On Spring Training

Jeff Rubin the former CIBC World Markets chief economist wrote a book a little while ago, Why Your World is About to Get a Lot Smaller. In this book Rubin calls gains in efficiency "head fakes". What happens when people discover that they can heat a 1500 square foot home with the same natural gas they once needed for a 1000 square footer? They get a 2500 square foot home. Oh sure it is a little more thoughtful than that, but I clearly remember when mom and dad went from a two car to a one car family. The new car cost as much to lease as the two old cars did before. Dad said the savings would be found in reduced auto insurance, still I think my parents could have saved even more if they had stuck to a more modest vehicle. (Do not even get me started on the irrationality of SUVs with big engines, big diesel engines.) As for my parents luxury car, it ended up costing a lot more than the two previous cars combined - replacement car parts are not cheap.

Speaking of efficiency I have started my spring training, building up intensity and duration. It seems hard to believe but just a month ago riding to work was, thanks to the exceedingly cold temperatures, painful. Now my biggest issue is keeping the sweat situation under control as I hammer down University.

In the evenings I often ride out on the lakeshore trail to the Humber River and back. It is not a particularly trying ride, actually it is quite easy. But a short hop along the water's edge gives me a chance to stretch my legs and forget about everything, even if only for a short time.

I have to admit though, riding the trail is not all fun, now that the weather is improving the trail is crowding. I suspect in the weeks to come my route may take a more northerly path west. But as always my rant (yes dear reader I come packing heat today) is directed at automobile drivers.

Why is it that drivers believe that the rules of no parking or no stopping when in a bike lane do not apply? Sometimes I think I should lug a hammer or perhaps a brick around and smash the windows of cars that force me to ride in and amongst the two ton moving killing machines. I try with quite some success to ride where there are bike lanes, this means that over an 8km direct route to work I end up going about 12km. But the truth is there is little point, every few blocks some piece of work has lodged his (or her?) car right in the bike lane and forced me to pass through and between cars. What's the point of a bike lane if cars can park there?

Sometimes I think that (Toronto candidate for mayor) Rocco Rossi, who seems to be campaigning as a conservative candidate for mayor of Toronto (he was the former national director of the Liberal party of Canada) is right, we don't need a bike lane on Jarvis St or Bloor Street. Frankly given the lack of regard motorists have for cyclists and bike lanes, I do not think a bike lane will not do one iota of good anyway.

What Toronto needs, desperately, is huge, god awful, painfully, horribly, expensive oil. Gas so unaffordable that Rocco and his cronies are reduced to public transit.

I suppose this next bit reveals me to be the antisocial curmudgeon everyone has always suspected, but I long for the day when gas is so expensive everyone is reduced to riding bikes. I have a really mean spirited dream to ride up behind some of the really offensive drivers (in my dream those drivers would, because of peak oil, now be cyclists). I would come up behind the offensive drivers, the ones who used to stop in bike lanes or cut me off whilst merging with traffic because they were not paying attention, we all know the type, the ones who honked and drove recklessly. Well I would love to come up behind them and scream obscenities at them and then hammer past as they struggle on under the weight of all their flab. Of course in reality the cyclist who was a motorist deserves no such treatment, they are to be commended for doing the right and decent thing. Still the dream of exacting vengeance on overly aggressive drivers lives on!

Anyway I donated blood again, number 68 for me. I got to thinking, my type, AB+, is pretty rare and exotic, but not very useful. Given how much donating hurts my performance why do I bother? I guess the person (or 68?) who's life I saved can explain why my donations matter, I just hope my donations are saving lives. It would be a shame if my blood was just poured away.