By Lucy

I was sore Thursday.

Well, a little sore. The Vagabond joked my legs must be burning, but they actually weren’t that bad. I’ve crossed some sort of threshold in my physical fitness.

Now that I’ve got the Keto diet more or less down, I actually feel pretty good. Usually I drink chamomile tea religiously in the evening for my colicky pains, but I haven’t had any colic since I adjusted to the diet.

I had planned not to do much Thursday, and so I just flaked around my room. My packages showed up, all at once. My new shoes, which would be kicking around for a couple of days before I felt like breaking them in. My expensive green tea ‘specially for cold brewing, which takes 24 hours to cold brew! It also came with a sampler of some other tea, which was nice when I tried it, a lovely red, and such a strong flavour it barely needed sweetener.

I also ordered a box of this low sweetener jerky I found by chance when we were out at Lake of the Woods. Traditional jerky tends to be loaded with sugar to make it halfways palatable (and to preserve it). You can make jerky at home with no sweetener, but the house was on the verge of bursting into flames as it was. Not to mention our landlord was sending near-daily emails complaining that us cooking was heating up the kitchen (as if that’s his problem when he lives downstairs).

Friday morning I had my appointment with the doctor.

It went well, actually. I’m unsure if he was having a bad day before, a good day this time, or if he really had shown up at our first appointment expecting a gallows hanging over me, but he was much more cheerful today. My bloodwork was good, so I wasn’t doing anything noteworthy to my vitamins with the Keto diet. The sole exception was that he started telling me I needed to take an iron supplement. Except I already am! Time to go back to two a day, I guess.

He’s very nice, I think he’s aware that he’s bridging the gap for me not having a GP yet. He agreed to refer me to a surgeon for a lump on my leg that he’s pretty sure is a lipoma. A curious quirk of my condition is that we tend to be prone to all sorts of benign cysts.

Afterwards, I went for coffee with Faith, and picked up my brand new Soroptimist hat.

I went to the union hall next. I wanted to shoot the breeze with the receptionist, and top up my dues.

She wasn’t there! There was another female there, presumably also nice and pleasant to talk to, but not who I was looking forward to speaking with.

I went grocery shopping next. I prefer Nofrills, but there isn’t one within walking distance of my place, so I try to only stop by when I’m nearby. They didn’t have the Keto Splenda! Instead, they had a few options with things like monk fruit. I ended up going with this bag of erythritol that bafflingly said “plant-based sugar”. As opposed to all those meat-based sugars? (Actually let’s be honest, I’d pay good money to try a meat-based sugar alternative) They also had this small container of liquid Splenda, which seemed ideal for going out. Then I could just order stuff like black coffee and discreetly sweeten it myself.

I have my motorcycle course this weekend.

What I should do is order some take-out so I’m not trying to cook when my brain is already busy trying to absorb motorcycle lessons.

I noticed that Pizza Pizza has a Keto pizza! Where is one of those? I punched it into Google Maps, who informed me that it was literally next to the Nofrills I was parked in front of. Failed a spot check there!

It took them around 20 minutes to defrost and make the Keto crust. She actually went to check to see if they had any before she’d accept the order – not a lot of Keto customers at this store.

I noticed a few people complain the pizza was soggy, and they are slightly correct. The crust, at least the one I received, was not sturdy at all and was better eaten folded over on itself several times. Despite that, the taste was good and overall I was pleased with it. It’s a viable option for eating out with Keto (if you’re Canadian).

I puttered around my room for the afternoon. The course is 6:30 to 9:30 this evening, out in the woods. I got a text from the Vagabond telling me it was in an ATCO trailer, which immediately made me roll my eyes and slightly regret this. In some ways he is a fussy dad. Now I knew he had talked to someone who was running the course, and I was gonna hear about it from them.

I showed up at 6:25 and no one was in sight. A woman leaned out her car window and informed me they were “all waiting for me” in the second trailer.

Waiting for me? It’s not even time, did everyone get some email I didn’t receive to be there early? I was perfectly on time!

There were seven other students and a grey-haired teacher who looked very no-nonsense. He took down the information from my temporary M1 and directed me to the last seat at the back. We had to sign a bunch of waivers acknowledging that driving a motorcycle is inherently dangerous and it’s hard to keep us perfectly safe.

