AUGUST 23 - The Best Laid Plans etc etc, Mall Time, and No Goodies For Me

What a great day for biking! I got up just after 5 o'clock - to find Hubby rinsing out the coffee pot to make a fresh batch - hmm, strange, as I had prepared coffee the previous night, and it would have been perking when he go up half an hour previously. No way did he drink a full pot of coffee in twenty minutes. Or did he? However, shortly after that, his cell phone emitted this annoying electronic shrill trill - it was his Drive-Me-To-Work buddy telling him he wouldn't be going to work today.

Because the same buddy had called him yesterday morning, and Howard had used up just about all his gas driving himself to work and not replaced it - guess who got a day off work? Besides me, that is? Well, you may say, Howard could surely get some gas on his way to work. But you don't know Howard. He will not pump his own gas. (He is, however, a Real Man, because he won't eat Quiche.)  But - if you won't pump your own gas, you probably shouldn't live in Surrey, because Surrey has no Full Serve stations.  

So what did he do? He lay on the couch and promptly went to sleep, so I went back to bed and did the same.

About 9 o'clock, I was on the go again, here at the computer jotting down biking directions for the day - Howard was going to spend his free hours in Steve's garage working on the Radar Arch. However, back he comes. He can't find the key so now he does have a real Day Off and wants to know what WE are going to do.

Well, I inform him, I'm going riding - and I told him where. And he said, 'You shouldn't ride so far away. If you get a flat tire don't think I'm going to come get you.'

And then a few minutes later he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. So I gave up my plans (or postponed them) and we left afoot.

Walking up 134th and then down 96th - oh great, we're going to Tim Hortons - nope, he went on to the corner and pressed the walkie thingie - must be going to the King George Sky Train station - nope, walked by that.

So we end up at Surrey Central Bus Loop and he says, 'Want to go to Guildford Mall?'

And I say, 'Sure.' But my Shadow thinks, 'Sure ... there's nothing I'd rather give up my bike ride for than a trip to a freakin' mall.' However, after checking the bus schedule, we find the bus doesn't leave for another 25 minutes. So he suggests, 'Let's go to the (Surrey Central mall) while we wait.' And I say, 'Sure.' And my Shadow thinks, 'Great. Walk around one mall while we wait to go to another mall.'

However. On the way to the Mall, we pass the entrance to Simon Fraser University and I suggest we go in there and see how high we can get (no, not on pot. On stairs. Or elevators.) Because there is a huge tall tower there, which used to be the tallest tower in Surrey when they built it, but is probably not the tallest one now. I figured if we tried to go somewhere we weren't supposed to go, someone would stop us.

Well, seems the university only has the first 5 floors, and the tall tall part is office buildings with no entrance. Strange, that. But we did make it to the fifth floor, where we had a great view of not much.

The interior of SFU complements that of the mall, with the ceiling shaped like an airplane.

 My unpractised eye still sees a boat when I look at it, but my shipwright husband disagrees with me. Here, students can look down at the people in the mall and consider throwing themselves off when they get Fs on their finals.

Before we left, I decided to go to the washroom - they would probably be a lot cleaner and less crowded than the ones in the mall, as the university only had a scattering of people. I was right (of course) - it was one of the cleanest, most uncrowded washrooms I had ever been in. You could have eaten off the ....

As we were leaving, I realized that now we could put SFU on our resumes - after all, we had been there. And if we go back in 5 years, we could put SFU, August 2012 - August 2017. How impressive would that be!

After a while at the mall, which included a lunch at Burger King (the home of The Whopper), we headed out once again to the bus loop. Dark heavy skies had gathered above.

But a few drops of drizzle never deter us. We hopped on a Guildford bus, and after a very long roundabout trip -

Short trip would be the blue line - our trip there was the black squiggle line. Needless to say, we took the blue line back to Surrey Central.

- we got there. The bus let us off on the wrong side of the street, but there was a Sears on our right, with an overhead walkway to the Mall. However, Howard didn't want to go through the Sears building - I told him it was either that, or walk waaaaaay up to the next crosswalk and cross there. (We are talking about a very busy street here, no jay-walking for me.) And he answered me with, 'Are you sure about that?'

And I said, 'No.'

So we walked under the overhead walkway, and when he turned on the other side for the entrance, he was mildly surprised. So I said, 'Yes.' And we walked up to the crosswalk, down the sidewalk, through the parking lot, and towards this.

The darkest mall I have ever visited. There was lots of construction going on inside (hopefully the plans called for more light bulbs - although maybe they were taking my advice when my house is dusty - just dim the lights) and we had to weave our way through yellow tape and pylons. The only store that caught my eye as being a different mall store was a Nestle Toll House Cookie one, and their display looked sooooo yummy, I decided to pick up some goodies on the way back.

However, when I found out that one tiny little Lime Key tart cost $3.25, I changed my mind about that.

We hustled back across the street to our bus stop, and caught 2 buses back home (one at a time, of course.)

And that was that.