Beer with Brian

            On Tuesday I left home at 12:30 and headed east on Queen. I noticed that my chain was on the second gear wheel of my new rim, so I tried to move it back up with the left gear shifter, but the chain came off, so I had to stop and put it on manually. The wheel or the pedaling was not going smoothly though. Something felt like it was catching somewhere although not enough to slow me down. It just felt odd.

            The going was a little more difficult because of the snow, but there wasn’t a lot of it. I signalled left to an SUV two car lengths behind me that I was going to move into the centre lane to go around a car, but it kept on coming, so my wheel got caught in the streetcar track and I had to put my feet down to lift the bike out.

            I was just locking my bike in front of the Black Bull when Brian walked up. We shook hands and he asked me how long I’ve had that bike. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but it’s been almost twenty years.

            I had never seen the Black Bull so sparsely occupied. It couldn’t have been the hour, because when Brian and I have met there before it’s usually been at around 13:00. Granted though that we usually meet during patio season and the Black Bull has a very popular patio. Maybe the inside bar is not as big of a draw.

            Brian told me that the music project he’s been working on with his synthesizer and computer is almost done, so he’ll be uploading it soon.

            We talked about OCADU and all our colleagues that have died over the years that we’ve been working there, mostly of old age, a few from sudden health issues and the most recent was two years ago when one of our fellow models went missing and was found weeks later to have committed suicide in the Rosedale Valley ravine.

            I told him about my upcoming June 3^rd, 2017 gig at Linda Stitt’s Words and Music Salon at Vino Rosso at 995 Bay Street, at 13:30. As always, I invited him to collaborate musically on the event. Usually he just turns me down but urges me to not stop asking him. This time he told me he’d consider it.

            We each bought ourselves two drafts but Brian treated me to an order of fries, which was nice. The waitress was a bit aggressive though, swooping in when our glasses were not much more than half empty to ask if we wanted another ad doing so several times. Maybe if the place had been busier she wouldn’t have bugged us so much.

            We talked about Leonard Cohen’s death and his music. I had all of his albums up to The Future, but had to re-find stuff on CD. There were a lot of gaps, so since he died I’ve been downloading. I don’t think much of the music on his Ten New Songs album, though the lyrics are as great as ever. Brian said that he’d heard people say that the songs sounded too much like Sharon Robinson’s music. I said that my impression is that she tried to write music that she thought sounded like Leonard Cohen’s music and so what resulted was a kind of generic Leonard Cohenesque sort of sound, sort of like Hugh Laurie’s Americanesque accent on House.

            Our get together lasted only a couple of hours, but hopefully we’ll hang out again soon. At least we’ll probably see each other sometimes at work.

            After I left Brian, I went book hunting. I rode up Dufferin to St Clair and then east to Ayerego Books. There was just the sweet old owner and his thirty something assistant in the store. They were very helpful but they didn’t have what I was looking for. I rode west to Old Weston Road, where I got off and crossed the street because I thought that was the street that turns into Keele. I had to get back on my bike and ride further west to Weston Road and then south on Keele. That street is always jammed and it’s especially scary to be jammed up under the railroad bridge. I turned right on Dundas and stopped at Pandemonium. The guy behind the counter showed me the poetry section and then went back to listening to Joe Jackson. Their poetry section is actually pretty good, so it was just chance that none of the books that I wanted were on the shelves. One of my professor’s books was on display but I couldn’t afford it.

The Junction is the only area where I’ve seen a Dollarama surrounded by upscale stores. I continued west to Dencan Books. There was no one in the room when I walked in but he came up from below. I really needed to pee but he said they didn’t have a washroom. Of course that meant they didn’t have a public washroom. There was a Tim Hortons a block away but the bookstore would be closing in fifteen minutes, so I held it and thankfully they have a very small poetry section.

I rode east a couple of blocks to Starbucks and relieved myself. There are moments when urinating feels like a life changing experience and that was one of them, though of course it only felt that way.

So that was the end of my second hand book searches. I think I’ll have to look for the rest of the books at first hand stores. I assume the U of T Bookstore has all of the ones I need, but I might try Chapters.

I stopped at No Frills at Dundas and Lansdowne where I bought bananas, cinnamon-raisin bread, skim milk, zero fat yogourt and a pork tenderloin. The cashier was perky and friendly.

I ate a bowl and a half of a soup I’d made from chicken broth, onions, ground turkey, potatoes, carrots and yams. I watched an episode of Johnny Ringo and then fell asleep on the couch for over an hour. I went to bed almost an hour early.