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.