This City is Crazy

This afternoon found me sitting idly, chewing over what I had just seen when WHAMO, a bowl of salad dropped out of the sky and plopped down in front of me, nearly taking my nose off in the process. Anybody who knows me will attest to the strangeness of this situation, since the chance of me ordering a salad is, well, nil. Shaken from my thoughts I sufficed to reassure myself that this city is crazy.

Please understand, I'm no complete stranger to the madness that is the modern large city. I've seen many of them: Chicago, Sydney (thanks to my brother and sister in law), Paris and Frankfurt (thanks Mum), and Los Angeles. Never have I ever had a salad administered to me. No sooner did I sit in a restaurant than this salad appeared, or dropped courtesy of my overly efficient waitress, right in front of me. In the U.S. we expect water when we sit. Perhaps Montreal is recovering from a scurvy scare, and the city had to implement mandatory saladings.

When I left my room this afternoon, my mission was simple: find lunch at a respectable price. When I say respectable, I mean less than twenty dollars. Since I am downtown in a large city, that is of course a challenge. My mission was simple because I have a lot of homework to finish this evening, and I'm already completely exhausted. Perhaps you can guess what my next foolish maneuver was. No camera. My first look at Montreal during the day, and no camera.

Before I walked a full block I had nearly seen five bicyclists meet untimely ends. Usually I blame motorists for the kinds of infractions that kill people on bicycles. Not this time. These people were weaving in and out of traffic with a complete disregard for the cars trying to run them over at 40 MPH. They weren't all couriers either.

After walking about 10 blocks I finally got to a neighborhood that was low brow enough to serve a reasonably priced lunch. And what did I get for my efforts? I got a salad.