On Riding into the Wind

First of all, Happy American Thanksgiving! As a Canadian Thanksgiving is not really a big deal, a Monday off work, a big meal, that's about it. Of course for Americans Thanksgiving is a huge affair. Many people take Wednesday off to travel to be with family, then Friday is infamous "black Friday" when everyone buys their Christmas gifts, retailers favourite day of the year, although given the state of the economy Black Friday might be black for other reasons, or perhaps this year it should be called Red Friday?

Its rather annoying when Americans get the day off and we don't, so many vendors I depend on that are not returning my calls today, then I remembered when I woke a guy up in San Jose, hey it was 0900 Pacific Time, on a working day. His first words to me were, "happy Thanksgiving". Ooops!

Now I have to ask, how come no one else is voting in my latest survey? Surely we all have a favourite type of bike, heck even my arch nemesis George, rides a bike... no not the guy from TISC (I spelled the name correctly) I meant the unelected tongue tied President of the United States, he has a mountain bike he rides all over the ranch in Crawford.

I still wouldn't want to drink beer with the guy.

Now President Elect Obama, if he could come by... although I think I'd rather play chess with him or something as cerebral, although I strongly suspect he'd whip me in under 10 moves or something equally insane. Here is a thought, imagine trying to play poker against the guy who the Republican could not unsettle.

Anyway today on the ride to work, drivers were bad, of course, hardly need to say that. They were their usual oblivious ignorant selves. But what I wanted to say is what a headwind! Holy smokes the whole ride in was a hammer feast just to maintain what I am sure was not more than 26 or 27km/h. The only time, when I was not in the shelter of buildings, when the wind was bearable was when I got to draft off a Taxi. At least, assuming the wind has not changed directions, I should fly home tonight.

I am thinking I'd like to write a SF (Science Fiction) novel. I have some ideas for what I'd like to write about, I am just not sure if I have the self discipline to actually write the whole thing beginning to end, nor do I believe the characters I have dreamed up are not totally cliched, well a few are not cliched, they just aren't believable. And really who would read a novel about a dystopic future police investigation of a murder? Like that one hasn't been played out a bajillion times before.

On Domain Name Service

Years ago, when I was a University co-op (alright I feel old now), I worked for a time at a company that was in the Insurance industry. One guy, an actuary, had a trade magazine at his desk, yes believe it or not there are in fact trade magazines for actuaries. Now I know most of you are probably thinking "what does an actuary do?" The truth is actuarial science is probably the most straightforward branch of mathematics, you start by observing some statistical trend, life expectancies, number of car crashes per hundred thousand drivers, number of house fires per million homes, etc, then you tell an insurance company how much they should charge for a particular policy. Sound boring? Well from what I hear, it is. Anyway this actuary has a trade magazine and as I was waiting to talk to him about his computer I read the article that the magazine was opened to.

The article was written by another actuary who was pleased as punch that he was able to help his neighbour with a professional problem, specifically the neighbour wanted to know if he should keep his whole life insurance policy or go term life. (If you don't know the difference between whole and term life, don't worry about, you will find out, sooner, much sooner, than anyone really ought to.)

I do not have the problem of having the useless profession on my block. Short of a TEOTWAWKI event (A Y2K expression, The End Of The World As We Know It), I suspect neighbours, friends, family, will always be knocking on the computer guy's door asking for help with their wireless or their email, or word processing, or... & cetra.

I should have listened to my mother and become a doctor. At least then when I have an ache or pain I wouldn't have to weigh the cost of waiting (always far too long) against the potential benefit of actually seeing the doctor.

Anyway much as I'd like to, on further reflection I realise I really cannot go into specifics here, but suffice it to say a friend of mine was having DNS issues and so for the first time I looked into registering a domain name for someone other than my employer. Holy smokes, domain names are cheap! For the princely sum of $10 you too can own: EverythingIEverWantedToKnowAboutLifeInsuranceButWasAfraidToAsk.com.

