Until Next Time My Dear Penticton

The next morning I woke up long before my watch alarm went off. I checked the time, or at least what I thought was the right time, using the watch light. Oh we don’t need to get up yet, still plenty of time, or so I thought. I went back to sleep, trying to squeeze in every last minute to desperately try and make up for my poor time management the night before. I was later awakened by my friends telling me that it was quarter after seven….I had slept in!! In the midst of my panic I tried to figure out what went wrong with the alarm I had set on my watch. It should be mentioned that the watch has been very good to me in a lot of ways but waking me up on time is not included in the praise that I give. On several occasions it has let me down, so I was not altogether surprised that it happened again in this circumstance, especially when you consider the state I was in the previous night. If it didn’t work on the times that I was riding a peak of awareness it should not be expected that it could happen with a more favorable result when my mind was beginning suffocated with a glaze of “one too many drinks” and sleep deprivation. I soon realized that I had set the alarm correctly, just for a different time zone. I was not off to a great start but I had no other choice but to roll with it. Luckily we had the foresight to pack the night before, so it did not take us long before we were on the road.

The plan all along was that Shannon was going to be the one to drive us back to Vancouver. She wanted to do me this favor since I drove all the way up and because I needed to get some rest so that I would be fresh for the upcoming playoff game. So I dragged myself around to the passenger seat, flopped myself down and started to burrow my way into the seat in preparation to slip right back into sleep/recovery mode. Shannon assumed her position in the captain seat and off we went. Well at least off we should have went, but backing out of the parking spot seemed to an insurmountable task for some reason. Just as I was giving in to my heavy eyelids Shannon asked me for help, asking me how much room she had before she would back into the fence surrounding the pool. I was silent at first due to the confusion I was feeling over the question, this must be a weak attempt at a joke because there was enough room to parallel park a semi truck in the space she had between her and the fence. I soon realized two things. One she was not joking and two that she was in no condition to drive. It was at this point I was faced with the reality that it was going to be up to me to get us back to Vancouver.

It was no small task to get myself into the right mind set to safely drive us home. I was feeling the effects of the big night we had but it was nothing more than a lack of sleep and dehydration. I was able to use the power of positive thinking to convince myself that I actually felt great, I just didn’t know it yet. When your thinking is right the fact don’t count! This is how I was able to get myself into the right mind set and how I was able to make record time on the way back home.

From this point on there was not too much more to tell. The ride back was full of visualization, to prepare myself to play an epic game of baseball, and aggressive driving to get us back with enough time to make it to the game on schedule……and a lot of rehydrating lol. This was the only obstacle that really interfered with my time line. I drank between 3 and 4 liters on liquid on the way back and this caused me to have to make a few more pit stops than I would usually make. Other than that there was not much happening. Shannon actually slept 90% of the 4 hours it took to drive back, so there was no noteworthy conversation to speak of. I got back 30 minutes later than I had planned but still made excellent time….I blame the pit stops, but they were necessary, I needed to rehydrate in a bad way.

As for the baseball game, our team played well, but not well enough to win the game. Our defense was solid, but they still managed to score runs on some perfectly placed hits that found the holes that we were not able to cover on defense. There defense on the other hand was able to rob us of the well hit balls that should have scored the runs that we needed to win the ball game. It was close all the way through but we ended up being on the losing side of a 6-5 final score. Once again the Mounties were not able to make it past the first round after finishing near the top of the league in the regular season. I, much like the rest of the team, played a good game but was not able to manufacture any of the clutch plays in the field, or at the plate, that would have been needed to seal a victory for the good guys. The loss did free me up to enjoy the final few weeks of the summer but I still would have liked to make it past the first round, even if it was just to enjoy living my life as a mustached man for one more week. Mustache power?! Not this time around…..

So that concludes our Penticton Adventure! We would have loved to have stayed longer, but I think we did enough living in that one day to make up for any of the lost time that was unavailable to us on this occasion. We went big and we went home, it was a good compromise J.

Stay tuned for my next series of posts about my trip to Westport, Washington coming soon!