It's ALL YOUR FAULT!

*** continued from previous post ***


"What are we going to do?" she asks, but it's not really a question. What she REALLY said was, I can't believe you didn't check this out and now here we are exhausted, wet, cold, and with no place to stay and we've forfeited a bunch of money because you're an idiot and IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

I panic. The ball is squarely in my court. I am, as our illustrious President Bush had said, the decider. I got us into this mess, and it's up to me to get us out. Silly woman trusting me. She should know better than that. I thought that I could use this line of logic to put the blame on her, and then realized there were other things in life I wanted to experience. A Canadian Hospital was not one of them. I was in the pit of despair, then - BOOM - another flash of inspiration!

"Okay, here's what we will do. We've come this far, let's give it a shot." And then, because I haven't made enough mistakes, I add, quite casually the most damning statement that I've ever uttered in my life. "Worse comes to worse, we will just turn around, find a motel, and try to get our money back tomorrow. I'm sure they'll understand if we cannot physically get to the Lodge."

I can see Mom weigh the options in her mind. On one hand, she could go along with this scheme. On the other hand, she could trick me into taking my helmet off and hit me in the head with her friend, the rock, and try to claim that I'd run away. I can see in her eyes that at this point it's a coin toss.

"Fine. You want to try it, we’ll try it. The lady inside gave me directions. She said about 5 miles out of town, beyond the Nordic Centre, is where the gravel starts. I asked her if the road was good, and she said "Well, good for a car. It's hard-packed. I don't know how it would be on a motorcycle and honestly I haven't been up there in years." Her eyes pierce me like an ice-pick in peanut butter. "That was a direct quote."

I become distracted by the ‘Nordic Center’, but shake the thought out of my head. I have more important matters to contemplate.

*** the journey continues ***