Look around, look around at how lucky we are to be alive right now
“That Would Be Enough” from Hamilton
A few days after my last post, about how bike helmets get the respect that masks deserve, Jean had a fairly serious bike accident—one that would have been far worse had he not been wearing his new, high-quality, full-face coverage, bike helmet. He was out mountain biking with friends when he lifted his front wheel to go over a small cliff, causing his back wheel to flip him up and over and onto his back—or something like that; I wasn’t there and he doesn’t quite remember.
I found out when I got a call from him that there had been an “incident” on the trail and that his friends were taking him to Emergency.
“Oh, my God,” I said. “You need a good mask!”
On the drive over to the hospital with his best N95, it occurred to me that I should have asked which body part he had hurt.
At that point, the most obvious injury was to the baby finger on his right hand, which was out at a weird angle. But he also had some bruising on his head. (Yay, helmet!)
Though this doesn’t earn me any wife points, after masking him up, I left him there on his own to get through the triage. Which actually went fairly efficiently, for ER, but they did want to check on a number of things, so it all took a while. He got a CT of his head and torso, an X-ray of his hand… He was there about seven hours total. They reported no head trauma (again; yay, helmets!). They put his finger in a splint and gave him a referral to a hand surgeon. And they warned him that he was going to be very sore.
Meanwhile, I went out to see the musical The Prom, since I figured there was no point in both of us missing it. (I suppose that doesn’t earn me wife points, either. It was a fun musical, though!)
Jean wasn’t quite done at the hospital when I checked in him with at intermission, but was waiting outside the house for me when the play was done. (He knew I’d be done around 10, so he took a taxi home, but he didn’t have a house key.)
He reported that his left shoulder was bothering him more than the right hand with the damaged finger (which turned out to be dislocated, not broken). And indeed, he had rather impressive bruising there. And he was so stiff and sore he could barely move the arm on that side at first.
Purple haze
That all happened on a Saturday. The following Thursday, Jean was scheduled to go fishing with his brothers in the Timmins area. And I was going to fly up on Monday, so we could both visit with family. He let his brothers know that fishing wasn’t really in the cards anymore, but that he was hoping to make it up to Timmins a few days later than originally planned.
Then none of them ended up going fishing, anyway. Because this is the Canadian forest fire year. And in the Timmins area, in early June, it was just too hot, too dry, and too smoky to be outside all weekend.
We looked at alternative options to the original plan, but they weren’t great. Adding flights there and back for both of us was very expensive at this late date. Someone had to stay until Monday, as our catsitter couldn’t start before then. And neither of us were crazy about doing the entire road trip on Monday or splitting it up into Monday / Tuesday, given that we had to come back on Thursday.
So Jean made his way to Sudbury on Sunday (not a great trip, he reported, as driving with two injured arms isn’t wonderful), where he stayed with his sister. I took my Air Canada flight to Timmins on Monday. (Just a half hour delay with that flight, first due to a late crew member, followed by a problem with the cabin cooling system.) Jean got himself to Timmins on Monday and picked me up at the airport. We stayed with Dad.
By then the local air quality in Timmins was improving, the smoke having moved on to suffocating the Ottawa area.
Timmins was mostly about seeing people, of course. Dad had recently suffered some vision loss in his right eye, likely due to partial blockage in a neck artery. But he was feeling pretty good when we were there, and still served up wonderful dinners. He let me help with the prep this time, though!
We also met with my friend Sylvie, who was just starting her retirement, and re-discovering the wonders of the library. We got together with all of Jean’s brothers and sisters and in-laws, who gifted Jean with some training wheels for his bike. My brother came over and we did some catching up—though not as much was required as usual, as we had all met up in Toronto a few weeks prior.
Jean and I also did a few walks, including on one trail neither of us had ever done before. The mosquitoes were pretty wicked this year, but we mostly kept ahead of them (and wore DEET).
Thursday we made our way back, Jean having recovered enough to manage this drive much better. Air quality predictions were pretty dire for southern Ontario, and we did smell some smoke on the stops enroute (and N95 masks are helpful for that). But there was some rain later in the day, and that improved matters. We gave the catsitter the night off and made a pit stop at home before heading to Toronto the next day.
Purple Rain
We left the car at home and took a city bus, Ion train, then an inter-city Flixbus into Toronto. That all went well, and we arrived around noon. Then we got on the subway to our accommodation, only to realize we had gone one stop too far and had to walk back some.
We had found that hotels in downtown Toronto were really expensive. So this time, we decided to try the Chestnut Residence at University of Toronto. It was in a great location. And its exterior and lobby were much more chic-looking than we had expected. But the overall experience was… interesting.
We had arrived well ahead of the 4:00 pm check-in time. They directed us to what they thought was an available room. Only, it turned out to not have been cleaned, at all, from the previous residents.
