Including before and after photos:

Before

After

I was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba — a place with wonderful amazing people so outstanding they occasionally take your mind off of your freezing legs in winter or itching mosquito-bitten legs in summer.

At 14-years of age, I moved to British Columbia with the man in the photo who is wearing polyester pants and smoking a cigar, a.k.a. Dave, my dad. We crossed the Rockies with all our belongings in a grey 1953 Ford Mercury Dump truck. We had to take the air filter off to make it through the high mountain passes in that thin air.

When we at last drove up to the ocean and I saw it, it was love at first sight. I got out determined to stride right into it (which I did). Greeting me before I could reach the shore, a seagull immediately welcomed me in its own special way. It tried. It failed.

Showing enormous dexterity, poise, and perseverance even then, I sidestepped in the nick of time and carried on to my destination unscathed. There’s a life metaphor there somewhere.