| Whew...That Was Close! |
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| Written by Susan Hollingshead | |||
| Thursday, 23 August 2007 12:57 | |||
 It is Karley’s birthday on Sunday and as part of her gift we agreed to baby-sit for the day while she accompanied Ian to Vancouver and indulged in some “just Karley” time in the city. Because the weather is so wonderful, we thought it would be a great day to take the wee ones to the Greater Vancouver Zoo in Abbotsford. We gathered them up along with the usual paraphernalia; strollers, juice, diapers, a change of underwear, snacks and of course, “Dollie” for Monet and “Bear Bear” for Makai.When we arrived we decided to rent one of the double bicycles (seen in the picture here) to take the kids on and get some exercise at the same time. Of course the paraphernalia was loaded onto the bike along with said wee ones and off we went. At some point Bear-Bear and Dollie joined their owners in the front passenger seat and because I had no belt loops, I hooked my phone onto the handle. After we had been riding/viewing for a half-hour or so, we took an illegal route (Oops, no bicycles allowed!) and ended up on a loop farther up the trail. There we met another family that we had seen earlier and they stopped to ask us if we lost a blue bear. Gads! They then told us they had seen it on the path, way back near where we started and they left it there!!!!! on the path!!!! Well, we rushed to return the bike (our hour was almost up and we were ¾ of the way back to the beginning anyway) and headed out with strollers to retrace our steps before you-know-who knew about his absent friend. Half way around the loop I (duh!) realized I left my phone hooked to the handle bars of the bike, Bear-Bear was nowhere to be found and panic set in; we now had two missing things. Grampa was pushing Makai who was leaning forward in his stroller and suddenly our wee grandson went for a plunge onto the path! Grampa scooped him up into his arms as he started howling loudly and asking for his absentee buddy, Bear-Bear. I raced back to the entrance with Monet in her stroller praying that some kind soul had turned in the ragged bear, to no avail. I also discovered that the bike we had rented was out on a new rental and apparently no one had noticed the phone. Shortly after, Grampa and Makai (with a new scrape on his face) arrived all calmed down and content that he was now strapped in AND with my phone in hand. (Rick had encountered the bike on his way back and retrieved the phone from the bike riders.) We managed to amuse and feed the two kiddies for the next hour and a half during which time I kept going to the lost and found hoping Bear-Bear had been turned in. After asking everyone we met and inspecting every stroller we came across looking for the fuzzy blue/mauve pal, we decided to walk the loop one last time (going in the opposite direction than our original route) all the while looking in every garbage receptacle...just in case! We noticed a little snack bar (we hadn’t seen it while going in the other direction the last two times we’d passed by) just twenty feet past the location of Makai’s spill and we stopped to ask them if by chance anyone had turned in Bear-Bear. Lo and behold…there he was!! Whew…that was close!
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