Word on the Street '23

I had a Saturday with nothing planned last weekend, so I decided to check out the Word on the Street festival. I would simply describe it as a big outdoor book fair: there were tents representing publishing houses, editors, independent bookstores; individual authors, poetry collectives, and even the Toronto library's own bookmobile which was my favourite part.

The bookmobile is basically a big bus that's been converted into a library on wheels. You climb inside, and there's enough space for half-a-dozen people to browse books comfortably before it feels a little too crowded. Air-conditioned, too, which was good because it was a rather warm spring day. The books are lined up on shelves attached to the sides of the inside of the bus, and I perused them for a while before deciding to borrow a random mystery book. The bookmobile was parked smack in the middle of the festival, which ran along the east side of Queen's Park, with a couple of streets being closed for pedestrians to wander through the various exhibitions.

I didn't really recognize any of the authors (unlike the last time I went to the festival, pre-pandemic, where I got my copy of Silverwing signed by Kenneth Oppel!), so I didn't attend any of the author readings or panel discussions; rather, I just enjoyed wandering in the crowd and eventually just chilling under a tree in Queen's Park to vape & listen to music.

Not getting a bike flat on my commute there & back was also a positive experience!

Really, the least enjoyable part of the festival was that there were some "F*ck Trudeau, lock Freeland up" wackos on the north-western side of Queen's Park, really, just like... 3 of them... blasting some Neil Young & other ironic music beside a big white van and waving provocative flags. They eventually drove past the festival, honking annoyingly before heading off to wherever else they were planning to "protest".

Anyway, I don't have any pictures to share. I know I keep saying this, but I really want more pictures with my blog posts. Makes them a bit less dull. I'll get around to it... eventually.

Fixed my bike

For the past few weeks, I've been dealing with bike repairs. I've patched 2 different inner tubes a total of 3 times for my back tire before finally fixing what was causing the tubes to get pierced while riding. It wasn't because of glass on the streets, or random sharp debris somehow making through a new tire; no, it was the wheel rim itself having sharp holes where the spokes connect that caused the tubes to get "sucked" in and tear.

I knew there was an issue, but it wasn't always causing trouble and duct tape had done the job of protecting the inner tube from the sharp rim fairly well until recently. Duct tape only goes so far, so the next step was to install a thin sheet of some sort of rubber/plastic made especially for bike wheels to protect the tube, and so far, no flats!

I've also installed a shock-absorbing seat post that actually works quite well at absorbing bumps on the road and makes for a more comfortable riding experience. It's great because I get the speed of a road bike with only a bit of added weight from the souped-up seat post.

Last thing to finish up now is to move the seat post forward a bit more because I installed it too far toward the back wheel. Still rideable, but I'm leaning forward to reach the handlebar which feels a little weird. A simple use of a hex key to loosen and then tighten once adjusted is all that's left and my bike repairs are (hopefully) complete for the next little while!

Memento

I don't watch movies very often, probably less than once a month. But yesterday evening, I felt like watching something, so I spent like half an hour browsing action, adventure, and sci-fi categories in the Kanopy movie database. I settled on Memento. I enjoyed it! It's about a guy who's trying to find his wife's killer while suffering from a type of amnesia where he can't form new short term memories. So he has to leave notes for himself to keep track of his life. And the movie is edited in such a way so that it sort of feels like you're suffering from the same memory issues as the main character all while actually telling a coherent story. Critics were right: it's a good movie.