Rubber Block Pedals

            On Thursday when I got up I noticed that the grease barrel outside the A+ Sushi & Bibim restaurant had been knocked over and a large amount of used cooking oil had spilled about halfway across the entrance to the Dollarama parking lot.

At midday I went to Bike Pirates to fix my pedal. I’d found a replacement pair in my junk drawer and so I brought them along. I was in front of the shop half an hour early as usual and took my book out of my backpack to read when another guy showed up and started talking. He said he’d hoped to be number one but I told him that when you’re among the first four it doesn’t really matter. He introduced himself as Casey and told me he was there to fix a flat and recounted how, a day or so ago when the tire first went flat he’d thought he’d locked his bike but had just secured the chain to a tree and when he came out he saw someone trying to ride his bike away. Fortunately the tire was flat and so the guy couldn’t get far before Casey got his bike back.
            He said he’s lived in Parkdale since the 70s but there was too much drug dealing going on at the place were he was living. He moved out, thinking that he’d be able to find another cheap place in Parkdale but had a rude awakening when he found out how high the rents are now. He was forced to move into a shelter at Lansdowne and Dupont and apply for subsidized housing. He said he misses cooking for himself but he considers his situation right now to be like a holiday.

            Quite a few characters from the streets of Parkdale walked by when we were talking and Casey seemed to know them all by name, including Bernice, who’s the only one I know.

            Den opened up the shop and let us in. I got stand number three. I removed the old pedals and prepared to put on the spares that I’d found in a box many years ago but I found out that the part that screws into the crank arm was too small. I went looking in the bins for another set of pedals. I found a nice set with rubber treads on metal frames. One of them was still attached to a crank arm and so I had to put it in the vice and remove it but I put it in the vice in the wrong way, not thinking that I might crush the gears. Den stopped, hopefully in time and put it in the grips along the crank arm. I still couldn’t wrench the pedal off though and so I put some penetrating oil in it and let it sink in for a while. When I tried again it started turning and I got the pedal off. I think these pedals were a pretty good score because they look good and also look like they might last. They look like Raleigh Chopper pedals, though there’s no logo.

            While I was there I thought I’d adjust my back brakes because they’ve been barely catching for the last few weeks. When I tightened the cable though they slipped back apart. Finally Bob, one of the older volunteers, who doesn't hear very well and needs people to look at him while they are talking, got me a new straddle for the cable and helped me put it on. I adjusted my derailleur by myself because it hadn’t been slipping right away into high gear.

            When I went for a test drive out the back door, Bob was already out there to have a smoke and he said to me in a serious voice, “Let’s talk!” He asked, "You come here a lot don't you?" I answered that I hadn't been there in over a month. When I check now I see that the last time I’d been was on June 7^th, the day of the provincial election. He then inquired if I always bring the same bike in whenever I come. I confirmed that I do and asked him why he wanted to know. He just said he was wondering, but his tome seemed to suggest that I might have been involved in something shady. Maybe he thought that I was Igor Kenk.

            Everything seemed to be okay. I donated the perfectly good pedals from my drawer that didn’t fit my bike and so I didn’t donate as much money as I might have otherwise. The new straddle was $3 and so I donated $12 on top of that. I’d spent about two hours and twenty minutes at Bike Pirates.

            As I left the shop I noticed a large group of people, it looked like perhaps the entire staff and some of the family from the A+ Sushi & Bibim out in the Dollarama parking lot trying to clean up the oil spill with sawdust and end to pieces of cardboard boxes.

            I went home, had lunch and laid down for a siesta just before 15:00. I ended up sleeping half an hour longer than usual for an afternoon nap, probably because working on my velo uses different muscles than my every day activities, and it was already past the time that I would normally leave for a bike ride. I kind of new before lying down that I wouldn’t take a long ride that day. Instead I just rode down to Freshco to buy some fruit and yogourt. Before leaving I punched another hole in my left sandal strap and now there are seven extra holes so those clunkers will fit my feet.