We had to sit through a presentation on how driving motorcycles is dangerous, how the course is expected to run, defensive driving tips, etc. There were four females and four males, and basically everyone besides me had either driven a motorcycle before, or an ATV or some other recreational vehicle with a clutch. One of the girls is from Vermillion Bay (this is the only Drivetest centre north of the Soo). One of the guys was from Terrace Bay, and had apparently signed up for the course this morning on a whim, drove to town, booked a hotel room and went to Excalibur to buy all his gear last minute.

We were told to be there earlier than 9 AM tomorrow to select a motorcycle to ride.

Earlier than 9? What is this nonsense, why tell us to be there at 9 if they actually wanted us there earlier? Tell us 8 then!

We packed up early. There wasn’t much to do with only 8 of us.

The sun was blood-red from all the wildfire smoke in Alberta.

I dragged myself out of bed at 7AM and made breakfast with Wayne sitting in the kitchen, like always.

Then he says “Uh oh.” We got an email from the landlord. Supposedly, someone has been turning the outside light off overnight, which is a severe ‘security hazard’ and a evictable offence, according to him (methinks the Landlord and Tenant board will have a problem with that).

I snorted with laughter. “Is there even a switch for the outside lights?”

Wayne shrugs. “Not that I’ve seen.”

I wonder if the light is burning out or otherwise malfunctioning and we are being unfairly blamed for it.

When I try to leave, the landlord appears in the doorway, wanting to talk urgently about this ‘severe security violation’. I sidle past him – I’m still not convinced the mysterious light switcher even exists, but if they did, it isn’t me. And quite frankly, I’m busy and I don’t care.

I get to class ten minutes before it start this time, and everyone is already there and selected a bike. Flustered, I chose the smallest bike that remains, a small green dirt bike.

Eeeek!

I’m going to ride a motorcycle, under my own power, today!

Ye gods, what have I done?

I can do this.

I can do this.

I can do this.

We have three instructors, but to be honest, I barely caught their names. For expediency’s sake, we had our names written on painter’s tape on the front of our bikes, so they didn’t have to remember ours either. The leader, I believe, was named Wally, the second guy looked like my Uncle David so I’ll just call him David, and the third guy had a snowy white beard and a hearty chuckle that warmed your heart like a roaring fire, so I’ll just call him Grandpa.

I take stock and notice that I’m the only one wearing a “classic” black leather jacket. Two of the guys are wearing plaid jackets that must have passed muster, and work boots. The guy who bought all his gear the other day is wearing one of those polyfibre jackets for snowmobiling and some armoured pants. The one girl who’s shy and wears all black is wearing standard motorcycle boots and a black denim jacket. The blonde girl is wearing a snowmobile jacket with all kinds of pink details all over it. The fourth girl is wearing a brown leather jacket.

I get several compliments on my helmet. As the trainers pointed out, always assume you are invisible on a bike. Black might be “cool”, but garish colours or loud designs ensure someone driving a car is more likely to notice you.

First thing’s first: going in a straight line.

I probably don’t need to explain this, but controlling a motorcycle is more difficult than driving a car. You can hop into a car, put it in drive, and BAM! – you’re driving in a straight line, no further input necessary.

With the motorcycle, balance is key. No four wheels to hold you down, and that’s even before we add power to the machine. So for this, we’re just pushing each other on the bikes.

Get on. Kickstand up, ready position, shoulder check. Buddy gives you a push.

My bike wobbles. How do I do this? I glance at the pavement, wondering how much it would hurt when I’m not really moving.

“Lucy, eyes up!”

I look up. My bike tilts dangerously to the left. I squeeze on the front break and throw my legs out to catch myself.

“You have to have your eyes up.” Wally says. “If you look at the pavement, that’s where you’ll go.”

God willing, if I ever finish this course I’ll never glance at the ground again.

The next one goes better. Hate to say it, but these things do control better with speed. When the biggest guy gives me the most powerful shove, I feel like I have more control over the bike than when the shy girl does it.

Still, I grit my teeth and throw myself into it. This is just going in a straight line with no power, the Vagabond would be laughing from the cheap seats! By round 4, I’m doing pretty good.

“Lucy, eyes up!”

Ack!

Next is turning, still pushing. I know this would be easier under power – I’m always teaching my friends how to accelerate through a curve, or accelerate out of a skid. Speed is your friend when you have a healthy respect for it, and understand things like centrifugal force. Still, we have to play along.

