Going "Home" part 1

Foreword: This is late, very late, but whatever, I'm gonna post it now and part 2 later once I get it all written.

Well I went back to the UK for a week as I said in my last "filler" post and a number of things happened; I spent time with my mother, I spent most of 24 hours travelling, I slept on a couch for 6 days and I managed to turn half my back into a mess of pain.

I guess a little explanation is needed, so here we go; I needed to cross the Atlantic for a couple of reasons, for one my visitor's visa was about to expire (although to be honest Canada isn't that worried so long as you're not trying to work or claim for anything), and I still had to tell my mother the plans that Kata and I had with regards to marriage and our future.

I booked my flights with about 6 days warning, which caused no little amount of anguish to my darling Kata (and to me naturally) and I sorted out my other travel requirements (Airbus to Toronto airport and back) and then spent my last few days before travelling with Kata trying not to think about 7 days away from her and our life.

The day of my trip came on Wednesday 24th September and after a last afternoon of passion and affection, I left our apartment and started my trek to London, England. The first leg of the trip is always pretty easy, get into the airbus and wait for 100 to 120 minutes for the driver to head along the 401 highway to YYZ (Toronto Pearson).

This journey there were 3 other passengers and another driver being taken to Pearson to pickup a vehicle. The driver and one of the passengers were both of American origin, although the driver also has Canadian citizenship and in very little time talk turned to politics. Frustration at the American banks which were collapsing with alarming frequency, disgust at the banks' directors who were bring given "golden parachute" payments from the banks despite their clear ineptitude, anger at the politicians who had allowed such things to befall the nation due to lack of regulation and wonder at whom would be capable, if any, to restore the nation and more so the world's finances back to a steady ship as opposed to the sinking ravaged hulk that we were being shown every day.

Debate did run over the presidential candidates and their running mates; concern over the very notion that the GOP candidate would win and very real concern that if somehow he did win, he could very well die before the end of his term and leave his woefully inadequate running mate in charge of the world's most powerful democracy. The consensus however was that Obama would win the election but not if voters were complacent "every vote counts" was certainly mentioned, although as I've mentioned previously, truly every vote doesn't really count, or at least doesn't count for as much thanks to the vagueries (british spelling) of the electoral college system used in the presidential election (swing vote is a fantasy movie, not based in reality in the slightest, although I must admit I've not seen the movie for fear or wishing ill on Kevin Costner, nah not really, it just looks terrible).

So in any case, after listening for a while to the conversation I sat back and relaxed listening to music on my Creative Zen media player and I drifted off for a while. When we arrived at the airport I was the first to leave the bus since terminal 3 is first on the drop off route (International travel is for the most part handled by terminal 3 of Pearson). I headed in, picked up my ticket (as I'd booked less than 2 weeks before travel I had to get my ticket at the travel desk) and then I checked in for my flight. I took a short wander around the shopping area, not that there's a huge amount of it in terminal 3, and then I headed for security. Now at the risk of being misunderstood, the following is without prejudice or overstating, every time I've travelled out of Toronto, and I've done it 4 times now, I've noted that the vast majority of the security staff and store workers on the departure side of the terminal are of Indian descent (India the Asian country as opposed to the native American peoples), mostly 1st generation immigrants. The Tim Hortons (a bastion of Canadian coffee shops) is entirely operated by Indians (I assume the franchise is owned by an Indian family and they have brought relatives to Canada to work with/for them), the other food emporia and stores also have a high percentage of Indian staff. Its kinda weird but I take it as part of the rich Canadian culture of immigration which enriches the nation (I for one know that immigration is a positive activity after all I'm technically an immigrant about to emigrate once more).

One thing I suck at is waiting for things to happen, in this case I get pretty bored and antsy waiting for the flight to board and ultimately take off. My frame of mind is that until I get on the plane and the doors close I'm still responsible for what happens. After the doors close, its out of my hands and things are down to the flight crew, only then do I relax, or at least try to relax.

Anyway, as I was saying, because of the way things are these days, you have to wait around for 2 to 3 hours before your flight takes off and of course you need to keep entertained, fortunately I'm used to trying to keep myself entertained and I always take way too much stuff with me, so I settled down, stuck a DVD into my portable DVD player and started watching. I only managed 20 minutes before boarding started. Since I had asked for a seat near the back and on the aisle (leg room and proximity to the emergency exit in case of disaster) I was in the first major group to be boarded. I reached my seat (28D) and got myself set for the journey ahead, magazine, creative zen, bottle of water, hoodie, then I waited to see if I would be lucky enough to get an empty row or at least a seat between me and 28F (the other aisle seat on the central section of the airbus A310). Unfortunately the entire row and in fact the entire aircraft filled up and the passenger to my immediate right (28E) was an above average width adult male (less wide than me but still wider than say Kate Moss).

