Curse This City: the Canucks

The final minute bleeds out into the double eggs and those of us still holdings brews are sipping feverishly to relieve the tension. To stave off the burgeoning sorrow.

And then the count was down. It was over: 7 - 5. Over and out. I could hear my father, 30 km or so away, cursing up a storm.

People throughout the bar start chugging back the last of their drinks. Others stare into the ether, lost in disbelief. We're all reassessing our commitments to this team – bandwagon-jumpers and fanatics alike. Faced with the what we've known all along – understood in our hearts without acknowledging it – that this team of ours are a pride of losers. The Canucks? Pffffffff...

The crowds around the tables wake from their daze. Slowly, they turn their neighbours. Engage in disheartened conversation. "I just wasn't ready for that yet," I hear someone say. "I know they wouldn't win, but I wasn't ready for it to end so suddenly."

Well cold turkey has slapped us all very hard. Now it's time to watch baseball.

Bottom Line: now we have to talk to each other at the bar.

But on the bright side....

Bless This City:

....when I asked the server for another pale ale, the bartender screwed up and poured two. She hands me one, comes back minutes later with another frosty glass of amber liquid and she says: "This is your lucky day," and only charges me for one.

"Yes. Too bad about the hockey game, though..."

And, also, when I had arrived at the bar, I locked my bike to a parking metre but the bastard wouldn't stay upright. Bound by gravity and those damned wheels. So I just left it lying on the sidewalk, like a toddler worn out after a tantrum.

When I checked on it hours later, some kind soul had picked it up and parked it the way it should have been. There it stood, gleaming in the setting sunlight, beautiful as ever.

Bottom Line: some stranger probably wants my bike.