Groundhogs in the City

            On Friday morning I tried recording my song practice with the Nikon digital camera that Nick Cushing had brought me the day before. After it stopped recording I restarted and tried to record some more but later when I uploaded the files only the second video was there. I think it just recorded over the first video. Either that or the first video didn’t record in the first place.

            I was standing about a meter and a half from the camera while playing and on the video my head was either too close to the top of the frame or cut off at the top. I wasn’t happy with the audio. Guitar and voice don’t seem to mix well with one microphone. By message, Nick suggested that I record the voice into my computer, but I couldn’t make a recording with the microphone he left here, at least not from the front mic input. I’ll try the back one when I have time to take another shot at it. I’ll also try standing closer next time with the camera and tripod mounted on some big books, just to see if closeness improves the quality of sound.

            Late that afternoon I took a bike ride. The chance of rain was supposed to have diminished severely about an hour before I headed out, but there were some spectacular towers of cloud that in their beauty carry the threat of a shower.

            I continued my exploration of Parkview Hills, riding up O’Connor to Bermondsey and then travelled west. I went up Cranfield to Northline and on the way back noticed running around the bushes in front of a property just north of the 54 Division police station, what looked to me at first like mutant squirrels. They had chubby brown bodies but bushy black tails. I stopped but they stood there in the foliage watching me only long enough for me to get my camera out and take a couple of not very good shots but then they scooted underneath the concrete steps as I tried to get closer. It was pretty clear that they weren’t squirrels.

            I rode south and saw a cop getting into his car. Since he greeted me I thought I’d stop and ask him what kind of rodents I’d seen, since he works in the neighbourhood. He told me that what I saw were probably groundhogs because there are lots of them in that area.
            I took Bermondsey to Northline and then followed Northline as it curved from north to east. In the driveway of another building I saw two bigger, rounder more adult groundhogs than the ones I’d seen before. I tried to take a picture again but they were gone before I had a chance. They seem to hang out together more than squirrels do.

            I took Northline back to O’Connor and made my way back to the Danforth. At around Pape I stopped in front of Starbucks because I wanted to use the washroom. I opened my backpack to get my cable and padlock out but the padlock was not locked over the end links of my cable the way I always leave it. I thought that maybe I hadn’t locked it properly and that maybe it had come off the cable in my bag, but it wasn’t there.

I obviously couldn’t use the washroom without locking my bike, but fortunately I didn’t have to go really badly, so I got back on my bike and started riding just as it was starting to rain. Before I got to Broadview it began to pour very hard even though the sun was still shining on me from the west. I was fully soaked by the time I’d crossed the Bloor Viaduct.

As I splashed along I remembered that the last time I’d unlocked my bike was after shopping at Freshco when I’d returning from my bike ride on Wednesday. I usually put the padlock in my pocket while I’m coiling up my cable, but I think this time I set it down on top of the bike rack. I suspect that I absent-mindedly just put the ravelled cable into my bag and left the lock behind.

I stopped at Freshco on my way home to see if my padlock, which would be useless to anybody else without the key, was still sitting there. I looked around but it wasn’t there and the whole bike parking section had been cleaned up. I’d noticed on Wednesday that there were tags on all the bikes that have been locked up in front of Freshco for several months with a message that this was their final warning and that they would all be removed on July 6^th. I thought about checking with the lost and found but since I couldn’t lock my bike I didn’t know where to leave it. I figured I’d go home and get the chain and lock that Nick Cushing gave me and maybe come back to check the lost and found on Saturday.

I knew that I’d left the lock in my bottom kitchen drawer and that’s where I found it. The keys however were not in the boat shaped bowl in the living room where I would normally put them. I proceeded to turn my place upside down, even looking in places that I would never toss a small set of keys, such as the bottom kitchen drawer. I pulled everything out of all the drawers but there were no keys.

Finally I gave up and decided to take one more stab at finding my padlock. I rode back to Freshco and took my bike into the entryway where I wedged it into a corner between the pop machine and the sliding door. I went in and stood in the long line-up for the express checkout because that’s also the lost and found. Since I had nothing on the conveyer belt the cashier thought at first that I wanted ice. There was no padlock in her box of found items.

I went back home and renewed my search for the keys for a while but it finally occurred to me that there was one very sensible place that I could have put them. I unzipped the top pocket of my backpack, dug around and there were the keys. Prior to that I had not tried to put together the chain and the lock that Nick had given me. As soon as I tried there was a new problem. I had to cut away the ends of the plastic sheath around the chain so I could get at each end link. Once that was done there was a bigger problem. The shackle of the lock would not fit through the links of the chain, so I had to stick two screwdrivers inside each end link to pry them apart. It didn’t take much before there was enough room for the shackle. The chain that Nick gave me though was far too flimsy for me to trust it to secure my bike on a regular basis. It looked like it would just take a few minutes with a pair of pliers to unravel one of the links and thereby free the bike, but now at least I had a temporary lock and chain for my bike until I could buy a new padlock.