Mind Off-Leash: Social Media Posts during the Pandemic

By Marjie Aldom Smith

As most of the world went into COVID-19 lockdown, Marjie was determined to keep her spirits up the same way she always has--by writing. She began to share her thoughts, covering the emotional and subjective gamut on her Facebook page. Among other things, she investigated the development of a young hawk family growing up in a nearby tree; told about the experience of raising monarch butterflies; shared observations about her mother's descent into dementia; and relayed stories about her life lived in Canada and the United States.She did not realize how many of her friends were looking for encouragement from her writing until they started to chat about the postings and encouraged her to publish them. This former journalist had been writing to the published page for decades, but she hadn't been writing on Facebook from that perspective. After lockdown was over, she decided to publish portions.Here are just a few examples of her whimsical writing style:"Today, little wavelets of sadness were flittering by like the departing breath of someone's soul. I can, today, feel the fear, the grief that is out there but not yet right here.""If I hang around a house long enough, I don't get cabin fever, I come down with the Property Brothers virus.""When I developed a fever and started to shiver uncontrollably, we both cracked up at how my voice was shaking. We were like kids on the loose with helium.""It was a slow golf game. I glanced over and saw His Collarship unknowingly trailing a clump of Spanish moss. I called over, 'Game's so slow you've got Spanish moss growing on you.'""Thou shalt not have your computer below your head. I already see my own double chin more often than I'd like. If I wanted to see everyone else's, I would have become a cosmetic surgeon. My favorite view is the guillotine, where the chair is lower than the table and all you see on screen is this talking head, the body, apparently, still back in bed."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9798886440294

