By James Durand
As you may have guessed, if you ever read my weekly ramblings, I’m not much for sitting around the house, or killing time.
Lately, with a new home, there is no shortage of projects, and I’m still trying to squeeze in some riding, so time is tight, and there is no threat of becoming lazy, or wasting even one minute.
Last weekend, I managed to get a day off work and had a few home projects to cross off the list. After a short bit of chores, Chenoa had to leave and it was just me and the kids for a few hours.
If any of you have young kids who “help” with projects, you know how great it can be to spend time with them, but definitely not an efficient use of time when it comes to completing a task.
Rather than fight it, we chose a project for all three of us. No Rhyley, we can’t paint the driveway rainbow. No Regan we can’t build a rocket ship.
And then from Rhyley: “Hey Dad, let’s build a sweet jump out of the scrap wood”, and Regan, “YEAH”.
So we fired up the saws, pulled out the nails, and started swinging hammers. To be honest I was just trying to occupy them for a while without any screen time, so we started with a typical chunk of 2x4 with an old piece of plywood nailed to it. It was underwhelming to say the least, so we started over.
After an hour, we had built a beautiful custom A-frame. You can roll over it, manual down the back side, or hit it with speed and launch several feet down the driveway.
When Chenoa got home, I was flying out of the driveway into the street (Rhyley was in charge of traffic control), and Rhyley and Regan were sessioning the A-frame. After another couple of hours we were all asked to quit horsing around and come in for dinner. So we ate as quickly as we could and got right back to the driveway.
Not only did my projects not get completed, but now my list is longer. The kids want a jump, a drop zone, and some skinnies. And somehow these projects got bumped right to the top of the priority list … Hmm, I wonder how that happened?
I’m James Durand and I’m Goin’ Ridin’