Montreal. Rain coming down, dark, raggedy clouds hanging low in the sky. A good day to hibernate. Or, you know, avoid being productive.
Have slipped into a morning routine of pulling my
Making the walk yesterday morning: reached the corner of St. Urbain, found myself nearly flattened by a woman in a wheelchair who barrelled along at near light-speed. Heard a chortle of amusement from the open window of a passing car.
This morning at that same location: reached the corner, a slim woman pushing a stroller appeared next to me. She wore a full-length yellow rain slicker, the child in the stroller (I'm assuming it was a child -- all I could see were two motionless, slightly-pigeontoed red shoes) was covered by an umbrella placed to that the handle must have gone through the child's mouth and out the back of its neck, where it scraped on the sidewalk. No passing vehicles leaked laughter -- they were probably as creeped out by the scene as I was.
This city is a near free-for-all of festivals and big events once what passes for the warm season takes hold. My squat looks west toward Mount Royal and the park the spreads out around it. Sunday morning -- far, far too early -- my eyes opened, I heard music being played. Live music, vaguely marching band style, drums pounding away. Tried to ignore it, it persisted, when I finally gave in and levered myself into something close to an upright position, I saw big crowds packed into that green spread of land, the boulevard that stretches through it closed to motor vehicles. (I'm assuming that last bit -- no cars/trucks/etc. were in sight, only and thousands of humans.) A festival, turned out. Kind of. The Tour de l'Île. When I'd dragged on clothes and stumbled down to the street, I discovered many local streets were closed to traffic. Many, many local streets, in what could easily pass as haphazard fashion. And two streets over, people on bikes headed in the direction of the massed gathering. Hundreds, thousands of people, lots of them families. I fell into a cafe, ordered a container of caffeine, sat at a table and watched the scene outside, the endless stream of bicycling Montrealers passing by.
I passed a lot of Sunday walking through the Plateau district, discovered more and more streets blocked off to motor traffic, endless thousands of people biking along those avenues, many of them small, narrow backstreets that stretched through funky neighborhoods. Everyone seemed to be enjoying it except for the unhappy souls trapped in cars, long lines of traffic backed up most along the few thoroughfares not commandeered by the city for the Tour.
Lots of unhappy motorists. Who have been venting their unhappiness in the newspapers for the past two days. And venting and venting. Ah, well. Life goes on.
I have the feeling I lost some weight during the last weeks of dealing with house/moving back in Vermont. Since arriving here on Saturday, I have been packing away food at a rate that would be disturbing for many humans. Just part of regaining equilibrium, I guess, after all those months and months of so much fun.
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Bike rack/mural wall -- Montreal:
España, te amo
rws 2:46 PM [+]
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