On Oil

I donated blood today. I don’t even know how many donations I have made, I would have to look at my donor card and see what the count is. I think it is more than 65 donations to date. So I will not be doing any riding for a while and as fall turns to winter (a year ago today was the first snow fall of the fall/winter of 2008-’09) I fear my days of riding are just about over until next season.

Talk of seasonal change brings to mind a dream, I think it was a dream, possibly an experience from my late high school years. It must have been a late August night, I am driving with friends in the car, I am pretty sure down the Don Valley Parkway under the bright yellow sodium lights, with the music on loud and the windows and roof open, enjoying that bitter sweet last gasp of warmth and freedom that is a teenagers life in the summer. The freedom of being able to drive too fast with the wind in my face, is an experience I have tried to repeat a couple times in the years since. But I want to come back to this notion of the bitter sweet pleasures that must come to an end.

We live in a dream world I’m afraid. We need to come to terms with the fact that the amount of energy in a Liter of gasoline is about 32MJ/L or about 150 kBTU/Gallon (US). Put another way, there are about 7 million calories of potential chemical energy in a Liter of gas, now 7 million calories would get me nearly 300 round trips to Rochester NY by bicycle (based on my 12 Kilocalorie effort last time), 7 million calories can also be used to drive the 2001 Audi sedan that Lesley owns perhaps 8 to 10 kilometers in Toronto.

Can I be more blunt than the mathematics here? The fact is driving hugely, phenomenally, unbelievably, wasteful. We as a society need to recognize a few facts about the way we live:

1. Our lifestyle is unsustainable


2. Our lifestyle provokes animosity from the sort of people who would commit acts of terror against us.


3. Our lifestyle is destroying our very habitat.

With respect to the first point, peak oil is not something I think I need to rehash. It is fact, there is only so much ground beneath us, and only so much of that ground contains oil. It stands to reason, as we tap the oil, there will be less and as the amount of oil runs out, getting more will become harder and harder. The total global production of oil is about 83 million barrels a day, yet every year the amount of oil existing wells produce drops by about 4 million barrels a day. Just to maintain existing oil production figures, every single year 4 million net new barrels a day of production must come on stream around the world. So the recently discovered elephant field in the Gulf of Mexico, which is under thousands of feet of water and earth and contains 15 billion barrels of oil? If it could produce 4 million barrels a day, or 46 barrels a second, it would still only keep our production flat lined for a whole ten years before running dry. Of course we need production to increase. Little wonder oil was selling for $146 a barrel prior to the recession and is now nearly $80 despite the massive contraction in demand for oil.

With respect to the second point, consider by the time your typical American (or Canadian) child turns four years old they have consumed as much energy as your average Somali will consume in their lifetime. A Somali village of 40 needs as much energy as I do! We dump our garbage off their shores because they cannot police their own waters, their fishermen in desperate need for food or money to sustain the family resort to piracy. It is now believed that Osama Bin Laden got his start with support to the Somali war lords, little wonder, they probably are as disgusted by our own decadence as we are.

In Vice President (President Elect) Al Gore’s presentation that was made into the movie An Inconvenient Truth, he shows a cartoon where there is a balance, the decision is bars of gold or the planet Earth. The former next president points out that gold isn’t really worth all that much if the planet we live on is dead.

We have been living in a dream, energy so easy to get, all you really need to do is punch a hole in the ground, wait for the oil to burst out and, if you name is Rockefeller collect your billions. But as I have tried to show, this way of living, with machines that use far too much energy, and with lifestyles that are far too wasteful, is coming to an end. I fear the next act for the human race will be to learn how to make do with a lot less just as we did one hundred years ago.

On Joy Rides

You know it occurs to me that that bit of Tolkien I quoted in the last post could be taken as some sort of attempt on my part to equate myself with Aragorn the king of Gondor. Obviously nothing could be further from the truth, I was just thinking of the scene in Return of the King when the sword gets reforged from the broken blades, much as Erin was rebuilt. (Something rather pathetic, read the Wikipedia article I reference, I think someone needs to be told that The Lord of the Rings is not a text book, and I thought I was bad because I named my bike.)

I better insert a second disclaimer here, I read The Lord of the Rings, long before the Peter Jackson mega blockbuster came out, before I came to know Lesley even, truth is, I'm not much of a fan for fantasy, including Tolkien. I'm sure I've upset a legion of boys (if they read my blog) but I just never liked reading a thousand pages about an impossible World where impossible things happened and people lived impossibly long lives. I need my fiction to be grounded in reality. (Sorry children, but having a Wikipedia article about Lord Aragorn that reads as if the king were real does not make his story any more enticing.)

In other news, ever since I got Erin back up I have been riding her as much as I possibly can. And what a delight it is to be on a light bike. Suddenly hills that in the past seemed difficult are now a place to drop the rest of the club as I hammer on by.

Recently I rode through 16th Avenue from Kennedy across to Keele St, whatever appeal there is in 16, also known as Carrville and Rutherford and possibly other things, is beyond me. There was a huge amount of motor vehicle traffic. But one thing I found ironic and disgusting at the same time, as I passed Leslie I encountered a Dewbourne then a Spadina Ave. Now having grown up in Cedarvale I lived one block from Dewbourne and remember riding my Coppi up and down Spadina. Only up North of 16 the roads got these names by a frantic effort of developers (Question: why are all efforts by a developer frantic?) to sell homes to the nostalgic children of Forrest Hill and Cedarvale residents. Children who had to have the two car parking and had succumb to the seduction of the automobile.

