In between things going pretty decently, it's been an irritating day.

If you ever have the chance to eat at The Breakfast Club on Taschereau near Boulevard Rome, take it. If the Latkes Benedict are on the daily specials, get them. You will wish you could remember my email address for effusive thanks.

So I figured, okay, per plan, I'm not going into Montréal today. I'm finding someplace close to the hotel. So I packed the laptop, the marked-up hard copy, and The Five C's Of Cinematography (my current take-along book, the most lucid I've ever read on the subject) into one of my "it's so stylish, no one will know it's a pannier" panniers and went café hunting on foot.

There are no cafés. I don't know where those café listings I linked in my last entry came from, but ain't none. Taschereau is a street of furniture stores, hotels, malls, and restaurants. Some of the restaurants look worthwhile--and some of the malls are interesting; one is segregated into the Asian side and the non-Asian side--but none of them beckon sit in me! sit in me! I love when you stare pensively! I adore when you write for hours!

So that was irritating, until I cut behind the Esso station and there was the Brossard Bibliotheque. Two stories of quiet rooms full of books, and the tables have A/C outlets. Smart of them to hide it behind the Esso station. Otherwise, everyone would want one.

Four hours of productive writing later, time for dinner. I promised to try one of the beautiest restaurants of south shore of Montréal, mostly because I like the bad English at the website, but also because it's right next to my hotel. Tried it. It's good. Won't go back, because it's not amazing. If I'm spending under $25, I'm flexible. Over $40 and it had better make my neurons fire in synchronized patterns.

So I waddle back to the hotel, and my room's warm, and I did have a glass of wine. So since I don't like snoozing during a PRODUCTIVITY TRIP, I wrap the laptop in plastic, slide it into its compartment in the pannier, clip the pannier to the bike, and suit up. It's about nine at night. I think I can find the 24-hour Second Cup on Rue Ste-Catherine again, and while I'm out there, I can see whether the Barnes & Noble has Vélo's Montréal bike path map.

An hour later, I'm on the same drawbridge I crossed on my first night here, only the gate's locked when the drawbridge isn't open, and there's no sign of the gateman, down at the Montréal end. He might be there, but I can't tell, and I've passed a couple of times and noticed that whoever was on duty was asleep.

15 minutes, standing there, waiting for either the drawbridge to rise or a tanker to approach, or a siren to go off. Anything. Somebody flashing a light in my eyes and telling me to get the hell off this bridge would, at least, have been an essentially orienting experience. But no. Just water noises and the lighted buildings of Montréal, right there, minutes away. Finally I wrestle the bike around and head back down the rise.

At the bottom, I can turn right, into Brossard and back to the hotel, or I can turn left--there's a piste cyclable, all yellow-broken-lined there, too. My left gastrocnemius or plantaris is, if not actually barking, whimpering some. Back to the hotel would make sense. But what if the left path goes to another bridge? I could still write tonight...

The left path does not go to a bridge. It goes a couple of miles up into St. Lambert, where it dumps out in front of a police station and then leaves you sitting on your bike, staring at a highway cloverleaf and wondering if going straight puts you onto a bike path, or onto an interstate. That was enough for my plantaris and me. We turned around and biked the six thousand miles back home, stopping at a Tim Horton's near the river only long enough to make some notes about a couple of scenes and cool down enough that we discovered--upon leaving--just how very cold the air was that we'd been biking in all that time.

Tomorrow my plecostomus and I need to stay low-mileage, but the Brossard Bibliotheque is closed on Wednesdays. So it may be another decent but irritating day.