As I turned onto Mont-Royal, arriving from Avenue de l’Esplanade, I saw the mountain as it always is, at the end of April: gray and ugly.
First bike outing, Saturday, just before the rain. But gray and ugly as you want, the mountain was teeming with people…
After putting on my headphones at the foot of the monument to Sir George-Étienne Cartier, I took Chemin Olmsted to climb up to the belvedere. Slalom between joggers, strollers, serious-walkers-with-walking-poles, less-serious-walkers (hello, mister who wore Crocs), children on scooters and dog walkers with six meter leashes.
In my ears : Tropic Morning News, from the latest LP from The National. In my nostrils: the smell of the earth waking up, damp. Everywhere, broken trees. Remnants of branches all over the ground. The ice storm of the other time martyred the mountain.
I passed a few cyclists on the way up, which always secretly makes me happy, I’m stupidly competitive, and years of therapy haven’t cured it.
Passing them, I make the wave in silence. Yes!
I glanced at my watch, which showed heartbeat: 152 beats per minute. Aweye, the big one, faster.
I specify here that I am not an athlete, far from it. I’m a semi-serious athlete who rides mostly to put off death for a day or two.
In a few seconds, I was at 160 BPM and I thought with a certain hatred that if one day I pick myself up in a private CHSLD not under agreement, it will be as late as possible so that these bastards don’t steal my heritage too long, at $8,000 a month…
I got passed by an electric cyclist. I secretly cursed, I wondered how many BPMs that one was. Why come up the mountain if it’s not to make you go crazy? Eat a hot dog while pedaling, as long as you can, comrade!
I know, I know, I have a toxic cycling background that makes me hate e-bikes the way some people hate drag queens (I haven’t seen any on the mountain by the way). I have a certain hatred for BIXIs, so we’ll talk about that another time.
A jogger suddenly turned around and we almost collided. She jumped when she saw me. At 165 BPM, I didn’t have the breath to yell at him to be careful. You have to take care of your half-turns. Speak to the CAQ…
A squirrel crossed Olmsted Road, not in too much of a hurry, I slowed down the pedal a bit to let him pass. I’m sure he can’t wait for the season to start again when squirrels like him are photographed by our French cousins, equal in this to the lions of the Serengeti and the kangaroos of the Outback.
It will come, the squirrel, it will come, at the end of June, around…
On a bench which I approached, a woman was seated. To his left: a man was curled up, glued to his chest. Passing them, I saw that he was sobbing. I looked away, I wanted to give him the illusion of some privacy.
In my ears, music and reality were in sync, it was one of those mornings:
I was suffering more than I let on
The tropic morning news was on
Nothing will stop me now
To say the painful ends out loud
Crying on a park bench, in public, with walkers, joggers, cyclists and squirrels: you have to be in pain. I say this without mockery, quite the contrary. I would never have that courage.
Returned to the belvedere, people everywhere, again. It almost played elbow to take pictures with the city center as a backdrop. Scoop amazing: you can’t see any orange cones from the Mount Royal belvedere. From there, one can live under the illusion that the orange cones only exist in Chapleau’s drawings.
I thought, looking at the couples, groups of friends and families posing in front of the belvedere balustrade: this is my favorite place in this imperfect city. Everyone has the banana in the face. Even when the mountain is gray, it’s full of sunshine.
I started back down the mountain, I stopped watching my pulse. I got up as always on the pedals without forcing, letting gravity do its job while watching the buildings of the city center parade between the bare trees.
Montreal has all the faults in the world, but it’s funny, I wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Its beauty is not obvious, it’s not like Quebec, let’s say. Quebec is ostentatious in beauty, while Montreal is ugly (except on the mountain), but Montreal is… alive.
And in my ears, the guy from The National sang:
I’ll be over here lying near the ocean
making ocean sounds
Let me know if you can come over
And work the controls for a while
These words do not synchronize with any image of my first outing on the mountain. I just felt a little jealousy: I would like to write something beautiful like that, once. Just once.
And I thought: the mountain will be even more beautiful when the buds burst.
It’s coming soon, it seems.