This past weekend we celebrated Jakob’s birthday. Again. It’s the 3rd party he’s had for his 2nd birthday! We celebrated this one in Brandon and invited all his Aunts and Uncles from both sides of the family and the result was a great time of family fun.
He loves his Wassermelone
A sweet moment with cousin Aleksa
As for the bike racing goals that I set for myself, that’s a different story. Results have been mixed in the sense that on the positive side, I’ve completed every race. On the less positive side, I’ve been slapped with the hard reality that I can’t just jump into racing after a 5 year hiatus and expect to do as well as I used to. Somehow I thought that the 2 months of training on the exerbike at the compound gym would have me well prepared to compete. That has not exactly been the case. Part of the problem is that I keep registering for the tougher race categories so that I can get my money’s worth and spend more time on longer courses. Oh well, I’m in it more for the experience and the fun anyway (yeah, nice excuse. . In any case, it was good to come back after 5 years and receive warm welcomes from the familiar faces I used to race against. One club went so far as to welcome me back on their website. I thought that was nice. Next Sunday (July 5th) will be the defining moment of truth to see if this crash course of racing pays off. I’m scheduled to ride a 100km mountain bike race. Friends who have done it before say I should be prepared to SUFFER. Should be fun…not.
Let the good times roll! We survived our 27 hour journey from Yanbu to Winnipeg and have been quick to squeeze as much fun as possible into the week we’ve already been back. A quick recap of all the fun…
The long journey went as flawless as can be expected. Jakob was amazing. again. Thank you Lord.
Shortly after the hellos, hugs and such at the airport, we headed off to Montana’s for food. Pork ribs for me. Mmmmmm…haven’t had pork in so long. You’d be shocked how much better a bacon cheeseburger tastes with real bacon and not beef bacon substitute.
Friday I headed off to my cousin Klaus to pick up a minivan we’re renting from him. Sweet ‘98 Ford Windstar. I’m soooo thrilled to be driving a minivan. Seriously. I am. I love the seat height and the massive amount of room for all our crapolla.
Of course the culture shock we are experiencing extends to the weather. As can be expected, we are wearing pants and feeling a chilly bite in the breezes while our Winnipeg friends comment on how hot it is. We are used to 39C and wind that feels like someone is blowing a hair dryer in your face.
2 days after arrival, and with jet lag still kicking our sorry butts, we headed off to Minnesota to see my brother and his family. That was fun. One highlight was satisfying my craving for a Dairy Queen Blizzard. Mmmmmm…
Jakob had a great time playing with Holly and Evan. It helps that Evan has a HUGE Thomas the Train collection, and that Holly is a big fan of Cars: the Movie, and has a Lightning McQueen and Mack combo car set. Fun times. One of their favourite things was crazy dancing in the living room.
One of the added bonuses to visiting Waldy was that I got to pick up the bike I bought. It is really sweet, and practically needs to be tied down as it’s so light it almost floats away!
It was funny to see Jakob’s reaction to something totally foreign to him – PUDDLES!!! We bought some great little Lightning McQueen boots at Target so that he could splash around.
We’ve spent so much time in airports lately, we started to feel airport withdrawal. To cure our itch, we went to a church service that’s held in the Grand Rapids regional airport. It was nice to be back in church, even if I don’t know the latest worship songs anymore.
So, that’s a quick recap of our first week back. The next week will be equally packed with fun. Tonight I will be racing my mountain bike for the first time since 2004. whoa. I’m very curious to see how I do, and whether the time I spent training on the indoor exercycle will actually translate into fitness in the real world. Wish me luck.
Cat’s out of the Bag…
looks like Jakob’s hand-me-down clothes won’t be as useful as we’d hoped for the next little Duester…
Jakob is transitioning to a crib that has a side removed so that when the next baby comes along in October, he’ll be ready for her to take his crib.
Down the tubes. What exactly does that mean? After googling it, I found that it essentially means wasted and unrecoverable. Now, what tubes are they referring to??? “A strong candidate for the tubes being referred to must be the soil-pipes which are connected to lavatories,” as explained here. Actually, after looking up the meaning I’ve found that maybe it doesn’t quite describe the way I feel about the last year. Upon reflection, there have been a lot of positives that I can be thankful for.
As you may have guessed, today is my birthday. Another year older and hopefully wiser. Truth be told, this time of year tends to get me down. At least it has since I’ve lived in Yanbu. The reason for that is because I tend to miss good buddies at a time of year when you normally get together with friends and family to celebrate. This year the gloominess is accentuated by the terrible itch I have to visit Canada and enjoy my first full summer off since 2005. I can’t wait. Only 9 days until we blow this Popsicle stand! hmmm…wonder where that saying originates from…
In other, random news…
It’s kind of ironic when I discover breaking news about Saudi Arabia by visiting the online edition of the Winnipeg Free Press. The earth shaking news I’m referring to is the screening of a movie in a public theatre!!! Yes, for those of you who don’t know, Saudi Arabia has NO public movie theatres! Essentially, the conservative religious stance on it is that it will lead to spiritual laxness, and moral rot, (phhhh…like there’s any evidence for that happening in N.America…uhhh…;-) as well, it might encourage females and males to mix. For a deeper explanation, read here. And here’s probably a more interesting angle -the Saudi News take on it
My gr. 8’s sang Happy Birthday to me this morning. That was nice.
