Juggling while Running

            I dreamed on Monday morning that my friend Dutch Jongman was in town. He was in a room with some older friends and I tried to get him to go to a reading but he told me he didn’t want to be a poetry gladiator at the coliseum anymore.

            Unlike the morning before, my back didn’t bother me at all during song practice and on top of that I had a great session.

            I separated another video from my July 23^rd song practice recording and uploaded it to YouTube. This one is my translation of Serge Gainsbourg’s “L’alcool”. It was another surprisingly fast upload.

            Since I’ve run out of detergent, for the last few weeks I’ve been washing my clothing with Irish Spring hand soap. One good way to clean your fingernails is to hand wash some clothes.

            I took my ride at the usual time. It was quite a bit cooler than it was for the last few days.

A guy ahead of me on the Bloor bike lane was pushing a squeaky front box with his daughter inside, though she looked old enough to be riding her own bicycle. I left the lane to get around him but there was suddenly a little traffic jam so I had to go back onto the lane. A couple of minutes later I went out again and a car stopped to let me go but I didn’t want to stop traffic so I waited for him to go and by then I was so far behind that I went back on the lane again. I finally got around them a little later.

On the Bloor Viaduct a heavyset man with powerful looking legs who kind of waddled while he pedaled and a skinny guy smoking a cigarette passed me. At the Broadview lights the guy with the cigarette advanced his bike up beside the woman that was at the front and he started giving her pointers about her bike. She in turn advised him that he shouldn’t be smoking and riding. He said, “I know! I know! It’s horrible!” I suppose that since nicotine is a stimulant, until the smoking starts screwing up one’s lung capacity it would probably help someone go faster.

I got ahead of them not too long after that but several minutes later, around Woodbine, the smoking cyclist rode up beside me just to tell me, “You need just a bit of air in your front tire and your back tire’s almost flat!” I said thanks and moved ahead but I was sceptical of the accuracy of his observations. Later when I checked, the back tire was hard as a rock and the front was only a little softer.

I went north on Dawes Road and finished exploring what on the map is called “Crescent Town”, I guess because it has crescents. It’s not a town or even a village but rather just a bunch of high-rises. I ended up on Victoria Park and since Victoria Park is technically the border between Toronto and Scarborough I had completed my goal of visiting all the streets from the west to the east end of the city as far north as Eglinton. On the few bike rides that I have left before school starts I might not start working my way from Eglinton and Kipling up to Lawrence and then across to Victoria Park. I’ll probably save that for next spring. I might keep going east just to check out the alleys between Victoria Park and Warden but I won’t bother with travelling around Scarborough.

On the way back, just west of Woodbine I saw a guy running while juggling. Apparently it’s called “joggling”.