Monday, January 21, 2013

flower toast and a tall tale

I spent Friday afternoon surfing the internet and looking at food and craft ideas. So this was my breakfast on Saturday morning. Took way too long to make, I definitely need to practice making this. If it weren't for my incredibly competitive perfectionist nature I would have given up after the first like... 4 attempts.


Oh well. Since I seem to have an aversion to cooking anything other than eggs, rice and dessert, this will be something to add to my repertoire.

Other than that I have a very interesting story for today. It almost sounds like a tall tale, it's so interesting. But I assure you it is true.


This week I'm working on a video for a scholarship application (that I will post if it turns out well) and enlisted my sister as photography help. All us Vancouverites were gaping at the fog today, and while one of my very practical friends said "it's not safe for driving," I think it's beautiful. So I decided to get started on the filming. Unfortunately by the time I got home from running some errands and ate lunch it was already mid-afternoon. By the time I had finished planning with my sister on what we would film (it wasn't a very good plan either) it was late-afternoon. And by the time we had dug out an old-but-not-broken tripod meant for binoculars, not cameras, and ran in and out of the house several times picking up things we had forgotten, it was almost evening.

So we got our bikes, or rather, Jules borrowed our mother's bike and I rode my own. We headed off to the dollar store to get a helium balloon pumped for the filming, my sister carrying the very, in my opinion, unnecessarily clunky tripod in a flimsy cloth bag. It was quite dark by the time we got there. We took our photos and videos in the fog and cold. As it grew darker my hands and feet grew numb and my nose sniffly. Plus there were passersby giving us strange looks the whole way through (two girls with a poky binoculars-tripod throwing out and reeling in balloons with fishing line); but we didn't really mind, in fact it was quite a lot of fun despite the fact that to move my fingers shot searing pain through my arm. Finally we couldn't take it anymore and packed up, my sister taking down the tripod and stuffing it, poky-end-first, into the bag that she slung over her handlebars.

The first half of the trip home went smoothly. Suddenly I heard a cry behind me, muffled by the wind and fog. The bag had somehow gotten stuck in the spokes of my Jules's front tire. But no matter, she was able to untangle it fairly quickly and we continued on our way, drawn by promises of hot chocolate at the dinner table.

Another scream. "Shelley, Shelley, stop! Come back!"

I turned back again. It seemed the bag had gotten stuck in the wheel again, some 10 metres or so behind me. I squinted through the dark - she didn't seem to be making much progress. After a minute or so I yanked my bike around and coasted back to wear she had lugged hers onto the sidewalk and was vigorously but despairingly trying to loose the bag. I tried to help, but she wouldn't let me. "It's not use," she said, "a bit of the tripod's broken off and caught in the wheel with the bag."

Crap. We really didn't need this now when night and possibly frostbite was breathing icily down our backs. Our fingers were too numb to really be able to get anything unstuck, so I switched bikes with Jules to give her a break. We decided to cut the bag off later, and I did my best to hold the majority of the fabric out of the way as we pushed on homewards, walking our bikes now. Every so often as I watched the wheels spinning there would come a clank from a protesting spoke, until with one almighty twang two spokes detached altogether from the metal tire rim.

Shoot. That was my mother's bike that we had borrowed too. But what could we do but keeping going?

Clankkkk. A spoke fell off entirely. We didn't stop to pick it up.

Eventually I remembered that I had put a pair of scissors in my backpack in case we needed to cut the thread for the balloon, and Jules cut the bag off and carried the tripod in her arms the rest of the way home. By the time we had gotten back we were thoroughly in need of thawing, and half of what we had set out with was broken - the tripod, the bag, the bike. As I parked the bike outside our door I bent down to check the wheels; they would still function, I hoped. Only two spokes out of place. I twisted the one that was still half-attached between the other spokes so it wouldn't clunk. Hopefully Mom would not notice. She hardly ever used that beat-up old bike anyways. We would sneak the bag upstairs and sew it back up. The tripod would be stuffed away, where hopefully no one would go looking for it for the next five years. We figured, if they found it by then we'd have already moved out.

In the end it was probably all for nothing - the photos turned out so dark I'm not sure they're usable. At least the camera wasn't broken. And oddly enough, the balloon, being the most vulnerable thing we were carrying, survived as well. It was quite a funny experience, actually, when you look at it with a warm mug of hot cocoa between your hands.

Literally ROFL-worthy, especially when your parents are still unaware of how many things you managed to break within one hour.

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