Enrolled in US Lit, then Rolled Through the Wasteland

            On Monday morning I broke another guitar string, even though I’d changed the B a week or so ago. Maybe I’m hitting the strings harder these days.

At 11:10 I enrolled in 20^th Century American Literature and Early Medieval Philosophy. It took me three minutes so I can’t blame that for the rest of the morning getting wasted. I spent way too much time arguing with someone on Facebook.

Late that afternoon I took a bike ride I wanted to explore the streets that run east from Don Mills Road. I’d remembered from last year that Don Mills Road is scary for cyclists, but I’d forgotten how intimidating it is. I felt like I was on the Don Valley Parkway. Just like last time I walked some of the way but this time I started riding once I as past the entrances and exits to and from the DVP. I turned right on Gateway, went along Grenoble, and then Linkwood to St Dennis. Then I came back on Grenoble where I stopped to look at some graffiti in Flemingdon Park. The neighbourhood is full of people and yet it’s architecturally lifeless because it’s a forest of high-rise apartment buildings.

I didn’t want to ride back the way I came so I took Don Mills to Eglinton and travelled west through four long construction zones with only short spaces of calm between them. Most of Eglinton was narrowed all the way to Yonge, which made it even less of a bike friendly route than normal.

Going down Yonge a young woman on a big bike whizzed past me. I had no problem overtaking her but she got by again at a light. I coasted ahead on the hill but when I stopped for a red light she was so desperate to get ahead that she whipped right through.
            I went home along College and then down Brock. I had just stopped at the stop sign after the underpass and was rolling again when a tattooed early middle aged woman in an old car slowed down beside me, rolled down her window and asked if she could talk with me. She assured me, “There’s nothing wrong!” She went on to tell me that a friend of hers never wore a helmet but recently got doored and now she needs brain surgery. The woman wanted to urge me, and she put her hand on her heart and added “with love”, to protect my head. I told her that I’ve fallen off my bike lots of times but never cam close to hitting my head. She argued that neither had her friend. I countered that the odds are very low and they might even be higher for people walking on an unsalted sidewalk in the winter, so why not insist that they wear helmets too? She repeated that she was speaking to me with love because of what happened to her friend. I told her that she was doing this now because she felt personally involved. Our conversation ended and I went home.

I couldn’t find any information about a woman getting a brain injury from being doored in Toronto. In my experience it’s very difficult to hit one’s head when one falls off a bike. One falls on one’s hands, wrists, arms, elbows and shoulders. One would have to be really thrown hard against something other than the ground to hit one’s head. There are contradicting statistics on this matter. Apparently countries where the most helmets are worn have the most bike accident head injuries but I don’t know if they’ve enforced the wearing of helmets because of the injuries.

That night I watched the last episode of the first season of Maverick. A small town mistook Bret and Bart Maverick for Doc Holliday and Wyatt Earp, even though they kept insisting they weren’t them.