Imaginary Line

Sage tells the story of our landing in Canada. I’m glad I didn’t talk about it in my last entry. Sage tells the story *so* much better!

On the road with a bike

It’s been a good week so far and my experiment is working swimmingly. Saturday afternoon, after a friend of mine helped me figure out how to best take apart (and re-assemble) the bike, I had it packed and ready to go for Monday.

Sunday was an awesome day. I picked up a car and we drove to the border. Long story short: we’re permanent residents of Canada now! Longer version of the story will eventually make it to Sage’s show, I expect.

Monday I took packed my bike and clothes into the rental and drove it to the airport, returning the car and getting a ride to the airport at the same time. Traveling with the bike couldn’t have been easier. I checked the bags (no extra charge from Westjet despite the fact that the bike bag was a tad oversize). When I got to Vancouver I needed only to grab my bags and run – no different than any other time I’ve traveled and caught a cab to Tsawwassen where I’m staying now.

Cycling-wise it’s been great. The bike went together with barely an issue (and none I couldn’t fix) and the route is really incredible. It takes me along Boundary Bay for a couple KM where every day I see seabirds and raptors as well as dogs and their people. After that there’s a nice ride down a farm road for a few km before a short ride on a bike lane along a busy street before getting to work. All told it’s about 15 km and takes me about 40 minutes. It’s harder to do this commute than a similar commute in Toronto – there really is only one stoplight (and it can be green) between here and work which means I go nonstop the whole way there. Good for me, I’m sure, but takes getting used to.

Drivers overall are very courteous, and with only a few exceptions give me the entire lane when they pass. But really other than the one busy street at the end I’m lucky if I see more than 3-5 cars on the way.

Still getting used to the time zone so this’ll have to be a short entry and I’ll end it here but not without a few photos from today’s commute:

A bit of a dark post

I’ve been watching the hysteria build over swine flu. I’ve even seen some of the characters from Stephen King’s The Stand (Randall Flagg, and Mother Abagail to name a couple)

Which reminds me. The whole TV miniseries of The Stand is online over at youtube. Might be too scary to watch now but it really is well done.

A dream that wasn’t…

Today it was about 27°C (about 80°F) out today and as I sat out in a friend’s backyard, I was reminded of a wonderful time we had about 7-8 years ago. There was such a surreal beauty to it that every once in a while Sage or I will mention it and ask the other “Did I dream that?” Every time, the answer is “No.”

One hot summer day in the Ozarks, our friend Will called us (we were living in town by this point) and asked if we’d like to come over for a barbecue. We stopped at the store to get some contributions of our own. When we got there our Will met us at the car and led us not to the backyard, but off into a field. At the edge of the field was a tree. And in the tree, suspended about 5′ in the air, no word of a lie, was a queen size bed suspended from strong branches. A few kids and their mom (Will’s partner) were relaxing in the bed.

Apparently with the summer heat, it just made sense to put the bed in the tree for siestas, relaxing, and even sleeping at night. Because it was off the ground, bugs were much less of a problem.

Now that we, the guests, had arrived, the entertainment could start. Will went over to a record player set up in the field. Fed by a long extension cord, it coloured the day with the sounds of Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker and other classic jazz musicians.

And thus we spent our afternoon, sitting in the tree-bed, listening to jazz, eating what may have been the best barbecued chicken we’ve ever had while the kids ran and played in the fields, coming back up on the bed every now and again for a cuddle or a rest.

See? I still have to ask Sage every once in a while if I dreamed it.

I did it!

OK, so I’m sorry but I’ve been so busy with work I’ve kept you out of the loop for a bit. Anyway, a few developments have come up which are presenting some interesting challenges.

So the big thing is that I am going on a short road trip next week: 2-4 weeks for work. Definitely hitting Vancouver, maybe going to Calgary and back to Vancouver but that’s still up in the air. I’m actually looking forward to it as I’ve never been to western Canada. Should be interesting.

So I got a crackpot idea. What if I went carfree on this short trip. Sure, I was carfree in Quebec City but I had time to settle in and get used to things. And I could easily fold the bike, stick it in a bag and put it on the train. Now I have a flight to take. So I had to get a bit more gear. I went out and bought a suitcase for the bike. It took a little traveling around the city but I now have an Airporter Suitcase from Dahon (the maker of my folding bike). One challenge, though, is that it is designed to easily accommodate 16″ and 20″ wheeled bikes. Mine has 26″ wheels and at a minimum they had to come off. Still, I brought it home figuring I would quickly pack the bike up and be done with it. But it wasn’t meant to be. With rack and fenders (both needed for commuting) it wouldn’t come close to fitting. I was able to just disconnect one end of the fenders and get those flexible enough but the rack had to go.

Now before we go any further I have a confession to make: I’m pretty handy with a computer. I’m not half-bad even with pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment, air handling units, and water purification systems. But put me with a bike and I’m clueless. I got most of the rack off and then took off what I thought was the wrong piece. A few shims fell out and I was convinced I had broken the bike (see? Clueless!). I was able to fit it in the suitcase, though, so that was good.

I came *this close* to taking the suitcase back and going with a rental car (or maybe the bus). But something made me take another look today. I was able to get it mostly back together easily. And then a friend was able to help me figure out what those shims were (simple – they were to hold the rack on and make it so that you could hook your pannier in easily (i.e. far enough out that the hook could reach). And so. It was back together and working right.

And lo and behold, I rode it home from their house, took the bike home, carefully took it apart (now that I knew how the rack worked) and it was only about 15 minutes and the bike was safe and sound in the suitcase and ready to fly.