So, we went back to the lobby and were assigned another room. Only, the key card wouldn’t open the door. So, it was back to the lobby where they reset the key, but said that it could be a problem with the door itself. And that if it happened again, to call and they would send a mechanic.
It did happen again, so while we were waiting, we tried to get on the wifi. We’d been given the network and password, but it turned out to be a slightly more complicated network, where we also had to guess the correct security certification options and methods to use to actually be able to log on. Which all took a while, but at least it was something to do while waiting in the hall for the mechanic.
He was able to fix the door, and that room was cleaned. It was not bad size, and had its own bathroom, but was pretty spartan—no TV, double bed not queen (looked so tiny!), that sort of thing. While the wifi was tricky, it did turn out to be a good connection.
But we weren’t about to dawdle there. We headed out to the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was kind of a cool, rainy day, not ideal for a patio lunch, but I figured that eating inside at the AGO cafe, with its excellent air and relative spaciousness, would suit. Once Jean figured out how to download proof that he was also an AGO member (I had done that ahead of time), we went to the cafeteria, only to find that… It wasn’t there.
But we asked, and it had just moved a floor down. Good, because we were really hungry by now! We scarfed down smoothies, cakes, and coffees.
We then solicited advice on what to see, and started with the Cassatt – McNicoll exhibit, which was great, actually. It featured the work of two women Impressionist artists, Mary Cassatt and Helen McNicoll, neither of which I’d heard of before, but both of whom produced beautiful works. We also toured the photography exhibit of Wolfgang Tillmans, in a wide-ranging and interestingly displayed exhibit that also very much worth seeing.
Dinner that night was at The Rabbit Hole. The original air quality warnings for this day had me wondering if I’d really want to eat outdoors, but that had continued to improve. And, the day had warmed up by dinner time. (It had also cleared up, though that matters less at The Rabbit Hole, as their patio is covered.)
Just as when I ate here last year, I was quite impressed with the food quality. As was Jean, who was trying it for the first time.
Afterwards, we headed to Massey Hall to see Classic Albums Live tackle Prince’s Purple Rain. Wow, the singer they had for this was just outstanding, especially on any high vocal runs. He was quite charismatic as a performer as well. The guitarist was also exceptional. So, they had definitely covered the most important bases with Prince. But there were a ton of other musicians involved to cover the various instruments and background vocals as needed, strings and saxophones and keyboards and obviously drums and bass…
I didn’t always find the sound mixing terrific, at least not from our seats. Like, when one of the background vocalists took a lead turn, they were often hard to hear at all. It’s also just a fact of these Classic Albums Live shows, given that they dutifully perform a whole album in order, that you realize album order is not always ideal live order. Like, everyone got very excited about “When Doves Cry”, but it’s smack in the middle of the show, between two lesser-known songs.
The second half, they are able to sequence more as they want to, with additional Prince songs. They certainly covered some of the hits: Little Red Corvette, 1999, Kiss, Raspberry Beret, but they also included some more unusual choices, like Prince’s version of “Nothing Compares 2 U” and choosing to end on “A Love Bizarre”.
Overall, a very fun night for me, and a tolerable one for Jean.
History has its eyes on you
Saturday we were ushered through the residence’s fairly regimented included breakfast: single file, take tray, visit stations, grab cutlery, find place to sit, eat, discard tray items in appropriate recycle / compost / trash bins, bye-bye. (We managed the indoor dining risk by getting there as soon as it opened, wearing a mask through the buffet part, picking a seat apart from others, and eating fast.)
Then we ambled around downtown, killing time until lunch at Hey Lucy’s, which we picked because it was near The Princess of Wales theatre, and it has a bunch of patios. It was a nice day, fortunately, so we sat on the rooftop patio, and ate our perfectly adequate lunch of a wine, pasta, and pizza.
Then we went to see Hamilton. Which is a pretty fantastic musical, I have to say! Now, I was pretty familiar with the soundtrack, and had also watched a documentary about the New York production, so I kind of knew what to expect. But I was still really blown away by how all the different themes are interwoven throughout, and just the pace of events presented.
It struck me that one less familiar with the play might have trouble following all that was going on.
At intermission, Jean admitted that he was a little baffled. (“Did he get married twice?”) But he was pleased that the musical wasn’t as “rap” as he’d feared, and he quite impressed with the vocal talent. Sound quality in this theatre by the way? Excellent! We also had quite good seats (even though I’d refused to pay for the very top-price ones).
So yeah, I’d really recommend this, if you can afford it (or can score some of those low-price tickets). Just maybe read a synopsis before heading in.
Saturday night’s dinner was what Jean was most looking forward to in Toronto, as we went back to Avelo. They remembered us (!), and did just a wonderful job again, with their five-course (and a few extras!) dinner with matching wines (and still uncrowded, and HEPA-full, with many masked staff).
Sunday morning we did the reverse journey back: subway, Flixbus, Ion, city bus to back home.
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