Angry Traffic Cop

            I think I broke a personal record for French song memorization on Tuesday morning. I learned a whole song by heart in about 40 minutes.

I took a bike ride on Tuesday afternoon and it felt like my velo was slower than before. There didn’t seem to be anything dragging but it felt like there was. Maybe it was my imagination though since I was passing just as many other cyclists as usual.

            The city has pulled a dirty trick on cyclists crossing the Bloor Viaduct. They’ve set up a line of posts separating the bike lane from the cars; so now it’s harder to pass other riders. Most bikers were far enough to the right that I only had to give them a bit of warning, but one guy was in the middle and so I had to say, “Excuse me! Passing on your left!” before he moved over.

            I had only planned on going as far as Broadview but I was feeling pretty strong, plus I was still behind about three cyclists, so I kept on going until I’d passed them and when I got to Chester I was satisfied that I’d accomplished something so I stopped and turned around.

            I rode to Yonge, south to College and then west to Dovercourt. At the corner where I was waiting at the light to go south there was a pretty and extremely tall young woman in a very short pink floral dress. Her height made the dress particularly provocative because it gave the viewer a lower perspective on where her legs extended above the hem.

            On the south side of College in the middle of Dovercourt there was an angry cop directing traffic away from going south on Dovercourt from College or going north on Dovercourt from College. He stood facing a car that was coming up Dovercourt and extended both of his arms parallel to one another, palms inward and downward towards the car’s fender and then moved his arms to his left to indicate that he wanted the driver to turn right. The driver hesitated, perhaps because he was confused about the signal or maybe because he didn’t think he could make the turn sharply enough to not hit the policeman. The cop repeated his signal more aggressively and shouted, “Move!” Finally the driver backed up a bit and then started trying to turn at a wider angle. The officer threw up his hands in frustration and turned around to look in my direction while shaking his head. The light changed and I walked my bike south on Dovercourt and heard behind me the cop shouting, “Go!” to another driver.

            

Changing a Quill Stem

            On Monday the most important thing I had to do was to go to Bike Pirates in the late afternoon to replace my broken headset. I made sure that I got there more than twenty minutes early so I wouldn’t have to wait. There was one guy ahead of me who lit up a smoke while he was waiting, so I moved down the street. The wind though was moving from him to me so no matter how far east I edged myself it was as if I was still standing right next to him.

            Another guy arrived, then another, then one more who recognized me from when I used to go to Agostino to get my velo fixed. He hadn’t heard that Agostino committed suicide a couple of years ago.

            He told me that he’d been there an hour early because he’d thought they opened at 16:00 and wondered why they didn’t. I explained that the shop is volunteer run and so some of them might work. If the place were a business they would probably have less strange hours.

When Dennis came out to unlock the gate and got his pen and clipboard ready, it turned out that the guy ahead of me was there just to buy a part and so I was number 1. The guy I’d been chatting with said that he’d actually been there first but he’d been an hour early and so he’d gone for something to eat. Dennis looked annoyed and firmly assured him that he wasn’t going to get into an argument. The guy responded, “No, no, I’m just sayin that I was here!”

I took stand #3 and clamped my bike to it. I was pretty sure that I knew what to do at first, and that was to start removing my headset. I unscrewed the locknut, a spacer and the top race. I undid the quill stem bolt and pulled it out. Then I started disconnecting the left-hand brakes with the intention of also doing the same to the right. I always have trouble getting the barrel nipple on the end of the brake cable either out of or into the slot where it fits inside the brake lever. I could get it turned on its end but I couldn’t slide it over to slip through the slot before it turned back on its side again. I struggled with it for several minutes until I finally asked Den to help me. It wasn’t easy for him either but that’s because he’s short and I had my bike clamped high. The secret seemed to be to give the cable a lot of slack so it could be manoeuvred more easily.

