Tag Archive | travel

Road Trip

Sep5

Luke and I went on a trip to Maple Ridge last weekend to celebrate Sunny and Mike’s 25th wedding anniversary. We’ve been there twice before together, once in ’20 for Freddie’s memorial, and again in ’22 for Twig’s. This time it was for a far happier occasion, however as with the other two times, car issues arose.

The first time Luke insisted on driving his old Honda civic, and somewhere near the summit of the Coquihalla it overheated. We had to pull over, he opened the hood and steam poured out. I was sure we’d miss the event, but because he already knew it was a piece of shit car, he had brought bottles of water for just such an emergency. After a bit of a wait, we were back on our way.

On the second trip we went in my Jetta because I didn’t want a repeat of the first one. All went well until we left Sunny’s place to drive to Julie’s where we were spending the light when the red oil light came on. We were both shocked by that as I do the regular oil changes every six months. The next day however we went straight to a gas station and while it was low, it was somehow overreacting, and all was well for the drive home.

This time Luke picked me up in his 1997 Crown Victoria. As we drove down the driveway and turned onto Hall Road, I said “it sure squeaks.” But the car ran fine, and as we neared Merritt Luke said we were low on gas but should be able to make it to Hope. I said maybe you should just go into Merritt and get gas, but he said no, that’ll waste 20 minutes we can make it.

This is what I really don’t want to hear when driving along. “Uh oh, I think that gauge was wrong, we only have 2 litres of gas left, I hope we make it.” Jesus, I hate that. So I just decided to think positive, pray a bit as well for good measure, and somehow after the car dinged the third and final warning that we were about to run out of gas, we turned off for Hope and into a gas station. Phew!

The party was a lot of fun as I know so many of those people, and I was able to visit with my grand nieces and nephew a bit. They were busy bartending and visiting with their friends. Amber is 11 and can make a very good Caesar. The event was catered and there were tons of food leftover which they planned to divvy up and freeze.

The next day the drive home was very painful for Luke as he was hungover. I felt fine, so I asked him if I should drive but he said no, he could do it. Imagine our shock when we arrived at my house to see Joan lying flat on her stomach in front of the steps. We asked what happened, and she said she’d fallen the night before, and had crawled this far and couldn’t get any further.

We got her up onto a chair and plied her with water. As Luke still had to get to Osoyoos, and given his state, he said he had to leave and drove off. I tried to help Joan into her car and couldn’t so called Old Faithful, aka John Patterson, and he drove right over and helped us. You know what they say, a friend in need, is a friend indeed.

I then went to Osoyoos where mom appears able to walk minus her walker, but only when in a trance. One night she walked down two steps to her old bedroom, slept in that bed for a while, then returned to the upper part of the house. I said to her see? you think you can’t walk, but it turns out you can. Isn’t that spooky? It means she’s still able to stalk people, coming upon them without warning.

A lot of Lunches

Aug7

It’s interesting, but I’ve become a kind of a ghost placeholder for widowers. First my friend Ron, Rhonda’s widower came, and I made a ground pork, cheddar and noodle casserole, which he liked a lot. We talked about dear Rhonda and how wonderful she was, and I sent him off with a hug and a piece of chocolate cake.

Then came lunch for my friend Patricia where I had cleverly made extra of the casserole, and we had that however with a different salad. She loves cherries so I made a lettuce salad with cherries and a delicious dressing, and cherry clafoutis for dessert. Google those as they’re easy to make and delicious.

Elsa and Marie came for lunch on separate occasions and those are largely stress-free events as they happen so frequently. Then I made a new friend, and this was my junior high school friend, Bobbi’s widower, named Chad. He came for lunch, and I made us butter chicken, then he came to Osoyoos a few days later where we scattered some of her ashes.

Mom’s peaches, Glo Havens, are ripening in Osoyoos and they’re one of the nicest varieties around. She has 19 trees on her property so that’s a lot of compote, jam and pie. I was just there for my usual visit and picked around 25 pounds and want to return for more, but how when my nerves are shot from the drive as it is, so adding in an extra trip isn’t a good feeling.

Here’s another weird feeling. I now weigh 5 pounds less than I did when I got married 40 years ago. So the other day when I was cleaning out old stuff, I found my wedding dress and noticed it was a size 11. Should be perfect, right? I unzipped it and pulled it up over my hips and slid my arms into the sleeves then reached around to pull up the zipper.

Well. Do you know I’d need an extra foot of fabric to close it? How is this possible? I weigh less, yet can’t get even get close to zipping a dress I actually wore comfortably when I weighted more. I failed physics, you know, and this is another puzzle for me to ponder. I took it off, folded it and returned it to the trunk, to be tried on again in twenty years, I guess.

