On my new bike

So here is the story (and its not of a man named Brady)... Actually I never watched the Brady Bunch, it was always on after the cartoons, I was too young for the Brady's when they first aired. (Now I suppose its the remake that gets the ad dollars... damn I just dated myself didn't I?)

Anyway my plan was to pick up my beautiful new 2006 Specialized Roubaix Comp Triple on Friday April 18 and ride to my new home. Sigrid Ziegler (see What I'm reading on the right) was even going to help me set the bike up, get the pedals on, get the seat to the right height, all that good stuff. Then on Wednesday, April 16 Lesley told me that Friday night we would pack and move stuff to our new home. So that very evening, Wednesday, I had to skate to the bike shop and then buy bike shorts and ride to the new place. (By the time I asked, Sigrid already had plans, naturally, so was unable to help me, which as it turns out was a real shame.)

Now I want to stress, I can ride a bike, I've been riding without training wheels since quad roller-skates were all the rage. Besides a street car track mishap in 1995, not far from where I live now actually, and a four or five-year-old suddenly pulling out in front of me in May 2000. I have not crashed on a bike since the 1980s. Well the bike store was good enough to attach my pedals to the bike and my cleats to my shoes, but nobody at the store bothered to tell me that I can loosen the toe clips with nothing but a hex key.

I managed to make it from the store near Dufferin and Bloor along Bloor to Roncesvalles and down to the pedestrian bridge over the Gardiner/Lakeshore. Well as I was turning a 180 degrees down the ramp to get off the bridge, I started to loose balance and could not free my foot fast enough. (The results of that crash are on my Bont Vaypor's, my rear derailleur and my right elbow.)

I biked along the MGT towards the new house in the East end. I got as far as Queens Quay and York street when I encountered a red light. Remembering that I fell to the right previously, this time I made sure to keep my right foot free and ready to arrest any fall. Naturally the wind, from the south, blew me to the left! (The evidence of that crash is my busted pride and the witnesses who saw an idiot who can't balance on his bike at a red light!)

Saturday after moving some (760 square feet) hardwood into the bedrooms to acclimatize the wood and assembling an Ikea bookcase in the basement (here's a silly question, why is assembling crap from Ikea so damned hard? And why does all their stuff look so bloody corny?) I went for a quicky out to Mississauga and back, it was a nice little 50km ride, but hardly had I set out when I took a wipe out at another stop. Well this time someone was good enough to tell me exactly what the problem was, my pedal was too tight.

I went to a nearby bike shop, where the staff were very helpful, ever before I bought anything, which was awful nice. The owner told me something rather blindingly obvious yet at the same time something I was not already doing. Before I stop, long before I stop, I should be freeing my feet from the pedals. He also told me that I should not bike further than I am willing to walk until I have a repair tool, a spare tube and an air pump. (Well the air pump I am going to cheat, after all I can always go to a gas station, the tool I bought and I will pick up a spare tube, just as soon as I learn how to replace them!)

On the ride home I was biking with Herb Gayle, well Herb skated, we actually managed to have a pretty decent conversation. Remarkably I had a real struggle keeping up with Herb, I figured that a cyclist should be able to keep speed with even the best skaters without too much trouble, wow was I wrong, Herb is fast.

Sunday I went for a quick skate, too much work to do around the house, but I bumped into Ed Duncan (see the readings at the right). It turns out Ed disagrees with my thoughts on Tibet. His argument is that athletes who spend years preparing for the Olympics should not have to worry about politics. I agree with him, although I doubt the Israeli athletes in Munich in '72 worried about politics or Black September. Ed actually knows someone who would have been on the Canadian team sent to Moscow in 1980, except of course we, in The West, boycotted that game in protest over the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet bloc countries as we all know replied by boycotting Los Angeles games in 1984. The Afghans would go on to reply to all of the above by hosting the people who flew airplanes into buildings on Tuesday September 11, 2001. I highly doubt Al Quada or the Taliban cared much that the West boycotted the Olympics 21 years before that horrible day.

Its a complicated thing, I am not even sure what my opinion is on this. Perhaps Athletes should compete, maybe they should all wear Tibetan colours when they go on the podium? Maybe not. But it seems rather trivializing to me to be having games and celebrating sport while not far away people are dying. The whole notion of the Olympic games has reached a new level of crass in my opinion - and that upsets me. The Olympics were not supposed to be about Propaganda but since 1936 that's all they've really been about.

Since I am not sure what I believe anymore I think I should end on this note. I read recently that the first modern Olympic Opening Ceremony was a creation of the Nazis. Makes sense, the torch, the elite athletes, the marching about, it all smacks of Nazi imagery. Maybe in Vancouver they can put an end to that tradition?