Has Been and The Gonna Be

I consider myself a cyclist.
Back in the day I used to be a pretty good racer.
I was a USCF certified fitting specialist and worked 50-hour weeks in a bike shop, racing on weekends and training before the shop opened in the morning.
I moved back to Canada, hurt my back and found out carbohydrates make you fat unless you ride 10,000 kilometres a year.
Still, I own a ton of gear, two bikes and fix my neighbour's bikes in exchange for beer or babysitting.
But truth be told, Alex is the real biker in the family.
He rides every day; I ride three times a week.
He has the newest bike in the family; my Bianchi is three years old.
I own a set of the coolest free-riding pads in the universe, but Alex, who wears my forearm pads as leg armour, is the one whose crashes have scratched them beyond recognition.
I have two bike-related scars--one on my cheek and one on my elbow; Alex has scars on both knees, both elbows, his chin, his butt and a bruise on his tummy from landing on the handlebars.
But the real kicker is recognition.
When we went into West Point Grey Cycles yesterday, the shop dude called: "Hey Buddy, how's the riding?"
He was talking to Alex.

Right on the money

It’s been a weird week.
One of the nicest people I’ve ever met has turned out to be a left-wing radical, my son is now riding his bike to school and the Canucks have made the playoffs.
Strange how dissimilar things can all be tied together.
My friend Elecia, bless her tree-hugging heart, passed on a recipe for removing the toxic black mold problem in my apartment. As you know, black mold can be lethal, but my tie-dyed friend said a mixture of lemon juice and baking soda would clean the mold right up. She swore this is what she uses to get bong-resin stains out of her shag carpet in her VW van, so I tried it.
Of course, it didn’t work, and I wasted $5 worth of lemons, but no real harm done.
Alex started riding without training wheels on Friday and by Saturday we bought him a new bike, mountain bike gloves and a neat little Orca bike horn. By Saturday the whole package had been devalued by about 50 per cent. He crashed so many times, the bike’s paint is scratched through to the frame, the gloves have a hole in them and the whale is now a two-piece unit.
About the only positive thing to come out of my week was the Canucks. The $100 I put on them with Bodog at the beginning of the season to win the Cup is now looking like a pretty shrewd bet. 100 to 1 (now down to 10 to 1) would pay out $10,000 US, enough to get Alex some new gloves and pads and pay a professional to come in and wipe out the mold problem.

I God a Code

A person suffers the most upper-respiratory tract infections (colds, etc.) between the ages of three and five.
One of the worst occupations for getting sick at work is a doctor.
I am blessed to have both of these human Petri dishes living in my house.
About the only time my son doesn't have a runny nose is when it's clogged solid.
My wife isn't a doctor, she's a nurse practitioner, but for all intents and purposes they do the same thing.
If you've gone to the doctor's office to have your hacking cough looked at and wondered how physicians stay healthy, the answer is simple.
They don't.
They get sick a lot more than the general population.
Which brings me to my point: Either my son or my wife have given me a super bug.
I have all the signs of SARS, avian flu and the bubonic plague, with a touch of Norwalk thrown in for good measure.
In a previous life, I worked three weeks in -40 C weather with double pneumonia, taking nothing more than honey and whiskey to keep me going.
Tonight, I have Kleenex softened with lotion, hot tea served by my guilt-wracked wife and a copy of Hop On Pop, courtesy of my son. (He feels no guilt for my illness, he figures that since I'm in bed, I must want to read to him.)

It's all I can do to hang on.

Excuse me, I have to go have my tummy rubbed.

'Put down the booger'

There's something about bicycles and kids that put everything into perspective.
When my personal stress meter starts going into the red zone, just heading out the back door and watching Alex chase the neighbour kids with a green thing from his nose brings the old stress meter back into black.
It's hard to take yourself too seriously when the neighbours are watching you running around the playground in bare feet and track pants yelling at a four-year-old to "put down the booger."
Bicycle have the same effect. Whether watching a preschooler trying to ride without training wheels or heading out on a three-hour epic on Mt. Seymour, the end result is the same.
I got to do both this weekend.
Alex wanted to try riding with just two wheels, so on Saturday we headed to the park and rolled him down the hill a few times so he could work on his balance. I have to admit he has the athletic ability of his father and after a few crashes, we headed home for dry clothes and hot chocolate.
Then it was my turn.
On Sunday, the guys and I headed to Lower Seymour, rode the access road to Fisherman's, crossed Twin Bridges and tried to make it to Old Buck via Bridal Path. We crashed frequently and had to cut the ride short for hot choc . . . , er, hot wings and beer, but the end result was the same as the day before--happy, muddy and stress-free.

Choices

Who we are and how we got here are all about the choices we make.
That point was driven home the other day when I received a multi-media package from a cousin in Australia.