Only try managing that domain once you buy it. Registrars have it in for us! What a convoluted ugly, and I do mean ugly process. Sure you can pay with a personal credit card, but then if you do that you need to supply the home address. You can specify that the address should be hidden but what if you are doing your friend or organziation a favour? What if you want their address to show? So for example, suppose the Prime Minister of Canada started a Kitten Lovers club. So maybe Mrs. Harper decided to register primekittens.com. Only instead of the home address being say 24 Sussex Drive, she wanted it to be 1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington DC (I hope the Obama family's new Puppies get along with cats).

So Mrs. Harper (The Prime Minister's wife) goes to some Registrar and fills in the information, Lauren Harper, 24 Sussex Drive, Ottawa ON, K1A 0A3, and submits this to the registrar. Now of course anyone who wants to, can easily find out where the Prime Minister of Canada lives, but until I was able to modify the DNS record almost 24 hours after I set the record up anyone who did a whois against the record I created could see my home address. Even better than that, once I did start to configure things I left certain fields empty, my friend did not have a mail server, so no MX record. What does the Registrar do? They add an MX record for their own mail server. Guys, if I order a corned beef sandwich on rye, please do not serve me a chocolate cake because I did not bother to order desert, assume if I did not order desert I don't want any!

I guess the point of this whole post is, stop assuming I am incompetent, this assumption is really starting to frustrate me. I miss the glory days when all you needed to blow the system away was rm -rf * and talk of email worms (viruses) were all fiction.

On Laws

First order of business, Sultan Ahmed, the Taxi driver who it appears crashed the Taxi he was driving into Chris Kasztelewicz (the cyclist who lost his leg when Ahmed crashed his taxi) has been charged, according to the Globe and Mail with six different criminal charges, although only five are listed:

1. criminal negligence causing bodily harm
2. dangerous operation of a vehicle causing bodily harm
3. failing to stop at the scene of an accident
4. attempted obstruction of justice
5. aggravated assault

I am no lawyer, but I do believe that items: 1., 4., and 5. all come with some pretty significant jail time. Which to be frank is a relief. The way cops are with Taxi drivers I almost expected them to give this guy a pat on the back and then say, better luck next time.

On doing further research I found out a big one, Ahmed is also being charged with assault with a weapon, his car. Naturally that sort of charge, if found guilty comes with very significant jail time. In addition, we should expect that Kasztelewicz will take civil action against not only Ahmed, but probably Beck Taxi as well as any number of other entities. It is pretty much a sure thing that Ahmed will never drive again, nor will he ever be able to pay off all the money he is going to owe Kasztelewicz. The sad part is, I suspect no amount of money is going to truly compensate Kasztelewicz for the loss of ability, namely, Kasztelewicz can never ride a bike again. Well he can, but Kasztelewicz, like me, likes road bikes and liked to ride fast, and with one working leg, well riding fast is not going to happen anymore, and unless he drags around a prosthetic leg or training wheels how would he balance when he hits a red light?

The whole story is tragic. Honestly I don't care that Ahmed is a father with two children and a wife to feed, we have a social safety net for that. What pisses me off was the attitude that I will bet Ahmed had going into the argument, that no matter what, by virtue of the fact that Ahmed was in a car and Kasztelewicz was on a bike, Ahmed is in the right!

Gladiators in the Colosseum used to face the emperor before the battle and say: "We who are about to die salute you!"

Car drivers everywhere: we who ride among you, salute you! (Only it is a one fingered salute.)

Senatus Populusque ex Machina!

The signature of the Roman government was SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus) which means, The Senate and the People of Rome. Well I have replaced the People of Rome with People from the Machine. So we have: The Senate and the People from the Machine! Since all of us plebeian non-motorists don't matter, well maybe recent events will change some opinions.

