Hare and Tortoise 1000k prelude: darkest before dawn
5:00 pm, 19 June 2009, Victoria BC
"This is a bad omen."
The thought came to me on the heels of a new spasm in my stomach. I was lying in a warm bath, in a hotel room in the middle of Victoria. It was 5pm on Friday. The Hare and Tortoise 1000k was scheduled to start in 10 hours on Saturday, and silentq was out, wandering the city while I tried to get to sleep. However, I couldn't sleep because my stomach felt like it was being stabbed by scissors. The feeling had started this morning, when I was having breakfast at silentq's parent's house in Comox, though given that breakfast was just a bowl of packaged cereal and a cup of coffee, I was at a loss as to the source. Concurrent with the indigestion was a splitting headache that seemed to course from forehead to the base of my neck, a general sense of dread, and a temptation to quit this ride before I even started.
The plan for the vacation was thus: fly to Vancouver via Toronto to visit friends and see my parents. Help my parents move apartments in Vancouver. Rebuild my bike and ride it around the city where I spent my teenage years. Then take the ferry to Vancouver Island, to visit silentq's family in Comox, ride in the Hare and Tortoise from the southern tip of the island to the north and back, then relax for a couple of days before returning home.
What I hadn't planned on was having a thief steal my laptop and passport on the day that my parents were moving. The thief knew what they were doing. They broke in to the car while we were at lunch and, confronted with a wide array of bags and luggage in the trunk of the vehicle, took only the most expensive and interesting looking bag, while leaving everything else behind. That was my laptop bag, which happened to have, among other things, my passport and my American work visa.
Thankfully, this happened while I was in my home country, at the beginning of a work week in a city with a fully functional Passport Canada office. While the police didn't give me much hope for catching the thief or recovering my bag, they did give me a nice little police report that I could use for replacing my passport. Passport Canada's instructions for replacement kind of reminded me of "FedEx quests" that are a staple of roleplaying games.
You know the sort:
"You need the magic sword to kill the evil dragon, but to get the magic sword you need to talk to the old wizard, who also says that the sword needs to be enchanted with a poultice created from the crushed petals of a rare Elderblossom, but the Grove of Elderblossoms is guarded by a Thingy that can only be bypassed by a Whatsit."
Replace the dragon with my passport, the sword with my application, the old wizard with character testimonies from old high school friends and current Boston ones (thanks again, jasonlizard and photiq!), the Elderblooms with funds deposited in a Canadian bank , the Thingy with a notary public and the Whatsit with a police report, and you probably have the most tedious roleplaying game side quest ever.
Oh well, at least I had a police report to start. That was something.
The process to submit my passport and visa replacement applications consumed a day and a half that I wanted to spend rebuilding and tuning my bike. And that didn't even result in my getting a replacement, but only in a vague guarantee that I would have a passport given to me before I left the country. I wouldn't actually unpack my bike from its travel case until Thursday night in Comox, working in fading twilight and trying not to think about the fact that I had no passport in hand and no guarantee of actually being able to return to my job or apartment. Fortunately, silentq's father, a retired Canadian Air Force mechanic, possessed a garage with a breathless array of tools and gear, and while I would've appreciated more time to rebuild my bike, I couldn't have asked for a better place to do the reassembly. A few cursory laps around the neighborhood proved out the work, and the familiar feeling of pedaling and guiding my steed on smooth roads was a comfort after the vexations and tribulations of the past few days.
Still, I found myself lying in this tub, considering all of my checklists, trying to think of what was left to do between now and the start, and knowing that it was all just a mental exercise to distract me from a looming sense of doom. Too many things had happened before this ride even started, and the indigestion was just the latest in a heap of worries and discomfort. Perhaps I should just ditch this whole affair and spend Saturday and Sunday touring Victoria, or hanging out with silentq and her family while they went skydiving. It might be irresponsible to do this ride while I was still waiting for my passport or worried about the consequences of losing my laptop. What the hell was I doing here, anyway?
Then, once those thoughts fluttered in to my mind, I pushed them aside and remembered that, damnit, I was here to do this ride and to quit now would be to concede the entire vacation to the realm of irredeemable debacle. I could still ride and I had a working bike. I had to give it a try.
(note: I've also back-posted a bunch of entries for the preliminary brevets that I rode this summer if you want to read about my other training rides. There are bike crashes involved, though only one involves me.)
