bikes, cars, and knives

June 26th, 2006

So me and my friend sarah go to blockbuster to rent a movie. We do a lap and can’t find anything, at this point we’re not feeling too confident in the quality of night we are about to have. Then things change.

My phone rings, it’s tom. He wants me to come with him, nick, and dustin on a bike ride to the movie theatre to see ‘Cars’. After some convincing sarah agreed that it would be fun so we head back to her car and rip to 446what!

We get there and everything’s all right, we grab some bikes and sarah and i asked what the plan was for locking them up- seeing as we don’t have a lock. I guess they had decided that some how we would just bring them into the theatre with us…. so we went with that and headed down the road towards the round-a-bout (sp?) because that’s the awesomest way to get anywhere in kelowna. On our way these thug kids pumping drum and base in a 4 door mitsubishi lancer (i think, i don’t know anything about cars) cruise past us, i’m thinking “man this is either their parents’ car, it’s stolen, or they are drug dealers” (expecting the latter).
Lancer: Do you guys want to buy some ecstacy?
Us: No.

Lancer: Is that a yes or a no?
Us: No!!!

Lancer: (hand motions) Thumbs up or thumbs down.
Us: (hand motions) Thumbs down.

So i was right. But… that’s just the begining, the night only gets better.

So we roll (literally) up to the mall where the movie theatre is, and we decide to go to red robin, because tom’s friend lynzee is working there. She hooks us up with some fries and pop, which to me felt like a part of an 80’s movie, then we realize we are almost late for Cars. Then we rip through the parking lot and ride up to the theatre, there’s a bit of a line but it isn’t too bad. Nick’s first and he asks for his ticket for cars and then says, “And i have a bit of a strange request, but can we bring our bikes in there?” After some talking to the manager he comes up and asks back, “Is there 3 of you?” and we’re like, “actually there’s 5″. After entering into a binding verbal agreement that Famous Players will not be held liable for the theft of our bikes, we are told to leave them by the back hallway, and that they will bring them in for us.

At this point we feel pretty awesome, they brought our bikes in. Personally, I would like to attribute this miracle to “mind over matter”, but either way, we believed and were rewarded.
So we watch Cars, and it’s pretty good- not amazing, but pretty good. The Cars looked pretty cool- i guess that’s the point of those movies, they look cool. Anyways, we walk out of the theatre and we are like, “Uhh where are our bikes?” they someone showed us- they had moved them into one of the empty theatres, the kid working informed us, “you probably wont ever be able to do that again.”

Next we took a second to gather our thoughts and to recognize that we were standing, with our bikes, next to the candy bar in a movie theatre. That made us laugh, wish we had our video camera, and smile for nicks camera phone. Then we moved out.

Springfield road was pretty dead. So we made sure to take up as much of the 4 lane road as possible with our 5 person bike crew. It was during the next few minutes of ripping down the road at high speeds, full of joy, when we realized, once again, that basically everyone loves a bunch of people riding in a group of bikes- even the dude in the convertable that had to screech to a hault when he didn’t set his point-of-no-return very well before the intersection at springfield and gordon (thank you young drivers of canada, for the YD approach and allowing me to not experience this same embarassment- often.) So we turn the corner onto ethel, get some waves from some people riding in a taxi waiting at the red light and a bunch of cheers from a backyard party.

Now’s where it gets interesting. Two kids on bikes are coming the opposite direction, and we’re all like, “Yay!! Fellow bikers.” Well these kids didn’t have the same attitude. One threw some shiny metal thing in our general direction, it bounced and hit dustin’s bike, causing literally no damage. Next he yelled, “F you!”. So we look, and it was a knife!! These kids threw a knife at us! Who throws a knife!?! So we picked it up because we didn’t want to leave it on the road, and we decided we should chase them. They seem to have gotten away, but through some good detective work and knowledge of the area we managed to find them.

After calling 911 and getting the non-emergency number for the kelowna police i described the kids to the dispatcher and she sent a car. Then we held on to them for probably half an hour or fortyfive minutes waiting for the car to arrive- it was easy because they were like 14. This was the best part. One kid admitted to doing it, so we asked him why, he didn’t really know. I guess they were just messing around. He was so mad though, he was swearing up a storm.

Anyways, I’m going to try to make this long story a bit shorter by just listing a few of the highlights during the wait for the cops:

- The kids trying to convince us that we should beat them up, instead of us phoning the cops. Us teaching them how we aren’t negotiating a trade.

- Hearing sirens and then the kid who didn’t do anything betting us “anything” that it was an ambulance, then when it got closer and went silent-betting us “anything” that it was the cops coming for them and just turning off their sirens a block away, then when they never came- betting us “tom’s bike” that it was an “old fogey” dying at the old folks home a block away.

- A conversation about how an ambulance wouldn’t use sirens to come pick up a dead “old fogey”.

- Asking the guilty kid if he has a job, learning that he does, and it is “all around”, and also that he makes 20 dollars an hour doing construction, but doesn’t build houses.

- A conversation about if he is excited for 2010 because of the construction boom due to the olympics.

- nick picking up the back tire of his bike like 30 times as he tried to run away.

- The guilty kid telling us about how many times he got arrested when he lived in calgary.

- Dustin talking to him about how when he lived in calgary (which he didn’t) the cops would just come into the elementary schools and arrest everyone.

- Me making them promise not to beat up sarah.

- One of the neighbours threatening to call the cops, and us explaining to them that we already did.

- Dustin explaining to those same neighbours that we were kind of sketched out because the kid kept phoning someone and only saying where he was and we were afraid that it was like their big brothers or something. Thenthat neighbour telling dustin that if that happened they had it covered.

- Tom telling them where we live and about our landlords, and getting mad at them when they wouldn’t listen.

- Nick being so stoked on chasing the kid and catching him every time he ran away.

- Dustin asking the not guilty kid what the guilty kid’s name is and him saying, “It’s Justin, no wait it’s Nathan, i just thought it was Justin.” Then dustin explaining to them that he was their age once and can tell that he’s lying.

Then the cop followed them home to talk to their parents or something. Hopefully they didn’t get grounded for the rest of summer.

We’ll probs add more later, cause I’m tired.

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