meeting the locals!

I borrowed a bike from the friends I am staying with and headed into town along the Chester Creek Greenbelt. In the winter people ski down the track, but right now in spring, the greenbelt is absolutely verdant. Gleaming white-trunked silver birch trees resplendent with fresh lime green foliage line the track, the ground carpeted with iridescent green grasses with a rainbow of wildflowers bursting into bloom as you ride along.  The track follows a babbling creek with funny humpty timber bridges as it runs down to the coast – to the Cook Inlet (yeah he came here too!) where a wide mudflat gives way to a narrow bay. The track then joins another that follows the coast into or out of town. Today I headed downtown for a late breakfast. I jumped the queue waiting for a table (there are some perks to being by yourself) sat at the bar and ordered eggs florentine and a small cappuccino. Small? Nothing is small here! The coffee was big, as big as the biggest you get at home and the eggs came with a hash brown the size of my head! I ate as much as I could and chatted to the people who were sitting next to me. Not many locals here, not that I’ve met yet anyway.  I had a little bit of time before my appointment with the National Parks Service to get fingerprinted and to fill out the myriad forms to get cleared as a volunteer. One of the questions on the form was: what number is my FBI file. Not sure? Hopefully I won’t have one. 

Anyway I digress… I decided to explore the backstreets of the town and headed off.  Finding myself riding on the odd side of the road with big rigs (we call them 4WD’s - no one has a car) roaring past, through bumpy roadworks I looked for a quiet side street and headed down it. All around were cute timber houses with intricately designed shingle roofs and decided a photo was in order, so I stopped at a park to get my camera out of my bag. MY BAG!!!!!!!! As I got off my bike I quickly realised it was no longer lashed to the rack.  Oh god!!! I felt my brain snap as my heart leapt into my neck pounding like pink monkey’s drum. I cannot describe just how distressed I was. In the bag was my passport, my wallet - complete with my credit cards, my iphone, my camera, my life. %$#@!!!!!!!

I dived back on the bike and peddled like fury back to the bumpy roadworks praying all the way. I must have looked scary – wide-eyed and crazy – people jumped out of my way on the footpath as I scanned the road like a woman possessed. Everyone I saw looked like a potential bag thief. Then I saw him. A tiny bearded old bloke sitting on a grass bank on the other side of the road with my bag on his lap, my wallet in his hand. “Hey!” I shouted across the busy road “hey, that’s my bag!” It felt like a lifetime before I could cross the road and jump off the bike. He handed me my wallet. By now my heart was jumping around at the top of my throat, threatening to burst out my mouth.  “Bet you’re glad to see that” he drawled. I think I said thank you forty times in the first sentence. “That’s the first Iphone I seen up close”. He told me. “I looked in your book. I knew you were a nice lady – you have a picture of the Dali Lama.” He said he worked out I was from Australia and was examining the coins in my purse. “Can I have a couple?” I gave him the lot, plus all the cash I had – only $20 US and a $5 Australian note. He was pleased with the money and asked me if I drank beer – I said “no, but maybe I’ll start today, let me buy you one” so we jumped on our bikes (he was cycling too) and off we went into town to a seedy bar where all his friends were drinking and we shared a Bud light together. He told me about his life. He had been homeless, living rough, doing a paper run for money and managed to buy a trailer (caravan) for a song, so now had his own digs. He paid a friend $20 a month to park in their yard and use electricity. He’d been in gaol for drug offences and assault as he had a short wick that got him into trouble more than once. Great. Gary was newest best friend. He told me an hour’s worth of stories about losing jobs, eating for free at the soup kitchen, working on fishing boats, about his dysfunctional family, and about delivering papers in the snow. Every person who walked into the bar knew him and they looked quizzically at us sitting there drinking together. I thanked him again and made my goodbyes as I had to go to the park service office and get on with the formalities of becoming a volunteer. He asked me go riding with him another day. I probably will. He is a friend.