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 13

Day 14

Day 15

Day 16

Day 17

Day 18

Day 19

Day 20

Day 21

Day 22

Day 23

Day 24

Day 25

Day 26

Day 27

Day 28

Day 29

Day 30

Day 31

Day 32

Day 33

Day 34

Day 35

Day 36

Day 37

Day 38

Day 39

Day 40

Day 41

Day 42

Day 43

Day 44

Day 45

Day 46

Day 47

Day 48

Day 49

Day 50

Day 51

Day 52

Day 53

Day 54

Day 55

Day 56

Day 57

Day 58

Day 59

Day 60

Day 61

Day 62

Day 63

Day 64

Day 65

Day 73

Day 74

Day 75

Day 76

Day 77

Day 78

Day 79

Day 80

Day 81

Day 82

Day 83

Day 84

Day 85

Day 86

Day 87

Day 88

Day 89

Day 90

Day 91

Day 92

Day 93

Day 94

Day 95

Day 96

Day 97

Day 98

Day 99

Day 100

Day 101

Day 102

Day 103

Day 104

Day 105

Day 106

Day 107

Day 108

Day 109

Day 110

Day 111

Day 112

Day 113

Day 114

Day 115

Day 116

Day 117

Day 118

Day 119

Day 120

Day 121

Day 122

Day 123

Day 124

Day 125

Day 126

Day 127

Day 128

Day 129

Day 130

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Day 136

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Day 139

Day 140

Day 141

Day 142

Day 143

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Day 145

Day 146

Day 147

Day 148

Day 149

Day 150

Day 151

Day 152

Day 153

Day 154

Day 155 and 156

Day 157

Day 158

Day 159

Day 160 and 161

Day 162

Day 163

Day 164

Day 165

Day 166

Day 167

Day 168

Day 169

Day 170

Day 171

Day 172

Day 173

Day 174

Day 175

Day 176

Day 177

Day 178

Day 179

Day 180

Day 181

Day 182

Day 183

Day 184

Day 185

Day 186

Day 187

Day 188

Day 189

Day 190

Day 191

Day 192

Day 193

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Day 196

Day 197

Day 198

Day 199

Day 201

Day 202

Day 203

Day 204

Day 205

Day 206

Day 207

Day 208

Day 209

Day 210

Day 211

Day 212

Day 213

Day 214

Day 215

Day 216

Day 217

Day 218

Day 219

Day 220

Day 221

Day 222

Day 223

Day 224

Day 225

Day 226

Day 227

Day 228

Day 229

Day 230

Day 231

Day 232

Day 233

Day 234

Day 235

Day 236

Day 237

Day 238

Day 239

Day 240

Day 241

Day 242

Day 243

Day 244

Day 246

Day 247

Day 248

Day 249

Day 250

Day 251

Day 252

Day 253

Day 254

Day 255

Day 256

Day 257

Day 258

Day 259

Day 260

Day 261

Day 262

Day 2, Year 2

Day 5, Year 2

Day 6, Year 2

Day 8, Year 2

Day 9, Year 2

Day 11, Year 2

Day 12, Year 2

Day 14, Year 2

Day 17, Year 2

Day 19, Year 2

Day 22, Year 2

Day 24, Year 2

Day 25, Year 2

Day 26, Year 2

Day 27, Year 2

Day 29, Year 2

Day 33, Year 2

Day 34, Year 2

Quotes from Marjie's Book

About the Author

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Mind Off-Leash

Social Media Posts during the Pandemic

Marjie Aldom Smith

ISBN 979-8-88644-028-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88644-029-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2022 Marjie Aldom Smith

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Covenant Books

11661 Hwy 707

Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

www.covenantbooks.com

Day 1

Pandemic Goal: Observe My Shrunken World

Each day of our limited circumstances, I am not only going to be grateful that I am well, but I am going to work on observing and learning new things. Yesterday, I learned that walking the dog at the right time gives you a beautiful view of the sun as you top the incline on our street. Previously, I was busy talking to Ernie, the yellow lab who lived on that corner, until his owner died last summer. I wasn't walking much until recently because of knee replacement surgery. Now that I have joints that can motor a pair of sneakers, I've rediscovered that corner and many others.

Day 2

Disempowering Garden Hogs

Given the beautiful weather, one has no excuse for avoiding the dirty jobs in the garden. When we transplanted some plants that came with the house four years ago that had slowly edged onto the sidewalk, I discovered a clogged network of bulbous roots tucked under the sidewalk and everything else they could invade.

No longer will I walk by and say, They're green. That's all that matters. I will disempower them more frequently so they aren't such garden hogs.

She says.

Day 3

Worldwide Kinship of Suffering Stimulates Empathy

I have been going daily to a site, Worldometers, which gives the data on the COVID-19 scourge and the number of new cases by country. As the disease has rapidly spread, names of countries showed up that I had never noticed before. So I felt in our kinship a responsibility to learn more. Here are three that I hope you are more informed about than I.

Burkina Faso, formerly Upper Volta, is a landlocked West African country north of Ghana and south of Mali (as my niece, Loreli Cockram, could have told me, having spent time in Ghana doing mission work). If you want to challenge yourself, try saying the name of its capital: Ouagadougou (again, my niece tutored me). It is a poor country of 19.19 million people who have experienced regular military coups and is governed accordingly. It is currently highly unstable because of jihadist attacks on the people. We can only pray that the virus doesn't get a foothold and add to the suffering.

Faroe Islands, of which I had no prior knowledge, are a self-governed archipelago of eighteen volcanic islands that are part of Denmark. They lie between Iceland and Norway. They are popular with hikers and birdwatchers (take note, my birding friends). There are 49,290 people living on this island necklace, so that is a small number to fend off a pandemic.

Réunion Island is a French department (a governance level right below the national level) with a population of 860,000. It is located in the Indian Ocean. It is known for its rainforest interior, beaches, and reefs. Sounds kind of like Puerto Rico to me. There is a climbable live volcanic mountain.

That's my geography-by-virus lesson for today!

Day 4

Hawk Family Provides Live Nature Show

We took portable chairs to the parkette 150 yards from our house with the enthusiasm we used to apply to outdoor concerts. On the program today was a pair of red shouldered hawks with their new brood. I'm assuming they are the same parents that were in the park last year since they mate for life and return to the same nesting site.

The other reason I make this assumption, rather than assertion, is these hawks are plentiful in our neighborhood, and to the novice, they all look the same, so I wouldn't know if it is a different pair. They've changed domiciles, picking a sturdier tree this year with an improved canopy. The first photo is of Mom, this year, while the others are of last year's fuzzy white chicks. I have learned from these birds that they choose a nesting site in the high-up crossroads of trunk and branch. They prefer a spot that they can watch from another tree and approach easily.

They also like to make it tricky for cameras to catch them coming and going, but I shall persevere.

