Barbie from Hell

            On Friday morning I finished touching up a photo I’d made of a drawing of my daughter and I from 26 years ago.

            I was sore from the long bike ride it took the day before, especially in my right leg. I wasn’t limping but decided that I wouldn’t ride back to Scarborough for a couple of days. I’ve got to get back into condition, but carefully.

            I decided on which of my song videos I’m going to synchronize with its corresponding sound recording next. I’ll do “L’alcool” by Serge Gainsbourg.

            I had a piece of the pot roast for lunch.

            Since I didn’t plan on riding outside of Parkdale on Saturday and since I didn’t want to take too long a bike ride today, I decided to find a balance to keep myself from vegetating. The plan was to ride to Yonge and Bloor but first I wanted to go to the post office. There’s an official notice on the mailboxes downstairs from the post office. It was posted on our front door but my next-door neighbour Benji moved it inside. It says that the mail carrier can’t get into our door to deliver the mail because the electronic lock won’t open. Since I’ve been waiting for my new health card I decided to ride to the local post office on Queen between Dufferin and Dovercourt. I was surprised that one of the clerks there is a Lee, who I met back in the 90s when she came to my poetry series at the Gladstone and came back to my place for coffee with a few other people afterwards. Back the she introduced herself as Barbie From Hell. I’d known she’d been a mail carrier but didn’t know she was a clerk now. She said she likes it much better working indoors. There was one piece of mail from Ontario Housing but since she knows me she didn’t check my identification. She kept some other customers waiting while she showed me a picture of her cat Garfield on Instagram.

            I rode up Dovercourt and at Dundas I had a green light but two cars were stuck in the middle of the street. I had to swerve around them.

            It was a very nice afternoon and quite a contrast to the day before. I wore a tank top with an open button shirt on top and even that was almost too much.

            Something about Friday rush hour seems to do something to the brains of both drivers and pedestrians. They behave more irrationally than on any other day. I was riding south on Yonge and crossing Shuter beside some pedestrians who were walking almost a meter out onto the street. When I went to their left to avoid them I almost got clipped by a car. I exclaimed, “Jesus Christ!” and told them they have to stay out of the way.

            I stopped at Freshco to buy a couple of jugs of vinegar and couldn’t pass up on a $2 watermelon.

            I didn’t feel much more sore after my ride than I'd felt all day, so hopefully it didn't do me any harm. Later the backs of my legs felt cramped.

            I felt kind of fatigued all day.

            For dinner I had the rest of the pot roast and some of the potatoes with gravy. This pot roast dinner from the food bank was much better than I’d expected it to be and it lasted a few meals.

            I watched two episodes of Sea Hunt.

            In the first story Mike is exploring a wreck underwater when a sudden storm hits on the surface and wrecks his boat. All he has left on the surface is an inflatable life raft. He has no food or water and while he’s drifting he picks up three survivors of another sinking. They are Nancy, Vince and Ed. I didn’t recognize until reading the credits later that Vince was played by Leonard Nimoy. Mike’s three new guests clearly have no experience with the sea and so Mike takes charge. He rigs up a spear and dives to catch a fish. No one at first wants to eat raw fish and so after Mike has some he saves it. When Vince finally wants some Ed reveals that he threw it overboard because it smelled too bad. Mike tells him they could have used it for bait. Mike manages to spear another fish and Vince is so hungry he desperately tries to eat the fish by himself and in the struggle knocks Mike’s spear into the water. The wind is blowing them out to see. The wind shifts after five days and Mike fashions a sail from their clothing. They take turns serving as the mast. After six days they see land but they would be torn apart by the breakers if they let the current wash them ashore. Mike dives with a rope to anchor the raft to a rock and swims to shore, avoiding the breakers underwater. A fisherman finds him on the beach and they are all saved.

            In the second story an underwater stunt man named Tom wants to become famous by breaking the 350-foot skin diving record. Mike is against it because Tom could die and also he could negatively affect the reputation of skin diving. In order to keep Tom from danger Mike agrees to help. Tom is driven by his obsessed father who is a former gold medal winning Olympic diver. Tom’s wife also wants Tom to call it off. Mike carefully plans the dive for safety. Different mixtures of gas have to be breathed at various levels and so tanks have to be tied to the marker line and ready to be used. Below 350 feet the water becomes freezing cold. Tom is supposed to tie his wife's scarf at the 380 feet mark but he can’t do it with his gloves on. But when he takes them off they drop away and so he has to deal with the cold. He thinks he’s tied the scarf but it is loose. Mike helps him to the surface and Tom must spend four hours in a decompression chamber. When he emerges he finds there is no proof that he made the dive and he is in bad shape. His father is sorry he pushed him so hard and tells him to not worry anymore about breaking the record.