Eldon Quick

            On Monday morning I finished memorizing “L'âme slave” (Slavic Soul) by Boris Vian. I did a quick search for the chords and there is at least one set that I’ll transcribe tomorrow. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Je suis capable de n’importe quoi” (I’m Capable of Anything) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through singing and playing it in French. Tomorrow I’ll run through my translation and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog to prepare it for publication. 

            I weighed 87.45 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since last Monday. 

            I weighed 87.8 kilos before lunch. 

            In the early afternoon I went over to Metro Cycle to pick up my Raleigh with the new handlebar height extension post. I paid $110 cash and took the Raleigh for my ride downtown. There was some forward and backward give on the handlebars that felt weird. At first I wondered if it was a feature of the new post but it didn’t feel right. I pushed it down to hold it from moving as I rode and planned to ask about it at Metro when I got home. As I approached Bathurst and Bloor, suddenly the handlebars went all the way forward 90 degrees and I wiped out. Fortunately to my immediate right was a meter high concrete planter in front of what used to be Honest Ed’s and so I fell onto the planter and my worst injuries were my right thumb, which was bleeding from under the nail and my right leg was scraped in two places on the side of my knee. If I’d fallen all the way to the sidewalk I think my injuries would have been much worse. I had to ride my bike carefully home with the handlebars flipped forward and had to strain to stretch my fingers to reach the brakes whenever I needed them. I made it back to Metro and what I expected was to hear Gordon yelling at an employee for not having tightened my extension post properly. Instead I saw him laughing even after I told him I’d wiped out. He sobered down a little after I showed him I’d been hurt. I told him I want to die of old age and not from a bike accident. He handed me $20 and asked if I wanted more. I told him it’s not about the money but the safety. He said he’d thought he’d tightened it enough but it looks like he hadn’t. He put it back in place and tightened it, assuring me it was secure this time. I took it home and then remembered that I wanted my original Zoom extension that this one had replaced. I went back to Metro to ask about it but Gordon said he’d had to cut it to get it off. I was leaving and he apologized to me again and said that every bike mechanic makes a mistake like that sometime. I’ve had lots of work done on lots of bikes over many years but never rode away with something that immediately failed on me because of a mechanic’s error and caused me injury. When I repaired my bike at bike pirates they had a policy that no one leaves the shop until their bike is safe. 

            I weighed 86.95 kilos at 17:45. 

            I got an email from Alex Wood that my Martin is ready. I guess I’ll have to go get the cash and then pick it up tomorrow because otherwise I won’t have time until Friday. I need to take my Gibson there to get my truss rod cover put back on and so I think I’ll take my trailer. I might try to take my Epi up there as well if I think I can strap three guitars to the trailer because that’s how many I would have on the way back. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a slice plus a tip of roast beef while watching the season 2 premier of The Bill Cosby Show. 

            Chet is coaching the school football team when his star player Alex comes to visit while walking with a cane. He says he’ll be limping for the rest of his life and so his football career, including his scholarship is over. He says he’s going to drop out and get a job since if he can’t play football he doesn’t want to go to college. Chet offers him a job as assistant coach but he’s not interested. Later Chet is chewing out the team on their playing and they ask if they could have some game films so they could see what they are doing wrong. Chet goes to see his filmmaker friend Greg who lends him a vintage movie camera. Chet makes some entertaining home movies with the camera but he’s less successful filming the team and coaching them at the same time. Alex comes to see Chet and tells him he doesn’t want to coach and when Chet tries to convince him he gets angry, accusing him of planning his life out of pity. Later Alex comes back to apologize and decides to give assistant coaching a try. He works the camera this time but at the end of the day concludes definitely that coaching is not for him. Later when the team views the game film they find Alex’s footage to be very helpful. Chet talks to Alex again and tells him he took his film work to show Greg and he says Alex has talent. Chet says there is a film scholarship to USC so maybe he shouldn’t quit high school after all. He could practice film making by shooting game films for all of the teams Chet coaches. Alex is interested. 

            Greg was played by Eldon Quick, who made his stage debut with the American Shakespeare Festival. His film debut was in In the Heat of the Night and his TV debut was on The Monkees. He played the big words speaking character of Johnny Littlejohn (who is part of Doc’s team in the pulp novels) in Doc Savage: the man of Bronze. He played Chronos in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. He played Captain Sloan on M.A.S.H. he memorized the first book of the English translation of the Iliad and performed it at colleges.