Helloo

Toronto in the springtime is much more pleasant than I had anticipated.  Seeing the city only in the fall and winter has done nothing for my opinion of it.  While I appreciate the beauty of a freshly snowed-upon landscape, the cold is just too depressing to handle.  I think everyone suffers from seasonal affective disorder after the holidays.  Walking through the U of T campus today, I noticed how different and beautiful everything looked with leaves on the trees and a dearth of suicidal students roaming around in tired, zombie-like states.  Though instead of the "undead" I call them the "unasleep".

My favorite thing that this time of year brings is appropriate cycling weather.  I refuse to buy those spiked wheels just so I can become a human popsicle riding along St. George St in the dead of winter.  I love zooming down Beverly St. and taking in the sights while singing some ridiculously outdated song in my head like "It's Not Unusual".  I don't enjoy almost getting hit by cars everyday, but really, who can have it all?  What I cannot bear, however, is the pretentious assholes who suit up in their latex cycling gear, hop on their expensive skinny road bikes, and even manage to signal with an air of superiority.  My twenty-year-old Raleigh sighs every time they pass us and considers anorexia... or well it would if it could think.  When I get on the road I feel like it's me and every other cyclist against cars and pedestrians, so when did all of the cyclists turn on each other?  There are the super-into-it cyclists that I have mentioned above, the hipster cyclists with their banana seats and large makeshift baskets who try painfully hard to look... what's the word?  hip?  when they ride around town.  I feel like a different breed of cyclist:  the awkward in-between girl with a shitty bike and an even shittier idea of how not to die on the roads.  Part of me wants to look less awkward riding a bike than when I do just in everyday life, but the other part of me wants to stick it out for all the other people out there who have no category, who just ride along to get where they're going.  People who like to see instead of being seen.  So whenever I dismount my bike and rip my leggings on my metal back-side basket or stumble as I get off, I'll raise a black panther-like fist to all of my other awkward cycling Torontonians out there.

I am a student at U of T.  I am starting a blog.  This is it.  Enjoy.