Three Things from Edmonton podcast - Episode 69: away, debate club, over the hill

 

Happy end of the week, amigos!  Here, after internal review, are three things that made for some happiness or gratitude this week. Three Things, episode 69:

                                          

1. Away 🇪🇸

My friend Richie posted a vacation video of himself doing what he does a lot of in his spare time when he’s not on vacation, which is the point of vacations, I think. True, the video of him cycling is from the hills of Spain, not the hills of Gatineau, but pedalling a bicycle for joy is pedalling a bicycle for joy. Richie’s video is joyful and beautiful and, with the twisting highway, dramatic rock face and blue sky, elemental. For a bit of hometown Toronto, he added audio of a Skydiggers song, the lyric from Slow 

Burning Fire where Andy Maize sings 

But lately I’ve caught you 

Staring at me 

With a new kind of look on your face,

which is what a good holiday can deliver—a new way to see the things we already like to look at, but free of the mundane that dulls how we see. 

So, get this: Auntie Shelagh and I are planning a holiday in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where, with Tulsan friends Dave and Patty, we will, among other things, listen to and talk about Bob Dylan music. Pretty much what I do every day in my life in Edmonton. Except in Tulsa now there is the new Bob Dylan Center that we will visit. The new digs will be a place for new thoughts about old things. All that I expect of myself will be to learn more about Chimes of Freedom. Away, we look forward to finding a neighborhood market, buying groceries, making a tasty meal with olive oil, onions and tomatoes, drinking wine, sharing stories—the stuff of everyday life with enough of the sediment of everyday life left back at home to make life new again on the road.

I saw the first fall of snow

Dylan sings in a song on his new album. That’s the prize. To see again, but freshly. Snow as salt. 

We stayed once on Lopez Island in the San Juans. We did all kinds of things that I could call to mind if I hit rewind. What I most remember is riding a bike to the town square to get the stuff we needed for dinner.  Like the elementally calm night last week I pedalled to Andy’s IGA on 142 Street for the missing ingredients for baked chicken—garlic…soy sauce…fresh thyme. 

2. Debate club 👔

In high school, I was on the debate team. I learned there are two sides to every question, and that, somewhat unnervingly, I could defend both. In the morning, I could argue that Churchill was right to seek peace by preparing for war and in the afternoon that he was dead wrong to do so. (Or, he wasn’t, but others were.) I learned there are two ways to debate an opponent. You could prepare your speech beforehand and deliver it hermetically sealed, making sure your key messages are repeated, or you could listen to your opponents there on the spot and engage with what they actually say. I learned it is respectful to clash with what your opponent is actually saying. I learned in debate club that I have a low-level self-harm impulse. I mean, whose idea of a good time for a teenager is it to get up on Saturday morning, head out of the northeast end to spend the day arguing about the merits of the Juvenile Delinquency Act with really smart opponents, who you were pretty sure would become judges and politicians, and then be told to your face by debate judges if you won or lost the round? 

I also learned how to tie a tie. 

My debate partner’s father taught me as much as he thought I could handle, which were the nine steps needed to transform a strip of silk into a half-Windsor knot. 

That was four decades ago. At a funeral last week, we crossed paths again, my knot guru and I. I went with a four-in-hand that day. I have slipped a bit. His looked to be a half Windsor, perfectly balanced, the tight core covered by the loop of fabric. Be it resolved that like all fasteners, a good tie formed by a good knot makes you feel more secure on your feet.

3. Over the hill  🚞

<<Ding!>>

“Just on your left,” I said.

“Sorry,” the jogger said, moving over to let me pedal by.

“It’s all good,” I said, “thanks for pulling me up.”

That micro encounter with a friendly jogger happened on the hill up from the Groat Bridge to the university campus. The jogger was moving at the perfect pace for my pedalling cadence, so, I psychologically hitched on and let him pull me up. He made me pay for the kindness. With the crest of the hill in sight, he looked at me and accelerated.

“No, no, no, don’t do that, man,” I pleaded, laughing. “Okay let’s go.”

I dug in and matched him to the top. My lungs burned. 

“Right on,” I said, going by, “have a great day!”

“You, too,” he said. 

“Whew!” 

Theoretically, I might have thought about pushing myself so obviously and audibly out of my pulmonary comfort zone, but if it was just me urging me, then, no, I would have not convinced me to add a little more effort.  Stranger, thanks for making me see there’s still a little more to lazy me than I had given breath to.

🎧 Three Things, episode 69, with a bit of Richie, Dylan v. Churchill, my ordeal up the hill, and a bit of Auntie Shelagh on holidays:   https://podcasts.apple.com/.../three.../id1550538856...  [5:11]