On things to do in the winter

Lesley and I went skiing. Well I went skiing, Lesley went snowboarding. She very much wants to be a skater type person I think, not inline speed, but skateboard, snowboard, sort of like Avril Lavigne's 'Sk8ter Boi'. I've got to admit I admire the persistence, especially since Lesley has had no formal instruction in boarding. (This may come as the greatest non-shocker to those who know me, but I have never been, nor am I interested in, snow boarding. I used to do a lot of downhill skiing, heck I was pretty good at one time, but other things, lifeguarding in particular, started to take up much of my time.)

Actually thinking back to my downhill days, it was the mid 90's when I stopped, I remember the winter of 1994/'95, that was a warm winter, heck there was no snow that year. I remember riding to the pool at... lets see if I can still spell this one correctly, the Joseph J. Piccininni Community Centre... and YES, I got all the I's and N's right! You want more irony, I rode the same white Coppi to J.J.P. - don't use that name on the phone, sometimes Joseph's son would call and would he give the casual staff hell if they dared answer "JJP how can I help you?" - back in '94 that I rode to work last week. Only Christmas of 1994 there was NO snow, none, nadda, bubbkis. By the March break of 1995 I remember sitting out on the front porch in shorts and a T-shirt doing my required reading for English. No wonder I gave up skiing, how the hell do you ski in weather like that?

Hard to believe but that was 14 years ago!

On the way to the hills today on the radio they told us it was 45 years ago that JFK was shot. And this July marks 40 years since Apollo 11.

A lot of major events of the 60's seem to mark significant anniversaries this year, well alright two... no three, if we use 2008 as a starting point, sadly they are are assassinations of decent people, April was 40 years for MLK, RFK was 40 years ago this past June, then in November it was 45 years from JFK. I guess every year ending with three and eight is going to be that way.

Ooooh, Christmas marks the 40'th of Apollo VIII the first maned flight to the moon. Course it was the same year as MLK and RFK so yeah of course! (It is also the anniversary of the Tet offensive.)

Maybe I should be living in the 1960s? Actually what I ought to do is go do a PhD in American History, I would have a lot of fun doing that. Except, really, who needs an expert on the Johnson Administration?

There was something remarkable about the '60s, a period when the World went ahead and just turned itself inside out and upside down, then decided, nah that sucks, and the same people who said make love not war turned out to be the greedy bastards who would run up the debt, undo reasonable banking laws, and create our current economic disaster. (No I am not going to cite all my sources and write an entire essay on why the Baby Boomers are responsible for the sub-prime implosion, I am just going to point my finger at my parents generation and say, all your fault and walk away!) Besides blaming Baby Boomers is so easy, I mean its not like finding one is difficult, and really besides The Beatles, what have the Boomers given us that has been net good? Bill Clinton? Forget it, any good he did was offset by the Boomer George W. Bush. Stephen Harper? (Uhm, the only Boomer PM we've had for more than six months and anyone tells me he was any good... oh yeah, Brian Mulroney, an outstanding PM! For American business.) What about the arts? Well name a Baby Boomer artist? And I am excluding Margaret Atwood because while I appreciate she has a lot of talent, I just don't like her writing style, sorry Margaret. (Yes I am being arbitrary, but it's my blog I'll do as I damned well please!)

You know who else is a baby boomer? Virtually every single driver who thinks cyclists should get off the road because cars are GOD!

I win, baby boomers lets get this count up already, go smoke another dobbie!

I am mean aren't I? Oh well, when it comes to me and my ride, it seems, either they kill me, or I wish horrible things on them, but I cannot wait for a generation to emerge that has a better attitude towards cyclists. Sadly I have yet to see that generation come out of the oven.

How on Earth did I get from things to do in the winter to wishing ill on something like 70 million souls? Oh that's right, I was riding home from work in the cold yesterday and a car driver nearly killed me, then when he wanted to yell obscenities at me, rather than roll down his window and properly yell them, he mouthed the words to me, it was too cold to roll his window. (Well I'm sorry it's too cold, maybe think about how cold I am, and maybe think... hmmm, I'll bet nearly running this guy over is going to make him even more uncomfortable.)

