On The Beatles and the MGT

As promised a rant related to skating, but first we interrupt our regular scheduled program to announce I saw a movie in a theatre! Its been a long time, what with my rather large collection of DVDs but today my parents and I saw Across the Universe. The IMDB users, as of this writing gave it a 7.8/10 stars, personally I'd give it at least a 9, but then it has two HUGE things going for it.

One, its a love story with Beatles music, much like Mama Mia, but Beatles and a movie instead of Abba and a musical. I'm not a big Abba fan, but The Beatles... well come on, this is The Beatles. (Actually I listened to their albums so much when I was young, grade 8 and 9, I got completely sick of them, but its been so long that I can now go back to and as I type this Michelle - Rubber Soul, 1965 - is playing on my CD drive.)

The other thing going for Across the Universe was that it was a period piece, it takes place in the 1960s largely in America. One of my favorite subjects of study is History particularly Post War America. (One of these years History will look back more forgivingly of LBJ, he was a decent man, he just got himself in that "Bitch of war" that he didn't even want. Its no great secret LBJ was suckered into Vietnam "courtesy of the Beltway Chapter of the Harvard Alumni".)

Anyway enough of that. On to skating.

So I've got a big complaint. The MGT (Martin Goodman Trail) is a hazard strewn disaster of pedestrians, cyclists, rec skaters and of course, Geese Goodness. (That's Geese poop for those of you lucky enough not to know what I am talking about, it tends to accumulate on bike trails.) Well add to that the driveways up and down the trail and top it up with a Gatorback section from the hot place below and you've got to wonder why I bother with the damned trail. Why bother? Well it is reasonably level, important to a skater and its long, almost 10km from my home to the other end west of the Humber River. Also the MGT is car free... mostly. Sadly I have encountered cars on a bike trail, yes I've yelled at the driver but there really isn't much you can do, they've got 1000 kg of steel on your 1kg of skates, in a fight they win, you die.

But what really gets me about the MGT? At the bottom of the longest hill, between Jameson and Parkside is The Boulevard Club, they have a driveway that cuts across the trail, bad. They have three 36 inch high posts, about three inch diameter metal cylinders. (In metric, about 80 cm high, 7~10cm diameter cylinders). The cylinders are spaced about 3 feet (1 m) apart. Well apparently it wasn't doing an effective job stopping the bikes from impeding the car drivers as the cars poison the air. New posts were added, the three new posts are offset from the original posts, they are about 48 inches (1.2 m) high they are about 2 feet (60cm) in front of the original posts and roughly half way between, halving the effective space to maneuver between.

Does this ridiculous setup slow bikes? Of course not, a cyclist only needs about 20cm of room. But it kills strollers and skaters like me. Mind you who cares about us, car drivers act like its an impervious barrier and they just blaze through that driveway without considering who might be trying to get through. It just seems so sadly typical of this city, the hell with everything only motor vehicles matter. Sigh.