Next I started trying to disconnect the right hand brake cable. I began turning the black cone shaped and ridged knob that fits into which the cable housing goes but I couldn’t get any slack to even access the cable. I asked the volunteer with the well kept moustache, whose name is Tom (coincidence, or did his name inspire him to emulate Tom Selleck’s facial hair?) He informed me that I didn’t need to disconnect the brakes, gears or even the handgrip on the right side. Since I’d already undone the brake cable on the left all I had to do was lift up the edge of the left handgrip with a screwdriver, spray some degreaser inside, then slide the grip off the bar. Then I would need to loosen the left hand lever and the left gearshift and slide them both off. Then all I would have to do is slide the handlebar out of the quill stem with the brakes, gears and grip still attached. I have to confess that I hadn’t realized the handlebar was separate from the stem quill or even that my problem was a broken stem quill rather than a severed headset.

The hardest of the above tasks was just getting the left handgrip off. I had to spray the degreaser inside several times and struggle with getting the rubber to budge for the next several minutes. Those grips have been on my bike for about ten years and they were a gift from Agostino after I paid a debt of over a hundred dollars that he’d let me owe him for several months. I’ve had grips that literally dissolved in a matter of months but these have served me well. I finally got it off and everything else slid off fairly well after that.

I removed the broken quill stem and went looking for a match. There were only four in the drawer that I could find with a similar angle as the old one. I showed them to Tom and he said two of them were missing parts but the other two would work. One was aluminium and the other was steel, but the steel seemed more flimsy to me. Tom said that steel against steel was better in terms of rust. I didn’t really understand what he meant. The aluminium quill stem looked and felt better so I went with that. Plus its colour matched that of my frame so that the only parts that were black now were my handlebars and my seat.

I put the quill stem in but Tom told me not to fully tighten it until after I’d slipped the handlebars back in. He showed me the mark on the quill stem that indicated how high I could safely secure it. I think it may be a little lower than the other one. I positioned and tightened it and the handlebars, then slipped the gearshift back on and tightened it and did the same with the brake lever. My front brake cable was too frayed to re-string through the guide but Tom was able to find a longer used one that I could clip and use.

I always have trouble tightening the front brake cable enough so the brakes will work. Tom was busy at that point so I asked another, older volunteer who is hard of hearing and often leaned in to get me to repeat what I’d said to him. He tore two pieces of cardboard to place between the brake pads and the rim and then attached a device that squeezed the pads to the rim, and then he adjusted my brakes by himself. I would have preferred that he’d actually taught me how to do it, as I know that Tom would have, but it was getting late and I knew that I would probably eventually learn it from someone else the next time front brake adjusting became an issue.

Everything that I’d come to do got done with a lot less trouble than I’d expected. I’d envisioned having to replace the handlebars and the entire headset, which would’ve involved removing the front wheel. But when I went to turn my pedals in order to check how the gears were shifting the back wheel wouldn’t move at all. The back brake pads were right up against the rim and I was puzzled because I had done nothing to the back brakes. Tom asked if I had turned the knob adjacent to the right grips and I had turned it counter clockwise when I first started trying to remove the grips before he’d told me I didn’t need to. I have to confess now that I’d had no idea that the knob was an adjustor knob that actually tightened or loosened the brakes. Tom told me to turn it clockwise all the way and then my wheel turned freely.

At a stand near mine I saw a woman that looked familiar and when I heard her speak I saw that it was Sarah Greene, who I know from her hosting of the Tranzac open stage. I said hi to her but she didn’t seem interested in chatting. She just said hi back in a friendly but very brief manner.

I took my bike for a test drive up the alley, onto O’Hara and then down to the other entrance to the alley behind my place. Everything seemed to be working fine, but I would know better on an actual ride. I went back inside the shop and then went to wash up. While I was approaching the sink I ran into Rob McPhail, who I hadn’t seen for a few years, though we are friends on Facebook. He reached out to shake my hand but I showed him that I hadn’t washed it yet. He was carrying a wheel and didn’t seem to be there with a bike. We chatted briefly until a volunteer reminded me that if I was finished with my stand, someone else needed it.

