About 3 weeks ago now, I had my first houseguest to my new Island home: my friend Joanne, of Following a Bold Plan fame. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Vancouver Island bloggers I know were practically jumping out of their skins with excitement in anticipation of her arrival (yours truly, included).

Within minutes of her aircraft landing, we met up with Erica/Erika of Behind The Scenery, and were exploring Island View Beach.

We spent a delightful 2 days in the Victoria area, with Erica and Chuck as our exemplary tour guides. Donna, of Retirement Reflections, joined us for a day of exploring beaches…

Once back at home base (Chez Badass West), we set up a loose schedule of hikes and explorations. Donna, living relatively close by, joined us for as many as she could. The weather called for 2 days of full rain, but we didn’t let that us stop us from getting out there.

Then Donna had some family obligations to attend to on the weekend, and we continued to hike and explore on our own.

A visit to Nanaimo wouldn’t be complete without seeing Saysutshun. And being that it was Joanne and I, you know we were going to get into kayaks at some point!

The owner of the kayak/bike rental business on the island (Jeff) is a real character, as we found out. The lady who sold us the tickets to the ferry referred to him as “the man who owns no shirts”. Uh oh.

Laid back, super friendly Jeff is a throwback to the 1960s. We watched in amazement as he turned away at least 2 groups of customers who wanted to rent bikes from him. The first group was 2 guys who Jeff determined didn’t have enough time to experience the island by bike before they had to leave to pick up some friends at the Nanaimo airport. The second group was a family of 4 – Jeff opined after speaking with them that they would have more fun walking the trails than biking them, and thus that is what they did.

Ummm Jeff, can we have a word about your business practices please?

We were both so taken by this guy and his outsized personality. Wait, not out-sized but in fact perfectly sized for his out-sized physical self. See picture, below.

I asked if I could take his picture and put it on my blog.

Jeff: Sure you can! Uh, what’s a blog?

Next thing I knew, Jeff had his arm around me and Joanne was snapping our picture. Only after our 2 second encounter did I think: WTF did we just do?!?! There’s a pandemic going on!!!

Gentle readers, let this be a cautionary tale about how easily one’s guard can be let down…

So here we are many days later and I didn’t come down with The Covid, and I assume the same for Jeff. Dodged that bullet, thankfully. Why do I feel like a teenager who just “got away” with having unplanned and unprotected sex? What a world we live in now…

On the (last) Monday of Joanne’s visit, we made good on a long-planned trip to visit Ann of The Unretired Life on Hornby Island. Donna and Erica were able to join us as well!

The next day was spent in a luxurious visit (also long planned) to the Grotto Spa at Tigh-Na-Mara, in Parksville. No pictures were taken due to spa policy but I did pick up a very pretty nail polish with my spa credit so here’s a photo of that. At $25/bottle, it had better be spectacular.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, it was the 2nd last day of Joanne’s visit, and our last hike…to Jack Point.

For more photos of these adventures, please check out my IG account: @widowbadass.

So, why did I put The Gift That Keeps On Giving in the title of this post? Well, Joanne introduced me to her secret weapon for air travel and, as it turns out, drowning out noisy apartment neighbours – Bose noise-cancelling headphones! She let me try them on, and they work very well.

After only 3 hours of sleep the night before last (thanks to the Stompy McStompersons living above me and the Party Bros down below), I headed out to Best Buy to get my own pair. Thanks, Joanne! More about my “adventures” in apartment living in an upcoming post.

Come back soon, Joanne! We all miss your smiling face (me, most of all)!

This last photo is just for Joanne 😉

Apropos of nothing, today is the anniversary of my wedding to JD. If he was still alive, we would be married 10 years today. Or would we (still be married)? Hmmmm…

Rock on,

Your friendly neighbourhood Widow Badass