On Dreading

Today is Wednesday, therefore tomorrow is Thursday, the day after Friday and the day after that is Saturday, September 13, 2008. Roughly between 0700 and 0930 on Saturday (actually it will probably be between 0720 and 0910) I will be skating. I will be doing the North Shore Inline Marathon, for the second and very likely last time. Any regular reader of my blog knows that when I signed up for the NSIM back in April I was an avid skater, any regular reader who has actually been following my blog since then knows things changed just a little. The truth is, I cannot wait for Saturday, Saturday afternoon that is! The marathon will be over and I can get down to the business of selling my unused wheels and bearings, to make room for my bike repair tools and spare parts.

A part of my life will be over, just as a new part begins. Ironic, I used to be completely addicted to inline skating. I figure in the period between July 2004 and April 2008 I probably spent upwards of 1200 hours on skates. I loved the freedom, and the speed.

And then I lost the passion. It was not as if I just decided one day, that's it, I am giving up on this, I think it was a combination of things. The new bike (Amy) the extra long distance to get to TISC, whereas the Beaches Cycle Club is right around the corner. The change at TISC, I went to have fun mostly, but it seems from what I read that the focus shifted to winning races and away from the relaxed environment that I liked. (Hint to elite racers out there, guys I have a day job that causes enough stress, when I go riding or skating I am trying to relieve, not re-live stress.) I am not trying to say these changes are a bad thing, I am just saying I am not interested in winning if I can't have fun doing it and what I read of this year's programme did not look like my cup of tea.

Anyway one thing any skater has to admit that cycling has them beat on, I can ride my bike from Woodbine and Queen St. in Toronto all the way to Hamilton Beach, let all the Toronto skaters draft off me for a few of what would be recovery laps, before turning around and heading right up to the top of rattle snake point, and then home... which inspires me to propose a new ride on Riding Too Far.

Another reason I love to ride, since I switched to riding I have done even less driving than before, I am averaging about 10~15km/week. Now think about this, in driving 15km we will say I get appalling fuel economy, that is say, 2L of gas, there are roughly 300million people in North America, if we all burned 2L of gas a week, that would be 600ML/week or about 70ML/day, lets assume that industry uses an amount equal to consumers, so 140ML/day, and lets further assume that there is 40 gal. (151L) of gas in a barrel of oil, that means that for gas consumption, North America would use about 1M barrels of oil per day, if everyone drove as little as I did. (Oh and yes, notice that I assume 6 and 96 year-olds all drive.) Well 1M barrels of day sounds like a lot until you realise that in fact the United States alone uses more than 10Million barrels of oil per day! Instead of driving to Hamilton, ride a bike. If we could all cut our gas consumption back by as much as I did, global warming would become the great non issue of the 21'st century instead of probably the greatest threat to the human race since the invention of the atomic bomb. If we could all cut our consumption back as much as I have, the United States could end its dependency not just on Saudi or OPEC oil, the United States could end it's dependency on Alaskan and Canadian oil! Imagine a World where Osama Bin Laden is no longer a threat, a World where air is clean and traffic fatalities are a thing of the past, it is possible you know. Just ride a bike more.