The only sport I watch with any regularity or enthusiasm is Formula 1. I’m not really even sure if it really qualifies as a sport – I know that the drivers have to be physically fit, but that fitness isn’t the major contributing factor to them winning races. In Formula 1 it’s truly a team effort requiring a skilled driver, skilled pit crew, and skilled engineers. If just one of those elements is missing, the race is pretty much over.

The other reason I like Formula 1 is because it seems much more fair than most competitive sports. I like to compare it do downhill slaloms, for example, where differences in athletes’ times can be in the tenths of seconds — easily accounted for by an errant gust of wind. The athlete’s training, the coaching, the equipment, etc., can all be negated by something completely beyond the athlete’s control. Luck, in other words. In Formula 1 the whole aim of engineering is to mitigate the effects of luck, but even more important, all the drivers race at the same time so that elements like wind, rain, etc., affect everyone equally.

The Toronto Criterium is very similar to Formula 1 in these respects.

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The TCL headquarters has been under siege all day, dear reader. By heat.

I’ve had the windows open since dawn, fans running, even took a prolonged and luxuriant shower. No good. The hot-water rads having been blazing all day. The superintendent is either cleaning the heating system for the season or the he’s trying to cook us out. By us I mean the whole building; the rads in the landing are all on full-blast so I’m thinking the other flats are probably getting it too. Maybe they’re testing how hot they can get the old iron grills before they explode. My recently relocated blogging chair is now just a nervous foot away from the big cast-iron one. Might be my last post.

So it was good to get outdoors for a bit. That and what the casual observer might mistake as summer outside. No, my living room is presently like summer, but nice try. (Sadly, this is not a hyperbole.) Outside, though, I tripped into a neat old neighbourhood that made me forget about my oven-like flat. Even the garden sheds are probably air conditioned there.

Rosedale is the place. North and a little east of the core. Took me a while to just get there, and once there the terrain is friendly to neither foot nor vehicle. Hilly, twisty, narrow roads, roundabouts going who-knows-where. Never a good time to stand in the middle of the road taking photos.

Took me two successive tries to get through there to my intended destination (with Google Maps on my mobile!). And I was started to feel smugly Torontonian.

Apparently the roads are based on pre-Toronto horse-riding trails, but if you ask me this is how they get away with gating the place without erecting actual gates.

To me Rosedale seems not unlike a miniaturized Bridle Path (farther north and east). On the Path, houses are on massive lots, usually far enough back from the road that getting to the front door would mean having to interact with armed guards and probably dogs. Mansions. The density of rich people in Rosedale necessitates that they settle onto smaller plots. The houses can’t get smaller, of course, so it’s usually the stuff around the houses that gets shrunk. Still neat, just really small.

I wouldn’t like to guess how much condos run for in Rosedale. This wouldn’t have even crossed my mind but smattered occasionally between the gargantuan houses are low-rise buildings that really couldn’t be called flats. Probably not rentals either.

Dang. Now I’m thinking too much about my own place again.

Still hot here.

So hot.

I bet the Rosedalians don’t have to put up with this.

Continued in next part…

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Happy death and resurrection of our lord and saviour weekend, dear reader! If you’re into that sorta thing. Me, I’m pretty ambivalent about bunnies and coloured eggs don’t really do much for me, so Easter’s on the bottom of my holiday list. Also, I don’t get Good Friday; isn’t that when Jesus died? I didn’t know the guy but expiring on a cross doesn’t seem good at all. Should be called Ironic Friday, maybe.

But please don’t let me keep you from enjoying it. I am. I’ve managed to run some errands at the east part of town. The Beach.

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Today I’m pleased as punch to present the traveling variety show that sets up camp across the street from my apartment at this time of year. Give ‘em a chance; if the cheerful yolp in the first clip doesn’t brighten your day, very little will!