Simplest way to turn on a bike is to approach on the long side of the curve, then cut across the short side when you’re two-thirds across. Probably best explained as a diagram:

Two of the girls drop bikes. The shy girl was first to drop hers, struggling under the weight of expectations, honestly. The blonde girl drops hers next, and it’s just good ol’ fashioned weight. She picked a larger Kawasaki Ninja, because it’s similar to the bike her mother has, but it’s too big for her to learn on, I think.

We finally take a break, as they’ve decided we have it down. They pick up the cones and rearrange them.

The cones are arranged in straight lines, at 20 meter intervals. Now they want us to power up the bikes.

He breaks it down to the basics, which is enough for almost everyone else here, having driven either their own or an ATV. I have no such experience and I’m lost. One of them comes over to help me. Fuel switch is on; turn off the kill switch, pull out the choke, then hit the ignition.

This next part I knew already. The Vagabond bought a new bike last year, and sold his old one to one of our co-workers. However, despite being north of 40 and as far as I know having had his M license already, that co-worker still managed to almost kill the bike within a month. The choke limits the air going into the carburetor, which allows the engine to warm up in cold weather (what exactly counts as cold weather depends on the bike). He was riding with the choke on, which makes the mixture too rich, kills your fuel economy, and eventually kills the bike (through build-up). So once the bike is warm, take the choke off!

Next challenge – drive to each cone, break, shoulder check, drive to the next cone.

One question… how do I shift gears?

Everyone else takes off and leaves me at the starting line.

Wally comes over. “What’s up?”

I cringe. “How… how do I shift out of neutral?”

“Oh!” He breaks into laughter. “We forgot a step!” He holds up his outstretched hand, and gestures to an imaginary spot between his thumb and forefinger. “Neutral is here.” He grabs his thumb. “First gear is here. So, you press down on the shifter to shift to first. While holding the clutch. Then, half a tap up to neutral, or a full tap up to second. Neutral can be tricky to find on some of these bikes, but if you hit the killswitch it’ll go back to neutral automatically, so don’t worry if you can’t find it.”

Ok. Got it.

Squeeze the clutch. Tap down to first.

The bike roars as the gears engage.

No wussing out now.

I let go of the brake and the clutch… and the bike stalls.

More laughter. “You have to feather the clutch!”

Right, because I’d know that psychically!

A few more stalls before I finally manage to jerkily roll forward under the bike’s power.

Oh my god!

Oh my god!

How

Why

Panic!

I reach the first cone. Do I hit the clutch or the brake first? Does it matter? If the bike stalls at speed, will it throw me like a bucking bronco? I squeeze them both at the same time. The bike jerks to a stop and I throw both feet out as I wobble.

When I try to start again, the bike stalls…. again.

I get pretty good at starting the bike and kicking it into first gear, because I stall it at almost every cone for a couple of laps. I keep my head down (and my eyes up!) and ignore everyone else lapping me. Eventually I managed to do it without stalling the bike.

Grandpa comes over to me. “Ready to try second gear?”

No, I’m ready for several shots of whisky and a nap. But sure.

Don’t worry about RPM’s. Just make sure the clutch is fully engaged before kicking it up into second.

Done.

“Faster, girl!” He yells behind me, laughing.

Only the Vagabond calls me girl! I twist the throttle with a vengance.

The bike rears slightly and my head whips back. Maybe too much!

I do a couple of laps, up to second, down to first, up to second, down to first. The bikes have no speedometer, so I have no idea how fast this is, which is slightly discombobulating. I know the point is not to overload us with information, but I’d like to have an idea.

They call us off the bikes. Lunchtime!

Some of the others stay outside. Shy girl smokes like a chimney, wears all black and doesn’t ever try to talk to the rest of us.

I decided to talk to buddy from Terrace Bay. He has the most rotten luck – he started his job at the paper mill in August last year, bought a house and took possession in November – two scant months before the mill closed! He managed to find a job at a mine near Sault Ste Marie, works one week on, one week off. He’s staying at the Travelodge, which is the worst option in Thunder Bay (there is bedbugs and NO WIFI), because he brought a dog with him.

Cue the lunchroom breaking down into adorable squeals as everyone whips out their phones and starts comparing dogs.

When they get to me, I can’t fake it.

“Not a dog person?”

I shrug. It’s not like I hate dogs, I just don’t understand having a pet in general. I know the socially accepted responses, but I’ve discovered that if I use them, people want to show me more pictures, and I honestly don’t want more pictures. I’ll nod and tell you your dog is cute, best I can manage.

