An Unexpected Meeting

Tonight I turned my bicycle north onto 125 St from 102 Ave and promptly smashed into myself.

In front of me and blocking my path ahead was an SUV that was corkscrewed in the middle of the road, sitting there, then moving slowly backwards and closer and closer to the curb of parked cars behind it and then lurching forward a bit, then moving backwards again, long white reverse lights and shortshortshort red brake lights.

My thought about the driver was not in keeping with the approaching Christmas season.

It took another half minute or so for the SUV's driver to wrestle the metal back into the proper direction, opening a channel for me to pedal by, my thoughts, as mentioned, uncharitable.

And then the sound of three raps from the inside of the driver's side window as I moved by. I stopped and turned around and watched as the veiled window slowly glided down to reveal her face. She was a big frightened.

"Can you help me? I don't know how to get out of here," she said. "I took a wrong turn and now I don't know how to get out of here."

"Where are you going?"

"170th St and 64th Ave."

She was an older woman, but seemed in control of things, and had been confounded by the buckled bridge over Groat Road and then marooned in the neighbourhood and its narrow streets and its lack of an exit route to Stony Plain Road.

I tried to offer verbal directions, but, listening to myself try, and watching her not follow my turnaroundturnrightturnleftturnleft, turned my bike around and told her to follow me. We turned left onto 102 Ave, me ahead, her behind, and waited at the red light. I pointed back toward her vehicle and we talked about the long light.

Talking at the lights pointing east

Then we turned left onto 124 St toward Stony Plain Road and we waited at the red light and we talked about the traffic and the snow.

Talking at the lights pointing north
I again asked her if she knew where she was and if, when she turned left onto Stony Plain Road and our converged paths diverged again, she could get to 170 St, and she said yes, yes, thank you, and I believed her. We got through the next flashing green signal and I spun across to the far sidewalk and she waved as she drove by.

On her way west

I wondered, should I have done more and offered to drive her to her destination or phone someone at the other end? But I didn't think of those things when I was waiting for the lights to change. I remembered my initial thought about a clueless driver, and I felt a stab of shame. And I thought about the contrast between the metal and glass on the outside of the SUV and the flesh and bone of the human being, trying to get home, sitting inside.

And I kept thinking about that, and still am. Siri will be no help on this one.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more