[Insert standard angry rants against cars and car drivers right here!] Oh and Lesley was telling me she thinks all Taxi drivers should have their licence suspended, I think that's a great idea, lets start a petition, call the city licensing board, lets put a stop to Taxi insanity in Toronto!

Once Taxi drivers start acting sane I will offer free lessons on how to nail jelly to the ceiling. (Read: "don't hold your breath".)

On Riding in the Winter

What a frightful experience riding in the slush is. Don't get me wrong, it sure beats walking, or taking the Queen Street car, but damn, everything, and I do mean everything was muddy and wet when I got into the office. I spent about an hour just trying to get the worst of the mud out of my clothing. I guess I have at least learned one valuable lesson, I need a fender on my bike, that is not really something I have a lot of latitude on, if I don't arrest the mud before it nails me in the backside I am going to get sick. Arrrrrrgh, more money!

So by now if you have not heard the story of the cyclist who lost his leg near CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, formerly the Queen Street Mental Health Centre, or as us ex-lifeguards from Trinity Pool called it, the place where all the crazies come from) you've been lucky. The story is, although most of the facts are still not available, the cyclist is in and out of surgery, there may or may not have been a robbery, there was a shouting argument (people who live on the street were woken up by it in the early hours of Friday morning) a cab driver then backed his automobile into a cyclist and rammed him between a poll (presumably a telephone or hydro poll?) and the cab. The witnesses said they heard the sound of bone crunching then screaming, by the time they got out of bed the cyclist was in a pool of his own blood on the ground and his leg barely attached. (It was later amputated.)

Alright, I honestly tried really hard to tidy that story up and get rid of the really gruesome details but even re-reading my own writing makes my skin crawl.

There seems to be an attitude among people in our culture that driving is a right, that car drivers should have an unobstructed access to the road, that cyclists and pedestrians are second class and that cars are borderline deities. Do we need to list all the faults with cars? Seems so:

1. Automobiles are the ultimate terrorists, killing more civilians and non-civilians in North America every single year than anything else, including heart attacks and Al-Quedea.
2. Automobiles are a HUGE emitter of green house gases.
3. Automobiles are single biggest users of oil, a resource that I have documented over and over again as being in frantically short supply despite the recent drop in oil. (Just wait until the economy picks up, you think $1.50/L was bad, everybody has stopped developing new fields since the price drop.)
4. Use of oil enriches the likes of Al-Queda because more oil use means more demand, more demand means higher prices, higher prices means more money to the Saudis who give some of it to Osama and friends.
5. Automobiles promote obesity and laziness.

I am sure there are even more wonderfully bad things to say about cars. Not to say that the people who build cars at GM or Ford are bad, I am sure they are decent hard working souls, just like me. But somehow, one hundred fifty years ago humanity made do without cars and did alright, why do we need cars now? This whole expectation that driving is a right passed on from God and Henry Ford on down to us mortals is such an unhealthy attitude. I really don't know what to do? I'm not saying that cycling is a right and driving is not. Both are privileges, but at least cyclists are a lot less likely to kill anyone and besides when I eat too many beans for dinner, I am pretty sure I am not a big emitter of noxious gasses when I saddle up.

On Clipping In

Let this blog post forever serve as an advert for the greatest concept in cycling... alright maybe it's not that special but holy smokes does clipping in help. I am sure I have expressed my distaste for the old steel frame Coppi here somewhere. That bike felt slow, it felt rickety, it felt bumpy.

Now to be fair those old friction down-tube shifters were, and are brutal, getting in a gear so that the cogs don't rub and make funny noises is damned difficult, reaching down to change gears is a pain and getting into the right gear is trying at best. The steel frame is no treat either on Toronto's pothole feast that us locals often confuse with roads. The front wheel isn't true either, this is a new thing, actually it is not that the wheel is untrue, it has a flat spot and being that up until now I haven't cared enough, I was not about to piss away a hundred bucks buying a new rim.

