Snippets, memories

I'm all done with   bad boys.  Now I like the good guys, who know how to act 'bad' once in a while.     

   *wink*

I like the ones who are both and more...

ok

Mike,  the girls must be all over you.  All those nurses and the wild parties they have....my sister is a nurse and she certainly has some stories to tell!       

We'll be expecting young Mike to come back with some glowing reports in the very near future.   

hahahahaha yeah, we are a pretty wild bunch :p but unfortunatly not in my class. The other 2 classes are much more fun and wilder, it sucks :p

anyway in januari i'm going to work in a hospital for a few weeks, we'll see what happens.

@ Jilly: the girls are not all over me, I am not a good looking guy :p

Back on topic...

Skip forward another few years,  and I'm living in the Vancouver area.


VANCOUVER TO THE OKANAGAN:

I live in the East now, but I spent some years living on the West Coast (of Canada). This story is about a journey I took, in order to move from the Vancouver area to the Okanagan.

I decided that the city life wasn't for me after all and decided to move back to the Okanagan. Not only that but it was a much better place for my kids, now aged 5 and 1. I knew the area well, and had always loved it. It's the warmest place in Canada, with Osoyoos having the only pocket desert in this country. Not to mention the beautiful mountains, lakes and orchards that this area is so well known for.

The West coast is very rainy, and this particular year it had been raining more than usual. It was nearing the end of November and I had given in my notice to leave at the townhouse complex that I was living in. I hated living there, although it had all the amenities that most people could want, there were so many negative things about the neighbourhood and area in general.

I had only recently given up my trusty little Honda car for a larger Pontiac. The reason being that once I had decided to make this journey, I knew that my little Standard car may not make it over the sometimes treacherous and snowy mountains that I would have to drive through. The weather channels gave out all the warnings about not traveling in the rain storms, and especially not attempting to cross the mountains in such bad weather. But I'm too stubborn for my own good and knew that I would go anyway, the only thing that would stop me would be if they actually closed the roads down, and so far they were still open.

So I left that morning, packed up my car, and my two little kids and hoped for the best. I had done this route before quite a few times, so I knew the roads well. The rain kept on falling, it was bad, it wasn't letting up, and I knew that as much as it rained on the West side of the mountains the more it would snow on the mountains themselves. It was too late to turn back now, so I kept on going.

I noticed that the road was not only very slippery, but large puddles of water lay in some dips and areas which sprayed the car every time we went through them. We were in the mountains now, but not at such a high altitude that that there was any snow at the moment, just the continuous rain. This is a drive that in the summer can be very pleasant and fun to do, but now it looked anything but. To make things worse it looked like everyone seemed to have followed the warnings and stayed put, we were one of a very few vehicles that were actually passing through this area. The others were truckers with huge semi's that thundered past trying to get to their destination before they closed the roads down left and right. The road was getting very difficult to drive on and the visibility was very poor as well, I wondered how I managed to get myself into this, but knew I only had myself to blame.

I had been the only vehicle on this road for a long time, so was surprised to see a big semi-truck directly behind me. He was coming up way too fast, and worse he kept on driving at that speed, it seemed he was but inches from my tail. I started to drive faster, trying hopelessly to get away from him. 'What is he playing at?' I asked myself, this is all I need, a crazed out trucker on my back. He didn't let up and kept close enough to me that I knew if I slowed down at all, he would have no chance of slowing down to avoid me and would crash into me. I thought about my kids and wondered how I could have been stupid enough to put myself in this situation is the first place.

I decided to make a move, I drove on to the muddy hard shoulder, hoping he would be able to just drive past me, but first I made sure that I wasn't going to simply fall off the mountain, luckily the fall didn't look too bad, worst case scenario I would only fall around 10 feet down. Unfortunately I was going at too high a speed to safely stop on the muddy, socked hard shoulder, and did fall into the 10 foot drop. Thankfully none of us were hurt, but I was in a bad situation. I was on a isolated road, in a deep ditch that was quickly filling with more and more water.

The trucker stopped too. Oh no, I thought, what does the he want? Surely not to help? But he did help me out and so did a couple of other vehicles that stopped while I was in the ditch. They put a rope on the car and I drove it backwards up on to the road again. I thanked them and went back to the driving. On the way I still had to pass the snowy mountain roads, luckily my car was able to manoeuvre over them with not too much difficulty.  After which, we drove through Manning park,  A large natural park, miles of beautiful forest  that  in good weather  would be a pleasant drive, but today it  just looked dangerous and grey.

Eventually I came to a town called Princeton. And there I found out that all roads were now closed, the ones I had just driven over and the ones where I was heading towards. Not only that but a local town had been flooded out and so the motels were almost full to capacity. I did eventually manage to get a room for us. Once booked in, we went to the Cafe to eat, and there was the trucker, he waved and smiled and I did the same. A certain understanding between us, although I couldn’t quite fathom what that was. They all seemed to know each other, the truckers have probably done this route many, many times before I thought.

We went back to our room and  tried to get some sleep I had to wait and see if they would open up the roads tomorrow, as I was eager to be on my way.

The next day, they did open up the roads going East, and so I was on my way again, I made it to my destination without too much more trouble.

Thanks.    I think this is the last one I'm going to print though.   

Quote: 
I always was a horse man, I have had horses since I was a small boy (when I was 8 my parents wanted me out of house and gave me away to be raised on a horse farm, "Rosenhof" near Hanau):


Rattler,  you say they gave you away?  To who?  That must have been very hard for an eight year old kid.

Of cause, he became *my* horse, and later, when I was older I bought him and rode with him until his death 17 years later.

It's nice that you were able to keep that horse,  I don't know much about horses, but I know some people who get really attached to these magnificent animals.

Thanks for sharing this with us Rattler,  I really enjoyed reading it.  Your horse 'Major' must have been very special.

Writing a book is one of the toughest things I've ever done. Coming back and editing it is tougher though. I have finished one and have just started work on a second with a third to be done if the other two do well.

I know a few well known authors personally and quite a few not so well known ones.... 

Good Hunting.

MR