Human Failings

Cruel jokes and small kindnesses Christie Blatchford

Saturday, Jun. 13, 2009 12:43AM EDT

Like everyone's, my life is replete with cruel jokes, but some days are richer than others in this regard.

Friday, on the very day I was in the pages of the paper mocking Jasmine MacDonnell for having a bad case of the dropsy (she's the former aide to Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt who kept leaving behind the minister's confidential papers, tape recorder and the like), I lost my own tape recorder.

In fairness, this was hardly a shocking departure; I routinely lose the electronic geegaws with which modern life burdens us. As I told my boss this week, as I was preparing to write about Ms. MacDonnell, “That poor girl is living my life by mistake.”

As it turns out, she had merely borrowed it.

On my way out the door in a state of advanced hysteria to look for the tape recorder (I never found it), having dragooned my freeloading boarder Strach into coming along with me so I could retrace my steps on foot, I shrieked at him to hurry and promptly if for no good reason threw my BlackBerry on the roof of the car.

Miraculously, it survived the bumpy trip up and out the back lane, conveniently going flying only when we were on the road, where it landed with such an audible clink that I somehow heard it over the sound of my own hammering pulse and thus was able to retrieve the sucker.

As you read this, I will be somewhere on the road between Victoria and Comox, on Vancouver Island, riding a bicycle.

This is utterly inexplicable, given that I spend a good deal of time and energy cursing city cyclists in the course of my ordinary life and never ride, though I have two bikes, in Toronto, where I live.

One is in a rank corner of the basement, tucked in among the aged hoses I am apparently collecting; the other is in my bedroom, on a gizmo that turns it into a stationary bike. I haven't been on the former for 10 years; the latter, which I bought when I briefly dreamed of becoming a triathlete, in two years.

It was last fall that I blithely committed to doing the bike ride. I was in Comox for the second annual ride for Boomer's Legacy, the charity named after Andrew (Boomer) Eykelenboom, the young Canadian medic who was killed Aug. 11, 2006, in a suicide bomb blast in Spin Boldak, Afghanistan.

I didn't know Boomer, though my Toronto Star friend Rosie DiManno met him, but in the course of researching my recent book about Canadian soldiers, I certainly learned about him and what a fine young man he was. And in the course of that, I also came to know Boomer's parents, Maureen and Hans.

The goal of Boomer's Legacy is to help Canadian soldiers help Afghans with a minimum of bureaucracy and to maximum effect; the charity gets into the soldiers' hands the relatively small amounts of money that can make an enormous difference to Afghans, and over the three years of its existence, has done such diverse things as get local youngsters surgical operations in neighbouring Pakistan, bought sheep for a farmer whose herd was destroyed by the Taliban, funded a bomb-sniffing dog (named Boomer), bought science equipment for a high school in the Panjwai area and helped Afghan women get the skills they need to stand on their own two feet. Maureen has been to Kandahar herself to make damn sure that each rotation of soldiers knows the money is there for them to use and that they're spending it and spending it properly.

She is a pistol, one of those whirlwinds who just gets things done while remaining cheerful and irresistible, which is disconcerting to a crabby dame like me. And last fall – perhaps it was after a glass of the grape – we decided that we would actually ride in this year's race, would properly train for it, etc. It sounded like a brilliant plan, largely because it was nine months away, and everything that far away sounds good to me.

Maureen procrastinated a while but by the spring actually did begin to train, recently going out for what I think was a 100-click jaunt. I merely continued to procrastinate, though I did have a friend (the same Irish charmer who was with me when I bought the fancy road bike) come and mount my good bike on the little stand so I could ride it in the winter. I actually got on it once, for about a half-hour, but in the main it has served as a sort of large clothes hanging apparatus.

The months flew by. I continued about my chaotic, disorganized life, misplaced various things, and suddenly it was May. I spoke to Maureen on the phone, explained my tragic lack of training, and suggested perhaps I would give the ride a pass. She, alas, wouldn't budge an inch (nor should she have; I am merely disclosing that I tried to get out of it) and I couldn't bring myself to say no. (Of this lifelong inability, my late father once remarked, “Thus your popularity in high school.”)

So it is that I'll be spending two days riding the 225 kilometres from Victoria to Courtenay, a trip through beautiful country that includes the Malahat, a rugged region of heavy forest and, sadly, steep cliffs. Many of the other cyclists are young, fit members of the Canadian Forces and/or young, fit civilian cyclists. I will be wearing those appalling shorts with what feels like a built-in mattress in the crotch, the stupid clip-in shoes I can barely work, and a helmet sitting atop my giant head. It should be grand.

While I am clearly unworthy of sponsorship, Maureen is highly deserving, as is Chief Warrant Officer Todd McGowan, who founded the ride. I would urge kind-hearted readers to sponsor either one of them; any donation of $20 or more gets a charitable tax receipt, and while Boomer's Legacy does have a website, it may be just as easy to send a cheque to Boomer's Legacy, 1417 Sabre Court, Comox, B.C., V9M 2X2.

I am not taking my BlackBerry on the bike with me.