The good news: Jennifer Dyck wasn’t in Kelowna to see the Rockets beat the Victoria Royals on Wednesday.
The bad news (at least from our perspective) is that the Victoria woman is still moving to the Okanagan, a consequence of the Royals’ playoff loss to the Rockets last spring.
“A bet is a bet, so we’re going through with it,” she said Thursday.
You remember this story. Dyck, a naturopathic physician, met Kelowna chiropractor Christian Brix at the Victoria Health Show in January. To make a long story short, they fell head over heels, decided to make a life together.
Only one problem. Where to live? It was during one of their four-hour telephone conversations that Dyck, a passionate supporter of her hometown Royals, proposed a solution to Brix, who roots for the rival Rockets: They would live in the city of whoever’s team advanced farther in the Western Hockey League playoffs.
They didn’t know their teams would meet in those playoffs. They made the wager two months before the epic seven-game series that Victoria lost (sorry to rip the scab off this wound, Royals fans) in the most unbelievable, soul-crushing way possible. Kelowna tied the deciding game with just two-tenths of a second on the clock, then won in overtime.
No one in the crowd of 7,000 had as much riding on the outcome as Dyck. Watching the game with her dad (her parents have been season ticket holders from Day 1), the Claremont grad might have used unparliamentary language when the puck went in.
That was in late April. Six months later, Dyck says the move to Kelowna is still in the works, but it’s not that easy to extricate herself from Victoria. She doesn’t want to leave her patients without care, so is looking for the right person to take over her practice.
It might just end up being a temporary arrangement, too, as she doesn’t think the shift to Kelowna will be permanent. “Our plan is to move back to Victoria.” Perhaps we’ll see her return to the capital in a couple of years.
For now, though, Kelowna is still on the agenda because, well, a deal is a deal.
The transition should be made easier by the welcome she has received up-country. A Kelowna radio station picked up her story, which spurred a group of listeners to roll out the red carpet. The result was a ceremony (attended by the Rockets’ mascot, Rocky the Raccoon) at which Dyck and Brix were presented with a basket of goodies including gift certificates to several restaurants, some wine kits and a pair of Kelowna-Victoria return plane tickets. “One woman gave me a bunch of Avon products.” Nice.
Still, pulling the plug on Victoria won’t be easy, either for only-child Dyck or her parents. On the flip side, she gets to be with Brix, and her parents like him, too. “They love him, thankfully. They love him more than the day the Royals lost.”
The couple have been spending as much time together as they can.
They just returned from Mexico City, where they volunteered on a charity house-building project together. That meant 12-hour days hammering nails, followed by nights on mats on a school floor, bedding down in the sleeping bags they brought with them. “That was a good test, right?” Dyck says. “It was a really good bonding experience.”
That still doesn’t mean they’ll be on the same page when the Rockets play the Royals. Dyck plans to be in the rink when Kelowna comes to town in November.
Who will she be cheering for? “Oh my gosh, Victoria, of course.”
