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Shifting Gears Click Here To Comment!

[Cross-posted from Vox.]

I live in a city where people make good use of bicycles. Granted, this is Toronto, not Copenhagen or Amsterdam or Bejing where the bicycle rules. But, on the scale of things in North America, Toronto is one of
the more bike-friendly cities. There is a bike culture … and I have longed to be a small part of it. I cannot give up my four wheels, especially now since my work takes me out of the city easily three times a week. But I have watched cyclists with envy, quietly going about the city in an independent, self-sufficient and often graceful manner.

As a kid, I practically lived on my bike. It was my major mode of transport from about the age of eight until I left home for university. My friends lived up and down the road of the farming community I grew up in, and there was a conservation area with a pool that we all congregated at daily – this was about a 20 minute bike ride from home. Who knows what my Mom thought of me taking off for hours at a time. My friends and I also rode our bikes for play, pretending they were horses, and trying to get them to be mountain bikes or
cross-country bikes before such things really existed. So much of my childhood involved taking my bike entirely for granted.

My ex and I bought bikes – this is about 10 years ago. They looked good, these bikes, or at least mine did. It was green (of course) and it had a basket on the front. It was the MOST uncomfortable bike on the
planet. I would stare at it, in frustration and pain, knowing that just lowering my butt onto the seat would cause me to wince. Being in such utter pain in my nether regions caused me to be paranoid about all the
other things I need to pay attention to in the big city … motorists, car doors opening, motorists, pedestrians, children, motorists, car doors, dogs, motorists … the paranoia came from having so much of my attention focused on the pain that I feared that I wasn’t paying enough attention to the stuff that could actually kill me. I think I rode that bike no more than three or four times before retiring the idea completely. I convinced myself that my body just wasn’t built for biking.

T bought a bike a few weeks ago. This was HUGE for her. She didn’t learn to ride as a child and is teaching herself as an adult. I admire her chutzpah. There is so much we take for granted about bike riding as just knowledge one has acquired along the way … how to move the pedal so you can put your foot on it to start out … how to balance … how to steer …how to stand up going over bumps … how to speed to get through uncertain bits of the road. For T, this is like learning Swahili at age 50 – it all feels very counter-intuitive to her. She had originally thought she’d buy a trike – one of those contraptions that has three wheels and a basket sort of thing out back but the man in the store convinced her that she was too young for that and that she could indeed learn to ride a decent bike. He sold her a sturdy bike with training wheels. And a helmet. The training wheels are VERY loud and she is getting pretty tired of them, I think, but she is also not quite sure she is ready to have them raised. The whole balance thing is a mystery to her. She slows down before speed bumps, which makes pedaling over them harder. She starts to yell out, and slow down,when she sees that she is coming up on a hill or a turn, uncertain of what to do or how to trust the machine beneath her. However, in the moments between being scared and uncertain, she admits that she really likes riding her bike. In some place within, she is having fun. With practice, this will all get easier for her, I think.

I watch all this in admiration and think to myself … maybe I could do this again if I had the right bike. So, I did it – I bought a bike! It was on a whim and a tad reckless, really – but the moon and stars must have been in alignment because I bought exactly the perfect bike for me. I’m totally smitten. T and I went out for four hours – my first lengthy bike ride since I was about 17, I think. My butt hurt a little bit by the end, I admit, but absolutely nothing like it once did. I was ready to go out for another four hours the next day, which is a
complete switch from how things were 10 years ago. We started in the Beaches, on the bike path, heading west to Ashbridge’s, then carried on to the Leslie St. Spit where we stopped to eat the lunch we packed.
Then we headed back. This would normally have taken about, oh, an hour maybe? But with T in learning mode … the pace proceeds much more slowly. This is actually fine with me as I was on my own learning
curve, getting re-acquainted with the brakes, gears, bike etiquette, traffic protocols, etc.

