A thank you to Cass who took time on her day off to supply a ride to the Salvation Army for me. It was much appreciated and because I was there before noon I was able to get some sliced whole wheat bread, bagels and some coleslaw which, together with my recent acquisition of peanut butter means I have food that will last until early next week.

It also gave me an opportunity to hang out, play crib and get out of my own head for the afternoon. In one of those plot line life twists that seems almost fated there was a pouch with a tire iron among its contents for $3 with green tickets half price it was $1,50 so I could purchase it with the $2 Thrift Store gift coupon I had in my possession.

With the bus route that runs along Gladys to the bus exchange in front of Abbotsford Community Services getting home, even hauling three plastic grocery bags of loot is doable because the longest walk on the trip, from the stop on Ridgeview to my place, is down hill making it easier to restart after the halfway point break to allow my back to align before continuing.

The neighbour on the corner has a Mercedes that needs its transmission replaced – $3,500. Making even the $1,000 the bloodsuckers wanted to do the clutch seem not so outrageous. It is a benefit of driving a standard that you don’t think of when you buy the vehicle. I am perfectly happy, actually I prefer, driving a standard but because fewer and fewer people can and many prefer the automatic the price of a manual transmission vehicle is discounted because of limited the limited market of people who will drive a standard.

Of interest at the Centre of Hope at lunch was the first of two dry runs they plan to have to work out the logistics for November.

The membrane, or whatever method they used to waterproof the concrete the underground portion of the centre [parking garage, thrift store] is leaking. Aside from the headache of leaks in the Thrift Store you cannot leave the matter unaddressed because the water will – literally – eat the concrete alive.

So starting the first Monday in November [where did October go?] they will have to move the Quonset hut, jackhammer up the concrete pad in the courtyard and strip the soil out of most of the Healing Garden in order to get at the concrete structure and replace the waterproofing.

Which means that for November, or longer depending on how the job goes and the weather, the courtyard will be closed. The courtyard being closed presents the problem of access to the grocery distribution and the meal, as the normal access to the meal centre and cafe cannot be used while the courtyard is closed for construction.

So today [Friday] was a dry run to test out their plans for how people will enter and exit the building for groceries and meals. You can plan how you want the traffic to flow all you want, but it is the dry run that tests how your theoretical traffic flow actually flows – and lets you see what other thing you need to add to your plan.

The big negative to the need to redo the waterproofing and the loss of access to the courtyard as a result, is that the Cafe will be closed during the work since access is through the courtyard.

The trees in the area will no doubt find themselves under assault from the men as the result of the loss of the easy access to the washrooms available when the cafe is open. Offsetting that is that coffee [and water] will not be available with the cafe closed.

The real concern is the question of the weather. If it stays unseasonably dry the loss of access to the cafe will be much more liveable than a return to our normal late fall weather. Not strictly the temperature, but the rain. The Cafe provides a place to go to warm up and get some hot coffee inside you which is nice …… but during our normal rainy winter weather the washrooms provide a dry place to change to dry clothing. While homeless I was far more concerned with being dry than I was about the temperature.

I went to university and articled in Saskatoon and understand why residents of the lower mainland are laughed at as wimps for their ‘cold’ weather. Extreme weather is – 60 wind chill, not 0. As I wrote the temperature is not the killer I worried about while homeless, you can plan and deal with the cold. My planning was about how to stay as dry as possible and how to get out of wet clothes and into something dry. Zero is not that cold, but zero when you are wet is deadly if you cannot get dry.

In listening to the judgment in the suit filed against the city by the homeless I was struck by how beneficial it would have been if the judge had had access to someone with lived experience with being homeless, not to give him thumbs up or thumbs down, but to provide a point of view tempered by lived experience the judge does not have.

Taking down your tent and packing it away during the dry season is a royal pain in the bippy, but taking down your tent and packing it away during the lower temperatures of our rainy winters is a threat to your life. Whether past mayors, councillors and city staff accept their responsibility or not, their actions in denying people somewhere to keep a dry change of clothing and a place to get out of soaking wet clothing into something dry have resulted in people dieing from unnatural natural causes.

I believe it would have been of benefit to the judge in making his decision if he could have sat down and had a coffee with someone with lived experience to provide context and perception directly related to the issue he was judging.

While I am not a lawyer ……. I was going to comment about having standards but in light of the fact I ran for a seat on Abbotsford’s City Council and considering the behaviour and actions of Abbotsford mayors and councils on the matter of the homeless …. lawyers suddenly look better.

An interesting way to assess Abbotsford’s mayor and council: “What would I say about the behaviour of Abbotsford’s mayor and council towards the homeless? They make lawyers look like virtuous, caring human beings.”

Anyway, considering the way the law differentiates I would think that there is a difference between your right to be dry in summer, when it is a matter of comfort, and your right to be dry in winter when it is a matter of life and death.

I fervently hope that our unseasonable weather holds until the re-waterproofing is done and access restored. Even though it means I do not get my preferred cooler weather.

The reason for ‘food until next week’ being a consideration is that after weeks of being trapped at home with myself and in my own head the coming week will see my release from durance vile. When you factor in the weeks of work to get a pool of money together to have the clutch revitalized and the slow deterioration of the clutch and thus the prospect and period of incarceration it has been a – let us say – challenging2 + months.

