Life happens when you're busy making other plans

Quinn Thomas is a 21 year old medicine student who is cycling across Canada to raise awareness about organ and tissue donation in Canada. He travels solo with no entourage and spends most nights camped out on any free patch of grass he can find. He doesn't carry a laptop or a smart phone with him so I did a lot of corresponding with his mom, who was handling his media relations efforts. When I found out he didn't have any accommodations lined up for Winnipeg, I offered my spare room as a place for him to crash and my garage as a place to stash his bike for a night.

"Some people's kids pick up stray and lost animals. My daughter takes in stray bikers," my dad joked. I figured Quinn had to be a good guy, not only was he speaking out about a cause near and dear to me, but if he wasn't, well I'd have to tell his mom on him. He only needed a place to stay for a night and since he was agreeable to doing a public appearance for me the least I could do was be his Winnipeg ambassador and host.

It turned out to be a very entertaining 24 hours. Here are the highlight moments.

Quinn has one rule. His bike cannot be transported by a vehicle. He has to propel it himself. I found this out when I offered to pick him up when he arrived in town and had taken a wrong turn. It's been crazy hot here all month so I thought the break from the cycling would be a relief, but Quinn told me no, in his funny little French-Canadian accent, "bike cannot go in truck." See, Quinn feels that taking a ride while he is cycling would mean taking the easy way out, and since people on dialysis waiting for a kidney don't have an easy way out, neither should he.

The first thing Quinn noticed when he stepped into my house was my two pairs of shoes at the door.

"You have two pairs of running shoes?"

"Yeah, well one pair I run in outside, the other pair I just use at the gym," I explained and then made a mental note not to take him past my shoe closet.

Quinn was very curious about my truck, actually, in his voice it was a "pique up" truck. "Why a truck?" he asked. I explained to him as I do to everyone who asks that it just felt like me. I couldn't really see myself in a car and I liked the look of the orange truck.

"But do you ever use da pique up part?" he asked, not satisfied with me not having a practical reason for my choice of transportation.

"Sometimes. I can throw my bike in the back or sometimes stuff for work. My dad uses it and I used it to move out."

No surprise, Quinn eats a tremendous amount of food to fuel himself for his riding. I watched him eat a 1 litre container of yogurt, then fill that container with cereal and milk. Then an hour later we ate dinner and then he was full. For an hour.

We made plans to go out for gelati after I established that Quinn himself could ride in a pique up truck if he was not traveling with the bike. Just before we left, the clouds moved in and the wind picked up. Quinn was excited for this very prairie weather system. Of course, after we parked and were walking to the shop, the sky opened up into a small hurricane. On the way home there were limbs and even entire trees downed. Quinn had to take pictures he was so amazed by the damage.

At some point I mentioned that I was doing a learn to run 10k program. Again, Quinn was puzzled.

"What do you mean, learn to run? Don't you just, run?"

"Well no, I'm training to be able to run 10k. I'm working up to it gradually. Today I did 7k."

"You want to run 10k now? Let's go!" This coming from a guy who just cycled 85k that day.

"No, I don't want to run 10k," I said. How do I argue that I had already spent my energy just doing seven on the treadmill in the air conditioned gym that afternoon?

"You want to run 7k?"

 On Monday I had planned a press event at the park for us with Quinn as the star guest. He also wanted to visit a dialysis unit so I made arrangements with the pediatrics one at 10am. I had everything timed out so we could visit and then head out to the press event.  Quinn had to find his own way to the hospital and cycling there would take too long so he decided to cab it. Something got lost in the translation though when he asked if he could catch a cab from my place, because he phoned me and said, "yeah, Jillian? I been standing outside on Ness Avenue for 10 minutes now trying to hail a cab and da one I did see go by wouldn't stop for me." In the Winnipeg suburbs I have never heard of or seen someone hailing a cab, as I am sure they do all the time in the major metropolis of Montreal.  I explained this apologizing for missing that detail and got off the phone to call a cab to come pick him up. Not even considering a miracle possible at this point, I was amazed when Quinn phoned back three minutes later to tell me he had managed to hail a cab on his own and was now en-route. The meet and greet in the dialysis unit started later than planned, but it went great with Quinn charming the whole department, including a sweet and shy teen girl.

When time was up (beyond up, but it broke my heart to break up the merriment) I took Quinn up to my office and got him to help me carry stuff out to Truck that I needed for the press conference.

"We put dis in de pique up part of de pique up truck, yes?"

I looked at the truck bed, looked at my very precious paper sign and back to the bed. I had visions of the sign getting "piqued" up by the wind and blowing out of da truck. We had one plastic bag of heavier stuff I could gamble putting on top.

"Yeah sure," I said.  Quinn was beyond pleased and nothing was lost on the trip. Beautiful.

I got Quinn and myself back to my house where he had to pack his stuff. The poor guy hadn't had time for breakfast so I scurried around the kitchen to fix the highest calorie, on the go food I could manage. When all was packed on the bike we left the driveway and I lead the way toward the park where my publicity stunt was in danger of running behind. Barely made it past my next door neighbour's house when Quinn got a flat. I got on my phone to see what kind of emergency measures I could pull together.

"Bike cannot go in truck! Bike cannot go in truck! Go without me!" Quinn insisted. My plan B's were not yielding any help and Quinn had just pulled the inner tube out of his tire when I got a message on my phone that our website, the very one we would be promoting at the event, was not working.  The tent on my small circus was collapsing on top of me. I felt like I had walked right onto my own sitcom. Clearly I was not writing the script, but these things always turn out funnier that way.

Quinn got his tire put back together and full of air surprisingly quickly.

"What time is it?" he asked.

"It's 12:20."

Quinn nodded. "I never leave before 12:20," he said. I guess if you are counting on a bike to cooperate with your schedule, you shouldn't mess with its routine. We got on the road and made it to the staging area I had set. I phoned to the IT call centre, told them I needed my site back up in time for the supper time news. Just before we started pedaling out, I got the call that the site was up and running again. "Let's do this, guys," I said and then led the way to the waiting TV cameras.

Quinn made a wonderful speech about the challenge he had given himself and thanked me, in front of everyone, for putting up with him. I kind of think he got the "put up with" thing backwards since I felt more like the saddle sore. Thankfully he doesn't seem to remember it that way. I think the greatest part of his visit that I hope I hang onto was the opportunity to see my world through his eyes. Thanks Quinn for the fun and laughs.

Good luck to you, mon ami!

If you want to follow Quinn as he completes his journey, check out his website and his Facebook page.