I have never been able to sleep properly on a plane. Trans-Atlantic flights are moderately long, 7 to 8 hours, and west to east are "best" done over night so that you can sleep on the flight and be fresh in the morning when you land. Unfortunately for me that doesn't work, the planes are uncomfortable and busy. I'm a big man and although I fit relatively well into the seats, my shoulder width means I get bumped almost constantly when people walk past me. The length of my legs mean I have to leave one leg in the aisle if I want to improve my comfort level, which again causes problems. Also thanks to my shoulder width my head is mode forward than most in the seat, which means for comfort reasons I need to have a pillow behind my head for any length of flight.

OK moaning aside, the flight was pretty normal, the movies were meh (Indiana Jones 4 which sucked and Vantage Point which I'd seen with Kata in the Cinema. Although I did watch Indiana Jones 4 to see how badly they had destroyed the Indiana Jones franchise. To my mind the recent South Park episode said it better than I ever can), the food was fine (it was President's Choice Indian food) and after 8 hours of passing out for 20 minutes every hour or so, we were finally landing at Gatwick airport. I made my way from the airport to Fulham Broadway underground station where I met my mother and we made our way to Hendon where she lives.

To be continued...

Off to the UK for a week

I'm flying off to the UK today, for a week, visiting my mum for the first time in over a year.

I don't want to go but I kinda have to, I'm adamant this is the last time I'm doing it before Kata and I get married.

The last week or so has been pretty crappy, both of us dreading today's arrival, but here it is. I'm waiting for the first part of my journey to begin, air bus to Toronto Pearson airport, from there its a direct flight to London Gatwick airport and from there a couple of train journeys until I get to my mum's place.

By the time I get there I'll most likely be utterly exhausted and utterly depressed, I was last time I went back to the UK and left Kata behind, though that time it was for 2 weeks.

Anyway, just a short post to say what's happening and once I'm back I'll try and get back into writing regular posts.

Cycling in London Ontario

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I got a junker bike to use as a runaround in London, so in the last few days I've been using it and starting to build up my cycle fitness again.

So the basics, its a mountain bike, was a front suspension but the suspension is seized solid, which is fine as my last bike in the UK was a full rigid mountain bike. It has 21 gears (7 on the wheel and 3 on the pedals) but I'm the kind of cyclist who never uses the pedal cogs other than the largest (my legs are a testament to the power I put into my cycling). I also generally never go lower than the 3rd gear on the wheel and will cruise on 4th or 5th gear (about 42 to 24 for 3rd and 42 to 18 for 5th).

Back in the UK I used to ride to college 3 or 4 days a week, each day would be around 24 miles round trip, the journey mostly took me through town and city streets and some small part was on a cycle path along the river Clyde. The trip would take me about 1 hour each way, depending on weather conditions and traffic (some days its pretty ridiculous). Many of my friends said I was stupid to do it and some days I had to agree with them (gale force winds, driving rain, blown and shredded tyre, abandoning bike over night and walking 1/2 mile carrying both wheels) but I enjoyed the cycle, loved the exercise and saw the benefit it made in my health.

The last time I cycled any great amount was in February of 2008 when I was back in the UK for a couple of weeks. I haven't owned a car for a long time (more than 4 years) and the bike was my every day vehicle. If I needed something from the store I'd hop on my bike and head out.

As I mentioned previously, I've "had" a bike in Canada since November last year, but due to laziness and the winter that came along, I never sorted out the 10 speed racing bike. When the opportunity of a cheap bike to run around town on came about (see previous post) I jumped on the chance. For the first few days I used the bike just to pop down to the local Valu-mart or the post office, rides of not more than 2km, however on Friday we needed more things than I could easily get at Valu-mart (Tofurkey for one) and I decided to take a ride out to the Masonville mall area of the city.

I mapped the route on Google (although I already knew it from the bus rides and the car drives we've taken out there) more to see how far it was than to actually get directions. The route works out to 4.8km each way, so I got my gear on (so far its just riding gloves here) and filled up my water bottle.

