Boot Hill

           

            On Thursday I was still decompressing because of the change from being academic during the school year to getting back to being me. It’s interesting and ironic that a lot of the non-school related things that I do during the school year, like keeping up with my journal get done a lot easier than they do now. What with trying catch up on Twitter and Facebook and other things that I put on hold while I was studying, goofing off is very time consuming.

            I was dreading getting back into recreational bike riding because I figured it would be hard since I hadn’t taken a really long ride since the beginning of September. I started again the hour of knee exercises, with weights that I tend to do before riding. While doing that I listened to a couple of episodes of Amos and Andy from the 1940s, during the war. One of the shows had a funny line. Andy needed money to pay his rent and having heard there was a $500 prize for a photograph of a beautiful baby he “borrowed” the framed picture of the baby that was on the wall of Shorty’s Barber Shop. He found out that the photo won the prize but the catch was that the parents of the child needed to collect, so he convinced his landlady to pose as his wife. When the man in charge of the contest was interviewing them, his wife said that the child had been born early. The man commented that I looked very healthy for having been born early, to which Andy explained that it was okay because they’d made up for it having been born early by letting it take a nap later in the day.

            I finally got my red flasher wired and taped back onto the back of my bike, though I wasn’t sure if I’d be out until dark.

            I was riding east along Bloor and I stopped at the light either at or near Palmerston. I saw Heather Babcock had been waiting for the walk signal and then she crossed in front of me. I didn’t say hi, since she’d unfriended me from Facebook last year, just after Remembrance Day, I assume because I’d disagreed with her post claiming that the annual commemoration wasn’t a glorification of war. She looked attractive as usual, but also tired and tense.

            I rode to Broadview and then headed north to Pottery Road and then ventured down it because it had bicycle symbols that indicated a lane. It’s not exclusively a bike lane though, as cars and bikes have to travel single file in the same lane. When I got to the bottom of the steep curving hill, since I didn’t see the bike symbols continuing, I found out later that I could have stayed on but I didn’t like the look of it, so I turned onto the bike trail that opened up on the right side. That must have been the Lower Don River Trail. I followed that until the Lower Donlands and then crossed a little bridge over the river to end up on the Crothers Woods trail, which doesn’t really go anywhere but travels around like a drunken wasp. I was out of shape and had to walk my bike up a couple of steep gravel trails. I finally ended up at Bayview, and travelled on that until I realized I was going north. I got off at Moore, which I recognized by name, but found out later I was heading east instead of west. Well, actually all of the streets in that area run diagonally to north-south, east-west. I stumbled onto Laird, which sort of went north west through the community of Leaside, past not one but two music schools, one of which of course had a shoe store beneath of it because of what foot tapping while playing does to one’s boots. I took Laird all the way to Eglinton, just so I could know how to get home from there. I went west, past Trigenics, which I looked up later, which is apparently special technique that a lot of chiropractors get certified for to treat muscle pain. There is very little scientific proof that it works other than patient testimonials, which of course could be all in their heads. Here are some negative side effects that even trigenics practioners admit to: nerve lesions, unexplained severe calf pain, open sores or skin lesions, severe bruising, fractured bone, acute systemic flare-ups such as diabetic shock, tissues subject to highly exaggerated pain on palpation, dislocated shoulder that has not been reduced. Risk of injury from Trigenics can occur during manual muscle testing (strains, sprains). Due to the maximal contraction during a lengthening procedure, there is a risk of injury. Minor bruising may also occur in susceptible patients due to manual pressure being applied to the muscles. Where do I sign up?

            I passed the Finnish Credit Union, the name of which, “Osuuspankki” sounds pretty kinky. Whenever you make a withdrawal, the leather clad tellers call out “Osuuspankki!” and then they give you a spanking.

            On the way south, at Alexander, I saw that a block had been demolished and that now, Buddies In Bad Times had become suddenly visible from Yonge Street. The theatre had taken good advantage of this fact with a big banner with the name attached on the wall of the building that would have been the side of an alleyway before. I also found it interesting just how easy it is to forget what had probably been a recognizable row of storefronts. I did not miss at all what had been torn down. I looked it up on Google Street View and found they still have the block as it appeared before demolition. On the corner there was an Ali Babas; a little further north a NYC baseball cap store; Fickle (a Chinese fast food place; a Wind Mobile outlet; CKT a martial arts supplier; a cell phone accessories store; the Papaya Hut, which has been on Yonge street for decades in various locations; Kleen Air Dancing shoes; another NYC store; the Kathmandu Nepalese and Indian restaurant; Wrap and Roll; Vape Toronto; and at the other corner, with a patio, the Cocina Lucero Restaurant. Back south, around the corner from Ali Baba’s, near the Buddies In Bad Times Theatre were a sushi place and a Thai place. Other than the Papaya Hut when it was further south, I don’t think I’d ever set foot in any of those places.

            My plan had been to take, at the most, a two-hour bike ride. But because of getting lost I’d ridden for two and a half hours.

            That night I watched the first two episodes from the first season of Gunsmoke. They really pulled out all the stops to draw people into watching the premier. It began with John Wayne, all dressed up in western gear telling everybody that this new show, starring his friend James Arness is the best and most realistic western to ever hit the small screen. Judging from the first episode, I wouldn’t agree, although I thought the opening scene of Marshall Dillon standing among the grave markers on Boot Hill, against a spectacular backdrop of clouds was quite powerful. The second story was better. Dillon saves a bad man from being lynched for horse thievery. He’s obviously an outlaw but Dillon wants to treat him according to the law. An investigation showed that he didn’t steal the horse in question. Later the outlaw shoots a man in a fair fight but the man is a relative of the men who’d originally wanted to lynch the outlaw, and so Dillon has to once again defend someone he doesn’t like against the law abiding citizens of Dodge, while the outlaw laughs out loud at the irony of it all. The outlaw was played by John Dehner.