Cole Airlines is Born... and Flops!

From my desk on the 27’th floor of a downtown office tower Winter remains, for the time being a reasonably pretty season. From the sidewalk it is an entirely different story, slush, black snow, yellow and most dreaded of all, brown snow, making walking in a downtown street an adventure in a mind field.

It is with those cheery thoughts that my mind turns to events that transpired over the Victoria Day long weekend of 2000.

There was a long period between 1995 and 2004 when I stopped skating and took to biking in a big way. Biking has a few big advantages over skating, its considerably faster, you can change gears, rough ground, grass, even dirt are all potentially passable (depending on the type of bike and tires). Of course bikes are a lot more expensive than skates and they are often stolen if not locked up properly. So both methods of getting around have their advantages and disadvantages.

But back to May of 2000 when one day I was biking along the Martin Goodman Trail. I remember I was so frustrated by the crowds that kept obstructing my path that when I finally got a nice clear section of trail I, well for lack of a better term, floored it.

Technically the Martin Goodman Trail is a 20 km/h zone. Thanks to my GPS I know that I am routinely busting that barrier but in skates but I usually don’t get much past 25 km/h except with a downhill or a good strong tail wind. On a bike that 20 km/h speed limit is actually a real limiting factor if you choose to obey it. One day in May of 2000 I choose, with more than a small amount of contempt to ignore the speed limit. I put pedal to the metal and was probably doing something past 35 km/h when a young boy, perhaps 5 or 6 years old decided that right in front of me would be an outstanding place to plant his bike at a perpendicular to the direction of flow of the traffic. I still remember, his very protective parents made sure he had a big white shiny mushroom helmet, they just neglected that useful rule, look both ways before you cross the (bike path) street.

I remember very clearly slamming on the breaks just as hard as I could. Which I suppose is a reasonable thing to do in most circumstances, except, when you are in a bike, and you don't have a seatbelt certain rules of physics come into play which well in my case rather hurt. Imagine if you will a bike going a steady, lets say 30 km/h. Now on that bike is a cyclist, who is connected to said bike by gravity, our cyclist plants his rear end on the saddle and his feet on the pedals, both of which are pulled down by none other than Newton's apple force. Now let us suppose, just for a moment, that our cyclist slams on the breaks just has hard as he (in this case) can. The bike's motion is arrested by the breaks, the cyclists motion is arrested too, by the pavement rubbing up close and personal on his face, after our cyclist flys face first over the handle bars.

Anyone ever tell you a human being cannot fly is full of it, I have flown, for about a tenth of a second at Kew Beach on the Martin Goodman trail I was airborne, me and an Airbus A380 had something in common. Only the A380 has some pretty impressive landing gear (and flight control surfaces come to think of it), I must have been asleep during the particular physics 121 class where they taught how to build your own airplane.

At the end of my flight I landed, as described above, on runway, oh roughly 9 right (might have been 8 or 10 right, I didn't have my compass that day). But roughly was a very good description of my landing. The fact that my face did the majority of the breaking was not lost on my co-workers the Tuesday after the long weekend.

I recall my parents taking me round to dinner after Cole air flight 001 and the waitress at the restaurant almost fainted when she saw me, her opening words were oh my god, look at your face. To which I responded I know, would you happen to have a table? The following working day the receptionist came by my desk and cleared her throat, I turned around and her response was: Oh my god, I just wanted to see your face! Clearly while Cole Air was not a viable business plan over the long term, I attribute the non-viability to the decline in passenger air travel in the wake of 9/11; however, Cole Air did improve the overall fame (infamy?) of my face.

There is a moral tale to my little flight, always wear your helmet when biking and skating. There is another moral, look both ways before you cross the street.