The day was warm, around 26C, there was almost no breeze and the sun was blazing, as it seems to do all summer over here. The bike is far from perfect for me, the saddle is a little too low, the frame is a standard 18" (back in the UK I rode a 21" with the saddle way up) and back in the UK I had bike shoes with clip pedals.

The ride to Masonville is relatively uneventful, there are a few hills and train tracks to cross but nothing major. I set off and managed to arrive at the train crossing just as an East to West CN cargo train was rolling through the city as they appear to do many times a day. I was waiting for a good 5 minutes as the massive freight train rolled by but once it cleared I set off once again.

I remembered just in time that I had to stop off at the Post Office to send off a package and took a short break there while I dealt with things. Heading back out I got myself back onto the road so that I could head back out on my journey. The first hill came along pretty quickly and while its not a hard hill, it took me by surprise a little and it taxed me for the first time in a while. As I mentioned earlier I never drop below 3rd gear even when climbing (unless its a monster climb) and I had to work pretty hard, the low saddle position making me have to use more energy than I normally would. The hill drops off after a short while and the road levels off for a km or so, but then there's more climbing, its gentle and relatively easy, but its pretty constant.

By no account was the ride hard, but the weather and the return to cycling was making me dehydrate quicker than normal. By the time I reached my destination I'd already gone through 2/3 of my water. I took care of my shopping and headed back out onto the road for the mostly downhill return home.

On the way home a couple of college kids in a car did what stupid kids do in cars to cyclists all over, they shouted as they passed, to which I returned a couple of expletives (as usual). The only other issue I had was to deal with the "right turn on a red light" issue whereby instead of hugging the side of the road as in the UK, I had to keep out of turning lanes and avoid cars going round me to turn.

In general the drivers were more well behaved than UK drivers and the cycle, although tiring, was really good fun and a nice introduction to local riding.

Saturday morning I had to pop to the pharmacy to get some anti-biotics for Kata (she has an infected piercing) so I took my bike to save time and get some more saddle time in. After the pharmacy I headed down to the Tim Horton's near Kata's work to get her a Timmies breakfast (she started work at 7am) and then meet her for her lunch break. After lunch I headed back home again, another few km under my belt.

Sunday morning, Kata was craving a McGridle breakfast, so I took my bike again and headed for the nearest McDonald's, which is in the heart of downtown's most ghetto crossing, Dundas and Richmond. As I waited to enter the establishment, 5 ghetto "gangstas" were leaving, I held the door for them and waited for them to leave, no thanks were rendered, but I didn't expect any. This branch of McDonald's has a walk up window, just so you know, but I had no intention of using it, hence why I walked in. Once I had my order I headed back out to make my way to Kata's work and she had her breakfast/lunch. While we were talking I was thinking I had nothing to do that afternoon and I wanted to take a cycle, this time I thought I'd head out the other side of the city and make my way to the White Oaks area and the White Oaks mall.

The ride to White Oaks is further, about 6.4km and there's far more climbing involved, riding along Wellington Road, from around Grand Ave almost to Bradley Ave where the mall starts, its a steady climb, harder than the climb to Masonville and much longer, the temperature was in the mid 20s again and the sun was blazing, so once again my water wasn't lasting. I kept going, because I rarely give up and I made it to White Oaks before long and headed into the mall for a wander around.

I didn't do much more than wander, although I did visit the WalMart to use the bathroom, then I wandered around again until I was bored and headed out. I decided to visit Canadian Tire for the first time and was quite impressed by the place, I didn't buy anything and headed out again.

My water was almost empty and I decided to stop on the way back home at the A&P supermarket to pick up some water, or in this case, a can of Arizona Iced Tea (honey and ginseng flavour). I picked up a couple of other things and headed back out again, refreshed and raring to go. The rest of the ride home was uneventful and I got back, hot and sweaty, but certainly happy.

I'm planning a lot more cycles around the city now. There are a bunch of cycle paths through the parks along the Thames which I'm considering taking (although the mosquitoes and black fly may make them less enjoyable), but I am planning a big cycle around the outskirts of the city, which should be around a 35km circuit, something that I'll build up to in a couple of weeks I'm pretty sure.

So I'm finally back on my bike, building up my bike fitness and enjoying myself in the nice weather. I best make the most of it before the snows come again.

