The Tuesday before I left for Palm Springs I went wandering around the city with one of the few friends I kept from high school, Teddy.

This is Teddy.

We brought cameras.

Teddy and I started out in downtown Edmonton. We eventually ended up at the Muttart Conservatory (“How did we get here?” “I was following you.” “I was following you!“). So we decided to just cross the river again and go to my house.

There’s this footbridge near my house.

This is the footbridge.

The bridge has been there for ages. When I was a kid, we’d watch the Canada Day fireworks from this bridge.* If you wanted to, you could play the theme from “Hockey Night in Canada” – the proper one – on its floorboards. And, of course, there’s the graffiti.

This is the graffiti.

Generation upon generation of shitheads have carved their names into this bridge. Anyone of any age who says they haven’t, at some point in their lives, scratched something into the rails is either not from around here or a damn dirty liar. I saw “Michaelangelo wuz here” chiseled into a bench once.

It’s pretty much the best bridge ever.

*I really should go back to watching the fireworks from the bridge. Every time I go to the Legislature grounds on Canada Day I run into the same guy who used to go to my high school, drunk off his ass and making a nuisance of himself. I don’t know how they keep finding me.

I’ll give my new next-door neighbours some credit: the apple tree in the backyard probably seemed like a fantastic idea when they bought the place. I can imagine it myself: apple blossoms in the spring, a playground for the kids and cheap applesauce anytime you want.

However, the thing is huge. And a mutant. And it hangs over the fence. So instead of Larry the Previous Neighbour inviting us over to pick apples, we have this:

They explode, too.

Yay.