The mom sits on the nest for the first two or three weeks while the male is on meal duty. Then the female joins him in the hunt. It takes two to feed them as these chicks are quite vociferous about mealtime, which is 24-7 in their little belly-driven minds.

When the chicks leave the nest, they are still fed by the parents for several weeks.

Day 5

Choristers Still Have Alto-tude

So, without choir, I'm checking out fellow altos to see if they still have their spunky alto-tude. Susan Crawford is off to Hogwarts; Susan Robinson is looking at things from a different perspective; Marjie Aldom Smith figures she has a new source for communion wafers should supplies be cut off to churches; Caroline Williams Jones's new dog is teaching Caroline new tricks, and Patsy Killian is collecting kisses from Quinn. We're waiting for the other low-notes to check in.

Day 6

Conversion to Technical Relationships Brings Humor

With change comes humor, and technology talks back as we adapt to a fully technical lifestyle. Tonight, Jerry had a Zoom videoconference Bible study at our dining room table, and I was waiting in the den for our choir rehearsal to start on Zoom. When our music director came on early to prep, he kicked the Bible study off as it wouldn't sustain two platforms.

I'll call John Mark, I volunteered and immediately asked Siri to call John-Mark Schacht, our music director. I mispronounced his last name twice and quickly tried to correct it. Siri hesitated and then asked if I wanted to call John-Mark Shot-shot-shot. I was laughing so hard Jerry had to phone and asked JM to delay fifteen minutes.

I'm now about to join our triple shot music director and team.

Day 7

Cleaning Garage Unearths Treasure

I'm cleaning out the garage storage where everything is dumped when you move and languishes forgotten. It has its rewards. Yeah, it's a sweaty job in Florida, but I found my favorite softball glove. I thought it had found the portal to Neverland years ago.

I think there are psychological levels to its importance since I've had a new glove for over thirty years.

This glove was a birthday gift when I was about ten. It was picked out by my dad. Being the youngest of five and living in an era where moms took care of birthdays, it was an exceptional gift. As a tomboy regularly in trouble for something, it symbolized being accepted for who I was by the patriarch in a still patriarchal society (someone forgot to tell Mom that, thankfully).

I'm also left-handed, so Dad even got that correct. The glove saw its way through my school years, a woman's team on Manitoulin Island, and a mixed team in Chapleau, all in Ontario, Canada. Somewhere about then I got a new glove that was designed for a first-baser, the perfect base for a lefty. It saw me through youth group games in Timmins and mixed ball in North Bay. Then the gloves got set aside for the gentler sport of golf. But the two gloves are still there, waiting. Maybe with this prolonged time at home I'll play some catch with His Collarship. We will definitely be six feet apart if I can throw that far anymore. Or throw at all, for that matter.

Day 8

Same People, Same Facts, Different Conversational Method

Today was a reminder of how innovative we become as we seek to keep contact with each other and still be safe. Keep in mind that innovation to a sixty-seven-year-old is the definition of archaic to a twenty-year-old.

Our church is putting up signs in neighborhoods where parishioners live and want to show concern for their street mates. We are but a prayer away from each other when six feet seems awkward and unsustainable.

Today, a friend and kindred spirit (we share the same birthday and many other things, including a favorite song) grabbed a beer—Yuengling of course—and I poured a glass of wine to set the tableau for a long chat. We talked for over an hour. It seemed like five minutes.

Along with my neighborhood, family, friends and, in the broader perspective, the whole world, I will be praying for her daughter, a nurse, who has COVID-19, a mild case so far. I worry about kids who don't have it; her heart is with a child who does.

I also got to talk to my darling granddaughter in London, Ontario. Maddie is a chipper soul and wasn't upset that her dance competition that we were to fly up and attend had been postponed. We arranged for her to phone later when she was on the trampoline so I could watch her backflips. Both she and her brother, Luke, were fearlessly flipping around, and I was privileged to watch, courtesy of their dad who held the phone.

Yes, there is an ugly disease causing chaos, but the human spirit is rising and finding ways to live life in the great between of what was and what will be again.

Day 9

Wavelets of Sadness Like Breath of Departing Souls

Today, little wavelets of sadness were flittering by like the departing breath of someone's soul. I can, today, feel the fear, the grief that is out there, but not yet right here. There are no sirens. But they will come. Our shrunken lives are going on like becoming invisible will prevent us being affected.

