Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 77: pelicans, pellucidity, peloton*

Bonjour tout le monde! Here are three things that made for some happiness and gratitude last week, not because there’s not a pile of other crap out there, but because there is. 

Three Things podcast, episode 77: 

                       

1. Pelicans 

They are remarkable looking waterbirds, pelicans are. For the last two summers, every time I pedalled across, I made a point of glancing over the railing at the north end of the Quesnell Bridge to see if they were back. I first saw pelicans down there by the mouth of the storm sewer, where the fishin’ is good, in 2019. It was in June of that year that my binoculared friend Nicola pointed out 10 of them as they soared over the downtown farmers market. 

That same summer was the first time I saw them at the outfall. I would stop and watch them from above on the bridge deck while eight lanes of traffic streamed by on Whitemud Drive. They were there the next day, and the next day, too, and one of the next days they were there, and I didn’t stop that day, and then one day after that they weren’t there and there was no need to decide if I would stop to look at them. The next summer I looked for them, but no sightings. Last year, no sightings. This year, I had taken to wondering out loud, “will I ever see the pelicans?” as I cruised out of the trees and swung left onto the bridge. Still no pelicans. 

Until the morning last week they had materialized and were sunning themselves on the retaining wall by the outfall. I hit the brakes, turned around, got off my bike and walked it down the the hill to the river for a closer count. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9...10.! Ten pelicans again. I felt 10 years old again.  

What a concoction of elements the pelican is. A spiked bill like a giant drawing compass. A gullet like a sheet on a clothesline. Leg-high orange platform boots. Ten of them lined up there on the concrete wall, looking like gargoyles atop the face of a cathedral, the keepers of an ancient joke. They look like they enjoy each other’s company.  I enjoy their company. For seven straight mornings now, I’ve gone back to the river to watch them pose and goof around and air out their gullets and ease their bodies into the water and float like question marks. 

One morning, I got especially lucky. Right in front of me, four of them coaxed their feathered fuselages into the air and flew off under the bridge toward the outfall. I thought they looked like prehistoric superheroes who hadn’t been told they couldn’t fly.

2. Waxing poetic 

I was up early, which means I hadn’t slept well for fear of sleeping through the need to wake up early, so I was tired and a touch grumpy even before I got there. I was checking out the audio-visual setup of an auditorium I’d be leading a workshop in on the weekend. I planned to play some videos at the workshop and was eager to get in the room and start plugging in cords to make sure I wasn’t lost plugging in cords a few days later with a live audience watching things disintegrate. Where was I in this story? Right, arriving at the auditorium tired, shirty and, at the root of it, unsure of myself technically. 

It was this walking potion that was thanked by the manager for showing up on time and then informed there was a slight glitch. I couldn’t actually go into the auditorium. What? Why not? Well, because Cheryl had just waxed the floor, and could I come back tomorrow morning, instead? What a waste of time, I fumed to myself. No, I thought, the next day wouldn’t work because of a dental appointment and then early meetings the next couple of days days and then my great plan to prepare would run out of time and I would blow up in front of the audience and then somehow I heard my friend Hogey’s voice bring the temperature down. Hogey would want to go meet Cheryl and take a look at the waxed floor and find out a bit of her story. 

So I simmered down, went and said hello to Cheryl, took a look at the floors, thanked her for keeping things shiny. I managed to get back over lunch that day and with help get the video and audio working. I shared the story with Hogey, who taught me, adjusted for the episode, that it's not the wax, it's the waxer. 

I have to keep layering that lesson on. 

3. Kite tail 

There is nothing in the world of televised sports I know to be more stirring than the Tour de France. And I’m not even talking about the actual bicycle racing in the three-week bicycle race across France, the tactics of which remain obscure. I’m picturing the peloton—the pack of bicycle riders that ribbons its way through villages and their sloped roofs, by cemeteries and cathedrals and their dead, along farmers’ fields and vineyards, over cobbled roads, up mountainsides to ski resorts, down to seaside beaches, under trees, below flags and past the camper vans and faces of the cheering and waving people of the country—this strip of beautiful, vivid colour that courses along the asphalt arteries of France. 

It makes me wonder what the giant kite the peloton is tied to must look like.

 

Thanks for being out there, friends. Vive le Tour! À la prochaine.

Three Things podcast, episode 77, with sound from the pelicans, Hogey and the Tour,  is here for the listening and sharing:  https://podcasts.apple.com/.../three.../id1550538856... [5:57]

The original music in the podcast is the work of Edmonton composer and pianist Brendan McGrath. The end bells are courtesy metal artist and humanitarian Slavo Cech.

* Thank you, Dr. Heather Young-Leslie, for putting together the P3: pelican-pellucid-peloton.