Leggs: The Sequel.

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Gabby messaged me on WhatsApp: “Are you riding this morning?”

I tell her my thrilling plans for the morning: go to Uniqlo to try on a pair of linen pants, then drop off some empty cosmetic containers at the MAC store for recycling.

Wait a minute… While I technically have plans, they are the sort I’d be happy to ditch. I always have plans: it’s the whole point of my To Do Journal. It’s been my best defense against couch potatoery. It is also why, after more than a year, I still haven’t defeated the Demon King Ganondorf in Tears of the Kingdom.

The cover of this journal features a foiled print of Hokusai’s The Great Wave. Inside, there are 176 pages of lined paper, 1/3 of which are filled with assorted things to do. Big and small. Essential and absurd. Here’s a sampling of plans I’ve jotted down since starting this journal last September:

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Leggs.

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June hasn’t been off to a good start. Last week at work, while I got on my tiptoes trying to rehang the air blow gun on its hook and missed, the hose recoiled, pistol-whipping me in the forehead, leaving me with a zit-like welt. Worse yet, the joints in my right wrist and left index finger had randomly become inflamed, causing me to wince every time I used the spray bottle, like this:

Only 42 years old, and this is already my reality?

Outside of work, my fitness age, as determined by Garmin, continues to decrease. The expectations put forth by Garmin, however, remain lofty. After three months, my estimated VO2 Max has stabilized. Theoretically, at this point, the prescribed workouts should be hard as fuck, yet doable. This VO2 Max workout seemed to be pushing it, though:

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Rewind.

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Behold, my beautiful, lush garden.

The green sugar snap peas, purple moon cauliflowers, and bush green beans are well underway. The green lettuce, kale and butter lettuce are ready to be harvested. The Hungarian peppers are struggling, and the cherry tomatoes are taking their sweet time. The arugula has already bolted and were ripped out this morning, as were the radishes. In the previous two years, we grew the Cherriette variety of radishes, but this year we planted the Easter Egg II blend, named for its range of colours from white to burgundy. They went from seed to R.O.U.S. (radishes of unusual size) in just six weeks:

This is the largest intact radish from this morning’s harvest. There were larger ones, but they’d cracked, and bugs had worked their way into the crannies, so I discarded them in the compost bin. Even after getting rid of all those fissured radishes, the bounty is too large to be divided among two people, especially when just one radish is the size of an apple.

I’ve tried my hand at pickling:

Shredded on the left and thin slices on the right. Supermarket-purchased dill in both jars.

With new seeds in the soil, I’ll have three weeks to discover new ways to prepare radishes. Candied radishes? Caramel radish? Radish ice cream?*

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A bit more about Gabriola.

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I succeed in getting Yann to read the last post: I find that people are more motivated to read my posts when they know they’ve been mentioned. I don’t think I’ll get the friendly e-biker who said, “Have a good ride!” as he zipped past us. Yann and I had stopped after the climb out of Mill Bay Terminal to remove our jackets.

I turned to Yann and repeated what I thought the guy had said.

Yann looked surprised. “That’s exactly what he said. Word for word.”

My lipreading ability is heavily dependent on context, which brings me to the freshest experience to be filed under, “Just fucking write, please.”

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Return to Gabriola.

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Welcome to Greg Minnaar’s Tour of Terror. First stop: my shower.

Technically, he’s been making people shit themselves a little since he arrived at the bike shop two years ago. He didn’t have to try very hard either: he’d just stand there motionless, and people would jump. What talent. Apparently, he can also do backflips on a bike.

Last week, a colleague was about to eliminate him for once and all. As I was about to enter the break room, Greg took a nosedive in front of me from behind the doorway, jolting my heart.

“Wait. You’re getting rid of him? May I have him?” I asked as soon as I realized it was just Greg, and he was on his way into the dumpster.

Continue reading “Return to Gabriola.” →