An Exercise in Foolishness

Part 1 – Scene with no figurative language:

I was at the front of the group of bicycles lined up behind the stoplight, which was red. The cyclists were one behind the other. A blue and yellow City garbage truck pulled along trying to make a right hand turn, but was stopped by the line of commuters who came from behind me and started pedaling before the light turned green.

The driver of the truck braked suddenly. The truck stopped, the driver rolled down his window and shouted a curse. “You filthy hippies!” I hadn’t begun pedaling, so I smiled at the driver and said, “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” I tried to sound apologetic. The driver of the truck spit out his window and it nearly landed on me. I spit my gum into the back of the truck as it went on its away.


Part 2 – Same scene with super flowery language:

An army of bicycles, buzzing hornets on two wheels, were lined up at the intersection of the throbbing urban jungle’s roadway artery, like unpredictable insects just asking to be swatted by the nearest metal death machine. The stoplight shone an ominous red: death would ambush those who might illegally trespass into the roadway before the anointed moment. From behind there rumbled the blue and yellow metallic Gargantua, the beastly transporter of refuse known as a garbage truck, intent on a turn to the starboard side of the road, to carry its stinking orgy of collected goo away from the pathetic consumerist citizens and their throwaway lifestyles toward the cursed burial grounds, degrading the nostrils of those who fell afoul of its sulfuric stench along the way.

The cadre of velocipedic ant-men did the unthinkable and began an assault upon the open intersection before the red lamp had given permission and ceded into a permissive green. The wheels rolled through like snakes slithering into a baby’s crib; it was Caesar crossing the Rubicon; it was a moment of pure effrontery to reason, goodness and the Highway Traffic Act.

The operator of the trash-vehicle was agog and forced to press desperate foot upon the stopping pads of the steel juggernaut, initiating an inhuman screeching blast that echoed across the roadway and ricocheted into every ear: the bicycles had put a stop to this truck driver’s sacred mission, for now.

The fuming man inside, who took the insult as though his fair mother had been debased by loutish buggerers, rapists and freakpeople, rolling down his Plexiglas barrier and unsheathed his anger in broad daylight. “You filthy hippies” was the reprimand, and it stung my soul as true, for I had not washed since the morning. I was overcome with remorse on behalf of my fellow bipedalists, although I had in fact done right by John Law and never an inch did move before my time had come and until the street lanterns above glowed green. Yet I spoke for my wayward compatriots with an entreating explanation: “Some people just don’t know how to drive.” But it inflamed the fellow’s wound all the more, and he let uncurl from his hateful gullet a sopping sponge-bath worth of heinous saliva, that rocketed past my brow and did despoil the road, as though marking the turf upon which Thomas of Canterbury himself had unjustly lost his neck.

Now I was hot, feeling caught unfairly between a man’s wrath and his target, and so did I then launch my counteroffensive, a Trudeauesque pirouette if there ever was one: I lobbed the mass of chewable gumstuff I had been working most diligently on for masticative purposes and it did so humourously tumble into the back of the villain's trash-machine as he mushed away like Achilles chasing down the armour of Patrocles.

RIP Musa

This photo totally ripped off from blogto.com

I rode by on a Monday morning and
saw the police tape.
So many times served by the waiter
in the cowboy hat
I never minded the wait

French toast smothered in maple syrup
Red bricks eaten by flames
On a weekend with so many fire alarms
In a city that lives to blame

When power goes out in a heat wave
We rush to corners to direct the cars
But when Sundays are snuffed like a lit cigar
The police state's rather lame
And my daily pass through Dundas
and Euclid never will be the same

[See "Fire destroys Musa and several homes at Dundas and Euclid"]

Commuter sentence

Winter loses bloom and leaves
on the ground and the freeze thaw cycle
makes thick jagged potholes right on major roadways like
Bathurst. I live on an arterial road, something about the circulation of the city
I bike uphill to work, I almost die every morning nearly creamed by cabbies I
ride a two wheeled prayer got to make it over frozen tiny ice hills that send
tires skidding dangerous my face brushes concrete curbs I arrive at the office covered in
sweat and dirt

I resurrected my girl!

She lay in cryogenic freeze since her death last March. You may recall I performed the saddest of eulogies.

This afternoon, however, I took her from her basement slumber and performed massive surgery. After $38.46 and four trips to two different shops for parts, she lives! With a new aluminum rear wheel, overhauled brakes and fresh cables, a lubed up chain, air in her tires, and a shiny yellow bell.














Peaches returns. She is mighty as ever. Alongside Mario (her worthy successor) she owns the roadway once more. Door prizers be warned!

You Who Open The Doors

(fun in the big city)

your attempts on my life
will not be met with silence

tomorrow I ride with a bucket of pirahnas, and
give your head a soak

metal on fingers is not pleasant
me eating your rear-view mirror is wrong

cabbies on College, lo, your brainpower is lacking
instruct thy passengers to scan well upon egress!

had my fill of motorized ambush
haven't yet pedalled a dozen blocks

Dundas and Spadina - yikes
Chinatown will be my graveyard

I prefer blindness to stupidity
blindfolk at least can hear my horn

I swear at you, I feel better
- can outrage penetrate your plush sedan?

my helmet's not meant to dent your chrome;
I'm hopped on adrenaline and will mess up your face.

Avenue and Bloor

I had another nightmare
- I called 9-1-1
to save your life
could have done more
grabbed your broken body and
screamed murder at the traffic
you ambushed from behind rolling
end over end under metal and rubber

you exploding all over the walk
leaky red fountain from the knees
adrenaline holds you up, together
everything points in the wrong direction

everything ok?
you’re gonna be ok
sir – please, tell me your name
he can't remember his own name
head injuries and internal bleeding

I didn’t see it
could have happened to me; it happens
I
guess I know I
live in the big city

ambulance arrives in minutes
but he just kept screaming
“I’m not doing so good”
yeah yeah yeah goddammit you
got
run over by a truck.

They killed my girl

Poor Peaches, my dear Peaches. I never loved a girl as much.

They snapped your spokes and punched your tires; they rusted your axles into dust. They laughed at you, said you couldn't make it. I spit to think they were right. You were beat down but never defeated. O the asphalt is a fickle hellcat, and the automobiles like destructive mammoths - but I will have my satisfaction. Your daughter will avenge you.

RIP Peaches: June 2005-March 2006. Peaches gave till it hurt, then gave some more, til she collapsed finally of faulty brakes, broken spokes and terminally flat tires. A hearty steed, a roadworthy companion and a friend.

• Kilometres traveled: 3,000+
• Bike-a-thons: 2
• Flat tires: 5
• Unreliable kickstands: 1
• Warped wheels: 2
• Busted spokes: 1
• Rear-basket malfunctions: 2
• Bike computers destroyed: 1
• Water-bottle-holders destroyed: 1
• Spontaneous chain derailments (on lowest gear): ~50
• Collisions with autos: 2
• Collisions with pedestrians: 3
• Rear-brake failures: >20 (any time the temperature was below -10C)
• Near-fatal wipeouts on College Street: 1

Made for a woman, but strong enough for 10 men: Peaches defied the laws of physics and common sense. She was born a 1980s Free Spirit, reincarnated in 2005 as a 'FrankenBike', recycled with the wrong brakes and handlebars. She had a 50-lb lady's steel frame and no apparent virtues - aside from enough butt-rusted-ugliness to deter the urban thieves. Yet she did me right when I needed her - got me a job even - and I loved her true.

I bought her for $80 in a Kensington alleyway... She may as well have been born in a manger.

You will ride again, and we shall pedal the boulevards of paradise - when the roadway is righteous once more.