On Skating and the Olympics

I have a theory, not to many skaters are reading my blog anymore, no one has picked a favourite skate boot, I already have five votes for bike, but nothing for skate. (No I did not vote, in either poll.) Still it is ironic, on March 7, that is only 5 months ago, if I were asked what I do with my spare time the answer would have to be skating, the next day I bought Amy and by the time I got home from my first ride to Burlington a few months later skating seemed to loose all its appeal.

My calf’s still hurt from my skate two days ago, I’ll live, but this race in Duluth is not going to be pretty. Meanwhile I will not be able to do the Escape the Don ride tonight, everything hurts too much. Oh well, at least there is next week. I guess it does not really matter, when I took Erin into the shop yesterday, a lot of begging and pleading resulted in Mackey (the mechanic) telling me he might be able to look at her today. But the look he gave when he saw how out of true the back wheel on Erin is, maybe I should just buy a couple new spokes and a new rim? I wonder how much that would cost. Alright that does it, I am buying a lottery ticket. I need the money.

On an unrelated note, I wrote once, that athletes ought to consider boycotting the Olympic games. I wrote that in sympathy for the Tibetans. My writing pissed off Jacky Shu, not that pissing someone off ever upset me, but one really good argument I forgot to provide, the air quality in North East China is appalling. If I were an endurance runner or cyclist I would be trying to break my leg right now just to get out of competing. Between the dioxins and suspended particulates, the air in Beijing is a toxicologists dream (or nightmare I suppose).

The government has closed factories and reduced the number of cars on the road and their harshest measures have simply arrested the growth of the poisons not actually reduced it. Meanwhile in three weeks the Olympics will be over and the PRC will go back to poisoning everybody’s air business as usual. (Its not as if a dioxin cares that it just crossed the border and is now blowing into International waters.)

So what is to be done? Boycott Chinese made products? Demand better environment protection in future trade treaties? Put the environment before human rights when lecturing Beijing (not that the Politburo cares). One hundred years ago the same sort of nonsense occurred in the United States, slowly the progressive movement cleaned up the mess. To be sure the corruption and lack of environmental awareness, as embodied by the Bush administration has made a modest resurgence, but it will be beaten back down as is the nature of democratic societies. But China is not democratic, a progressive movement cannot arise organically in a non democratic society, can it?