I was at Bike Pirates for three hours this time but it had been a much easier job than I’d expected. Since I’d installed only a used quill stem and brake cable, and because I’m very poor this time of year, I only donated $10 this time. 

Husband Beater

            On Sunday, because friends would be dropping by later I vacuumed half the kitchen then cleaned the bathroom sink, toilet and floor. While I was in the middle of that Sundar the super knocked on my door to ask if I had a crowbar because my neighbour at the other end of the hall had lost the key to his apartment. I went out in the hall and saw that the guy was trying to use a chef’s knife to see if he could wedge it in to turn the lock. I went to my tool drawer and brought back my long flat head screwdriver, a chisel and two metal putty knives. I asked him if he could use any of them and he told me gratefully that he’d try them all. This was the first time I’d heard him say more than “Hi” in the last few months that he’s lived here and I didn’t notice that he has what sounds like a Latin American accent. I’m guessing that he’s from Brazil since he doesn’t look like he’s of Latin or Native descent like someone from one of the Spanish speaking countries down there might. Brazil is more of a melting pot but then so is Argentina.

            Sundar was standing there watching him try to get into his door and I asked why he didn’t have a key. He said that he has a master key but it didn’t work. He tried I in my door and it turned, but not in the other guy’s door. I don’t like the fact that he has a master key that fits my door. I suggested that he could use the ladder that’s out on the deck to climb up to his window, but it was padlocked to the fire escape and Sundar didn’t have a key for that either.

            I went back to cleaning the bathroom but checked every now and then on my neighbour’s progress. He wasn’t making any, other than to become progressively more frustrated. Finally he started declaring, “I’m ready at this point to break down the motherfuckin door! How much does it cost? $300? I’ll pay it!” He kicked the door hard a couple of times but it didn’t budge. He said that he was moving out next month anyway. I cleaned my bathroom floor and while I was drying it there was a knock on my door and my neighbour had come to give me back my tools. I asked if he’d busted open the door and he said he had. I wondered how he was going to lock it. He answered that he’d buy another lock.

            Shortly after that I heard Nick Cushing shout up at my window. It turned out that he was there with Bruce March as well, who was in town for a rehearsal with the band that he plays bass for, “Frequency Zed”. I made tea for Bruce and we all sat at the kitchen table chatting. I was wearing a tank top and Bruce asked me if it was a “wife beater”. I really hate that term but my response to it was as usual, “I’m not married!” Mine is black and traditionally the white tank top tends to be referred to as a wife beater”. But women wear white tank tops more than men, so why don’t they call them “husband beaters”? It occurred tome later though that perhaps Bruce asked the question as a roundabout way of proposing to me.

            Nick had me re-read a script for a character for an episode of his animated web series. I had read Hector Nectar’s lines previously but Nick told me my voice hadn’t been sinister enough.

            The week before that I had gone around to various stores trying to find a microphone adaptor with a jack that was small enough to fit into the mic input in Nick’s drift cam. The problem had been that the jack that looked like the right size wouldn’t fit past the rubber of the camera’s casing. Nick showed me that I could have just peeled off the casing at the end where the inputs are.

            They headed out and I hung around home. I couldn’t ride my bike that afternoon because the headset had broken in half the day before. Not from any impact but just from twenty years of wear and tear.

            I did some knee exercises in the late afternoon while listening to an episode of Amos and Andy from 1946. A lot of the jokes were about shortages in the post war period. The big department stores had a thick catalogue just to show people all the things they didn’t have and the small stores were going out of business because they didn’t have enough of nothing to keep going.

Decapitation is Hard on the Feet

            After the food bank on Saturday I really needed to replenish the fruit supply that they didn’t help me with so I rode down to No Frills. There was a panhandler sitting near where I locked my bike and I considered telling him that he could go to the food bank but I suspected that he knew and wasn’t interested.

The supermarket had deals on both cherries and grapes, so I bought both. After going home and unpacking my groceries I went out to the liquor store to buy two cans of Creemore for the weekend.

