So brings up my best buddy (who isn’t a dog. Peter wanted that clarified). My best friend is the F Bomb herself…a hard as nails grade four teacher who swears with clinical accuracy and loves with nuclear intensity. She is kind and rough, fiery and sensible, all these neat balances of humanity and ass kicking awesomeness packed into one body. Problem is, the body is non cooperative. She has this random, rare bastard of an illness called Pulmonary Hypertension. PH for short. PH together makes the same sound as the letter F by the way, making it interchangeable with the word PHuck or PHighter or PHart. Some of my favourite words start with F. I use them more often on special occasions, like weekdays and weekends. I learned many of them from the F Bomb herself.
F Bomb has had my back so much there is an imprint of her pointy little hands on there. I have a room at her house, a key to the house, and generally a collection of beer stashed somewhere. However, F Bombs superior husband (as in the guy is sweet, cute, thoughtful, funny, swears a lot, rides bikes a lot, and cherishes and dotes on his little guy…seriously, this guy is at a dad level held by few…he is like a Ben dad. They are rare) is entitled to any of my beer at any time.
The Bomb also has been instrumental in getting kids riding mountain bikes. Like hundreds of kids. Like kids that would never had touched a bike in their life without her. We spent an hour in the gym with a little guy who had never ridden before, then the next year he was on single track. Unreal. And she never cursed at him once! She never curses on kids. Just inanimate objects, adults, and around kids that aren’t in her class. She is just augmenting their vocabulary.
So she is not really able to ride because of this PHucking lung disease. She has some heart stuff too, which is no PHun either. And she misses it, because this kid is an athlete. She wants to do a tri someday (which will happen…fyi and stay tuned). So somedays when it sucks in the gym, or on the road, trail, on following the black line in the pool/hamster wheel, I am doing it because she can’t. She once stood on a treadmill next to me (it wasn’t moving) and yelled me through a half marathon. I can channel those expletives.
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