Road Trip

Last weekend I decided to go to Kelowna to see my brother/check out a school so I called my good buddy Lynn up on the Thursday night and we left on Saturday after I worked. We jumped into my daddy's little red Suzuki Swift who we named Bruce and began driving. It was such a hot weekend and we didn't have AC so we had the windows wide open.
I think I like writing these things after the fact because then I can skip the deathly boring stuff and just do the highlights... they are pretty subjective highlights, but I found them enjoyable none-the-less.
Our trip was a disaster from the start, but an excellent one. I had my fudgicle melt on me within a minute of leaving Lynn's driveway. It was all over me and all over the car and a bit in my mouth. Lynn thankfully wiped it up while I drove.
We got to Kelowna in relatively good time considering we were going 40km up most of the hill's. It really is a strange phenomenon to have semi's passing you. But Bruce was faithful and we made it to Kelowna. We even "blasted" the tunes - ABBA and some solid disco music. Daddy called because he went out and got me a BCAA membership because that's how much faith he has in his little car and so he called us and gave us the number just in case we needed it.
When we got to Kelowna we went and visited my little brother, Justin for a bit. He's been in Kelowna playing for Team BC for the past month and so it's been a while. He is so cute and I love him so much! It was fun to see his friends and to surprise him! David VanderEnde's car drove up so I went to scare him. I snuck up behind the car and jumped in front of his open car door and roared... It wasn't David driving his car. It was one of the coaches so I introduced myself as Justin's sister while Lynn and Justin laughed by Bruce as I yelled from David's car that it wasn't him.
We then left for Vernon where we were spending the night with my really good friend Laura's cousins. We had no idea where her aunt and uncle lived so we parked at this park and went looking for a pay phone. Jeff called us admist our searching and informed us that he lived two blocks away, but they were at Sir Winston's Pub which was a block away so we went and met them there. Oh ya.... I didn't see Earl's, but that's because I was looking in the wrong direction and not because I am blind! So we hung out with Jeff, Curtis, Trevor, Nathan, Cheryl and Shannon. We then went to this other place where we made Lynn dance with us. It took her a little while to warm up, but she eventually got into it and had good time. I'm pretty sure swimming was the highlight of our night though... at least mine and Lynn's. We went to Kinsmen beach.. maybe... at 1:30ish and played frisbee in the water without any light and the guys tried skimboarding... in a lake... It was funny. They don't have the luxury of a tide so they use what they can get. We all crashed at Jeff's house that night - minus Nathan and Cheryl so not all of us actually.
Sunday we went to Church, Beach - watched cardboard boat races... like these kids had to sit in the boats and paddle around this buoy.... quite impressive, we had Screamers or Polar Float - we were apprehensive at first, but the soft icecream/slurpee combo was excellent. We then went and hung out with Justin in Kelowna for a while. I miss him already! He's matured so much since being out there... I'm so proud of him!!! I'm not even joking. I can't even explain the change, but... he's a good kid. He really really is. I absolutely love him! It was still 38 degrees when we were driving him around getting grocery's at 8:30ish.... just a side note.
Disaster struck on our ride back to Vernon for the night. Well, it really wasn't much of a disaster actually. So we are 8km out of Kelowna right near Lake Country or whatever it's called and I see this deer on the side of the road in the grass. I am so excited and I'm like, "Lynn there's a deer!" because she has seen two already and this is my first for this trip. This really was a beautiful creature. It was a big buck and it was nibbling on some grass. It was raining out so I was driving slower than the speed limit, thankfully. So I was going like 90km and this deer decides to bolt in front of me. Uh Oh. I am driving a little Suzuki Swift that I'm pretty sure my brothers could crush if they jumped on it and here this big buck (I've seen a few in my day and I think this was one of the biggest I've seen and I'm not just exaggerating for dramatic effect) decides to run right in front of me. So I swerve to the left and slam on my brakes. I just realized I'm changing tenses at will in this paragraph so I'll apologize to you english majors now. Anyways. I'm swerving and slamming and my heart wasn't pumping any faster than normal. Lynn and I were both so calm and then when I realized that there was no way around hitting this thing I remembered, from good old ICBC on-line road tests, that just before you hit a deer (a moose on the test) you're supposed to take your foot off the brake so that your front end isn't barreled down and the thing doesn't fly through your windshield. So, just before we hit the Deer, I took my foot of the brake and stuck the car in neutral. I was really quite amazed at how well you can think and how quickly things run through your head when you're calm and in a bad situation. So, the deer hit rolled over our hood from Lynn's side to mine and it's face and an antler came and hit the windshield right by my side and then it lay on the ground for a second, got up and ran hobbling away. The first thing that went through my mind was... Amen for BCAA, but Bruce still drove fine. We pulled over to check out the damage, but things looked alright and Bruce still drove. It felt quite... unreal. Right after it happened we had to remind ourselves that we'd just hit a deer because our adrenaline wasn't pumping at all. So we continued our drive back to vernon. On our drive my window randomly fell down and wouldn't roll up anymore and a thunderstorm was starting so we taped that up good when we got to vernon.
On Monday we went back to Kelowna to check out the college.. that lasted 15 minutes. We went to Gyro beach for one last dip and headed home. It was so hot!
We drove home going 40 most of the way, stopping repeatedly so poor Bruce could rest, with the heat blasting, the windows wide open, and the Lion King soundtrack blaring! We made it home safely though and we had SO MUCH FUN!!