Late that afternoon I went for a bike ride and it was a great day for it. It was a bit cooler than the day before but once I got rolling it felt kind of muggy. The more I get used to the bike I built the more I like it. I seem to pass as many cyclists or more with this velo than the Phoenix.

My plan had been to go only as far as Parliament, but I made it that far with such good time that I extended my trip to Castle Frank. I told myself that on the following night I would at least cross the bridge to Broadview.

Almost immediately on the way back my headset started feeling wobbly, which was strange because I’d spent a considerable amount of time securely tightening it on Monday night at Bike Pirates. By Yonge Street it seemed to be getting worse. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go to Bike Pirates to firm it up again until Monday evening but I started wondering if dared to try to fix the problem at home before then. I turned right on College and suddenly noticed that this was not something that could be fixed with any kind of wrenches. There was a crack in my steering stem. I could only hope that if I drove carefully I could make it home before the whole thing broke off. Just as I was about to cross King’s College Circle the stem fully severed and I had to dismount.

I began walking my bike and was able to steer it around other pedestrians without too much effort with one hand keeping the handlebars in place and the other on the seat. When I got to Spadina I went north on the slim chance that Bike Chain would be open, but it wasn’t.

I walked down Spadina, which was very crowded with Chinatown shoppers, so I had to be very careful with my steering so the front wheel wouldn’t veer one way or the other while I was trying to go around people.

About halfway down to Dundas someone called my name. There was a guy standing near the edge of the sidewalk and smoking but I didn’t recognize him at first. He explained that he used to see me at Clintons when the Art Bar was there and also at Plastiscene when it was at Paupers Pub. I recognized him then. He had been a member of the Art Bar committee, though I don’t know if he had been one of the people that voted to ban me from the Art Bar. I told him what had happened to my bike and we chatted about that. Then he asked if I was still going out to poetry readings and told me that the Art Bar has started up again. I told him that I go to mostly Shab-e Sh’er and reminded him that I was banned from the Art Bar. He informed me that there was an entirely different group running it now, including him and Margaret Code. I told him that if they were keeping the name “The Art Bar” they had to bear some responsibility for what the previous group had done under the name and so that meant that for me to return to the Art Bar there would have to be a formal apology to me. His air became cooler suddenly and he said, “Oh, I see. Okay …” I told him that I had a long walk ahead of me and said goodbye.

I pushed my machine down to Queen and walked west. My left ankle was getting sore because it’s not used to that much walking. I also had needed to pee since I’d first started walking, but I didn’t want to lock the bike to go into a bar because then the headset would possibly flop off. There was a lot of pedestrian traffic everywhere along Queen, but especially around Trinity Bellwoods Park where they were just packing up after their annual yard sale. The sidewalk didn’t thin down until after I’d crossed into Parkdale.

I got home at around 19:00 and was glad to be there. I hung up my bike, headless if not for the few tendons still connecting it to the brakes and the gears. If it didn’t heal by Monday night I would have my work cut out for me at Bike Pirates.

I wonder if it’s a coincidence that the seat post and the headset stem both snapped within half a year of one another or if it was just the life span of the metal.

The Truth About the Toronto Anti-smoking Bylaw

            Late on Friday night a road crew started ripping up Queen Street from Dunn Avenue and moving west, so I went to bed to the sound of Rocky Rockpecker and the gang playing their jackhammers all night long. I don’t know if they kept me awake or if I just couldn’t sleep very well. I drifted in and out and dreamed things I can’t remember. As the early morning progressed the noise moved further west and got more muffled.

            Later that morning I was listening to one of the rare Serge Gainsbourg songs for which the lyrics are not posted online, and trying to concentrate and listen in order to make out the French lyrics, when the jackhammers returned to machine gun the concrete near my place. Needless to say it made listening to the nuances of a language that I haven’t yet mastered in quiet times, a lot more difficult.

            At about 8:45 I rode west beside the gutted streetcar tracks that had narrowed the street. I crawled behind one of those horrible busses that are replacing the Queen Streetcars for the next three months until it moved ahead after Lansdowne. Then I went to get into the food bank line-up.