Anyhow, a pastor has a parishioner who has a brother who semi retired and able and willing to do the clutch within my budget. So Thursday I moved the car to his place. Of course we are talking me and my car so of course there was the little matter of the rear tire that had gone flat to deal with. Oh, joy.

I am at the car focused on getting the spare on and the car delivered to the person who would deliver me from my imprisonment when my landlord comes home , sees what I am doing and brings over one of those tire pumps you plug into the lighter and inflate the tire.

Now I am focused not on getting the spare tire on itself, but on getting the car delivered to be repaired. Getting the spare on is not the Task I am highly motivated to accomplish but simply a step in accomplishing the delivered so the clutch can be done, myself set free.

So I look at the pump and, so what? Spare on, car delivered, car gets repaired and I am FREE! My landlord – correctly – points out re-inflating the tire and getting the tire repaired during the process of delivery is easier and more sensible than delivering the car with the need to deal with the tire an outstanding issue.

Of course my brain is going: put on spare, deliver car, car repaired, me FREE! My inner voice processes the word free with the intonation of COOKIE spoken by the cookie monster when confronting a cookie.. When I am trapped at home life becomes this rather weird play – the drama of the car presents in the format of the old movie serial the Perils of Pauline; FREE has the passion, the focus of Cookie Monster on a cookie; Abbotsford [and Maple Ridge] and their actions on homelessness are the Keystone Kops …… although now that I consider the matter Keystone Kops has far more to do with the actions and behaviours of the cities than with my perception and processing of reality during a time when I am hovering in mid air over a black, bottomless pit like Wiley E. Coyote when he realizes he has run off the cliff, looking down and envisioning the downward plunge and the possibility that you will “finish knowing then”; and with my focus my landlord is like watching Bugs Bunny dubbed in Japanese, you recognize the form, but the content does not process into sense.

The wonderful human being helping me get the car moved and repaired and my landlord share ‘A Look’ [yes, one of THOSE looks] and I am directed into the car and handed the plug that goes into the lighter, plug it in and start the car which starts the tire inflating. My landlord tells me to take the pump with me in case there is a need on the way to get the tire repaired and return it when I return from my mission, then exits stage left.

My brain is still going spare, deliver car, car repaired, FREE! Fortunately my WRAP plan includes provision for this kind of scenario and the matter is referred to the logical sub-processor that is one of the reasons getting drunk provides no escape for me. No matter how drunk – or stoned – I get there is a part of my brain that remains online in logical mode and provides running commentary about the asinine effect being drunk is having on my behaviour.

Not only doesn’t being drunk provide escape, this inescapable inner narration is as bad as or worse than whatever I sought escape from. A point that is logically made – ad infinitum – by said logic sub-processor.

The sub-processor judges my landlord correct, that it is more logical to include a detour to a tire store to repair the car in the car delivery process. Since the rule [I cannot remember its designation off the top, or bottom or from the middle of my brain] is that when this type of conflict arises, the judgment rendered by my brain’s logic sub-processor becomes ‘my final decision’ and obeyed.

So I it is that once the tire is inflated to the proper pressure I speed off at the speed of a crawl. I think that towards the end of its self powered trip I could have pushed the car faster than it was moving. So with the four way hazards flashing I slooooowly wend my way to Curtis Tire with whom the driver for my journey home after delivering the car had dealt with recommended.

It was a busy morning for Curtis Tire so I got to spend the better part of two hours waiting in a chair in their Waiting Room. Since my brain is now going get tire fixed, deliver car car repaired, FREE! it does not matter that it will be more than an hour before they even get to my car ….. tire fixed, car delivered, car repaired, FREE! is the focus.

So when informed that it will be over a hour before they get to my car my reply is a quietly polite “that’s OK”. Tire fixed, car delivered, car repaired, FREE!

I step out to the car get the briefcase/three ring binder that I travel with, return to the waiting room, extract sheets of paper from the binder, take pen in hand and begin to write down the words I want to address to Justin Trudeau as he begins his tenure as the person  in whose hands my future wellbeing rests.

Hundreds of words later and the gentleman from the front desk comes up to me hands me the keys and we walk up to the front desk and I pay a bill that even my brain in its mode of tire fixed, car delivered, car repaired, FREE! notes that the costs is very reasonable.

I exit the waiting room close to two hours after i entered it and as I walk to the car my brain poses the question that since I was writing and had not experienced the time that passed as waiting, was it a waiting room or writing room for me?

tire fixed, car delivered, car repaired, FREE!

My journey of delivery continues to its destination ¹ where I meet my rescuer. A nice man and the relaxing conversation help dissipate the focus of: tire fixed, car delivered, car repaired, FREE!

Interesting, thoughtful conversation on the drive home and after unlocking the front door and entering my abode I find myself relaxed and thinking I need to remember to take the USB stick with the 60’s psychedelic rock on it with me when I pay for the repair and retrieve my now mobile mobility device.

Start the car, start the music, open the windows, crank the music and cruise home FREE!

Being in that optimistic frame of mind I sit down at the computer and ask if anyone could provide a ride to the Salvation Army for lunch and groceries. To which Cass replied asking what time and where to pick me up.

And this Chronicle has reached the point at which it began.