By Lucy

I’ve been watching Sons of Anarchy. It was accidental; Rich mentioned he liked the show and we should watch it together, so I threw on the first episode to see if I’d like it. Needless to say, I was hooked, although hating that I am hooked. It’s not super about motorcycles or MCs, and I hate Clay and Gemma, and I worry about it changing my subconscious impression of bikers, and I wanted to watch it with Rich! Season three also somewhat killed my interest – without spoiling, the main story arc goes on for too long and repeats itself a fair bit. My favourite character is Chibs!

I dream of riding motorcycles every night. I can’t wait!

The desk is gone. It got picked up by a friend of a friend. I was debating asking her if I could keep it until closer to the end of the month, but decided against it. It’s already been taken down, no sense in expending the effort to put it back up again. My room is echoey and cold now that it’s mostly empty and there isn’t anything on the builder beige walls. The only thing left is the freezer.

Today the weather should be good, going to pack up the trunk and possibly the back seat. The back seat is a lot to balance – my tires need to go there. I want to pack the car while the weather is good, but if I need the backseat for anything I’ll be up schitts creek. It’ll also increase my fuel consumption, and Barrie is very hilly. A front-wheel drive car with a lot of weight in the back will have a harder time getting going on a hill. But also, the sooner the backseat is loaded up, the sooner I’ll have a better idea what I cannot fit and make a back-up plan. Currently my plan is, I found a very durable box in the basement, and I’m going to hold back some of the lighter things I have, so if I need to ship it it won’t cost so much.

Luna has my two plants for the month. I debated donating them, but I can’t let them go yet.

Everything has been packed, the last bag of garbage is together, and so is the last pile of donations. I took the last bit of stuff I found of my ex’s to a mutual friend’s. Had my going-away party on Saturday. Was quiet, we just went to the Mandarin for dinner.

Found this adorable paint can container when I went to Bulk Barn to refill my sugar and it’s my new sugar bowl! Presumably it was meant to be a gift filled with candies to a carpenter husband, but the lid design means it’s perfectly suited not to spill sugar all over the inside of my car, and I am the carpenter, so there.

Another impulse buy, this reusable carry-on kit. For those that don’t know, I try to avoid buying single use plastic whenever I can. That’s why I prefer canned soup over Mr Noodles, for example. I buy most of my cleaning products from Blueland; they come in boxes or compostable bags. You just put the powder in a bottle, add water, shake a bit and they work perfectly well. Maybe a little extra elbow grease, but not catastrophic. So I didn’t want to buy those little plastic bottles of shampoo and soap for my luggage. But! This is reusable and carry-on size, and I can just fill them up from the larger bottles I already have! Perfect!

The paid photoshoot finally happened. I was pleasantly surprised to find out I was actually being paid 40 dollars an hour. Kate stepped in for the other woman who honestly wasn’t ready to be a model and she’s always pleasant to have around (Kate Kraversky (@katekraversky) • Instagram photos and videos, yes she was on Star Trek). We had some fun making goofy pictures towards the end of the shoot, and I enjoyed the make-up artist giving me a head of Shirley Temple curls because I’ve always wanted those!

The photographer, John Rundle, was actually the first person to message me when I posted that I was leaving town. He caught me after the shoot and surprised me with a story. See, he paints cars (and tractors), and he has this gorgeous old Ford truck we do photoshoots with. Andrej tapped him early in the year last year, and after that he just started showing up to meetings with a camera and no one questioned it. Turns out, he didn’t actually have a camera before the first shoot with the truck. Me and Kate inspired him to go out and buy a camera and learn how to take professional photos, and now within a year he’s grown enough that he’s getting paid gigs.

Just goes to show you, “It’s a Wonderful Life’ style, you never know who you are reaching or in what way. You might not be Einstein, but you might inspire Einstein.

That reminded me that I hadn’t heard from the beatnik for a while, so I sent him a long message about how much I appreciate him as a friend, and we decided to meet up for coffee yesterday.

Mike is one of my oldest friends (in terms of how long we’ve known each other, but also because he’s north of 70). We met when I was 19 and looking to start modelling; he posted an ad for a model and we met up for coffee. We did a few shoots, but he has a different style than me and it wasn’t really working out. But we kept going for coffee. Before the pandemic, we would go for coffee every Sunday and talk for up to four hours, sometimes. As you can tell from the beatnik nickname, he’s a left-leaning bleeding-hearted liberal like myself.

He’s always been rather shy; there are few pictures of him around. He has no spouse or children. He got really reclusive during the pandemic and was hard for even me to get ahold of. The coffee shop we usually go to closed down and he refuses to patronize Timmies.

He’s the only person I knew before the Vagabond who had a motorcycle, although I never went for a ride on it (I was silly and thought it was a faux pas). He had to sell the bike since the pandemic, unfortunately. He’s a great source of what the biker scene and Toronto were like in the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. He brought me some books yesterday since he knows of my interest in bikes, which brings the number of motorcycle book I’ve gotten since October up to six (if you count the government’s manual on motorcycle riding and licensing).

I told him that everyone always asks me how he’s doing and he expressed surprise. I noticed last night he posted some updates on Facebook and they were flooded with likes and comments. Sometimes we go hermit, but it’s important to remember there will be people waiting for you when you come out of the cave. I’m going to miss him. I told him I’ll come back with my own bike and he can be a passenger on it, and he was pleased by that. The cafe he picked was also nice. The waitress comes around regularly to refill your cup for free.

I’m going to have to find a new cafe and new friends in Tbay, but I’ll miss the old ones.