On Riding to Rochester

I have been doing some research on the feasibility of riding to Rochester. It turns out that both Southern Ontario and Western New York state have an extensive network of bike trails, the problem comes when one tries to cross the border. Saddly the network breaks down at the border crossing. Aledgedly it is possible to cross at all three Niagara Bridges (Queenston/Lewiston, Rainbow and Peace) but the details are rather sketchy. So far I have found the following resources:

1. This is the website of the Greater Buffalo-Niagara Regional Transporation Council and if you click on the links to maps, you get a number of maps, including bike maps for Western NY state.
2. Since I am posting links on this, here is the Lake Shore bike trail, not that I follow it all that closely, but if anyone else wants to use my page as a starting reference, here it is.
3. Someone wrote a book about riding around Lake Ontario, they noted the following,

It always happens! A day or two after I receive the latest edition or revision of a book from the printer something important along the route changes! This time the change involves crossing the Niagara River and a slightly improved route east of Toronto.

1. Niagara River Bridges: As of late May, 2008, a bicyclist can use 3 bridges to cross the Niagara River. The Peace Bridge (Fort Erie, Ontario-Buffalo, New York); the Rainbow Bridge (Niagara Falls, NY-Niagara Falls, ON); and the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge (Queenston, ON-Lewiston, NY). Use the roadway rather than the walkway on the Rainbow Bridge, since the gate leading to the walkway tends to be difficult to negociate with a pannier loaded bicycle. The Peace Bridge may have very heavy motor vehicle traffic, especially during weekday rush hours, thus the walkway might be preferrable for crossing this bridge. The Queenston-Lewiston Bridge does not
have a walkway and the entrance to the roadway on the USA side might be a bit
obscured. I will try to visit cross three bridges before
winter.

2. Lewiston-Queenston Bridge: W. Z. & son as well as J. C. suggest the following techniques when using the Lewiston-Queenston Bridge.

a. Crossing this bridge is tricky while it is under construction. (there is no side walk to use and the Canadian to US entrance is in an unusual location.)

b. Crossing US to Canada, Turn right off Military Rd onto Upper mountain rd and take first exit ramp, this takes one to the bridge. After crossing and going thru customs go to the right most toll both and pay toll, the toll attendant can direct you to the recreational trail. Basicly you back up from the toll booth and go over the curb
to the toll offices and walk around the offices into the parking lot out to the Niagara Parkway and recreational trail. (I have done this twice this year and the toll both operators were very helpful). [N. B.: Earlier editions of 'Round Lake Ontario... suggested using this technique.]

c. Crossing from Canada to the US is pretty tricky. You start on the North side of the bridge on the parkway.(this is where you exited from the parking lot coming the other direction. You will see a sign on the fence stating that bicyclists to the US must check in with the toll office. Enter the parking lot and work your way around to the back of the offices and walk the bike around to the main toll office and report to a attendant. There are several signs directing bicyclists. When I did this, they directed me to carefully cross behind the toll boths and through a opening in the curb and wait for a clearing in the traffic heading to the US and then cross this traffic and stay in the right most auto lane. Go through the customs booths (right most open auto booth). Take the first exit ramp (leads to Upper Mountain Road) then take the first exit ramp ( Rt 104 East). When I did this 3 weeks ago the customs officer said this was the first time that he had seen this done. (tho' I don't know if he was talking about my Greenspeed Trike or a bicyclist.)

On Riding far and The Middle Kingdom

It is exceedingly difficult to maintain a blog about any summer activity in the dead of winter. There really is not much to report on. I try to use the trainer, but it is horribly boring, and its not like the scenery is exciting. Last year, excuse me, two years ago, it was late 2007, when I was at Scooters, I recall making entries of the form, "did alright then thought I was gonna crash so started doing idiotic circles in the centre of the track" which basically summed up every single practice, now I know had I kept working on skating eventually my posts would be of the form "did alright". But see this is why I love cycling, the whole world is open to me.

Let me explain.

For the longest time I had the goal of skating to Hamilton via the Lakeshore trail, in 2006 I managed to get as far as Mississauga (Cumberland Dr. at Hiawatha Pkwy, just South East of the foot of Hurontario St.) In 2007 I made it just the tinest bit further, to the foot of Ben Machree Dr. (South West of the Foot of Mississagua Dr.). In both 2006 and 2007 I skated from Bathurst and Queens Quay which means in both cases I ended up skating in the neighbourhood of 50~55km.