It was the first time I’d been there in two weeks, since the Saturday before that I’d had a performance for which to prepare. The line-up was a lot quieter than usual since Bart wasn’t there shouting at invisible people.

There seemed to be more people smoking though, but there wasn’t much that I could do besides move away. After the last time that I was at the food bank I called up the city of Toronto’s bylaw enforcement office to complain about the smoking within nine meters of the two doors at 1499 Queen West, one of which is the PARC entrance and the other the food bank entrance. They said they would investigate and asked if I wanted them to follow up with me. I gave them my number and at the end of that week I received a call from a very nice tobacco inspector. She informed me that she’d gone to 1499 Queen Street West to investigate but the problem is that the bylaw that seems to state that “In Toronto it is against the law to smoke within 9 meters of an entrance or exit of any building that is used by the public” does not apply to city sidewalks. It can only be enforced if the area outside of the door has the same owner as the door. That means that it would have applied to the back door of the Parkdale Food Bank’s previous location because the driveway was private property but not to the current location.

I pointed out to her that the wording of the public statements about the bylaw doesn’t offer those specifications. She explained that city hall wanted to make it sound better than it is. She complained that the way that they present it now just makes her job more difficult because she constantly has to look into where the property lines extend in order to know if a violation of the bylaw has occurred. She also has to often deal with a lot of negativity because of the feeling that many smokers have of being oppressed. That happened when she went to investigate at PARC. She told me that there is not much that can be done about smoking on the sidewalk. If the nine meter rule were to be applied to the sidewalk smokers would have to step out onto the street to be far enough away from a door in order to smoke and stepping up or down the sidewalk wouldn’t work because there’s always another door less than nine meters away from the door that one is moving away from.

On this day there were some women sitting and smoking on the steps of the apartment building next to the food bank. From what the officer told me I guess the bylaw could be applied to the steps, in which case the landlord of 1501 Queen West could be fined. But that would just cause animosity towards the food bank line-up and it wouldn’t solve the smoking problem.

Pretty much everyone in line this time were food bank regulars. The cart belonging to the guy ahead of me had “Robbie” written on it. Robbie is a large, soft man who smokes and who also seems like his mind may be wrapped in the gauze of prescription medications. There is a short and stout, white haired woman with whom he seems close. I had previously assumed that they were a couple but that is probably not the case since on this day they were not together in line. At one point he was talking with her and then she got behind him and lifted up the back of his t-shirt to squeeze something. Then she showed him her finger and went downstairs to wash her hands.

One thing good about the new location is that there are two public washrooms down stairs. Before the move from Cowan and King, the nearest toilet was at Nick’s Bar, around the corner on King Street.

My Guyanese friend was further back in line. He claimed that he wasn’t there for himself this time but for a friend who was too drunk to walk. He recounted a story he’d heard about a father of five who’d gone to another food bank in town and needed help to get the food to his car. The manager helped him but when he saw that the man drove a BMW he took everything back. That seemed odd to me. Why couldn’t a person have had a quality car before falling on bad times? With five kids to cart around one wouldn’t expect the father would be forced to sell his car to buy food.

Looking this up later though I saw that before Ontario Works was introduced a social assistance recipient was allowed to own a car worth up to $10,000. Now however the limit is $5,000 and if the car is worth more than $5,000 the recipient is only allowed to keep it for six months while looking for a job. If employment is not found after that time the recipient must sell the car. I think that’s a bit extreme.

My Guyanese friend insisted that it’s quite common for immigrants to get provisions at the food bank and then to ship them back to their country of origin. I guess anything is possible but I doubt very much if that’s a common practice. With the cost of shipping it would probably make more sense to just send the money to family members in other countries so they could buy food for themselves.

At about fifteen minutes past the time the food bank was supposed to open, the woman that I call “the bread lady” came out with a tray of watermelon wedges to pass out. She missed me but I wouldn’t have taken one anyway because I don’t like eating while standing up on the street. She announced though that there would be a longer wait because their computer guy had not yet arrived. Everybody appreciated the watermelon though and the fact that they’d thought of handing it out.

