A New Day Dawns (After I've Been Up For An Hour)

23 January - Alarm went off at 6 o'clock AM! I've forgotten what it's like to get up when its dark. I donned my uniform and ate my muesli and drank my vietnamese coffee before gingerly got onto Baby Blue. It was raining very finely and despite not getting saturated my glasses were constantly covered in a sheen of droplets and it was a cold damp. My wrist wasn’t feeling too good at first but after 9 when the hospital pharmacy opened I bought myself a very expensive velor wrist splint (i've got a prescription so I claim it) and it propped me up beautifully. It completely locked my wrist and even took some of the strain off it completely and I really had no problems from then on unless I was hopping kerbs. My legs and back and arms were still sore from yesterday's probably ill-timed run and it was wet and cold all day but just being back on the bicycle was such a relief after over two weeks of physical sloth. What seemed like most of the couriers appeard to be very happy to see me back on the road, which was nice. After it was all over met up with the others (including a new guy, someone who used to work for us a while back), Jason told me how he came off his bike in the exact same way as I had, whilst crossing railway tracks no less, but, luckily his head (helmet) took most of the impact so he was okay. After it was all over I headed home and then met K8 for vegetarian curry (???) and a mango fizz (very nice) before drinking beer at Stellas (home of the way too pushy serving staff). Wouldn't you know it, K8's dog's name is Lilly. And onto more somber news, today was election day over here which i'm hoping will mean an end to the godawful political ads plaguing the television. One of my main sources of information for political snippets was always the one line news reports that are played on the TVs in the office elevators and i've been away from them for so long that I really didn't know what was going on. I try to engage but the local and national news never seems to be interesting enough to read and i'm ashamed to say I probably still read the SMH more than I do the Globe and Mail. Although couriers are not a a political lot I'd be hard pressed to believe that they are going to be excited at the idea of a conservative government coming into power, which it appears is the case. They were favourites and they've won. I've seen a few scare stories on the internet and in the papers about the fascist and unforgiving state that will result from Stephen Harper's government but they've still onlygot a minority government anyway, none of their domestic policies are really going to affect my life in the short time that i'm here and I really don't think he's going to be able to make much of a dent in Canada's essentially liberal foreign policy. It is always worrying to see more of the western hemisphere sliding inexorably to the right but it's certainly the fashion at the moment. I saw Stephen Harper's victory speech, which was very conciliatory and graceful, but victory speeches ar hardly ever prescient of a politician's future actions. Also interesting to see the victory speech of jack Layton, the leader of the NDP, whho only have about a tenth of the seats, an increase but still hardly worthy of his exultion. The speeches were all mainly in English bbut interspersed with French, whiich seemed to give them a lot more gravitas but thhat probably only because I didn't understand what they saying. So, I'm sorry that my Canadian neighbours are going to have to live with a conservative government but other than that i'm not too fazed..