Well last year, in 2008 I rode, my first serious attempt at reaching the next town, i.e. had enough water and it was not raining, I made it to Oakville (foot of Winston Churchill Blvd.) by comparison I still remember my first serious attempt at Mississauga, I made it as far as 23rd Street in Etobicoke. My second goal was Burlington, despite having my first inner tube failure on the way through Oakville I made it deep into Burlington (that was the first time I rode more than 100km in a single ride, I remember I was so proud of myself when that GPS when from 99.99 to 100.0). My next goal was Hamilton and as I documented earlier I did not want to burn myself out the day before climbing Rattle Snake so it took two whole efforts, the first got me to something like 2km from Hamilton, the second effort, on Canada day I made it there and back.

Except the Lakeshore trail is too easy, it is flat, and it is through some heavily built up areas. I revised my goal to be from Lake Ontario to Lake Simcoe and back, as I documented earlier that goal was also achieved, but it was a much better and harder challenge.

My point is, it seems to me that no matter what my goal on a bike it seems to be a do-able journey. There is just no way (short of closing Lakeshore Blvd. and Southdown to cars) that a person can skate to Hamilton from Toronto, not on the route I biked, the roads are too narrow and too busy. Okay there is a sidewalk but in Oakville much the sidewalk is a muddy trail.

Anyway here are some insane goals I have for this year, some are already documented on the Riding Too Far blog.

1. Tour Lake Simcoe (due to heavy traffic and poor route options on the East side this might be, go North and South on the west side of Lake Simcoe, so still a 300km distance, but not a tour.)
2. Ride to Niagara-on-the-Lake and back in a day. (Its the damned lakeshore trail again, BORRRRING!! But NotL is a pretty little town.)
3. Ride to Rochester NY, crash at my friends place for the night, ride home the next day. (Lots of issues related to not using 400 series and Interstate highways, border crossings, and so on. But can you imagine when they ask me at the border, 'anything to declare?', uhm yeah, I brought back a 40" LCD TV and a bottle of Crown Royal, it's all in the saddle bag with my inner tubes!)

Any thoughts on these feel free to post comments, and yes I have thought of riding across Canada, but I don't have enough vacation days, much as I'd love to do nothing but bike, I need to pay for food and well more important, new bikes!

Anyway I would just like to make public the fact that Lesley and I are going to China, I have the airline tickets and the Chinese Consulate in Toronto has my Visa application and passport. I will have more to say on this latter, but for now the route is: Go to Shanghai and return via Hong Kong about two weeks later.

On 2009!! (And cross training)

Happy New Year everyone! Last year Lesley and I went to Boston for a day, this year we stayed home and to be honest, home is a better place.

Nobody commented on my last reader question which is a little disappointing. In one of the books I am currently reading (The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor by William Langewiesche) Langewiesche notes that a reporter for a particular periodical that reports on potential violations of the NPT gets very little feedback from his readers. It turns out that while the reporter is very widely read by people in the field these people often have security clearance and would even deny reading these articles if asked.

I would like to stress, here there is no security violation by publishing in this blog. There is a risk, particularly if the post is anonymous, of the post being summarily removed, but there is no risk in telling me how much you (don't?) enjoy reading what I have to say. Readers can be confident that their posts will remain in the strictest of confidence because hardly anyone ever reads this blog. :-P

Anyway today I had to run through the Hudson Bay store downtown, I had to deposit a cheque in the CIBC machines. As I was charging around the store dodging in and out of the crowd I noticed that I was using a cross-over to make turns on a sharp angle. That is to say, if I had to turn left I would throw my right foot clear over and to the left of my left foot forcing me to do a near 90 degree turn without loosing momentum.

It dawned on me, I was good at that from skating then I thought to myself, maybe I should use skating for cross training, heck it would improve my balance and co-ordination. I put more thought into the idea and came up with a better idea, I should swim more. After all I am not cross training for running through The Bay, maybe a Triathlon, most likely a pure road race, but not a department store sprint.

There is a pool just down the street from home and the great thing about swimming is that you cannot hurt yourself if you swim intelligently. Skaters crash and hurt themselves all the time, but an endurance swimmer cannot possibly crash, even if they hit someone else at full speed, well full speed is a slow walking speed, how could that hurt? The great thing about swimming is it forces you to breath properly and make the most effective use of your lung capacity, that and since I don't want to spend money, the other great thing is, swimming is basically free, I am not going to buy a Michael Phelps Speedo LZR swim suit, I'll make do on my old lifeguard bathing suit and do lengths during the free length swims, assuming there are such things.

Of course if I did swim, Lesley would probably come to watch and then she would laugh at me and say I look like silly. Maybe I should run instead?

