un tour la nuit, à minuit

I did Un tour la nuit on Friday. For those of you who don't know, it's basically a 25K nighttime bike ride with 11,000 cyclists, held the Friday night before the big Tour de l'île, which is an insane 50K bike ride pretty much around the southern perimeter of the island with about a billion other cyclists. I went back and forth all last week trying to decide if I was going to do this night ride or not, and finally I did, and many, many thanks to Arial (the Australian, not the font), who covered my entry fee as an early birthday present and kept our energy up and our funnybones tickled the whole time.

I had some reservations about doing even the smaller of the two rides, but I have to say, it was definitely the most fun I could imagine having with 11,000 other cyclists - there were the mysterious unseen tam-tams at the starting line, all kinds of people in front of their houses cheering and waving and blasting their stereos for us (and one guy who kept offering us pot), and once we got to the Cité des arts de la cirque (Cirque de soleil headquarters, among other things) everything was all lit up and they had set up giant speakers on that part of the route and were playing various Cirque soundtracks. Of course, this was the point when I realized how close to my house we were, and how much my ass hurt given that I had already done my usual 25K that afternoon before starting this 25K course, and how very easy it would be to hang a left once we got out of the circus complex and just go home and drink beer, and then how stupid it would be to do that with only 8K to go, so I stuck with it, and man am I ever glad I did, because at the finish line, they had fire-eaters. And fire-dancers. And the best raffle in the world, where they gave you cookies just for filling in a ballot. Oatmeal cookies! For free! After a big bike ride! Even if I don't win one of those shiny new bikes they were raffling, dammit, I got a cookie after my bike ride, and that's just awesome.

The only real low point was that they gave us a 9:15 starting time, but there were just so many people that we didn't start until more like 10:40, and we were in the last block of people to start (seriously - there were like 30 people behind us), but we made up a lot of ground somewhere because we finished before 12:15 and watched a good 300 people or so roll in after us. That, and the fact that the finishing area was apparently devoid of ice cream or popsicles, and Arial wanted one like I've never seen anyone want ice cream before. Beer they had, chips they had, even hot dogs, but no frosty treats. Only lukewarm chocolate milk. Which I now know not to drink at one o'clock in the morning, because the bike ride home after that will not be as pleasant as you might imagine.

It was genuinely a good time though (thanks again Arial!), and I will definitely be doing this again next year if anyone wants to ride with me next time...

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It's a small, strange world, part one:

This is a sign I pass every single day on my way home:

For those of you who live in Quebec, the sign is funny for one reason. For those of you who live in the UK, it's funny for a completely different reason. Either way, despite our cultural differences and the fact that we are reading this sign in two different languages, we're all laughing at the same man.

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It's a small, strange world, part two:

Here is the near-verbatim transcript of a phone conversation I had with The Gland this weekend:

(ring, ring)

The Gland: Hello?

BadYogi: Hey, I'm so proud of myself, I've finally memorized your new number!

The Gland: Why do you bother memorizing phone numbers any more?

BadYogi: I don't do it on purpose, it's just something my mind does, on its own...

The Gland: Well, when you moved, your new number was easy for me to remember, because the last four numbers are the same as my sister's number.

BadYogi: Huh... hey, would the first three numbers of your sister's number happen to be x,y,z?

The Gland: They are!

BadYogi: Oh my god! That was my exact phone number when I was a kid! That's actually why I deliberately chose these last four numbers when I moved, because I knew if I could remember them as a seven-year-old moving into a new house, I could definitely remember them as a twenty-seven-year-old moving into a new house!

And we'll stop there.

I can't make this shit up, people - this has actually happened.

And what's more, this blog temporarily comes to you from one of the sofas obtained from The Gland during the Great Furniture Swap of '05, which she in turn got from her sister many years ago. So basically, I have this woman's old sofas, and she has my old phone number. I'm not sure which of us came out ahead in this scenario, but it makes me happy to know that at least her kids have a phone number that's really easy to remember if they ever get lost.

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This week's playlist (and yes, it is longer than it used to be):

Summer Sunshine (The Corrs)
Venus (Bananarama)
Should I Stay or Should I Go (The Clash)
Devil's Haircut (Beck)
World Wide Suicide (Pearl Jam)
Heartbreaker (Pat Benatar)
Magazine (Pedro the Lion)
Caught a Light Sneeze (Tori Amos)
Forest (Bran Van 3000 w/ Jean Leloup)
Glorious (Andreas Johnson)
Never Let You Go (INXS)
Don't Explain (dZihan & Kamien remix) (Billie Holiday)
Chez Roger Boîte Funk (Troublemakers)
Smooth Sailin' (Rosco)
Mambo Cafe (Groove Armada)
Dirty Harry (Gorillaz)
Crazy (Gnarls Barkley)
Turn Off the Radio (Dead Prez)
8 Mile (Eminem)
Jesus Walks (Kanye West) (Really? 'Cause I think I saw him in the metro last week...)
Can I Kick It? (A Tribe Called Quest)
Don't Tell Me (Madonna)
Maxwell's Silver Hammer (The Beatles)
Margaret vs. Pauline (Neko Case)
Wives of Farmers (Grandaddy)
Breathe (2 AM) (Anna Nalick)
Is There Something on Your Mind? (Drowners)
Rough Gem (Islands)
Walk Away (Franz Ferdinand)
El Cuarto de Tula (Buena Vista Social Club)