So there we go. I’m staying actually a bit south of Vancouver in a somewhat rural space. I’ll have a 10-15 km ride to work each day which should be a good way to deal with the stress I figure is coming on a crazy project like this. And I won’t lose a month of summer cycling. It’ll also be fun to surprise the client by rolling up on a bike instead of a big rental car.

Now Calgary, if I have to go there, will be nuts. I will be staying less than a mile from work. The road, though, appears to be a 4-6 lane thoroughfare with no sidewalks and no alternate routes to get there. I hate to say it but I don’t even think I can walk. I may well get a car there just for the protection. But if I’m lucky someone else will be taking care of that…

So anyway: if work isn’t too crazy I’ll keep you up to date on this. It looks to be a busy time but having my bike will help keep me sane.

Northwest Passage – second trip

Well, after a literal pain in the neck plagued me this week, I finally was up for riding back to Vaughan today and wow was I glad I did. Because I can’t find my chain lube and haven’t managed to go out and get more, I took my folding bike, the Dahon instead. Good choice, too, as it was actually much quicker than my beater/winter bike and I was at work about 80 minutes after I left for work. Almost a record and the trip home (downhill) was even quicker.

Still, the only obnoxious thing is that there’s a stretch from Wilmington and Finch to Dufferin and Steeles where really, the traffic is too heavy and fast (70 kph speed limit) where I don’t feel safe taking the road and I end up on the sidewalk. On the positive side, there are hardly any pedestrians or driveways. Which got me thinking as I rode: Would it be practical to have a law that said that sidewalk riding was permitted on roads with no bike lane and a 60+ speed limit?

In other news, I found out what my next project is going to be – or at least a small one. about a week each in Vancouver and Calgary. I’m debating on buying a suitcase for my folding bike. On the other hand, it is $300 and I don’t know how practical bike riding will be once I get there. Has anyone used the Airporter suitcase for a 26″ Dahon folding bike before? Does it work well or is it a pain in the butt not worth the $300? And of course who knows where I’ll end up hotel-wise. So we’ll have to see if I end up with a rental car or not.

Happy Birthday Hugh Thompson

I studied American history (big surprise) in high school but either we never talked about Hugh Thompson, Jr or, more likely, I wasn’t paying good attention that day. (I do remember talking about the My Lai Massacre just not how it was stopped. And then a couple years ago I came across this song which tells the story of how he put a stop to it. Rather than spoil the story by telling it myself, I’ll strongly encourage you to go listen to Sage’s version, in audioplay form. It’s a compelling story and very inspiring. Anyone who read this blog for long knows I’m not one who has a lot of nice things to say about soldiers but this is one situation in which even I can’t deny that this was an amazing soldier the likes of which we need many more of.

Bike Commute – FAIL!

OK, “fail” is a strong word. It just hasn’t really worked out. Monday morning I woke up with very limited range of motion and pain in my neck. And so I went to the chiropractor to get it fixed and rode the bus to work yesterday. It’s nearly better but I won’t be traveling by bike to work today despite the awesome weather. I’ll likely be able to tomorrow, though.

On the downside, this project will be ending fairly soon and I’ll likely end up with a whole new client with new commuting challenges. Either that or I may end up with one that allows me to work from home in which case I’ll have to figure out how to practically work in cycling. For some reason I just can’t motivate myself to go on a long ride just for the fun of it. There has to be a destination, a purpose to my trip. This is why I really like bike commuting. And not only does it have a real purpose, it also leaves me in a fantastic mood when I get to work.

Commuting to York Region

So last Thursday I resumed the long bike commute again and it was really a nice change. As my clients change and I can work from home for weeks on end I wasn’t doing much cycling. This latest client, though, has needed me to be on site with them for the past couple months and last week, for reasons I’m not entirely sure of, I decided to look at google maps one more time to see if there was a route to work that was not traveling along Keele, a 6-8 lane high-speed suburban artery.

And guess what? I actually found the missing link. In the summer of ‘07 I commuted 3-4 days/week from our apartment (about 15-20 min from Yonge and Eglinton) to a client at Dufferin and Steeles – about a 20 km one-way trip that took about an hour. And on Wednesday I found a trail that picks up right near Dufferin and Steeles and goes totally off-road (including passing under the 407 and Highway 7) until just a couple KM from my client near Rutherford and Steeles.

I can’t tell you how nice it was to ride to work. I left early enough that traffic wasn’t bad and with much of the worst of the trip off-road it was not only easy, it was actually pleasant, taking me through a park, past a small pond and through a small marsh where birds were gathering that morning. By the end of the day, though, I definitely felt like I’d cycled 60 km for the first time in weeks. The great thing is that this over 3 hour workout was not in addition to my commute but a part of it. The trip actually took less time by bike than by transit. In the face of that it is hard to justify a 1:40 commute each way and then a detour downtown to an hour spin class or even an extra hour in the gym at home.

I need to resume cycling, though, as I definitely feel better physically and mentally when I do. The trick for me, though, is that I have to have a purpose. I had a plan to go out yesterday and today for a long ride but I couldn’t get behind it. I like to ride but I like a meaningful destination and not just a turnaround point. So this week I’m going to try to really minimize my use of the TTC. Without that I should be able to fit in several hundred KM worth of training in the same amount of time it takes to commute by bus. So we’ll see how going TTC-free (except when traveling with the family) works for me this week. Knock wood, it looks like the weather’s going to cooperate.