July 29, 2004

The following is a transcript of notes made on July 22, the 8th day of my trek:

Fuck! Simon is not coming down tomorrow and I’ll have no way to fix the bike. I talked with him for one minute which cost an obscene $3.60. Everything’s uncertain.

I liked the first part of my day much better — in the morning everything was splendid. I roamed around naked on the beach for hours and thought of Susanna Moodie. Because she wrote that god-awful book, Roughing it in the Bush, about her immigrant experience in Canada she’s suddenly become oddly relevant in my life.

This biking thing may be some sort of “immigrant thing.” I too am “roughing it in the bush,” going out there to grapple with Canada and its immensity. I want to understand this goddamn place, a place that changed enormously since Susanna wrote about her Canada. Unlike her, I’m not roughing it through wilderness trying to make a living, but rather I’m traveling down smooth roads through the urban sprawl that now defines Canada.

Thus, my immigrant narrative will be significantly different from Susanna’s. It will be about a placid boy who grew up into an angry young man and took over the roads in an act of rebellion. “Fuck cars and automation,” he said, “I’m going to rough it through Canada.”

And then he biked his heart out through an endless wilderness of asphalt.