"This is a bad omen."
The thought came to me on the heels of a new spasm in my stomach. I was lying in a warm bath, in a hotel room in the middle of Victoria. It was 5pm on Friday. The Hare and Tortoise 1000k was scheduled to start in 10 hours on Saturday, and silentq was out, wandering the city while I tried to get to sleep. However, I couldn't sleep because my stomach felt like it was being stabbed by scissors. The feeling had started this morning, when I was having breakfast at silentq's parent's house in Comox, though given that breakfast was just a bowl of packaged cereal and a cup of coffee, I was at a loss as to the source. Concurrent with the indigestion was a splitting headache that seemed to course from forehead to the base of my neck, a general sense of dread, and a temptation to quit this ride before I even started.
The plan for the vacation was thus: fly to Vancouver via Toronto to visit friends and see my parents. Help my parents move apartments in Vancouver. Rebuild my bike and ride it around the city where I spent my teenage years. Then take the ferry to Vancouver Island, to visit silentq's family in Comox, ride in the Hare and Tortoise from the southern tip of the island to the north and back, then relax for a couple of days before returning home.
What I hadn't planned on was having a thief steal my laptop and passport on the day that my parents were moving. The thief knew what they were doing. They broke in to the car while we were at lunch and, confronted with a wide array of bags and luggage in the trunk of the vehicle, took only the most expensive and interesting looking bag, while leaving everything else behind. That was my laptop bag, which happened to have, among other things, my passport and my American work visa.
Thankfully, this happened while I was in my home country, at the beginning of a work week in a city with a fully functional Passport Canada office. While the police didn't give me much hope for catching the thief or recovering my bag, they did give me a nice little police report that I could use for replacing my passport. Passport Canada's instructions for replacement kind of reminded me of "FedEx quests" that are a staple of roleplaying games.
You know the sort:
"You need the magic sword to kill the evil dragon, but to get the magic sword you need to talk to the old wizard, who also says that the sword needs to be enchanted with a poultice created from the crushed petals of a rare Elderblossom, but the Grove of Elderblossoms is guarded by a Thingy that can only be bypassed by a Whatsit."
Replace the dragon with my passport, the sword with my application, the old wizard with character testimonies from old high school friends and current Boston ones (thanks again, jasonlizard and photiq!), the Elderblooms with funds deposited in a Canadian bank , the Thingy with a notary public and the Whatsit with a police report, and you probably have the most tedious roleplaying game side quest ever.
Oh well, at least I had a police report to start. That was something.
The process to submit my passport and visa replacement applications consumed a day and a half that I wanted to spend rebuilding and tuning my bike. And that didn't even result in my getting a replacement, but only in a vague guarantee that I would have a passport given to me before I left the country. I wouldn't actually unpack my bike from its travel case until Thursday night in Comox, working in fading twilight and trying not to think about the fact that I had no passport in hand and no guarantee of actually being able to return to my job or apartment. Fortunately, silentq's father, a retired Canadian Air Force mechanic, possessed a garage with a breathless array of tools and gear, and while I would've appreciated more time to rebuild my bike, I couldn't have asked for a better place to do the reassembly. A few cursory laps around the neighborhood proved out the work, and the familiar feeling of pedaling and guiding my steed on smooth roads was a comfort after the vexations and tribulations of the past few days.
Still, I found myself lying in this tub, considering all of my checklists, trying to think of what was left to do between now and the start, and knowing that it was all just a mental exercise to distract me from a looming sense of doom. Too many things had happened before this ride even started, and the indigestion was just the latest in a heap of worries and discomfort. Perhaps I should just ditch this whole affair and spend Saturday and Sunday touring Victoria, or hanging out with silentq and her family while they went skydiving. It might be irresponsible to do this ride while I was still waiting for my passport or worried about the consequences of losing my laptop. What the hell was I doing here, anyway?
Then, once those thoughts fluttered in to my mind, I pushed them aside and remembered that, damnit, I was here to do this ride and to quit now would be to concede the entire vacation to the realm of irredeemable debacle. I could still ride and I had a working bike. I had to give it a try.
(note: I've also back-posted a bunch of entries for the preliminary brevets that I rode this summer if you want to read about my other training rides. There are bike crashes involved, though only one involves me.)