He asks the other girls where they are from. The brown-haired one says “Vermillion Bay” and he blinks at her. “Out past Dryden?” No clarity.

I smirk. “He’s a southerner.”

They giggle. I smile to myself. This is fun.

For the afternoon, they’ve set up a course of cones to simulate city streets, complete with stop and yield signs. There’s a few branching paths so you’re not running the same thing all the time, and a spot for us to practice stopping and starting on a hill. So we run that for a few hours.

At one point, I stopped by Grandpa and he says, “I heard from someone that you were from down south.”

“Someone”. No points for guessing who. Well, this is what I paid for, no point in complaining about it now.

They let us go early. Usually they have around 20 people in a class, so with 8 of us, most doing reasonably well, there wasn’t a real reason to make us run laps ’til 5PM. My hands were buzzing from neuropathy. Curiously, the inside of my left thumb was what hurt the most.

I ate and showered quickly and ran to the waterfront. I had thought that Saturday would be the Festival of Colours at the waterfront. Turns out, it was Sunday, and Saturday was just a generic “Festival of India”, which was too bad because Saturday was the one I invited K to.

It was alright. There was dancing and music at the big stage, and a variety of vendors scattered around the outside. I had purposefully left my wallet at home so I wouldn’t be tempted to buy anything, mostly food – all the food on offer was carb heavy. I would have loved some sugar-free lassi, what do celiac Indians do? Interestingly, there was a table labelled “free food”, which was awesome! I wouldn’t have minded a henna tattoo either, but again, broke and I probably shouldn’t. K complained that it’s just as small as he remembered it, but it’s bigger than the Festival of India in Barrie, which is to say, any size at all.

I slept well that night. I’d been sleeping well for a few days, actually, ever since my Keto flu or alcohol withdraw or both broke. More than 8 hours, and napping during the day. Catching up, perhaps?

I managed to get to class a little bit earlier on Sunday, not that it mattered. Two guys were late, one guy explicitly because he was hung over. Terrace Bay guy didn’t provide an explanation, although he did bring his dog with him for some reason. It was a tiny, pure white Chihuahua, trembling and silent, odd for them. He locked it in the office and no one said boo about it.

I was told that my bike had a high idle, whatever that means. Wally tried telling me I should start it in second gear, but I was still having a hard time not stalling in first!

First lesson of the day was “push steering”. The basic premise is that, at high speeds the bike turns better when you lean into the turn and push the handlebars away from you.

I was familiar with the concept already, both from having a pedal bike as a kid, but also just from physics. Still, I was nervous about it. It seemed like the sort of practice where someone might wipe out.

The traffic cone course was simple: four corners, a slalom, and an S bend. After a few false starts, I decided it was still best if I started the bike in first and kicked it up to second once I got going.

It was easy, actually. I was getting a handle on the bike and it was starting to feel natural. By the end of the laps, I was honestly just testing how low and fast I could take the corners. I dare say I did the best out of all the other girls, but maybe that’s just my perspective. The trainers didn’t offer that opinion and I didn’t ask. Brown haired girl was wild like me, and the blonde girl was being hampered by her larger bike. Shy girl was struggling and as the day went on, she did a minimum amount of laps before giving up and smoking for an hour. I wondered why she was here when she didn’t seem to enjoy it.

After they were satisfied we were good at push steering, they taught us emergency breaking and emergency swerving.

Emergency braking was not unlike some of the challenges they have in Canada’s Worst Driver, which I’ve been watching recently. Basically you just accelerate in a straight line until you hear a whistle, then you slam on both breaks while grabbing the clutch and kicking the bike down to first gear. It’s a lot to do all at once, but it didn’t take any of us long to get it down.

A few times Grandpa either forgot or dropped the whistle, and then the joke was “will you stop before you fly off the edge of the pavement if there’s no whistle”. I pointed out they did a challenge like that on Canada’s Worst Driver, when they tell them a red light will tell them when to stop but doesn’t. Will they brake before they hit a wall of boxes? Although you can’t really test that theory on a motorcycle.

Emergency steering is even easier. One guy stands in front of us as we accelerate. He either points left or right at the last minute, and we have to let off the throttle and swerve to that direction around him.

I’m not sure I was the best, but I think I’d take home the medal for “most improved”, considering I started behind everyone and was a nervous wreck for the first bit. I was also starting to figure out how I wanted my own bike to be. The clutch tension on this bike was too touchy, and I could have that adjusted on my personal bike so it was easier to feather and I wouldn’t stall it so much.

