Leo

i met leo may 31, 2005. the weather that tuesday had clouded over that morning, but by lunch time nothing but blue skies.

i decided to walk by the waterfront instead of ride, for some reason. i stopped at the benches at the far side of the grain elevator. eventually, a serious trail rider whooshed past down the gravel path to the bay. a bit later, a kid on a coaster bike. then another guy, slower, on an old trail bike.

he pulled up and sat on the next bench over. i had seen the dusty, dulll green-grey 18-speed a few minutes earlier outside the tim horton's. he was lean in his faded jeans and a plaid shirt, a dirty baseball cap and dark brown work boots, and his face was grizzled with tan and a 3-day beard. he might have been in his sixties.

he said it was a quiet day, and said he had come in from coldwater that morning. (no helmet, no water bottle, just a chain and lock around the seat post.) said he rides everywhere. i asked how long he'd been riding, and he said about a year since he lost his licence.

turns out he's a bricklayer. but the bricks aren't at the jobsite today in perkinsfield, so he's just riding around, he says. takes a tobacco pouch from his shirt pocket and rolls a smoke. he got to wasaga beach in under 4 hours last week. his other bike is much faster cuz it has skinnier tires, but he blew one of the tires. and he tells me about the really good trail from coldwater to orillia, and on to rama casino.

we exchange names and he asks if i'm off work too. no, just on my lunch break, i say, and he asks where i work and what i do.

leo looks up sixty feet at the grain elevator and says he used to dive off of it into the bay when he was 12 or 13. but he wouldn't do that any more. too old.

"don't break no code on the computer," he calls out as i leave.