Then something changed. My friend from out of town brought in a brand new shiny pair of clip in pedals that I put on Erin. I took the old pedals off and put them on the Coppi and suddenly the Coppi went from an unwieldy heavy old clunker into a steal frame rocket! What a world of difference clipping in makes. You would think I would have noticed that earlier, but the thing is my Roubaix, be it the 2006 stock Specialized Roubaix I bought at the bike show (Amy) or my custom build (Erin) were both clip in from the first kilometer. I always figured the Coppi was obsolete and therefore slower (shades of a computer guy there I guess) I did not realise sure the technology is not so great, but on a level surface the extra weight on the Coppi really is not that big a thing. Makes me think, save my good bike for the group rides and use the Coppi for commuting year round. Sure I love riding on Erin or heck any bike with STI shifters and a carbon frame, but risk damaging a good bike just for a 7km ride to the office? Suddenly the Coppi seems like a good way to get around.

Ironic, I saw the Coppi the exact same way back in 1994 and '95, before and just after I got my licence. Difference is now I hate driving and get jealous of cyclists when I do drive, back then I got jealous of people in their cars.

There should be a law, people should have to bike to work at least once a week year round. It would be good for their health, good for their stress, reduce fossil fuel emissions and traffic, make car drivers more considerate of cyclists and of course improve bike access. (Best of all, on a bike I'd be one of the fastest vehicles on the road... oh wait a second, during rush hour I already am!)

On Conversations with an American

A vendor I work with from time to time is from one of the blood red states of the west. I think Idaho or maybe Wyoming. Anyway we recently had a little email exchange, she knows I am a dyed to wool leftist pinko commie.

From: Sherri
Sent: October-14-08 12:58 PM
To: Michael
Subject: US Political Race

Hi Michael,
Hope things are well. Did you have a nice Thanksgiving?
With things heating up and just 3 weeks to go before Americans head to the polls...I was curious to know your thoughts on the whole race and the 2 candidates!
Sherri

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Michael
Sent: October 14, 2008 1:21 PM
To: Sherri
Subject: RE: US Political Race

One of my wife's co-workers is an Ex-pat from Tennessee. He was going to vote for Clinton before the primaries, but just confided to someone else that he voted for McCain in the advance poll because McCain's a white guy.

(That other person repeated that conversation to my wife.)

Here is what McCain has going for him:

1. He's white
2. He's probably got more of the K street lobby behind him than George Walker Bush
3. He is willing to put politics before nation every time, a-la Sarah Palin.
4. His foreign policy is not incompetent, it is not dangerous, it is dangerously incompetent!
5. He isn't an economist (he said that himself)
6. He is prone to moments of anger and spews venom that could kill a moose faster than his running mate.

There aren't two candidates, there is one candidate and a scary old guy who came in, what last? or second to last? in his class at Annapolis. (Sorry but I want the most powerful person in the world to have an intellect and curiosity, not make sudden brash decisions based on hairs on the back of their neck or whatever else.) Is it too much to ask that POTUS be inspiring and commanding, while intelligent? Both Roosevelt's had it, Truman had it, Ike lacked the inspiring part but at least he had the command and intellect down, Kennedy did it, I didn't much like him but Regan gave the appearance of doing it, even Clinton in a pinch could pull it off. McCain, could have but something happened around 2006, he took the low road, I hope enough people see that in 21 days.

Michael

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Sherri
Sent: November-12-08 3:51 PM
To: Michael
Subject: RE: US Political Race

Hi Michael,

So I assume you are celebrating Obama's victory?

Sherri

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Michael
Sent: November 13, 2008 9:54 AM
To: Sherri
Subject: RE: US Political Race

To my way of thinking this isn't just President Elect Obama's victory, nor is it a victory for just liberals or Democrats. It is a victory not just for all American's but for all people, everywhere. The World needs a strong vibrant United States open to new ideas and new people. (That is what made the country great in the 20'th century that is what will allow her to achieve new heights this century.) The alternative is something between what happened to Great Britain after World War Two or worse, Rome in 410 CE.

Clichéd? Yes, but there's a lot of truth in clichés.

Michael