This is good. This is leagues from where I started last year, dragging my feet on the ground, afraid to make a move.

This is confidence.

This is control.

This… is power.

Every time I tell someone I’m getting my M2, and they shudder and say “Motorcycles scare me! You’re so brave!”, it’s feels good. Like I’m doing a guitar solo on stage, or climbing Everest. Life is moving in leaps and bounds, and I’m doing things most people would be too afraid to try!

Feels like I can do whatever I want to.

They catered lunch for us, or should I say, our sponsor catered lunch for us. Mr Sub; a free 6 inch cold cut, a cookie and a bottle of water. I left the cookie, peeled everything off the bread and called it good. The cookie was later given to brown-haired girl’s little brother, as her family had to drive her down from Vermillion Bay.

After lunch, they set out the cones in the shape of the course we’d be tested on. They let us run the course for a couple of hours, by which point we either had it down or we were impossible to fix.

At one point, the dog escaped from the office and ran out onto the course. Miracle of miracles, no one hit it.

Then we had a small break and had our test.

We all passed, some better than others. I lost five points, because on the stopping on a turn bit, I took more than 10 seconds to stop. Probably I should have realized it at the time, but I didn’t think how long you took to stop would factor in that much. I was honestly kinda worried that if I stopped too short, I’d be written up for being reckless. Oops.

Yay! I got my M2! I can drive a fucking motorcycle!!

My hands were buzzy and sore, and my legs and core were shaking from being overworked.

I went home and collapsed into bed. I was tired and it was hot. Because we have to stay geared up most of the time, most of the day was spent sweltering away in my fishbowl helmet and leather jacket. I slept for about an hour, ’til i heard the megaphone from the marina.

Ah yes, the Festival of Colours.

The sign-up says to wear clothes you don’t mind staining, just in case, so I wore work pants and a work shirt. I wandered down to the waterfront and there was a bit of a snafu about tickets. Finally I was given a wrist band and a little token to redeem for the “colours”, which is simply a packet of dyed cornstarch. They have a sort of fenced off mosh pit in front of the stage now.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I mean, I was definitely expecting there to be some mischievous people who zero in on anyone wandering around without colours, but I wasn’t expecting the instructions on the back of the bag to include hugging people. Apparently part of the etiquette is to dip two fingers in your bag of colours and stroke the other person’s cheek, before blessing them. They kept saying “holy”, and I learned later that’s because the festival is usually called “Holi” in India, which wasn’t readily apparent.

There was one fellow, who was clearly very autistic or something close to it. He was wearing a full face respirator, and sort of awkwardly dumping his bag of colours on people instead of grabbing a handful and tossing it in the air. But he accepted the attempts to bless him by touching his mask or neck, and my heart was glad that he came out and was participating in his own way, and that no one was giving him a hard time about it!

Watching the kiddos run around with bags of colour in their fists, getting absolutely drenched and giggling and having a riotous good time, I felt far too uptight. I wished I’d had someone to come with me, so I wasn’t the random white girl standing awkwardly in the middle. Every once in a while a song would go on that seemed like a cue to everyone else and they’d start dancing hard. I love dancing, but I was too tired to dance. I dragged myself into the scrum for the colour tosses, but I spent a fair amount of the event sitting in the grass, absorbing it.

This is a lot of fun! Having some food, a fresh lemonade, dancing with the crowd… I can’t imagine why white people stick so doggedly to Christianity, with its stuffy ceremony and solemn old white men. I wanted to be at dance parties throwing bags of coloured cornstarch at people! It was light and joyful!

The announcer mentioned “hunger for touch”, and with a start I realized he was right. I was jealously watching all these people, dancing together, clutching hands and hugging, and I wished I had friends here to be close to. I wish some group would absorb me in so I could learn the culture and feel included. I need more friends in town.

Eventually I had to call it, because the sun was too much. I wandered down to the hostel to hang out with Hanuman for a bit, feeling sort of lonely and out of place.

Then finally I had to go back to my place. I tried to brush off the cornstarch outside as best I could, because I didn’t feel like showering. Or rather, I didn’t feel like I had the strength to shower, and deal with humidity too.

So I fell into an exhausted sleep, still covered in my colours and on fire from my successes.

Tongue-tied and twisted, just an earth-bound misfit, I