What you do when you discover a friend is trying to kill you...

True story!!

So, it started fairly innocently. I bought a bike, in the hope that I could go on bike rides with my kids once Mari has mastered starting on her own. I was thinking of lovely flat country roads or parks with no people to see my mastery of the two wheeled contraption.

My good friend, who I know occasionally read this, so I won't give her a name, lets call her Maeve, oh wait, Marcy... better, well, this good friend Marcy was excited and said, "Lets go for a bike ride." I thought OK. How bad could it be? Of course the last time I road a bike was in Hinton and my parents lived there in the early 1990s. But that wasn't that long ago...

Then it started to snow and rain, but finally the weather improved and I reminded Marcy that we needed to go on that promised bike ride. I had visions of us tooling around residential streets sweeping by a corner of the reservoir and returning to the house refreshed and rejuvenated.

But here is what happened.

The roads around here may look flat but they are all subtle inclines. I discovered early in our ride that she was planning on doing the whole reservoir. HAVE YOU SEEN THE SIZE OF THE RESERVOIR?

I was proud of my nerves of steel as we took the walk way over Glenmore. The mere sound of the traffic freaks me out. We went up more hills and then we crossed back over Glenmore trail again. And then up some more hills. I now expected to reach the peak of a very large hill, I won't say Everest, but a sizable hill. And yet I still staring at a long steady incline that ran along Glenmore towards the Lakeview golf course.

It was then that I realized I was very close to death. Maeve, oops I mean Marcy had outstripped me and was waiting patiently. I think her plan was to get me to the golf course where she had hidden a shovel and there she could discretely do away with the evidence. I think that might be it, although her face betrayed none of her intentions. But one should never trust the people that look too innocent.

I caught up to her and deciding that I dare not go any further I said, "I have to go home NOW!" She showed great concern and even offered to turn back with me, she even showed me a shorter way home. Oh, and she called to make sure I got home alright. So maybe I was wrong about her plan, but you never know. And besides if she didn't have a shovel hidden I would have died anyhow and then she would have had to drag my body to the hospital without help and that wouldn't have been very nice of me.

So, I saved everyone a lot of grief when I wimped out.

I plan to be in traction for the next few days, so don't be surprised if I don't answer the phone or the door.