The seduction of the automobile, reminds me of the scene in the movie Oh What a Lovely Little War. The beautiful woman on stage (representing war) singing to the boys telling them to 'take the ticket', but when the boys jump on stage she turns out to be an ugly hag, but of course by then it is too late, the boys are rushed to the trenches to fight or more realistically, to die. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, "Owning a car, is like holding a wolf by the ears, you don't like it but you don't dare let it go." Well some people like to own cars and drive, I don't understand that type of person but I know they exist, personally I still remember getting our car, it was an exciting way to blow a lot of money, but after eight years it is amazing how ugly the hag of car ownership truly is.

In other thoughts, recently someone published on the BCC web site the following in a comment: "...at Bloomington, and together we had a nice spin to the Starbucks. I only hit 65km/h on Kennedy. Next year, I vow to break the speed limit." Now I checked and in fairness nowhere did I write that I have had, for a long time, a goal of exceeding the posted speed limit of 70km/h on Kennedy Road southbound below Bloomington. I recall some time ago a BCC ride to Goodwood, QB was training for the Iron Man and after reaching Goodwood had decided to do a second lap up the town line road or perhaps 9'th or 10'th line. I tried to catch QB but he is just so damn fast, I ended up turning for home on Kennedy and discovered how easy it was to hit 60km/h, I realised with a little effort I could exceed the speed limit and maybe even get busted if I was not careful. Thereafter I set a goal of getting busted for speeding there. I have not yet achieved this goal, but I have said I want to do that for some time. Now I may not have written that I want to get busted for speeding on Kennedy but, I know I have told near everyone that I've had that goal and one day I will achieve it. That said, on August I did say the following: "Max speed: 59.27km/h (damnit didn’t bust the speed limit… gotta keep trying)" I know, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but imitation without attribution is something else entirely. I know sometimes I repeat what other people say, but I try to acknowledge that person, or at the very least acknowledge the fact that the remark was not my idea, and I know I should not get all hot and bothered about it, but on the other hand it is not the first time I have had an idea and someone has tried to steal the credit. At least this time the theft of an idea will not result in reward, a silly goal, a laugh or two, but nothing serious. The last stolen idea was work related and a vendor tried to claim the credit, thank goodness my manager was on the same conference call with that vendor when I conceived the idea, I just wish my manager was on the second conference call when the vendor tried to publicly take the credit for my idea.

On Being Reborn, Redux

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.

-J. R. R. Tolkien

A quick aside: sorry this took so long, I've been horribly busy with work lately.

Well first things first, I owe a great big shout out to Barry Cohen for a first rate pain job, Erin's scuffs can still be found, but not easily. Second but no less gratitude to Malcolm Munro of Bisegeal for being without qualification the most skilled bike mechanic I have ever crossed paths with. His fine work has enabled me to get Erin back into fighting form with no more than a new pair of shift leavers, new cables and guides. (In truth I could have reused the cables and guides if the ninnies at a store not to be named here had not cut all that perfectly good stuff up in a bout of lazy vandalism.) Oh of course I need new bar tape too, but the short of it is, for a ride that I was mourning just a few weeks ago, I am delighted, elated even, to say she is back! Below are some pictures of her reconstruction.















Before I got Erin rebuilt I was riding the Coppi in a bike lane and beside me was a motor cycle. I was not really thinking about it when I hammered past the motor cycle, he has a speedometer, I have to ask people the time of day on the Coppi (read: I don't have any stats). So passing a motor vehicle whilst in the bike lane of a 40 zone is no big deal to me, but the guy on the motor cycle was impressed. He told me it wasn't fair that I passed him, I replied that I didn't need gas either. (I am not used to motor vehicle operators saying nice things to me.) Lesley had a better line when I told her, she said I should have point to my legs and said "six litres of displacement!"

I have had a chance to ride Erin once now, on the BCC Sunday November 8 ride, I was much faster that day than I have been in some time. Here are some pictures of that ride.




In other news, I read recently that Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) has made new guidelines banning unsafe driving in advertising. In short car makers must produce ads that do not promote reckless driving by suggesting cars should be driven too fast or handled too dangerously. One advertiser lamented the new regulations: "It's going to present a challenge to brands …which are built on characteristics of power and speed.” The number of objections I have to almost everything I just wrote, although factual. It seems to me that automobiles promote a level of obesity, obscenity and obstinacy, from the behaviour they encourage in drivers to the way oil rich politicians lack any decency. To my way of thinking, the best automobile was the one that was never made, the best automobile ad is the one that was never aired and the best automobile driver is the one who threw away the keys and never looked back.

If it were up to me, and I am sure there are autoworkers and Alberta politicians who would sigh with relief that it is not up to me (they would care if they read my blog that is), advertisements for automobiles would be banned outright. All cars would be, by law, an ugly shade of yellow or orange, so they can easily be seen night or day, fuel economy would be at least 40 mpg (about 5.9 L/100km) and it would be clearly mandated that by say 2015 fuel economy would be 60 mpg (about 3.9 L/100 km). Engines would be required to auto stop when the vehicle was not moving and there would be no separate category for "light trucks". Heavy trucks would have their own fuel economy standards but a heavy truck would require very robust licenses. In fact all drivers would have to get a routine licence retest every three to five years, maybe when it is time for a new license photo? Any individual who does not meet very robust reflex, hand eye coordination and good vision and hearing would loose their licence. In short, driving really is a privilege, not a right, and people should not bother with the hassle unless they really *really* need it. Given the desperate state of the North American Auto Industry, why politicians do not see things my way is beyond me.

When you think about it, the reason we make driving so easy is as much as anything to secure factory jobs, but as fewer and fer cars are made on our shores here in North America (and as the quality of those jobs suffer, decreased pay, reduced benefits, etc) I have to wonder, shouldn't we at some point stop pandering to Detroit?