The phone rings a lot, but the calls have to do with the regular things of community life and the electronification of all church functions. I cannot help but feel this novel virus is going to make us better people. Our values will be clarified. But there will be suffering first.

We are obsessed. Whose idea was 24-7 news cycles? Because it affects us. I feel sorrow for the lack of emotion we have felt for the families trying to survive in Syria, for the people of Ukraine, for the hungry, frightened and diseased in Venezuela as they flee war and violence. And now when the virus strikes these people, they will die in the streets in the refugee camps. The groups like Doctors Without Borders and the Red Cross will be overwhelmed.

I read about wealthy people buying up all the rooms at luxury inns so they can be safe and have vacations. And I think how many medical supplies that would purchase, perhaps for treatment of those same wealthy families' members. Viruses don't respect status.

When I start to feel lonely, I think of Anne Frank's family staying in place in an attic to evade Hitler's long, hateful reach. They would have loved to live my restricted life. I also think of my friend, Kristin, with MS and my sister, Peggy, with Lewy Body. Both are in nursing homes, separated from their families for their protection. How alone they must feel.

So, yes, like many people, I'm a little sad. And I consider myself fortunate that is all I feel.

Day 10

Look for the Helpers Indeed

We were walking with our dog, Cadbury, around our subdivision—our new workout strategy, poor dog—when we saw a chalk-art message at the end of a driveway reading Stronger Together. And then Look for the helpers. I knew it was a reference to the story Mr. Rogers told: When I was a boy, and I would see scary things in the news, Rogers said to his television neighbors, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'

I had two reminders, with pictures, of this quiet army of helpers. One was of a small group from our church fixing the steps and overhang above the door for an elderly couple whose home had been damaged by Hurricane Michael. Our church's small disaster relief committee works with a larger volunteer organization Mission 850 to assess needs and help where we can.

The other reminder was a picture of our newly trained food bank team. With seniors being asked to stay home and the protocol changes, our church food bank, the second largest in the city, had to shut for a week. New, younger volunteers came forward for training, safety protocols were developed, and the food bank was back in operation.

It's not a big church, but its heart is mighty.

Look for the helpers, indeed.

Day 11

Neighborhood Finds, Feet, and Fresh Air Chat Room

There are repercussions for not driving your car for a while. It rebels. It may be something as simple as the battery, but AAA doesn't boost Volvo batteries. So off went my little four-year-old to the dealership.

The upside of not driving is that neither is anyone else. The neighborhood has found its feet and is collectively out walking and taking time to chat. We learned today, for instance, that the mantle over our fireplace came from the home of a couple in Alabama whose daughter lives in the hood and is friends with the previous owner.

We also learned that if your HOA levies a threat of fine by post if you don't do some particular good homeowner deed, you can ask questions in writing, and they must respond in return. It's called overwhelming them with paperwork so they cease harassing homeowners.

Why are neighbors even bothering with the HOA in the middle of a pandemic? It's because the new management group sent citations (basically work orders) to a lot of owners, us included, to do various tasks such as removing leaves from our roof (actually, it was to power wash our roof, which I've never seen any neighbors do because it damages the gravel on the shingles).

When Jerry called the contact person, the individual said just to remove the leaves. Unfortunately, it is the month oak leaves endlessly fall on our homes, followed by pollen and flowers. We have six large oak trees overhanging our roof. You can't keep it clear. If you don't do the work, you get fined $1,000. If you don't pay it, they put a lien on your house.

With all the neighbors out walking and talking, it turns into a mobile think tank. We found out who got cited for what, how to fight back, and what percent of signatures you need to separate from the larger HOA and start our own.

Tomorrow, who knows what the circulating topic will be?

Day 12

The Debut of Home Cuts

Here come the home cuts.

In a few weeks, we will know everyone's real hair color.

The fun part is doing your pedicure when you've had knee replacement surgery. Your knee doesn't have the flexibility it had, so getting your foot close enough to reach and see with reading glasses is like tackling a greased pig in a rainstorm.

Day 13

This Year We Visit Gethsemane Alone

Ten years ago, at the prompting of a friend, I took this picture to remind us of our own humility before God. It is Easter week, but the altar is not stripped yet. That happens on Maundy Thursday. At that time, the symbols of liturgy are removed from the sanctuary slowly, evocatively, silently, until the altar lies bare, a reminder that Jesus was stripped down to his barest humanity to die.