I could start a survey, how should Michael cross-train, swim, skate, run, ride more baby! Any other suggestions before I put out a survey?

On Really Bad Drivers and a Question for my Readers

Yes I know, anyone who rides in this weather has more than a few loose screws. (And probably a bad cassette, a toasted chain, a buggered rear derailleur.) But anyone who wonders why I ride to work should try taking the Queen Street Car one day, that ought to change opinions of my mental health in a right hurry. To me there are two options, ride or walk, public transit is a non-starter.

Anyway today, December 30 I am riding along Queen on Brian's old Rocky Mountain beater, I have just left the office where I exit on Richmond, since I am a good boy who always obeys the law I went the direction of the one way street (Richmond is one way Westbound only) to York then North on York to Queen where I now go East. On Queen between York and Bay as I go East a woman in a silver GM small sedan, with a license AEDT 744 speeds past me in the left lane, as there are stopped cars not 3m ahead of me in the left she quickly dodges right, nearly hits me and continues in the right lane about 20m, I don't actually catch up with her until the next traffic light. When I do I yell at here, as follows:

Me: "Yo!"

Driver: Stops eating out of a bag of what looks like potato chips, turns, looks either surprised or terrified, maybe both

Me: "You do a lane change like that again and I'm calling the cops on you!"

Me: I ride off into the sunset.

So if you see a reckless driver in a silver car with the license AEDT 744 let me know and I'll make sure that the good people at 51 division learn all about it. (Hey maybe we should start a bulletin board, "dangerous drivers and what they did", cops wouldn't need to make ticket quotas any more, just talk to cyclists, if the story is believable they could press charges without need for actually patrolling the streets!)

Anyway I was going to write an article about where energy will come from in the future, but frankly I don't feel inspired by it at the moment and although writing about how to deal with nuclear waste attracted a surprising number of readers I am just not sure if I ought to even go there. So I am going to put what I started below and say the following, if you want me to actually write this thing, you have to put a comment, with your real live actual name, like the thing on your subprime mortgage... okay, like the thing on your clothing - if it says Kelvin Klein I want a loan! You have to say why I should write it.

If you really don't want me to write about this, but want to read about something else, you have to tell me that too in the comments below.

If you don't give a damn, well then you don't have to say anything at all.

Anyway without further ado here is what I started:

Subject "On A Greener Future"

Recent responses to my blog entry on Nuclear power got me thinking a great deal on the subject of Energy. I have felt for a long time that the human race cannot go on as it has. I would like to consider, in greater detail how we go about getting from the World we live in today, where, every single day we, humanity, consumes roughly 85 million barrels of oil to a World without oil. And I would like to consider how we continue our current standard of living without turning our planet into an unlivable hell hole, hopefully at the same time.

On Faulty Hardware

The core network switch in the office has failed. Ironically, the particular issue, a failed supervisor, could have been avoided but I work for a company in the risk management business and when the idea of a redundant supervisor was suggested to the executives it was decided that the risk of a catastrophic failure of the supervisor was small enough verses the high cost of a second supervisor that should such a failure occur the company would just have to be unproductive until the replacement arrived onsite. Sadly as it is now Sunday at 5:00am, the only person who is unproductive is me! I cannot do anything, without a core switch I cannot work and with a replacement due to arrive sometime in the next four hours I cannot risk falling asleep.

So here I am on my blog, also reading up on recent attempts to get a Nuclear Fusion reactor working, heady stuff if they can make it work.

So since I have nothing better to do I will spec a dream ride:

Specialized Transition S-Works Frame, see picture below.

Zipp 404 Clincher Wheels (You know every time I see or write 404 I think, page not found HTTP error, I really have been working in this industry for far too long.) Anyway you can see the 404 wheels below.
Yes I could attach a power tap, but I'm not exactly rolling in it (money), and although this is a dream Tri-bike, even dreams have to be grounded in reality. (Read power taps are outrageously over priced.)

Since it is a Tri/Time Trial bike, the bars are Aero bars, T2+ Cobra bars by Profile Design, see below for a pretty picture.

Of course that leaves out the group, well mostly, Specialized includes their own "S-Works" crank set, it is a double 53/39, and brake calipers. So I suppose the obvious group is a Dura-Ace. I put in the Shimano image for the 7900 Dura-ace group but notice it includes the standard and compact rings as well as STI, friction downtube and Tri shifters, obviously I'll be using Tri shifters, and where are the brake leavers? (Can not use STI brake leavers on a Tri-bike.)

Now at this point there are two possiblites, for my readers, one you are drooling or two you are Lesley and couldn't care less. If you aren't drooling at the idea of this bike, are you sure you are reading the right blog?

