Rough Patch

On Thursday I did my laundry. I got $10 worth of quarters from the machine but then I realized I’d need three loonies for the top-load washer and the elegant old Korean or Japanese attendant seemed disappointed when I interrupted her and her smart phone to ask to change twelve quarters into loonies.

            I was waiting for my shorts and sweatpants to finish in the top-load washer before putting coins in the dryer and watched a guy putting his clothes in the dryer below mine. I always just grab everything and throw it into the machine but he was shaking out every single item and turning them, I guess, outside in before putting them in.

Later that afternoon I was getting ready to take my bike ride while my next door Queen Street westbound just after University is broken up and cracked to a rim-bending degree for cyclists and it's been like that all summer. It could be avoided by going out onto the streetcar tracks, but there's also an accidentally formed narrow path of concrete that curves in and kisses the curb until it clears the rough area. I'm not the only cyclist that uses it but it would be interesting to see what percentage do.

Benji was getting the garbage ready to put on the curb and cleaning the bins. He’s just doing it for two weeks while the landlord is on vacation. When Raja does it he doesn’t usually come on garbage day. He takes it in his van to a bin that he rents at another location. That seems like a smelly thing to do to your van when you can just get someone like Benji to put it out. Raja is giving Benji a small cut in his rent for this month.

            I took a bike ride in the late afternoon. I didn’t feel like riding until I was on my way. Until I got to the Bloor Viaduct there were several long spaces where I rode with no other cyclists in front of me. On the bridge though I had to pass about ten cyclists, including Madame Pavlov. Shortly after Broadview a husky woman in black with her hair in a wide braid under her black helmet passed me. She slowed down at around Donlands and I went by her, but after Coxwell I saw her come up beside me and so I slowed to let her pass and then tried to catch her again. She was built the way a lot of female cops are and wore her hair in a similar way. She stopped at Main Street. Why was she faster? With an aerodynamic helmet and leaning forward she would probably have an advantage because wind resistance, more than anything else, is the main speed killer in cycling.

            At Danforth and Birchmount is the Eli Lilly company and it takes up a very large block, a whole acre of which, besides some perfectly lined up trees around the edge, is nothing but closely cropped lawn. There's no fence around it and no sign saying "private property" so I assume it's accessible to the public but it would make a boring park as it is. I wonder why Lilly keeps it. Is it there just in case they build an extension to their drug factory? It’s a fun fact that Laura Nyro wrote "Eli's Coming" about Eli Lilly because she had a vision that he was bringing her drugs. It’s a fun fact because it’s not true.

            One thing about racing with the lady in black is that it got me to that area within fifty minutes. I had time to ride up Birchmount to Highview, turn right and explore all the streets that ran south off of it until the point where Pinegrove joins it, and started heading home in less than an hour from when I left.

            I stopped at Starbucks to pee and sometime since I'd been there last someone had stripped the abandoned blue and green bike that's been locked there since at least April, of both of it's tires. Now it looks particularly pathetic, as it hangs by its lock without touching the sidewalk.

Just after University I stopped to shoot some video to see if any other cyclists besides me take the smooth detour around the broken part of Queen Street, if they go over it or if they go out to the left and closer to the tracks. I shot about ten riders going by and almost all of them went to the left, while one went over the rough area. Not a single one of them did what I do.

I stopped at Freshco where I got two litres of nectarines, two pints of blueberries, a tomato and some yogourt. It was the first time in a long time that I could carry everything home in my backpack.

I had a chicken leg for dinner and watched an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye. In this story a stockbroker is murdered and the gun and silencer are left with the body. The old janitor comes in and freaks out. His hands are all bloody from touching the corpse and he’s holding the gun when the security guard comes in. The old man grabs both the gun and the broker’s briefcase and shows up all bloodstained at Hammer’s door. He spends the night at Hammer’s place and Hammer is surprised the next day when he takes him to the police as a witness that they arrest him for murder. When they go to the old man’s apartment they find $250,000 in cash in his refrigerator along with compromising photographs of the murdered broker. The old man says the money is his life savings that he’s been hording for fifty years but he doesn’t know anything about any pictures and he doesn’t even own a camera. During his investigation, Hammer forms a sexual relationship with the dead broker’s partner. The old man dies a few days later of natural causes while still in jail. Hammer finds out that the broker’s murderer was his partner.

I checked my bank account that night and discovered that I got the $300 back that I’d left in the bank machine. Yay!