I took the GRE today. The testing facility -- a lifeless, carpeted unit in an office building attached to a suburban mall -- was located in Burnaby, BC.

The testing environment was awful. Inimical, suffocating and unlivable. It was nothing like taking a test in my home college at the University of Toronto.

My score was fine. I am happy to report -- and not without irony -- that one of my two essays was on the enduring value of art.

The moment I escaped the grip of the mall, I rolled onto an urban highway, and rode home with the violent attraction of a neodymium magnet. It was all downhill.

I discovered a secret on my journey home. The phenomenology of cycling down a mountain on a bicycle without brakes can be heightened by projecting explicitives at no one in particular.