The death and resurrection have not yet happened. But they are close. And we know that in three days, we will be singing hymns in major keys as opposed to the minor key laments. But we won't sing them in a crowd. We will sing them alone or as families. And that's where music always starts—inside in our hearts, in our nucleus.

Today, that picture would have one solitary priest in keeping with coronavirus rules.

Like the liturgy of Holy Week, we are left alone in Gethsemane, asking to have this plague taken from us. It is stripping our lives naked, and we prepare for the unknown, for what feels like the death of our culture. We will go through Easter pared down and huddled, just as Jesus's disciples did.

And yet we hope and pray that we will emerge from this social entombment alive, humbled, and forever changed, much like those who survived the Great Depression.

This will be the Easter we find out what it means.

Day 14

Words Slip In and Out in the Ether of Togetherness Like Amoeba

It's amazing how many little conversations you realize you haven't been having until home becomes the hub for work. Words just slide in and out in that ether between working and living in the same space.

So, today, His Collarship and I were sitting out in the patio area in front of our house. We kind of peek out from behind two potted bottle brush plants and startle some of our neighbors who are circling the hood to find adventure and their pre-Christmas waistlines.

A couple bicycled by, obviously doing the almost-two-mile loop and cul-de-sac that terminates our street. Several minutes later, the man rode by again.

That's twice, said the observant Collarship, following it with even more profundity: His partner will be along in a minute.

I started to laugh. "You know who we sound like? Those two old men in the balcony on the Muppet Show."

Of course, we process news together as well, and it looks like we will be wearing masks in public. I turned to His Collarship and said, That Darth Vader mask will work.

It is a serious piece of solid rubber. Hot underneath rubber. It's the Fort Knox of masks.

Funny, that mask wasn't with the dress-up clothes last time I checked (we haven't got that bored yet!). I'm wondering if it got slipped somewhere by the other half, just in case I was really going to wear it to the grocery store.

Day 15

Hit Pay Dirt with This Neighborhood

I have not been a subdivision dweller or fan of pocket housing until we moved to Tallahassee (although we lived at the perimeter of one). We hit pay dirt with this one. It's a good place to live in a stay-at-home directive as we all have yards surrounding well-spaced houses. We can have great conversations without coming anywhere near the six-foot-range coronavirus dictates. The road is wide, making it a moving stage for our sudden daily intimacy.

Tonight, we were watching two girls who live just up the street, practicing their baton routines in the street. They like the area in front of our house because it is flat. Works for us. We sit on our patio, and the show comes to us. These girls are competitive batonists on an international level. As such, they engage in all sorts of body twirls and twists between throwing the baton aloft and catching it.

The flow of conversation with their parents led to putting in companion orders from Dave's Pizza, which we both like. All with social spacing.

Later, when we were starting out to walk the dog and had stopped to chat, we observed a motorcycle coming down the street with a dog running beside it at full speed. We stopped to make things easier for this dalmatian tsunami to rush by. We were laughing at this ingenious manner of exercising the dog, as was the owner. We all knew what house the dog was from and the yard work its owner had done.

It's like that.

Note: Our grandkids like riding their scooters on our street because it is straight, and the pavement is smooth. Their words.

Day 16

Riding a Bike with a Limp

I did not know you could ride a bike with a limp.

You can.

I have not ridden a real bike since before knee replacement surgery eleven months ago. It took months to be able to turn the pedals all the way around on a stationary bike at rehab. And then I moved onto the gym until COVID shut the doors.

Jerry hauled out my bike, cleaned it up, and replaced the tubes and tires. I hopped on to take it for a test run, and it was painful getting that knee around. I haven't climbed stairs or cycled in weeks, so it has seized up like an old ditched-on-the-rust-heap car.

But this is not a lament. This is a day for gratitude. I am happy to have ridden that small loop.

Two years ago this August, I had such an extreme attack of vertigo and imbalance while we were vacationing in Ireland. No—it wasn't pub-related—that I could not walk without help. The Irish doctor filled me full of meds to get me home. I had a lot of tests including a brain scan, and the good news is I still have one. The bad news is no underlying cause was detected, but it behaved like a migraine on steroids. It took a lot of vestibular therapy and time to get back to normal. I was just starting to ride a bike again when I had the surgery.

