The Seduction

We were talking to someone about how we met and as we were recounting the story I decided that it might make a decent blog; so, here it is…

I had been separated from my wife for eleven months and was attending a Canadian Power Squadron course. There were two separate classes, one on Wednesday and one on Thursday. They were combined one weekend for a Bearings and Fixes navigation course in Nanaimo Harbour.

I went with two of my buddies and we were pouring over maps at one of the tables when a really cute little blonde lady walked by. As she passed, I thought to myself “I wish she would come and stand at our table.” No sooner was the thought out when she turned around and came and stood right next to me. (She says she heard me call her.) “The rest” as they say ” is history.

This is how Rosalie looked when I first saw her.

Rosalie wanted to buy a sail boat, and I wanted a power boat so I knew I would have to learn to sail. Within the month, and after admitting that we liked each other, she whisked me off, first to Long Beach for a weekend and then to Mazatlan for a week.

Rosalie proposed to me on Valentine’s Day 1996 and after huge pressure, I finally agreed as I was on anti-depressant meds at the time and didn’t know what I was doing. We agreed on the day as 11th July 1998 and so my fate was sealed.

A few weeks before the great event Rosalie was driving my car when the timing belt broke and wrecked the engine. Fortunately, we still had her propane-powered 1983 Olds Delta 88.

My lifelong buddy Malcolm was coming from England to be my best man and hopefully talk me out of this nonsense. As we didn’t have my car, I used the Delta 88 to go to the Vancouver airport to pick up Malc and his wife Vivian. Rosalie had to work so I had to go alone. After picking them up, I decided to take the route through Vancouver so they could see something of the city. We got to the Upper Levels highway when I looked out of my rearview mirror and saw a cloud of smoke. My first thought was that some poor soul had an engine fire. The car started to slow down and I realized that it was us, belching out the smoke. It turned out the transmission had quit.

So, there I was on the Upper Levels highway with a broken car, visitors from England with their luggage trying to thumb a lift to the ferry terminal. Fortunately, a couple found our situation amusing enough to take us all the way there. We were picked up by our friend Larry in Nanaimo and taken home.

So, we didn’t have a car, but visitors from England to entertain. Malc, knowing me for a long time was probably not surprised in the least. I wasn’t sure about Viv though she probably thought I was a complete nut job.

Having no car, we borrowed one from my daughter Lesley. There were one or two problems with that car though. First, only the driver’s door opened so we all had to climb in from one side. Secondly, it ate a lot of oil so we had to pull over and feed it 10-30 oil every 100 km or so.

All this fun and we hadn’t even got to the wedding yet.