Anyway since the replacement Supervisor from Cisco is not due to arrive for another hour and a half... holy smokes! (I wish I could take a nap) I am going to calculate the weight of this thing based on the specifications on the web sites. (Oh damnit, I don't have the base bars, just the aerobars, well lets suppose, Cobra Wing bars which weigh between 205 and 215 grams.)

So here are the weights:

• Frame, crankset bottom bracket, chain rings and brake calipers: Not published!! Alright, lets just assume 1.5kg, nice Specialized, probably the one thing I'd really like to know and you don't tell me.
• Wheels: 1615g
• Aerobars: 492g
• Basebars: 210g
• Group: Not published! (To be fair there are a lot of variables here, for example do I get a 11-23 or a 12-25 cassette, I do not need a chain ring, but I need both derailleurs.) Lets assume 1kg.
• Tyres, tubes, cables and tape: Assume: 300g

Total: 5.1kg or about 11.2lbs! Holy smokes, did I forget something? That's half the weight of Erin. Damn. Now I'm drooling.

On News of the World and Other Things

I had the chance to watch the Yes We Can YouTube video, it is still inspiring. Then I was read recent polling data published on CNN, a full quarter of the American population will miss George Walker Bush when he leaves office in three weeks. Let me see, 25% of 300 million is 75 million people approve of the disaster that George Dubbya Bush calls his presidency. What planet are these people on?

In December of 2001, I went to China for the first time and met my future in-laws, my soon to be father-in-law asked why I disliked Bush, there were already so many reasons I did not even know where to begin, that was before the war in Iraq, before Katrina, before the Sub-prime meltdown, but not before the disastrous trillion dollar tax cut to the richest people in the World, the mishandling of the attacks of Sept. 11, the backing out of at least two major international treaties, Kyoto and the ABM treaty of 1972. (Alright the US did not actually withdraw from ABM until 2002, but the writing was on the wall the day Donald Rumsfeld was named Secretary of Defence.)

Anyway speaking of withdrawing from International treaties, I had an idea I wanted to throw out into the open, but it is on Nuclear power and I am not sure there are all that many people who know, or care enough, so a good many people may want to just move on, but for anyone who can follow, this might prove a good idea.

Nuclear power is a good source of energy in that it does not release huge amounts of green house gasses, but it does create waste product that will remain radioactive for a very, very long time. In addition, a normal nuclear power plant will produce Plutonium as natural byproduct of the fission process, Plutonium can be reused later in a power plant, or can be made into weapons. Another problem with Nuclear power is that the price of Uranium, the normal fuel for nuclear power is subject to all the volatility of regular commodities. (Obviously physical plant safety is a concern but that can be mitigated through well designed plants, modern designs have much promise in this area.)

So it seems to me that the problem with nuclear power is two fold, input and output. Well I need to cover some physics for my idea to make sense, there are, to my knowledge three different potential fuels for nuclear power, Thorium, Uranium and Plutonium.

The major problem with Thorium as a fuel is that it requires a two stage process to make it usable, first regular Thorium 232 has to be bombarded with a slow neutron then nuclear beta decay converts that Thorium 233 into Protactinium 233 which in turn decays into Uranium 233 which is fissionable. At least Thorium 232 is the most common isotope of Thorium. Uranium has two major isotopes, U238 which is not fissionable with slow neutrons and U235 which is fissionable, U235 comprises about 0.711% of all Uranium, 238 makes up almost all of the rest, about 99.284%, separation of fissionable 235 from unfissionable 238 is a costly difficult proposition. Finally there is Plutonium which is a synthetic atom, it is typically created by bombarding U238 with a slow neutron which creates U239 which beta decays into Neptunium 239 which beta decays into Plutonium 239, which is fissionable.

If you did not follow the above paragraph no worries, the short is fuel suitable for a nuclear power plant is difficult to come by. But that is nothing compared with what comes out when you are done.

Something in the neighbourhood of 1% of the fissionable fuel that goes into a reactor is actually used, the other 99% is removed along with the 'ashes' of the 1% and all of it, ashes and unburnt fuel is considered waste. The reason is as the fuel is 'burned' waste products start diluting the fuel, the waste products have a large neutron cross section which means that many of the neutrons which should be splitting fuel and making more energy get absorbed by the waste and produce nothing of value. So after a period of 12 to 24 months inside a reactor core the fuel, now very radioactive, is removed and put in a waste tank under the reactor for a period of about 30 years, after 30 years the most radioactive materials in the fuel have decayed and what remains although still very toxic is sufficiently harmless to be stored above ground or in some mountain. (Sadly the stuff that is left - ironically mostly Plutonium - is going to remain toxic for thousands of years.)

