When I went to get the snow tires swapped out at the dealership today, I was told that there were already a few people waiting inside, and so for the sixty to ninety minutes it would take to do the swap, it would be best if I… well… went somewhere/anywhere else, is what the maintenance gentleman was politely avoiding saying.
Which I totally understood.
Thus began an unexpected walk around parts of my locale that I have been driving through for over a decade but hadn’t ever opted to appreciate at a human speed instead of a vehicular one.
I started with walking up the main dealership street for about 20 minutes, noticing as I went that the sidewalk on one side of the street ended–without any clear reason, since there were wide boulevards that had ample space for a sidewalk to be laid–while it continued on the other side. Further to this confusion was the fact that the bulk of this sidewalk-less stretch passed a plaza full of stores and a Purolator Courier location, while the side of the street with a sidewalk passed by a long stretch of fenced-in, private business property. While I understand that these city planning decisions were likely made decades ago, it stood out to me that the side of the street that was closed off to the public had the sidewalk, while the side with the stores on it didn’t. (This was later underscored when I walked a rectangular circuit and came back to the same point on my return, and discovered that there is a crosswalk that goes from the sidewalk-ed side of the street to the side without one. A crosswalk literally went from a pedestrian-friendly corner across to a grassy boulevard with nowhere to practically walk.)
I was cutting across a road I’m passingly familiar with en route to the next major street over from the dealership’s street, when I noticed train tracks I’d forgotten about cutting perpendicular to the road. I’d driven over these countless times before (much to the chagrin of my tires), but I hadn’t really considered where the tracks go to and from. One direction would take me too far away from the dealership, but the other direction was not only the direction I was going to head shortly anyway, but rather intriguingly, the tracks seemed to end at the next street down. Did they really just end there?
Well, what better time to find out than when I’m out exploring anyway? Down the broad alleyway/driveway/trackway I went. It turned out that the tracks didn’t end at the next street, that was just the appearance due to a rise and fall in the pavement from where I’d been standing. They continued on, seemingly through some maybe private property? So I was reluctant to keep following them, and instead headed back toward the main road I had been shooting for a few minutes prior.
As I got onto that sidewalk–something I found lacking as often as present in this area–I passed by a suspicious Canada goose that was hunkered down on a small patch of grass. It didn’t seem to be nesting, so maybe just taking a breather? Do geese do that?
I gave it a bit of a wide berth, as Canada geese are known to be rather unpleasant at the best of times, let alone if they’re nesting (as this poor guy found out), and it gave me a beady eye the whole time, but I got by unscathed/unhissed-at.
Farther along that street was a plastic container company where the parking lot was packed, which is unusual to see in these isolation/physical distancing days. It occurred to me that they may be making PPE medical equipment, maybe plastic face shields, in which case they’d understandably need all hands on deck.
Unfortunately, that factory may well have been the cause of a pretty unpleasant chemical/plastic smell that followed me for blocks past that.
A couple of blocks more and there was a new townhouse development. It still smelled of unpleasant plastic, and I was wondering if they have to endure that smell often, let alone regularly. Nothing like paying a premium to move into a new development on a major street in the big city, only to never be able to get a fresh breeze in through your windows or be inclined to step outside.
(I’m reminded that a realtor we were briefly working with a decade ago tried to sell my wife and me on a house that was a block away from the property where they do sewage treatment. That was a hard pass for us, and one of the few bad pitches he made which helped us decide he wasn’t a good fit.)
As I passed by those townhouses, I noticed that, as with other new townhouse developments I’ve seen recently, every one of these residences had two plastic pipes coming out beside the front doors. One came straight out and another was bent downward. Some kind of exhaust or air flow system? Maybe one is for clothes dryer venting?
Whatever the case, it confuses me, because they look terrible. The townhouse structures themselves look attractive enough, but those pipes just jutting out from the right beside the door framing seems a weird, lazy shortcut in the design. Whatever the pipes are, could they not go out the back instead, where people park and maybe the gas and power meters are?
Were I to ever buy into one of those places pre-groundbreaking (and hopefully in a place not next to a sewage treatment plant or downwind of plastics manufacturer; take note, home shoppers!), I’d certainly inquire about those pipes on the design specs and, if needed, pay extra to have them stick out somewhere less obvious/ugly. Although I suppose one could use them to hang extra wreaths and garland or lights for Christmas decorations…
Down the next street and around the corner to start heading back to the original street I was on–again with a lack of sidewalks–I passed by a couple of ducks, perhaps a mating pair, who were snuggled up beside a fence post that bordered on a broad, grassy field. This confused me. Ducks nesting by water, I fully understand. That’s kind of their thing. But a mating pair kicking back by the edge of a field with zero water anywhere around, maybe a few minutes away at best as the duck flies from the nearest pond or lakefront, seemed odd.
I passed a Tibetan community centre that had some gorgeous prayer flags in its front yard trees. I tried to get a few shots of them, but it wasn’t easy to get just the flags and trees.
Not far past that, a warehouse or storage facility of some sort had a few shipping bays facing a side street, all of which had lights blinking beside them. Three empty bays had lights blinking green, and one bay with a truck already backed into it was blinking red. Surely the lights must mean something other than “Yes, you may pull your beast of a truck into this empty bay to unload” or “No, don’t pull in here because this bay is occupied”, because I’d think/hope that either of those options would be readily apparent without the assistance of the lights.
I did finally see where those train tracks from earlier went. They split, one route veering away and the other cut through what’s now a field, ultimately dead-ending at the raised grassy side of a new building’s parking lot. It’d be cool to see if there are any other sections of railway still on the surface farther along its old route.
Perhaps another time.
This pandemic has been so horrible in so many ways, and beyond the staggering body count, we can only guess at the mental repercussions yet to come. Yet it’s not totally without byproduct benefits, as well.
It has helped us to see the industries and people who truly matter in our societies–not just the doctors and nurses and hospital staff and ambulance drivers and police we’d expect to need in dire situations, but the truck drivers supplying grocery stores, and people staffing those stores and making the deliveries of food and packages–the ones who are truly key in being able to keep our communities and cities and countries and world going.
It has given us a time unlike any in history to better appreciate our loved ones, both those we’re isolated with and those we ache to be with and talk with in person and hug again.
And is has made us slow down in a way our lives before this never would have. Had this pandemic and the physical distancing it has forced on us not occurred, I would’ve just driven to this car maintenance appointment and sat in their waiting room with a book or on the phone and driven back home when it was done. Instead, because I wasn’t able to fall into that same old pattern, I had little choice but to see in small detail what was around me–an area I would’ve previously said I was familiar with, but which this walk revealed to me how little detail I knew about it.
As I headed out for this walk, I was already looking forward to the chance that this situation afforded me to see that area in a new way, but it ended up letting me see and hear and smell and overall experience a tiny part of the world–my world–in a way I hadn’t nearly expected; in a way my life before hadn’t opened me up to. And those walks are now something I want to try to do more of even once we’re back at work and school to make whatever our new “normal” will turn out to be.
I’ll be better… more aware and better informed and more mentally and spiritually uplifted… for now choosing to have those experiences in my life.
How could I not be grateful for that?