I pimped my ride… Yeah, my truck had scuffed paint all around the vehicle and the driver door’s corner was folded in. I took it to an Indian autobody guy and he quoted me 700SR to fix it. That equates to 186 USDollars. Ha! how cheap! So, it was a no-brainer and the work looks good.
The temperature when we got home from work yesterday was 40C. By the time my tennis lesson started at 8pm, it had dropped to a manageable(?) 34C. But, the good thing is that it’s a ‘dry’ heat. ha!
Interestingly, I found out that the official temperature in Saudi never exceeds 50C. The reason for this is because Saudi law dictates that all outdoor workers must be sent home if the official temperature is 50C or higher, thus ensuring that it never is!
As for down the tubes. I have a strong feeling that the Winnipeg Blue Bomber season is going to be filled with folly and embarrassing losses. I would not be overly surprised to see them win fewer than 5 games this year.
as for embarrassing, maybe it will be tough for them to top this…
Not the Yanbu blast, in case you thought it was...
Last week, for a span of about 5 days, Yanbu was gripped by volcano fever. The reason for the excitement was that two earthquakes, measuring about 4.5-5.2 on the Richter scale, rocked the mountains that hem Yanbu’s eastern edge. Overhead surveillance revealed that a gash could be seen in the earth and that magma had been forced close to the earth’s surface. The tremors felt here were quite mild. Sitting in my living room, all I could feel was a slight tugging sensation on the couch. The tremor was not significant enough to cause the pictures on the wall to move as the epicentre was about 150km away, near a town called Al Eis.
Residents of Al Eis were evacuated to Yanbu. This evacuation caused a few headaches, as some of the evacuating families had men with multiple wives. Customs here dictate that husbands with more than one wife are required to house them separately, lest they quarrel…Sooooo, extra accomodations needed to be provided.
There have been some pretty wild explanations as to what was causing the tremors. Some people (although I’ve never met them) have gone so far as to speculate that the earthquakes are fulfilling prophesies that signal the beginning of the end of the world. While others go only so far as to say that it’s obvious the earthquakes were caused because too much oil had been pumped out of the earth, causing it to become unstable…yikes. As you may or may not know, the oil fields in Saudi Arabia are over 1000km away from Yanbu. It would be like saying that an earthquake in Manitoba was caused by oil being pumped out in Alberta. Ha!
Needless to say, our excitement starved students were full of official predictions as to when the volcano was due to erupt. Some “official” predictions went so far as to state the specific day and hour! It’s no surprise that these predictions were wrong. In fact, a week has gone by and the latest reports are that the magma has since receeded and that there is no threat of an eruption anymore. I guess our local volcano was just a little shy. Oh well, at least we had a little bit of excitement (far enough removed to not be threatening, mind you) to spice up our mundane lives here in Yanbu.
About 2 weeks before his 2nd birthday, Jakob found a beautiful guitar that was left behind with some other trashy toys as a parting gift from a family that left Yanbu. As worthless as can be, from a musical perspective, Jakob has spent some quality time honing his “wock-star” skills. Here’s a video of one of our jam sessions. So far, our repertoire extends from the classic 80’s tune, Bullfrogs and Butterflies, to singing the ABC’s.
May 10th turned out to be an unusual day. The first thing that was unusual about it was that after 3 days of high winds and extreme dust storms, it started to RAIN! It was the first time in over a year that it rained. It felt so strange to see the clouds, smell the fresh scent, and feel the rainy humidity. It almost felt like we had been somehow transported to another country. The second thing that was unusual was that Elisha and I spent the evening alone. Just the two of us. We celebrated her birthday by going to the Holiday Inn for the seafood buffet. The food was great, and so was the peacefulness.
. In any case, it was good to come back after 5 years and receive warm welcomes from the familiar faces I used to race against. One club went so far as to welcome me back on their website. I thought that was nice. Next Sunday (July 5th) will be the defining moment of truth to see if this crash course of racing pays off. I’m scheduled to ride a 100km mountain bike race. Friends who have done it before say I should be prepared to SUFFER. Should be fun…not. 
Down the tubes. What exactly does that mean? After googling it, I found that it essentially means wasted and unrecoverable. Now, what tubes are they referring to??? “A strong candidate for the tubes being referred to must be the soil-pipes which are connected to lavatories,” as explained 