So we have two problems, fuel is a rare commodity and waste is something we will be stuck with for tens (or hundreds) of thousands of years.

Well why not chemically separate the unused fuel from the waste product? Heck, lets add some cheap Thorium to the exterior of the reactor, as it gets bombarded by escaping neutrons it will be converted into Uranium and then we can chemically separate the Uranium from the Thorium and get even more fuel?

Well in theory that is a great idea, the problem is chemical separation is banned by international treaty. It turns out that is a great way to build a bomb, build a small reactor, make some waste, extract the plutonium from the waste, build a bomb. Much easier than all that nasty mucking about with heavy Uranium isotopes.

So here is my idea, we have waste that has lots of useful fuel in it, we have fuel that could be made even more valuable if we could just reprocess waste. Well the issue is, we need a place where fuel could be reprocessed without concern that the reprocessed fuel would be made into bombs, oh and that place should already have lots of experience with Nuclear power for purely peaceful purposes, like, oh I don't know, say Canada?

It has been the avowed policy of this nation to use nuclear power only for peaceful purposes, we have had the technology to build bombs as long ago as the early 60's, maybe even earlier, yet we choose not to. Could an exception be made, that all nuclear products, retired cold-war era bombs as well as spent fuel be sent to Canada where in some remote facility it would be reprocessed into a fuel suitable for nuclear reactors? The reprocessed fuel would be sold to power generators all over the world, the remaining high level waste products could then be stored for the hundred or two hundred years in the geologically ultrastable Canada Shield.

Such an international program could solve multiple issues in one stroke, the verifiable complete destruction of cold war weapons, the removal of weapons proliferation issue, the reduction in nuclear waste products, the reducing of the cost of nuclear fuel, oh and it would also create quite a few skilled jobs in Northern Ontario or Manitoba or wherever the facility was located.

I am not sure if this is the solution to our energy problems, but I think it is a better idea than burning "clean coal" or oil. Obviously I think some discussion should take place on this matter, I wonder if I am the only one who feels this way?

On Ranting

I can hardly believe how angry I got in my last post. It is Lou Dobbs, well not just Dobbs he is just a mouth piece, rather it is the entire notion that a country built on immigration, the wealthiest country in the world, one of the largest both in population and geography, does not have the ability to take in a little cultural diversity. Now lately Dobbs has had a LASER like focus on illegal immigration to the exclusion of almost all other events, but I recall the first time I heard the Roosevelt quotation was from Mr. Dobbs. To an extent I agree with the guy that immigration should be done the legal way, but it seems to me that if you want to grow and economy and grow a country the way to do it is get more people. Making rules and making immigration difficult is closing a door, and doors have a way of becoming symbolic for a national state of mind.

As for concerns of a country becoming a "Polyglot boarding house", well that seems to be the issue of the very insecure. Only a people worried about their place in the World should concern themselves with national languages or a national culture.

Anyway I just felt I should explain why I got into such a tizzy the other day, I suspect cabin fever may have also played a roll in that.

On an unrelated note, I saw Valkyrie on Boxing day. It occurred to me, that even had the officers succeeded in their little coup d'etat, the allies were dead set on the unconditional surrender of Germany long before July of 1944. I think as early as 1942 the allies agreed that this time the war would continue until the bitter end. On the other hand, had the coup succeeded, then the officers might have surrendered and at least put an end to the war nearly a year sooner.

I recall when I was in High School I read in the Globe and Mail that one supply teacher asked his history students about some aspect of World War II and after much probing discovered that these students Toronto High School students did not know who Roosevelt was, Churchill vaguely and Hitler was a name they had heard of. I wonder sometimes, one day will Hollywood fill the roll of public school? But will students be able to think critically about things if they learn history through film? After all Titanic does not bother to connect the dots to Valkyrie, but the dots are there.

Speaking of such things, it occurs to me, many comments in the main stream have compared the current economic conditions to those of October 1929. I wonder, are we in fact entering the world of 1914 all over again? Is society about to be reborn in an orgy of fire? One should also recall that it was 1913, I think, that Wilson enacted the first Income tax in the United States and thus began the transition to our modern banking system.

I read a description someone had of the effect World War One had on the middle class of Europe, it was like they were dancing and someone removed the floor from under them, they tried to hold their place with nothing hold them up. Inflation robbed the middle classes of their savings and destroyed their income. I surely hope that this is just a repeat of 1989, not 1929 and certainly not 1914.