The other night while aimlessly scrolling through You Tube wondering what to watch, I saw Sumo Wrestling championships in Nagoya Japan. I thought what the hell, you can only watch so many plane crash and people slipping and falling shows, so clicked on that, and found out I just adore it. It’s so quick I’d hate to be there in person as you really need the slow mo replays to fully enjoy it.

What you get are two lard-filled behemoths crashing into each with such force their thigh fat ripples. At other times it’s like Bugs Bunny and the charging bull, he just steps aside, and pa-wang the bull hits an anvil. In this case a cagey wrestler steps aside at the right moment and his opponent steps out of the ring. End of match.

The other day I dyed my hair the colour of your standard mouse. Getting the Miss Clairol mix just right is hard, and see above, physics wasn’t really my thing. I guess this is more like chemistry as I mix two colours together, but now that I think of it, I failed chemistry as well. I’m not a math/science student by any stretch of the imagination.

But if you want a nice lunch made while reminiscing about your significant other, I’m ace at that.

Trip to Leavenworth, Washington

Nov26

In the spring Marie suggested we should do something fun to celebrate turning 70, and said a cute destination is Leavenworth, Washington. I’ve never been but have heard a lot about it from friends who have, so said sure, let’s do it. We booked for two nights and drove down last week.

It was time for an early lunch when we hit Trino’s Mexican Restaurant in Oroville, then we proceeded straight to the Icicle Resort where we arrived around 3:00 PM. We were thrilled to see our huge two-bedroom condo where they’d basically thought of everything a person could need. Just outside the window we saw the pool and hot tub, both heated.

The person at the desk said it was about a fifteen-minute walk into town, and so we thought that’d be nice after our drive. However they’d had a huge dump of snow that morning so the sidewalks weren’t shovelled and in places we had to go out onto the highway to be able to make our way forward. By the time we arrived the cute little town’s trees and stores were all lit up and it looked magical.

We needed liquor so walked back to get our car and drove to the Safeway where it took forever to make up our minds given the vast assortment. I settled on a bottle of a pre-mixed margarita by a company called On the Rocks. We had a drink back at the condo, then drove to town and looked for a place for dinner.

Even though we were in a Bavarian town we decided to eat Italian food, and it was delicious. The place is called Visconti’s and is upstairs and felt all cozy. I ended my chicken and mushroom fettuccini meal with a delicious, strong Irish coffee.

On Thursday we started the day with an attempt at eating the breakfast, which was included, but it wasn’t good, so we just ate a bowl of raisin bran, then headed to Das Thrift Haus for a bit of shopping. I bought two tops for $4 each, and then we went into the cute town and looked at the price of chi chi items in the stores and laughed a bit.

We stopped in at a photographic gallery and admired the landscapes. The artist was there and so we chatted, and of course the topic of the election arose. We said yes what a strange result, and he explained no, not really as you know, Robert Kennedy has a lot of really good ideas. We said huh! He added Elon Musk is really going to clean up some of the bureaucracy, and we said you are probably right.

When we left, we said wow, we sure had that person pegged wrong. Of course we should’ve taken the hint never to speak about politics when we saw a huge, fat man in a T shirt decorated with the stars and stripes and Trump written across it. They are everywhere down there. I said to Marie never say “cream” just say “half and half” or we’ll be outed and shot. Ditto “sack” and not “bag” or “a fifth” versus “a mickey.”

After thoroughly browsing the town, we returned and decided to be brave and hop into the hot tub. We found two big white robes in the closet, donned our bathing suits and shoes, grabbed towels and ran out the back, tip toed through the snow, and unlocked the gate. We removed the bubble wrap cover and ahhhh! Lovely pulsing hot water and steam rising all around. We looked like those snow monkeys in Japan.

We ate German food at Andreas Keller that night and were thrilled to have an old German man playing accordion. He played the Chicken Dance, and we loved doing the clap clap clap clap at the appropriate places. It appeared he was happy with our participation. I’m sure some nights he gets nothing but duds sitting there.

The next morning, we checked out and made our way back, however in Wenatchee we missed a road sign, and then I randomly said “turn left” which Marie did. Later she asked why I said that, and I asked her why she listened when she knew I had no sense of direction. Suffice to say we were badly lost but found good Samaritans who drove ahead of us until we got to the right exit where they waved us on.

Thanks, Americans. We may not understand them, but as we see time and again, when someone needs help, good people step in.