Road trips

Kata's work schedule conspired to give her 6 consecutive days off so we decided to hire a car for a couple of days. Rather than take a weekend hire (something we've often done) we decided to take the car from Wednesday to Friday and take a couple of road trips.

On Wednesday we decided to head out East and ultimately take a trip to Ikea in Burlington, I've been to Ikea in Scotland, but Kata had never been before. Ikea only have 11 stores in the whole of Canada, 4 in Ontario and the closest to us is in Burlington, more than 140km away. Now you may think this is a long way to travel just to look at and buy inexpensive Swedish designed goods, but in Canada 140km isn't much in the way of travel, its a factor of scale in this massive country.

Our first stop on the way to Ikea was a yarn store in Burlington called Spun, a cute little place in a "strip mall" situated next door to a sewing machine store and a "bar and grill", pretty typical for a strip mall. Kata was looking for some yarn for a project and when we take trips she likes to visit yarn stores. We spent about 10 minutes in the store and Kata bought the yarn she needed, as well as some yarn she didn't but really wanted.

The next stop on our trip to Ikea was Booster Juice, a smoothie company we'd discovered on a trip we made to the Toronto Zoo. Kata had directions for the entire trip printed out for us (thank you Google maps) and we were travelling along the same street that Spun was on and we spotted a Licks burger restaurant. We were both hungry and we had eaten Lick's Nature Burgers before that we'd bought from the store (the nature burger line is Lick's vegetarian burger, for which they are famous), but I'd never eaten at a proper Lick's restaurant so I pulled in and we headed in. We ordered nature burgers, nature coney fries (fries with vegetarian chili and cheese) and cherry cokes. The food was freshly prepared, the burgers topped to our specification (something I love about Harvey's and Lick's) and we tucked in happily.

We finished our food and headed onto the road once more. The Booster Juice (for we weren't going to give up on our smoothies) was about 5km away and on the way to the Ikea (Kata had planned wisely). The Booster Juice was also in a strip mall. It shared part of a health club's building and was next door to a "glow in the dark" mini golf. We both ordered the Mango Hurricane, mine with a protein booster and Kata's with a fusion booster (thus the name Booster Juice I guess). With smoothies in hand, we headed off to Ikea, another 5km away.

Ikea was pretty much the same as the Ikea I'd experienced in the UK, lots of nice, not overly expensive, relatively stylish products on display to purchase either as is or in flat pack boxes. We bought some candles, candle dishes (to burn the candles on), a pizza cutter (we didn't have one), a cast iron skillet, a messenger bag, some chocolate and lingonberry jelly, none of which was particularly expensive and most of which was pretty good quality. Kata enjoyed herself and admitted that we could have spent hundreds of dollars in there if we had a house to put stuff in.

We left Burlington around 5 and headed back for London along the 400 series highway, the traffic wasn't too bad and we headed to the Wal*Mart in the White Oaks area of London as we needed a couple of things, stuff for my bike and food for Blackie. The Wal*Mart was really busy and finding parking was a chore, but we took care of what we needed and headed home.

For Thursday we planned a day trip to Port Stanley on Lake Erie to visit another great lake (I've been to 3 now, Ontario, Huron and Erie) and on the way we planned to visit St. Thomas, Sparta and ultimately Port Stanley. The weather was fantastic, around 28C, clear skies, a gentle cool breeze and we headed out around 11am. We had planned our trip away from any highway, so we knew we'd be travelling past lots of farms and we knew we'd pass at least a couple of roadside farm stalls.

Not long out of London we happened upon a farm store selling fresh fruit and corn and we bought 14 of the most amazingly fresh and huge corn, we would have bought more but I managed not to bring any cash with me (apart from $7 in change) so we didn't get to buy anything else, but it all looked spectacular. We headed back on the road and passed km after km of farm land, either covered in soy (first pic), corn (second pic) or hay. Its quite a sight and it makes me happy to see how productive the land is around here. There are orchards and vineyards, all manner of fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs & spices grown in Ontario, granted nothing that needs tropical climes, although there are a huge number of hot houses around the country too.