Although we share a lot of the same genetic makeup, Dom and I have traveled down completely different roads in our lives.
The weird thing is, we cross paths all the time.
Dom lives in Australia and is considered handsome by girls, musically gifted, athletically blessed and probably the most philosophical person I know.
I, on the other hand, have spent more time above the Arctic Circle than in the tropics, have never been mistaken for Brad Pitt, listen to hard rock because there are only three chords to learn and have the body of a philosopher and the mind of an athlete.
Yet Dom and I both share a passion for rock climbing, fly fishing, mountain biking and statuesque brunettes.
As my son Alex sets out on his own path, I try to instill a sense of good and bad, based more on what I learned from my mistakes than any deep moral underpinning.
When Dom flies into Vancouver this July for a summer of fishing, biking and climbing, I hope Alex can see that, no matter what choices we make there are very few—prison, Korean automobiles and heavy metal—that are wrong.
Most are just a difference of perception.

Alex vs. Little Johnny

My son has been replaced by a miniature heavy equipment operator.

He watches Mighty Machines on TV, plays with his toy digger for hours and wears a hard hat to school.

He knows the location of nearly every construction site at the University of B.C. and can somehow fit a "digger sound" into most sentences.

Everytime we back up the van or bicycle he yells "Beep, beep, beep" just as a piece of heavy equipment does when it backs up.

It could be worse.

He could be like Little Johnny.

Little Johnny and his dad where buying groceries when Little Johnny noticed a very large woman standing in front of them.

In his outside voice he yells: "Dad! Dad! Look at that fat lady!"

Dad whispers:"Shush, that's rude."

But that doesn't stop Little Johnny.

"Dad! Dad! That has to be the fattest person I've ever seen!" he says even louder.

"Johnny, shush. That's rude," replied an embarrassed Dad.

"But Dad," Little Johnny yells at the top of his lungs, "Her butt is ginormous."

Just then the alarm on the lady's watch started beeping.
"Dad! Dad! Watch out, she's backing up! She's backing up!"

While the wife's away . . .

When Lisa dresses my son Alex each morning, she picks out colour co-ordinated Gap or OshKosh B'Gosh outfits.

That's not happening this week--my wife and a dozen of her colleagues have taken off to Kelowna on "business."

The fact that taxpayers are paying for it is almost as appalling as the fact that Lisa left me and Alex to fend for ourselves.

Since she's gone, I have posted an ad for a housekeeper (Carla has been over twice since Lisa left and probably needs to come back a third time to remove the paint from the kitchen walls), had the babysitter over every day (this limits the amount of time I am responsible for the safety of a minor) and eaten at McDonald's twice.

It would have been three times, but I figured we had to eat healthy,so I had the sitter make spaghetti and a salad while Alex and I watched TSN.

Not to say my son and I haven't been having fun.

We painted a model dinosaur, made about 289 Lego airplanes (and played fireman rescuer after throwing them against the wall) and adopted a stray cat (actually Alex's cat Stripey adopted the cat, but Alex is feeding them both).

In the period of one short week, Alex has changed from a boy into a, well,an older boy.

He no longer calls soccer "hockey ball," loves watching extreme mountain biking on TSN (mainly the crash scenes) and likes Led Zeppelin (only Immigration Song, but I'm working on the others).

Alex is coming into his own, which is cool and strangely weird.

For instance, this morning we rode to school on the Trail-A-Bike (an attachment that makes a regular bike into a three-wheeled two seater) with him wearing red rubber boots, a yellow rain jacket, a red firehat and a blue scuba mask.

Not one item was made by The Gap or Oshkosh and that suited both of us just fine.

Observations

As a journalist, I try to pay attention to my surroundings.Traveling to a foreign country has given me extra incentive to hone those skills. In no particular order, here's a few things I saw in Mexico over reading break.

Americans and Canadians are the fattest people on the beach. Europeans are fairly far behind and native Mexicans the skinniest.

Women have to realize that wearing a thong is a right, not a privilege. The same goes for men and Speedos.

Only people under 25 take advantage of all-you-can-drink bars, but everyone takes advantage of all-you-can-eat self-serve ice cream.

Just because you (OK, me) can eat 50 Global Thermo-Nuclear Hot Wings at Hooters does not mean you, er I can handle the mildest homemade salsa.

If global warming kicks in and Vancouver's rainfall stays the same, the Lower Mainland is going to look exactly like the Yucatán.

Minimum wage in Quintana Roo is $4 US per day. A $2 tip to the busboy, maid and waiter puts a smile on their face. But to really become friends you have to wear a soccer jersey. Club America is OK, the Pumas are not and Cruz Azul and Chivas rule.

If you've ever had sushi in Japan, you know most Canadian-made Japanese food is not up to par. No surprise, but the Mexican version is no better.

Paying bus drivers a percentage of their fares leads to them racing each other from bus stop to bus stop. This tends to scare Canadians who aren't use to doing 80 km/h though a school zone neck and neck with another bus full of terrified passengers.