Strangers moving by


There is a refrain among city bicycle riders you will recognize. One of the marvels of bicycle riding, it goes, is the openness of the vehicle itself, the windshieldlessness of the vehicle itself that encourages and reminds the rider to connect with strangers and places that are right there. Right there in a way more real than they are when experienced from the cockpit of a car.

I sing this refrain every time I live a ride like today's back home down the Oliverbahn.


First, there was time to stop and consider the textures of elm bark and boa constrictor skin.



A few blocks on, it was easy to get off my bike and offer an arm of help, accepted, to this friendly stranger walking warily from curb to snowy curb.



Then a quick hello and muffled conversation through neck warmers with an Oliverbahn rider who said he appreciated the bare-ish bike lane and how they (the pronoun of choice for the City of Edmonton) hit a sweet spot with de-icer applications this season.



When I caught up to this jogger on the 102 Ave multi-use path, I said: I was just admiring your efficient stride. I want to run like that. The jogger smiled and laughed a Thanks very much!



On Ravine Drive, I gulped a cloud of firepit from a nearby backyard and felt quite alive.
The Weepies came to mind. From Antarctica.
All the colours were bone white/
And sky blue.



I waved at a cyclist on the other side of the 142 St bridge over the MacKinnon Ravine. The rider waved back. We were seen by each other before disappearing again.



In the IGA parking lot I exchanged hellos with this pedestrian.



By the time I got home, I felt so exhilarated over these intersections offered by a bicycle in the city that I parked my bike and shovelled the walk. I think there are two way to think about shovelling snow. One is you shovel so your neighbours don't report you and you get fined. The other is you move the snow as a way to make strangers moving by feel welcome.

We are all strangers moving by.














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