Liz & Vic: 5am Bike Tag

My cousins & I came up years and years ago with the game one summer in Canada. Bike tag. We all got on bikes, someone was ‘it,’ and they had to tag someone else by…touching (AKA, ramming into) someone elses bike with their own bike. Ingenious…and not at all dangerous. To add on to that, we played it in my grandparents’ farm shed, which was full of…combines, tractors, pallets full of seed bags, and other large metal objects – which we weaved around the whole time to avoid the person who was ‘it.’ Somehow, in all those summers spent playing this game, no one got seriously hurt…not quite sure how that happened, but we’re all alive & healthy still today! It would be my cousins Liz & Vic, their two younger brothers (Andrew & Matthew), and my sister Jackie & I. I remember we always fought for the blue-colored bike, as it was small & low-to-the-ground, easier to maneuver, versus the tall big bikes.

One time, it was the day I was leaving Canada at the end of summer, and Liz, Vic & I wanted to hang out one last time before I left till Christmas. So the morning my family was leaving, my mom was supposed to wake me up around 6am for an early flight. Well, Liz, Vic & I made plans to all hang out at…5am. Their house is right next door to my grandparents farm, so I left one door unlocked so I’d be able to slip out at our secret meet-up time. Blearily, we all were there at 5am, and what did we do in our last hour of hanging out for several months? Yep, bike tag. We all snuck out of our homes & went to the shed with our bikes, where we started playing. I think we got to play for maybe 20 minutes, when suddenly over the intercom in the shed we heard.. ‘GIRLS??‘ It was my mom. We went back to the house, caught, and were sent to our respective houses, to our dismay. She later said that it was the faint shrieking (we were having fun, okay?) she heard, that woke her up. Thinking back, I’m glad it wasn’t the fact that she just happened to decide to check on me at 5:30am and find her daughter not in bed!

Vic & Liz are the cousins I grew up with almost every summer & winter. The few winters our families didn’t spend together, were (in my words), miserable. I have baby pictures of us I’ll share one day in a blog post, from playing together in the snow all bundled up, to playing at my grandparents house, to face-painting & crazy hair. Once old enough, I pretty much lived at their house, bringing the childrens mouths’ my brave Aunty Gloria had to feed from four to five, often six when my sister came too…sorry Aunty Gloria!! :)

I was beyond happy to spend two weeks in Canada this past summer. Thrilled. Two weeks may not be a whole summer…but that’s a lot harder once you’re grown up, married & have to buy your own flight tickets ;) So of course I took some photos of Vic & Liz. For this one, we ended up being late to going over to my cousin Lauren’s for some games & a movie, just skipped the games & went straight to the IMAX POTC4 (its tradition from when we were all once obsessed with Pirates…but that’s another ~~embarrassing~~ post for someday). But the pictures are so worth it!! :) Vic has brown hair, and Liz blonde-ish, just so you can tell who is who…