I loved being out on a bike. LOVED it. Didn’t matter to me in the slightest that we were going slow. I just loved the feeling of it again. T tells me I look like I was born to be on a bicycle, which says to me that my body remembers what it once knew so well. I really do think it is like learning a language – that there is a window of time when we learn things monumentally easily as children and then that window closes before we are about 10, I think. One of the reasons I hesitated to buy a bike has to do with my weight. I said I’d do it when I’d lost a bit more and that maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much. I’m glad I didn’t wait, and I’ve proved to myself that my body is capable of more than I give it credit for. Yesterday, T bought a bike rack for the back of her car so we can take our bikes to a wider range of bike paths. For now, we are looking for paths that are flat-ish and not too busy, although T did admirably well navigating the Beaches path with all the long-weekend pedestrian traffic. We are open to suggestions from those with more cycling experience in this city!

Parking on The Danforth Click Here To Comment!

I was the model of productivity today. I loaded my bundle of marking for the day into my knapsack and headed for The Danforth. You see, when I can park myself somewhere, like in a restaurant or cafe, for a few hours – I get much more marking done. Toronto readers will think this post is about trying to parallel park on one of Toronto's liveliest streets but NO! A-ha … I fooled you!

"The Danforth" is actually, officially, Danforth Avenue but no one ever calls it that. Why? I have no idea. This is similar to calling the thing you cross to get to The Danforth from downtown – "The Bloor Viaduct". It is a bridge, ok? A bridge. Toronto English seems to lean towards pretension.

Anyway, I wandered along The Danforth, looking for just the right spot. It was lunch time, yet I needed to find a place that was not crowded with lunchers and that had excellent lighting and that would be willing to let me – a single occupant – take up a table for four. See, this is trickier than it sounds. What would you call a place that is open for lunch but that is not crowded and would be happy to see me take up four seats? You would call that "not a very good restaurant". Nonetheless, I spied The Willow, a Tex-Mex place with not a single person in there at 12:30 p.m. Normally, I'd go running away from such a place but, today, it suited my needs exactly. I got a window seat and the server was pleased just to have another human being sucking air in her general vicinity.

I was hovered over, in short. It was fine, though, and the food was surprisingly good. Homemade soup, salsa and excellent nacho chips.

I finished my target allottment for the day – which is why I'm posting now. I also looked out the window a lot at street life on The Danforth. Here is a selection of what I saw:

  • A woman, I'd say about mid-late '50's, in a powder-blue ski jacket, wearing a knapsack that appeared to be chock full of stuff. She was hugging three stuffed animals to her chest, one was a teddy bear. She had a sort of lost, vacant look about her.
  • A man, 30-40's, in a baseball cap and a black and yellow jacket. He walked by me several times and he kept bending down and picking something up off the sidewalk at various points. I realized, after watching closely, that he was picking up partially smoked cigarettes.
  • Speaking of smoking – which I speak of as infrequently as possible – the percentage of people who walk down the street while smoking is well beyond what I would have expected. I would say about 80% of the people I saw today walking down The Danforth were smoking. This seemed to cross age segments, economic status, gender, race, sexual orientation and pretty well any other segment I can think of. The new anti-smoking laws have clearly driven people out of restaurants to get their nicotine fix along with a cardio work-out. I don't really get it.

After I finished my mini-marathon of marking, I walked along the north side towards Carrot Common. I was looking for places to put this, and I found a few.

In my quest to be more like Lex when I grow up, I have taken to  hauling my camera around with me.  As I have said before, I'm not a visual person.  Sounds/music – yes, I'm all over that. Words – yes, gimme more … words words words. So, I did have my camera today and what did I use it for? For taking a picture of words, that's what! These particular words were on the side of a funeral home. I think I got in a bit too close for the 60 Minutes extreme close-up, but the gist is clear.

I'll be back tomorrow, if I hit my daily marking target. Or, more accurately, I'll be somewhere tomorrow, trying to hit my daily marking target. Stay tuned …

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