Bright sunny day yesterday. Water line was frozen again. Worked off and on on my book. Had lunch out then moved the Motor home to a different space so we now have a firm connection to the wifi.
Did some cleanup around the grave sites in the cemetery. Then a visit up to Bastion.
So one by one each day goes by, we will both be glad to get home again. Had an email this morning from a long time friend who spent part of the winter in Victoria, looks like he may be headed for his home at Tete Jaune Cache before we get back.

  THE BIKE:  I was twelve years old and had never owned a bike, for that matter I didn’t know how to ride one either.  My best friend, Billy owned a bike, it was shiny red with silver fenders and balloon tires.  He would ride and I would run along side or behind, depending how far we were going.  Luckily just a few hundred yards from our little village there was quite a steep hill, far too steep to ride up on a one-speed bike.  

 Somehow, one day my Dad found out about a bike for sale somewhere in the harbour and he bought it for me.  “John this bike cost twelve dollars of hard earned money, now you look after it.” He went back to work.

 It was a black CCM, not as shiny as Billy’s, couple of spots of rust, but I had a bike! I washed it, oiled it with 3 in 1 oil and pushed it around the field out in back.  Finally I decided to try and ride it, ‘it couldn’t be too hard’.  I would get running along side of it and try and jump up onto the saddle, no use.  I remembered how Billy could step on the peddle and swing up, that almost worked but the bike had a mans frame and I was too short.  I tried mounting it by standing on a rock, but between not knowing how to balance and being on flat ground and still not being able to reach the one pedal when it was in the “close to ground” position, I just kept falling off.  It’s possible that was the day I first swore out loud!

 When my Dad came home that day, I asked if he would help me learn to ride.  He held the bike while I got on, then told me to get off. He went and got a wrench, loosened off a nut below the seat and pushed the seat down about three inches.  When we tried it again my toe could just touch on the lower pedal side.

 We immediately found out that a little speed was needed so I could stay up- right at all.  It seemed to take forever, but by evening I could make it part way around the field.  The next day I learned to push a way from the rock and get some momentum, a day later I could swing up just like Billy and that same day I rode over to his house and asked him if he wanted to go for a ride!

 When we moved to Port Hardy a couple of years later, the bike went as well.  When I was fifteen I bought a three speed English bike for eighteen dollars, but when we moved again the three speed stayed behind and I took that old black CCM with me.  I rode it until I finished high school.