Unbalanced Cyclist with Good Balance

            On Thursday I went on the U of T website to check my schedule for next week and found that my first Romantic Literature class on September 10 as well as the fourth class on September 19 will be cancelled. I made a copy of the syllabus and saw that we have to read Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud” before the first class. The reading list shows three books: The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Romantic Period; the original 1818 text of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Accompanying these two was a note in all caps telling us that it is important to purchase the 2018 edition of the Norton and the 2012 edition of the Shelley); and Thomas De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium Eater. For this last one there was no screaming stipulation that we have to buy a particular edition. I was able to find that edition of Frankenstein and Opium Eater on the Russian Library Genesis site. I also found an edition of the Norton but not the one the professor specified. I downloaded it anyway for digital reference but I’ll buy the book on Wednesday after class.

            Nick Cushing came by at around 12:30 after buying some second hand fenders from Bike Pirates. I gave him a Labatt’s Blue and we chatted for an hour and a quarter about various topics. He mentioned that he bought peaches in Hamilton and the price he mentioned paying for half of what I pay here so I wondered if Hamilton is closer to the fruit belt. He didn’t know but I can confirm that Hamilton is at one end of the fruit belt.

Nick headed off to buy some black light fluorescent paint for his tiki-head making business.

            I had chickpeas with garlic and flax oil for lunch and 250 grams of Greek yogourt with honey. I figured out that 250 grams of Greek yogourt amounts to about six heaping teaspoons so now I don’t have to eat out of a measuring cup.

            I took a bike ride in the late afternoon. Halfway across the Bloor Viaduct was a cyclist riding in the middle of the bike lane with both hands on his phone. The guy in front of me rang his bell to get by him and the guy with the phone started swearing at him. He finally got by and then I called out several times that I wanted to pass while he was still shouting after the other rider. I managed to squeeze by and as I was passing I asked, “What’s wrong with you?” He said, “You again!” He shouted after me, “You’re lucky I’m texting my girlfriend!” I assume the guy was having a manic episode.

            I rode up Birchmount to the first street north of St Clair, which is Roebuck. I took Roebuck east to Kennedy and since there’s a graveyard between St Clair and Roebuck there were no southbound streets to explore.

            The way home along The Danforth was very pleasant because the air and the temperature were perfect. At that time of day at this time of the year the air feels very soft and it’s hard not to be at peace.

            I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, peaches, ground chicken, margarine and yogourt. Hopefully the peaches will be better than the basket I’d bought a few days before. The basketed peaches were tasteless and dry.

            When I got home my landlord was back from his vacation and taking out the garbage. I told him that the new faucet he’d installed is loose. He said he’d come by to fix it on Sunday but that I could fix it myself by tightening three screws under the sink.

            I watched an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye with a disturbing subject. Illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico into Texas were being kidnapped and having their organs harvested. Hammer goes down to Texas to be the best man at his friend Hector’s wedding but the bride, Maria is missing. She had gone to meet her cousin Gloria where she would be sneaking across the border but Gloria has turned up dead and missing a kidney. Gloria is wrapped in a sheet with a laundry mark. Hammer goes to the laundry that cleaned the sheet and is told that the mark identifies the client, which in this case is a local clinic. He goes to the clinic but finds the head nurse, Alice uncooperative. The orderly though, Adcuff is quite helpful. Hammer goes to track down the coyote that brought Gloria across the border. They find him but he escapes in a truck belonging to a fruit farmer named Joe Rollins who is also very uncooperative. But one of his illegal employees, Rosa says she crossed the border with Gloria but on the other side Gloria was taken somewhere by Tito, the coyote. Hammer sees a scar on Rosa’s arm and asked what caused. She says that Tito takes blood from each person he helps cross the border. Hammer finds out that Rollins had been a medic in Vietnam and suspects him of performing the surgeries. Rollins also has a very sick wife. The head nurse is found dead from apparently hanging herself at the clinic but Hammer thinks she was murdered. It turns out that Adcuff the orderly was a physician that lost his license for several botched operations. They catch him just as he’s about to operate on Gloria but Rollins shows up with a shotgun and tries to force the surgery to continue because he needs the kidney for his wife. In the ensuing struggle Adcuff ends up falling on his own scalpel and Gloria is save.