One of my former yoga students at PARC came past me and said hi. For the year or so that I taught her, she depended on a wheelchair to get from place to place. I used to set corridors of chairs for her with the backs turned in for hand support and I got her to walk back and forth a few times before doing actual yoga. I was gratified to see her using a walker as she went by on her way into PARC.

I didn’t stand in the line-up this time because so many people nearby were smoking but I made sure that the woman who’d marked her place behind Robbie knew that I was in front of her. She understood why I wasn’t going to stand in line but whenever the line moved she would look for me and call me over so that I could get in front of her. Suddenly a surge of ten people were being let in but when I was in the lobby and heading for the stairs the doorkeeper stopped myself and the people behind me, saying in an annoyed voice, “I said ten people!” I guess she’d expected us to keep count for her.

The door person was wearing a red t-shirt with a circle in the middle and a yellow lightning strike going diagonally through the circle. On the upper right side of her chest she’d stuck an adhesive nametag with “Barry Allen” written on it. The joke being of course that the t-shirt represented the superhero The Flash and the nametag revealed his secret identity.

She said that they might not be as late getting started next time because she was going to be trained to use the computer later that day.

An older guy behind me that I’ve seen many times at the food bank over the last year or so, asked if the book I was reading was in French. I explained that it has the French on one page and the English translation on the opposite and that there are stories by various well-known French authors. He asked if there were any by Victor Hugo. I checked the index and saw that there wasn’t but that there were stories by Voltaire, Balzac, Flaubert, Baudelaire and Camus. He wasn’t familiar with Camus so I told him that Camus’s most famous book was “The Outsider” which is about a man in Algeria who gets into a fight with an Arab on the beach in Algiers, kills him and then goes on trial for murder. His face brightened when I told him that and he declared, “I’d like to read that!” I was worried that he was excited about the killing of an Arab but he told me that he’d spent some time in Algeria. I didn’t ask but I’m curious as to what circumstances took him there. He guessed that the man in the story got off in his murder trial but I told him that wasn’t the case.

When I was finally let inside I got a number in the low 30s. Angie was sitting and eating a sandwich behind her dairy counter when I approached. She told me, “I’m a on a coffee break. Come back in twenty minutes! Just kidding!” She gave me a half litre of 2% milk then told me to take another one from her. I also got from her a bag of five eggs, a package of frozen halal chicken wieners and a bag containing three cups of shredded cheese. Not much meat, but more dairy than usual.

To the vegetable lady I said, “Hi Sylvia! Your name is Sylvia isn’t it?” “Yes, how did you know?” I heard Angie calling you Sylvia. I pay attention!” “Do you pay attention in school?” “I try to!” “I didn’t pay attention in school!” Sylvia handed me four potatoes, a pack of organic sage, a fairly firm tomato and one honey mango that turned out to have gone past its eating stage and was already deep in training for a future as compost. So there were very few vegetables this time and no fruit.

My helper at the shelves was the woman who usually manages the bread section. I took a jar of tomato basil bruschetta, a bag of salt and vinegar Crispers and a package of mint Oreos. She offered me a bag of liquorice or a bag of marshmallows from one side of the bottom of a shelf but I told her I’d prefer the health bars on the other side. She gave me five oats and chocolate bars, one fruit, nut and chocolate bar and a handful of little restaurant servings of honey. She grabbed seven Brookside dark chocolate cranberry almond blood orange bars and put them in my bag, saying that she hears they are very good. I assume from that statement that she is prevented from eating the bars for health reasons. Since she is Native Canadian the most likely reason would be that she is diabetic.

I selected a box of multigrain Cheerios and a can of chickpeas. There was no tuna this week. I asked for a can of tomato sauce but she handed me one of tomato paste so I corrected her. She confessed that she’d made that mistake with someone else earlier. I picked a can of curried cauliflower lentil soup and she gave me an extra one.

She said I could help myself to the bread but they had an unusually slim selection this time around. With the tongs I fished from the bottom of a bin of stale looking white loaves the only multi-grain loaf and one cheese bun.

