but soon we were driving on solid ground again. We had conquered it! We braved the pothole and lived to tell the tale. All other potholes seem like pockmarks in the road in comparison!

I'm home now, safe and sound, despite the rains, the potholes, and the gale-force winds that met me at the Tantramar marsh (some of them nearly pushed me into the other lane on the highway...good thing it's twinned). I'm pretty sure my roommate will never drive with me again, or go out in the rain. And I'm definitely not looking forward to the move in a week.