When I was a kid in the late 1960s, I answered the front door buzzer at our home one evening. On the top step was our cousin Linda Meister and her nursing school BFF Carol Gossen dropping by during a school break road trip. They both sported curly wigs. Linda declared that night she’d always wanted natural curls and was jealous of all the ones brother Ian had on his head. So a wig was the answer, even if it sent me into hysterics.

Fast forward about four and a half decades and Linda is a Gossen, is about to begin collecting old age security, but still a bit of a goofball. She took her mom, myself and Clive around to visit her daughter Janna at work.

Linda wasn’t getting Janna’s attention above the hum of the hairstylist workshop Janna is employed by. So simply walked up from behind and goosed her 33-year-old youngest child making Janna jump as if she had been electrocuted by the hair dryer she was holding. Linda laughed as Janna looked shocked before realizing the joke was on her.

During those early years hanging out with Carol, Linda started dating her friend’s younger brother Gerald. He’s got a playful side too. Despite more than 40 years of marriage, three children (Kara, Andrew and Janna) and nine grandchildren, he never fails to take advantage of an opportunity to remind Linda, and whoever else is listening, that he is three years younger than his wife. He also got in a few jabs at myself about saying how we were headed to Linda’s place, neglecting to mention he also lived there, as well as being a co-owner of the home! Oops.

In the 1970s, Gerald set up a cabinet making business in his hometown of Langham, about 30 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon. He also has become a big landlord in the town. They own 10 properties in Langham. Except for their own home, he renovates and rents them although he’s just finishing up a project of building a home and reselling it.

He’s still working away while Linda retired a couple of years ago from being an administrator at the Langham Seniors Home, about a 90 second commute by foot.

But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t keep busy. Not Linda. No way.

She’s constantly got surprises on the go, a garden to upkeep, photo albums to update, and much, much, much more.

On the day we left Langham, she came out of her office with a full page list, three columns across, detailing each and every item to bring to their cottage north of North Battleford in preparation for having the Gossen gang up for the unofficial opening of summer, the Victoria Day long weekend.

But even though she had so much on her plate, Linda was, and is, always eager to discuss what’s happening in the lives of friends, ex-coworkers and family, or talk about Gerald and their family.

Despite the distance between them, Linda was very close to our mother, Hildegard Granger (nee Stock). Her niece was the daughter our mother never had. I have to admit our mother never made a secret of the fact she would have liked to have had daughters. She was particularly jealous of a family on her husband’s side who lived in Kamloops which had four girls.

The growing Gossen Gang is much more of a mixture.

While Janna and her husband Kevin Dauk, a pilot for an airline that flies in and out of Northern Saskatchewan towns and works sites, have yet to be blessed with a child, the same can’t be said for her older siblings.

Kara and her husband Aaron, who works in his family’s nursery and gardening business, have four kids. After running a day care for many years, Kara now specializes in eyelash aesthetics. The oldest, Rachael, is about to graduate from high school while 16-year-old Jonah already has his driver’s licence.

Andrew and his wife Teisha have five kids – Madelyn (Grade 5), Hailey (Grade 3), Samuel (kindergarten), Ellie (4) and Mason (20 months). They’re delightful. All but Mason escorted Clive and I on their bikes down the long driveway of their 19-acre homestead after we’d partaken of ice tea and watermelon during an afternoon break from our ride and from them planting a few hundred more trees to protect their property from the wind.

• Clive and I cried “Uncle” on Friday. The wind got to us. We ground through about five hours of fighting a 30 km/h-plus headwind before finally reaching Lanigan. Our speed was ridiculously slow. We had planned on going all the way to Wynyard, but that was about 60 more kilometres away, on top of the nearly 70 we had already accomplished. With no real place to stop between Lanigan and Wynyard we decided to call it a day. If it was only about 30 km away we probably would have gone for it, but the wind finally did us in.

KILOMETRE COUNT

Day 21: (West of Colonsay to Lanigan) 69 km Total: (17 riding days): 1,941 km