I spent the week thinking of what to write, every day shooting down my ideas, not considering anything worthy of sitting down and mashing the keyboard. Ok, there’s that, there’s work, there’s Catan and there’s May. But now I’m here and I’m writing.
Yesterday I went for my daily seawall round when the weather cleared up a little in the morning. After one lap I thought “yeah, maybe it’ll be raining tomorrow, better go again, I’m not even tired”. After the second lap, “Hmm, the weather forecast is saying the entire week will be rainy and the WeatherCaster is crashed due to faulty updates… Three is the lucky number”. And then, midway through I came up on closed gates. Actually, I failed to describe how it felt like a massive storm had swept along the coast. The ground was covered with dead leaves, small sticks, large branches and at some points entire trees had fallen down. Even though it was a Saturday, there was almost no one there and the wind was killer. At some bits of the track I had to gear down almost to the point of stopping just to counter the wind and still move a few inches forward. After getting to the closed gate I turned around and found a park ranger informing people to return to the city because the entire park was closing down due to a windstorm warning issued to coastal areas. I ended up leaving through the most random route ever and had to fight uphills with my already tired legs until I could get home.
After that I felt great, though. I mean, if I can bike under these conditions, the winter can be conquered. I just need to sort out some technical issues such as waterproof clothing.
Today I went for an afternoon ride. It’s been little over a month since a small deer was seen wandering around downtown. It seemed to have taken refuge inside Stanley Park. I saw a few photos and news about it, and wondered how come I had never seen it on my 40+ laps while the little thing was living in there. Then today I had the pleasure of meeting him (or her). A random dude closed me off on the regular path and I had to drop to the asphalt in order not to crash. This caused me to switch my route a bit and get back to the seawall a few hundred meters ahead. As soon as I started moving again (after going down some steps carrying the bike) I saw something on the corner of my eye and turned. A few seconds later some more people noticed it and gathered around to take pictures. I never cursed so much for not having the camera on me at the moment. Tried my best with the phone and it turned out no better than OK, but OK is enough.
I stood there in its presence for quite a while, just watching it pick the little yellow flowers among the green grass. There were some kids around too, curious and a little scared at the same time, coming close and then moving back as the creature made any sign of acknowledging their presence. Eventually I realized that I had dropped my bike at some point and it should be there abandoned to its fate since I wasn’t around. The deer decided to take a tour through an overgrown patch and based on that I decided that I should get back to the bike and go about my way.
The fun thing in this whole encounter was how much it brightened my day. The sky was still as grey as it could be, and there were some rain drops here and there, but I was completely mesmerized by how unlikely that was to happen. I mean, what are the odds of having a deer in such small patch of trees, what are the odds of running into it, or the odds that it wouldn’t go away for this entire time or that something bad didn’t happen to it. Still going on the odds, how come it’s not afraid of people, or at least tolerates our presence so close without fleeing right away, and just chill there, doing its business of chewing small buds? Right?
It’s not everyday that I have this kind of philosophical wondering, this kind of thinking needs feeding and random events like these are amazing ways of doing so. Now I think I should go back to work since there are videos to shoot, plates to clean and fake plugins to develop. See you guys soon.