A few times she put things in my bag that I hadn’t selected or asked for, such as a container of Mongolian barbecue stir fry sauce, a can of tomato soup and a can of beans. She suggested that I could have the beans with my eggs. I didn’t know that was a thing.

Love in Remission

            On Friday I published the video that I’d edited of the three that Nick Cushing shot of me singing my song “Love in Remission”. For some reason after rendering it came out crackly in the louder parts, though it didn’t beforehand.

            It was direct deposit payday from the photography-modelling job I’d done a couple of weeks ago, plus I got my monthly tax refund. So in the late afternoon I went looking for a cable converter jack so I could plug a microphone into Nick Cushing’s drift cam. On College just west of Spadina, Modcom had a jack that might have fit the camera’s mic input but it wouldn’t go fully in because it was stopped by the rubber casing of the camera. Across the street at Canada Computers they had the same kind of converter jack. I went to Staples but they didn’t have any converters at all. The employee that I spoke with suggested that jacks for that camera are proprietary in design and so it probably wouldn’t accept any converter.

            I rode to Yonge and Dundas just in case Future Shop was still there, but it wasn’t. I turned south, past a small protest of Tamils demanding a homeland in Sri Lanka. I went down to Queen and then west to Steve’s Music, but they didn’t have a converter as small as what I needed. I could only conclude that what I wanted does not exist. I guess I might have to record the voice and guitar directly into my computer while shooting the video with the camera. I wonder if there is a way to shoot video with my Kodak without having to press down on the shutter button.

            I went into the Horseshoe Tavern to pee. I don’t think I’ve been in there for at least a decade. It still looks like a dive but I assume that’s deliberate and not because the place is broke. I wonder if it’s considered a heritage site and if it receives financial support from the government.

            Going west along Queen I was trailing one of the stupid busses that are replacing the streetcars this summer. Luckily though, when it stopped at Bathurst, so many people were getting on that I was able to walk my bike in front of it and continue on.

            I stopped at Freshco on the way home. None of the fruit is very interesting there right now. Besides a deal on strawberries they were selling the ratty dregs of last year’s Ontario apples, there were no navel oranges and the grapes were too expensive. It’s that period before the fruit harvest when there’s nothing but peaches and nectarines from the States that have hardly any flavour. I bought a bag of embassy apples and a bunch of green bananas. The meat section didn’t have any great deals either. There was a package of eight drumsticks with half the $5 sticker torn off. I asked two shelf stockers if that meant it was only $2.50. They thought that was funny and one of them said he wished that was true. I got three containers of zero fat yogourt, one of cappuccino flavour and a can of peaches to have the yogourt until the bananas ripened.

            On the corner by my place was a tall guy of about thirty, panhandling with a skateboard under his arm. I don’t know why it seemed odd to me seeing a guy with a skateboard begging. Maybe it’s just because I’d never seen it before or maybe it’s because all skateboarders have a middle-class look about them even when they’re dressed poor. Hours later I heard shouting and the guy was alone, walking west on Queen Street, still carrying but not riding his skateboard.

The Heart is the Stupid Part of the Mind

            On Thursday I finally got caught up enough on my journal to spare the time for a bike ride. There were lots of other cyclists going east along the Bloor bike lane and so I had to ride with the cars several times in order pass them.

            Near the now shut down Honest Ed’s I overheard a father with a lisp exclaim to his child, “Life’s not perfect!”

Not wanting to overexert my knee I only went as far as Sherbourne. On the way back I went south on St George to the College bike lane, which was also quite crowded but free of barriers to keep someone from passing. It was a pretty warm afternoon and it felt good to be out riding and sweating.

            We should set our emotions free so they won’t be cooped up in the city. The government needs to allot a particularly desolate section of the arctic as a special territory for our feelings to live so they will have a purpose rather than being urban pests. Of course we can keep in touch with them to see how they’re doing but it’ll be a lot more peaceful, pleasant and cheaper for us to stay here with our bodies and our minds.