            At the supermarket I bought a tomato and a couple of bags of Mexican red grapes. There were blueberries but the sign said, “Product of the USA” so I almost passed on them until I found in the wrong place one large package that was labelled “British Columbia”. I looked around but couldn’t find where that particular brand had been stocked. When I asked a stocker he told me that I had the last one and that it was $1.99. On a hunch I went to the smaller packs of blueberries and saw that even though the sign said USA the berries were actually Canadian, so I got one of those for $1.99 too.
            I bought two containers of Greek yogourt and another of the Icelandic yogourt called Skyr because I hadn’t tried it yet. This kind was blueberry and it didn’t have any stevia extract in it.

            When I got home I should have had an extra hour to work since I hadn’t spent it on a bike ride but the wifi signal was so weak that it ended up taking that extra hour just to post my blog.

            Outside my window a woman shouted, “Learn how to drive asshole!" I looked out and a woman on an electric scooter was sitting at the light and said less loudly, "Sorry for my language!”

            That night I boiled a small potato, heated up a chicken breast and the rest of my gravy and watched two episodes of Dobie Gillis.

            In the first story, Dobie’s cousin Duncan accidentally locks his Uncle Herbert in the meat freezer at the Gillis Grocery and then he forgets about him and goes on a date with Clarissa. While Duncan, Clarissa and Maynard are in the park Duncan suggests they go for ice cream. Clarissa wonders where Duncan got the money and he says from his Uncle Herbie. She is surprised and says, “But he seems like such a cold man!” Maynard exclaims, “Cold?" Suddenly they remember that Herbert is in the freezer and rush back only to find that Herbert had disappeared. Maynard somehow concluded that after Herbert had frozen he’d defrosted down the drain. They are not aware of the fact that after many years of Dobie accidentally locking his father in the freezer, Herbert had built an escape hole in the back of the freezer. So Duncan and Maynard go into hiding in the basement of the college, directly under the home economics classroom to which at night they would sneak up to sustain themselves on rock-hard layer cakes. Meanwhile Herbert and Dobie are charged with the murder of Duncan Gillis but they get out on bail. There is a sudden cold snap and the furnaces at the college are stoked, driving Duncan and Maynard up from the basement while home-ec class is going on. They disguise themselves as girls to blend in and after trying to make cake batter with unshelled eggs and walnuts, Herbert arrives to deliver a sack of flour that had broken on his way in, covering him in white so Maynard thinks Herbert is Herbert’s ghost.

            Clarissa was played by Ahna Capri who was born in a refugee camp in West Germany in 1944 to Hungarian parents. They came to the US as refugees in 1950. She played the secretary to the crime lord Mr Han in Enter the Dragon.

            In the second story a professor demonstrates a formula he’s developed to make guinea pigs smarter. Shortly after that Maynard is told by the Dean that the college has discovered that he should never have been admitted to college and that he should be in Grade 3. Maynard is told that if he can’t pass a test they’ve prepared then he will be kicked out of college and so he goes to the lab and drinks some of the formula. It’s enough to impress the dean so much that he is offered a teaching position but he suddenly becomes even dumber than before so much that he can’t even remember his last name and so he rushes back to the lab and drinks the rest of the formula. He is transformed into a hairy Mr Hyde type monster and runs around campus wrecking havoc. Dobie begs the professor to develop an antidote and so he comes up with three. One turns Maynard into one of the professors, the other changes him into Dobie’s father, but when the third changes him into an attractive blonde woman, Dobie decides that's good enough and escorts her away. Later Maynard changes back after eating sunflower seeds and peanut brittle. Dobie is slightly disappointed. Maynard asks him if he should wear the same dress tonight that he wore the night before.

            Well into the night, somewhere a little east of here, perhaps at the Mazerick-Cowan Community Centre, a woman with a powerful and good voice was singing. I couldn’t make much out about the music other than it all sounded soulful but melodically similar.