I like to ride my bicycle

Here's a healthy warning to those of you with kids: Don't decide on a whim that you want to go for a bike ride.

BAD DECISION!

The first bike ride of the season is always an exercise in frustration. First of all, it means climbing over the mountains of crap in the shed to extract the bikes. This didn't prove to be all that hard this year - maybe I put things away properly last year. (which, by the way was done AS the first snowfall was happening)

Ok, fine... next step is to put the trailer together. That was pretty easy this year too (now that I've done it a million times)

Then I realized that my front tire was flat. No problem - we have a compressor... only Georgina has borrowed it to fix their car tire. D'oh. Ok, so I can load the bike into the van and drive to the gas station. Except that with 3 car seats and the usual piles of crap in the van, there's no way the bike's fitting in there. Alright, next option - remove the tire. Done and done.

Ok, so now, back from the gas station, it's time to put the tire back on my bike. Hrmmm - the brake cable is so tight that I can't get the tire back on and have the brakes connected. Will solve this later. Next step - attach the trailer - no problem.

Now we're ready for kids to come outside. Helmets at the ready. Turns out that Becca's head doesn't fit her helmet anymore. So it's time to switch with Eve.

This is a process that involves cramming helmets on heads, swearing over the straps, dealing with one baby who hates helmets and one 3-year-old who complains when getting her hair brushed.

Ok, we finally get all helmets adjusted. By this time, Eve has lost it - hates the helmet, hates being in the trailer, has already gone through an entire bottle.

Almost ready to go, and I remember that my brakes aren't connected. Kathryn and I try to work together to re-attach. No luck. So, I have to go grab a ratchet from the basement. Which means unlocking the house (for the fourth time). As I'm pulling the cable through the screw, it schwings (technical term) back and the nut goes flying.

5 minutes later, we find it in the grass and re-attach the brakes. Ok, finally ready to go (after re-filling the milk bottle).

Turns out that it's an incredibly windy day. Eve screams the whole way to Sobeys. The tires on the trailer are low, so are the other tires that I didn't pump up. Kathryn goes in to Sobeys to buy treats while I head over to the gas station. Woops - their air hose is broken.

By this time, all we want to do is get home. Eve is placated with Malteasers for most of the way home. She actually makes a happy sound at one point. We finally make it home, sore-assed.

Next time will be better????

(Author's note - this was only slightly exaggerated, but in the end, it was still a good time).

I am the wimpy Orkin man

So I was bringing a bag of empty bottles out to the shed the other day (let's face it, our shed is basically used for bottle storage since neither Kathryn nor I possess any gardening skills) and I hear this buzzing noise.

I look up into the corner by the door, and there's a wasp nest there. It was only about the size of a fist - but the sort of fist that pulls out your heart and throws it into the Temple of Doom. It was then that I noticed a few wasps leering at me, so I booked it out of there.

The next day, we walked down to the HD by our house (P.S., it's very convenient having a Home Depot right next door) and bought a can of wasp killer. The can said to wait until evening, or morning, when the wasps wouldn't be active. So then I had a couple of hours to talk myself into being able to go back in the shed and man-up.

By the way - I have no idea where this irrational fear of bees, wasps, hornets, yellow jackets (huh?) comes from - being stung does hurt - but not all that much... although, I can imagine that being stung by a whole nest full of wasps might hurt a lot more.

Anyway, once the sun went down, I suited up. By the way, it was about a million degrees outside - but I wasn't going to chance anything... I put on a pair of sweats and a hoody - with the hood up. I had considered winter gloves, scarf and toque, but that didn't seem very manly, so I sucked it up.

Now - the problem was that the nest was in a corner just inside the door of the shed. It wasn't possible to get at it unless I was actually inside the shed. The can said to spray from a distance of 2 meters. (we bought this brand because the other choice said 3 meters!) Which meant that I had to be inside the shed, and at the back of the shed - at the mercy of the angry swarm that I'm sure would erupt in defence of their home.

So, I cleared a bit of the clutter (mostly by just shoving it) and got ready. I thought about taking the lawn mower out of the shed, to provide an easy exit - but it looked like it might rain, and there was no way I was going to spray the nest, then calmly push the mower back in the shed.

I got the can ready, in one hand, balanced my feet on the mower, and turned on my flashlight with the other hand. The nest was pretty much one of the nastiest things I've seen. All the wasps were crawling all over it - ready to pounce on me (at least in my imagination).

I took a deep breath, then let loose. I think I emptied about half the can - and it was a big can. Then I hopped out the door, slammed it shut and tore off across the lawn as fast as I could run.

Epilogue:

A few days afterwards, I went back to the shed and scraped the nest down with a shovel. I took it out to the back alley and smashed the crap out of it... by the way - the inside looked creepily worse than the outside.