When I was a kid on an Abbotsford farm, my day started and ended with “chores”. If I was lucky – and if I had been good - and if it wasn’t Labour Day (when dad said we had to labour) … I could get Saturday off to do whatever I wanted.
So – Friday night - there I was – lying in bed - staring at the ceiling at 2 a.m. … couldn’t sleep for anticipation of my friend and I getting on our bikes and “travelling”.
Those were the days between childhood and manhood, the time when the bikes were a “forerunner” of a drivers licence. Our bikes were loaded with accessories that had something to do with cars. They sounded like a car with our cardboard and clothes pin spoke flapper. Our horns sounded like cars, we had mud flaps and steering knobs and all the adult things we were not old enough for.
One of these years we would get our licence and travel “by car” … but for now … here I was at midnight, thinking about the “open road” … my Saturday, to go “anywhere that I wanted”, on my bike.
Times have changed, and here I am, an old man. I should be retired, life should be easy, my chores are done. What am I doing lying in bed at 2AM, can’t sleep in anticipation of Saturday.
Where am I going on “Saturday”? Why, of course – I have to work overtime – get in my car like everyone else and “pollute the planet” one “extra day” a week, to pay for my taxes, to pay for those new bike lanes, which the cockamamie politicians are putting in.
If I live to be 140, my taxes will never pay for those millions. I demand that the municipality puts up signs like they do on highways, telling us how much this strip of pavement costs or – maybe I don’t want to know – I’ll still be awake at thirteen o’clock!
Don Warkentin
Mission, BC