Wednesday started off a little cooler than usual and overcast but in
the afternoon when I took my bike ride it had gotten hot again. It was mostly a
pretty ordinary ride. I passed Madame Pavlov before the viaduct and she testily
rang her bell as usual. I rode up Victoria Park again to Southmead, took that
to Engelhart which I followed till it turned to Alvinston, I turned south on
Pharmacy and went back down to Danforth. I stopped at Starbucks and there was
an enormous blob of a man talking as loudly on the phone as he was large at his
table.
Along the Bloor
Street bike lane I had a hard time passing a guy riding one of lie-down
bicycles, which seem to be wider than an upright velo. I warned him I was
passing but I guess he couldn’t get any further to the right. I was dangerously
close to hitting the posts on my left as I was passing him. I took Bloor Street
to Ossington, Dundas to Dovercourt and then down to Queen. While I headed west
a woman whizzed past me and I sped up to catch her. She was a very fast rider
or her bike was fast because she didn’t even seem to be trying that hard. I
started passing her just after climbing the hill west of Dufferin but she
didn’t slow down and there was a car ahead of me. When I was ahead far enough I
cut in front of her and after that I’m not sure what happened. I think the car
changed stopped and I had to swerve again. Maybe my wheel got caught on the
streetcar track but I wiped out, falling on my right elbow and my right now. I
think I only extremely scraped both parts below the joint because I still had mobility in both
places but both scrapes are a sizable deep red and painful. I think I’ll be
hurting for a week or so. It seems to me the woman shouldn’t have been going so
fast when someone was passing her, especially when she could see that there was
a car up ahead. I couldn't tell for sure because things were happening so
quickly but I think she actually sped up when she saw that I was passing her.
When I got home I
washed the dirt off my hand, arm and leg and went out to buy a can of Creemore.
When I got I took some pictures of my elbow and knee on the deck.
I cooked the
spinach and cheese ravioli that I’d gotten from the food bank and heated up
some sauce. I had it with my beer and watched a couple of episodes of Dobie
Gillis. The first story was from just before Dobie and Maynard headed out to
the army and it was mostly about Dobie’s father feeling sentimental about his
son going away but also trying to toughen him up for the army at the same time.
In the second,
Maynard gets his beard caught in his rifle bolt and his sergeant orders him to
shave it off. At first he resists but when he’s thrown in the brig he’s ready
to give in but Dobie meets an attractive lieutenant whom he can’t date because
of his rank. He hears though about a private that defended a similar case
Maynard's and did so well that he was sent to officers training. So Dobie takes
the issue of Maynard’s beard to court. The tribunal are about to rule against
Maynard’s beard when the military legal inspector arrives in the courtroom and
happens to have a full beard. They hurriedly find Maynard not guilty instead.
After the shows I
did a bit of writing but I started smelling smoke and wondered at first if a
building nearby or even my building was on fire. I went out in the hall but didn't
smell a lot of smoke until I went out onto the deck. My next roof neighbour,
Taro was barbecuing again. I think the smoke was travelling into Nicky's
apartment, across the first hall and then in through my bedroom door. I asked
him if he was burning a tire. Usually his charcoal smoke doesn't blow into our
place so much. There was hardly any wind at all. I asked if he has a fan but he
told me he doesn’t, so there doesn’t seem to be much that can be done about it.
When I went to bed,
fortunately the skinned knee and elbow didn't intrude too much on my normal
sleeping position. It hurt more get into the position than being in it. 
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