Bet you thought I'd given up, didn't you?
Well no such luck. I just took an extended hiatus, due to trying to finish a draft of my thesis, losing my job and then getting a new one, and going away on a week-long vacation out west. All of the above went extremely well.
So, it's officially spring, my crocuses and miniature irises are standing straight as soldiers, I've started commuting two hours daily (good thing I like the job) and I've decided that the Rocky Mountains are as close to paradise as anywhere I've ever been.
A little more on that commute: I purchased a vintage Pugeot bicycle to help me out with too-ing and fro-ing from the GO-stations. In Toronto, this little ride is considered quite fashionable. Vintage bikes, I was told by a source in the know, are 'hot'. Even hotter are baskets, bells, pink helmets and fake flowers twined in your wheel spokes. I opted for the vintage bike and a helmet (not pink). A back crate seems more practical than a basket.
The upshot of all this though is that in Toronto, it's cool to cruise around on a bike. In Oakville, where my new job is located, it makes you look like you live below the poverty line. No one rides their bike anywhere, and if they do, they don't wear a helmet because they ride on quiet residential streets for recreation, and their bikes are flashy, shiny, mountain-type rugged vehicles or triathalon bikes, not slightly rusted stilletto-framed Pugeots from 1965 with three gears and a broken head and tail light. When I pulled up to the bike rack outside my work this morning, a guy was locking up the sports-car of mountain bikes. We exchanged pleasantries but I knew he was steeling glances at my ride, and they weren't admiring.
Random pole: vintage or new-school mountain? What's your preference?
