Long Walk with a Flat Tire

           

            The plan on Saturday was to ride up to Goldie and Cad’s place in the very early afternoon to spend a few to several hours helping them with the perpetual storage problem that increases exponentially as a result of their constant accumulation of free clothing from charity events because Cad keeps on thinking he’s going to be able to profit from the obsessive hording. Their two storage lockers are becoming so dense after my efforts to reorganize them to make room that they have each developed their own gravity and one can see the contents of other people’s lockers in the basement lurching up against their softwood slatted cages in an attempt to orbit them.

            As I was getting ready to leave, I noticed that my front tire was a little soft and that the back could use a top up. I pumped them up then called Goldie to tell her that I’d be there in twenty minutes. She was surprised that it would be such a short trip but I assured her that it takes about twenty. I checked my watch as I started to see if I was right, and just south of St Clair, I realized that I was wrong, because it would have taken me twenty minutes just to get to St Clair and Dufferin, if around then I hadn’t discovered that my front tire was flat.

I called Goldie to tell her that I was going to have to look for a bike shop to get my tire fixed. I walked to St Clair and then headed west. When I got to Lansdowne, Goldie called me back to offer to pick me up in her car, but I told her that my priority at that point was to get my transportation problem solved and that I’d call her once that was done. I continued west. I was surprised that there wasn’t a bike shop in an Italian neighbourhood but then thought a little harder about it and concluded that the love for bicycles is only an Italian thing in Italy and that Italian Canadians have more of a car culture. There was still nothing at Old Weston Road but I kept on going until Keele Street and then headed south.

I tiredly walk my flat tired bike

past the dirty snowman

on the half green lawn

When I got to Dundas, I turned left and began walking southeast, at which point I realized that I was walking home because once I got to Bloor I’d be able to find plenty of cycle shops but then I’d be pretty much in my own neighborhood and it seemed ridiculous to pay cycle shop rates when I could just walk a little further and fix my velo at Bike Pirates. When my tube blew, it somehow dislodged the tape that goes around the inside of the rim to protect the tube from the spokes. It was dangling from inside the tire as I walked and when it started getting tangled I had to take out my jackknife and cut it off.

I took Dundas all the way to Lansdowne and then headed south. After the railroad bridge, a couple of the little houses on the west side have quirky Christmas displays. One of them has the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz as it’s central figure, but it looks more like the Tin Boy because it’s not man sized and has the silver spray painted face of a boys wear store mannequin. Further south, a tiny front lawn was decorated with two stone pigs: one coloured and cartoonish and the other grey and life sized. The grey pig was wearing sagging reindeer antlers made of red fabric.

From the beginning of the flat tire through the roundabout walk to Bike Pirates, the walk took me almost two hours. I called Goldie and told her the day was a write-off for helping her and Cad out, and we’d need to reschedule. I spent a little over an hour at Bike Pirates.

After my tire was fixed, I went to the LCBO to buy a couple of Creemore. I said to the cashier, “You know, even though this is no longer a funeral home, I can still sense the presence of spirits here!” He responded, “Oh come on, are you kidding me?” I was surprised that he hadn’t known I was joking because I figured someone must have made the play on words at least once. I told him that there are signs up in the store that say “spirits”, and then he got it, but didn’t smile when he said, “You’re a funny guy!” On my way out, I was looking to the left at the layout of the store and I slammed into the wrong side of the automatic door. I didn’t hurt anything but my pride, but that heals very quickly.

Then I went to the supermarket to buy raisin bagels. They had ribs on sale and so picked up a rack and a few other things.

After the walk I was pretty beat, and though I don’t really like to take siestas in the evening, I couldn’t stay up, so I had a sleep for an hour and a half.

That night I watched Ant Man and I was impressed with how they handled the character from comic books I used to have. They made it so Michael Douglas, the aging Hank Pym, was the original Ant Man in the 60s and that his wife, Janet Van Dyne, as the Wasp, had shrunk down into the subatomic universe and never came back. I assume there are future plans to go after her.

The fight scenes, featuring Ant Man suddenly shrinking and growing were very well done. His crew of former criminals were pretty funny. It looks like Evangeline Lilly’s character, Hope Pym, will be the Wasp in the next film.

The film was much more satisfying than the Avengers: Age of Ultron because there was one hero on which to focus and follow his progress towards several goals.