So the good news is that after all these prolonged reminders that I'm not thirty anymore, I can ride a bike. I'm not off balance very often, and I live somewhere where I can work at getting my knee back without breathing in virus droplets.

Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. We won't march with palm branches, but we can still lift our hearts in gratitude, for all we have.

Tomorrow, we will all have new ways to mark the start of Easter week. They may become traditions.

Day 17

Property Brothers Virus Hit

If I hang around a house long enough, I don't get cabin fever. I come down with the Property Brothers virus. His Collarship has endured forty-six years of coming home and thinking a moving company has been using our house for training sessions. And he knows that this is just the beginning.

When I was alone with an infant in a two-room cabin attached to a small church (with the outhouse on the other side of the church with the bears—that would be pronounced bay-yers in Southern-speak—while Jerry did his summer placement as a collar-in-training, I hung so much floral and striped wallpaper in that cabin. It looked like a seed catalogue gone haywire.

In Sault Ste Marie, home with a baby and a toddler, I started digging up and moving huge boulders with a pry bar. Jerry learned he was building a fence and that a post hole digger might be in order.

When we lived on Manitoulin Island, where my tiny companions had expanded to three, Jerry came home to find I'd moved a massive relic of a pullout couch that had been my grandmother's from one upstairs room to another. How did you get it down the hallway? he wondered, given that the walkway between the wall and the railing above the stairs was narrow.

Well, I rolled it on its side and dragged it, I said. Then when it sprang open and caught on the rails, I had to clamber along the railing to the other end so I could hold it together while I pulled.

I think the adrenaline of such a conquest was the equivalent of bagging a deer. An exceedingly small, pretty-much-already-dead deer.

This time, during coronavirus shutdown, after changing the garden all around, the itch turned indoors. My office, which is in a small bedroom, is a glorious array of mismatched bits. It is functional. Inspiring it is not. Thus, I purchased wallpaper. My office had taken a baby step toward becoming a she-shed.

This triggered himself having to help switch the big desk in the office with a small one that, of course, needed to change color. The idea of turning the closet into a desk cubby and building a work counter got axed before it materialized for the same reason most people's ideas get reeled in. Sometimes you just have to move some furniture.

Oh, and here's the real beauty: the wallpaper I bought isn't pre-pasted. Is wallpaper paste an essential?

I don't remember that corner of the grocery store. Here's to hoping Amazon has it.

Day 18

Mongoose Bike Has Taken Me from Tallahassee to England

Thanks to your encouragement, I am riding my bike around the neighborhood, and my knee is behaving.

But there's a partnership with my twenty-six-year-old Mongoose that is part of the story about Jerry fixing it up. It was getting worn, so two years ago, or thereabouts, I bought a new one that is probably easier to ride because it is a bigger bike. But it never fit like my old one. In fact, I fell off it at the Shannon Lakes Drive roundabout as I was trying to dismount onto the sidewalk. It was a woman's bike with a drink holder, and my foot tripped on the journey through. All previous bikes were men's bikes, so I was used to swinging my leg up and over.

Fortunately, only my pride suffered.

When I was having knee surgery, I gave my new bike to a family member, knowing biking was way down the road. The Mongoose was purchased in Venice, Florida, along with one for my for-better-for-worse buddy. He had vocal cord problems that required rest, so parishioners lent us their Florida house in a retirement community called Rotonda for the month of June.

Here, he could talk only to me. Bless my heart.

After about three days, we realized a camera and inline skates were not going to keep us occupied, so off we went to a bike shop. We bicycled for miles every day with big bottles of water for our internal combustion.

Since then, these bikes have been all over Canada and the US. Our idea of a vacation used to be pick a destination, throw the bikes in our SUV, and stop where we want. We've ridden them in places like the dikes in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and the Cotswolds in England. When His Collarship swapped houses and cars with an English priest for his three-month sabbatical twenty-four years ago, we took our bikes apart, boxed them, and brought them with us. We rode them rurally and in places like Oxford. We also spent a week riding in rural France where we rented a two-hundred-year-old farmhouse.

Brakes went on for scenery and events such as watching a man thatch a roof, learning about mummer dancers, or watching