After a short while, we arrived in St Thomas, its not far from London, only 26km by Google directions avoiding the 401 highway. We started to look for Parkspin (another yarn store) which was closing down (the reason to go there, a little bargain hunting), but there was an Iron Horse event on in the town which blocked the street we were trying to drive down, we had to take a few detours to get to our destination, who'd have thought such a small town would have a one way system? We went in, didn't find much that we were interested in until we found a button bin where a bag, a decent sized bag, of buttons were $1+tax. Kata saw some cute plastic buttons that she wanted to get and we dug in hunting them out. After maybe 15 minutes we had collected what turned out to be over 1400 buttons, quite a haul. We paid and petted the shop owner's dog and headed off on the next leg of our trip to Sparta.

Our first destination was planned to be Sparta Candles' store in Sparta. We reached the cute, tiny town after about 30 mins of driving through the countryside. We reached the point where our directions told us to take a left turn and drive 1km. I noticed a store called "Anything Used" and thought "that looks nice, maybe we'll stop in for a look later". So we continued to drive along this small road in Sparta (it's the Sparta Line), and we went past the 1km mark with no sign of what we assumed would be a well signposted store/house, we did see a sign for a lavender farm (Lavender Blue) but we decided to keep driving since the day was so lovely. As we continued to drive we saw many pretty houses and many trees covered in what looked like webs (see the pic), we were so amazed by this we had to slow down and take some photographs. We continued driving and we decided there was no way we were going to find the candle store on that road, but we decided to stop at the Lavender farm and check it out, we were so glad we had.

The Lavender farm, at least the part we could see, was an area of lavender bushes, hoards of butterflies and other insects, crickets chirping loudly, a pretty farm house with a patio and the pathway leading to the store. The store inside is minimal, but nicely presented, all the products are on display and the proprietor had samples of her lavender honey and lavender jelly for customers to sample, along with other samples to test of the cosmetic products. We bought some soaps, some lavender jelly and some lavender chocolate. I asked about the trees with the webs on and we were told that it was caused by the tent caterpillar on birch trees. We also asked about Sparta Country Candles and we were told that it was back the way we came 3km (about what we'd travelled) in the Anything Used store (well that fixed the prospect of us stopping in for a look around).

We headed back into "town" and stopped to visit Anything Used, its a typical gift store with all kinds of garden nick knacks, candles (naturally), books, fudge and all manner of other things. There were another 6 rooms of items upstairs (we only looked through 4 rooms downstairs) but we'd seen and found as much as we wanted to buy in the store (a candle and a resin frog for Kata's mother), so we paid up and headed out to visit another store in the Sparta area called Winter Wheat which Kata's mother had suggested we visit (one of her favourites in that area).

Winter Wheat was only 2 km down the Quaker Road from "downtown" Sparta and is set off the road in a shady wooded area. The building looks like an old farm house, there's also a little tea house, the residence of the owners and a goat house in the clearing. The store sells all manner of "folksy" items, furniture, prints, garden ornaments and all manner of other cutesy stuff. The store offers free tea, coffee and cookies (with a donation to charity greatly appreciated) and Kata bought a few cards to use on her pen pal letters. As I was waiting for her to finish paying, I noticed a hanging bird feeder out the window and to my surprise, some humming birds were flitting in and out feeding from the feeder. It was my first time seeing them in the flesh, a wondrous sight. We tried to get a picture or 2 of the birds, but people were milling around and they didn't return to our field of view before we left.

From Winter Wheat its 15km to Port Stanley, so we headed off and made our way there. One of the primary reasons for going to Port Stanley was to visit the beach there and for me to get a look at another Great Lake (my first visit to a Great Lake was to Lake Huron at Grand Bend in the Spring, the weather was warm but the lake was cold and the town itself wasn't open for the influx of guests that flock there in the summer. We walked on the beach, dipped our feet in the freezing water and headed on our way). Getting to the beach required a little "off our map" navigation but we got to the parking area (free unlike Grand Bend) and we parked close to the beach and headed out for the shore.

The weather was idyllic, air temperature around 28C, the sand a lovely golden colour by the parking lot, I was so excited, I took my sandals off (de rigeur for summer in Canada) and walked to the shore bare foot. The sand was hot, almost too hot, but it was wonderful to feel it under my feet. As we neared the shore we saw multiple life guard stations (not like Baywatch, the tower type that 2 guards sit on under a parasol) and on the back of the one nearest us was information on the weather, lake temperature, sun UV index and other factors I didn't bother reading. The lake was 20C and the sun was "fry you in minutes" strong, at least for North Americans and Northern Europeans, there were hundreds of people at the beach despite it being a Thursday afternoon and many were sun bathing or playing with their kids and generally having a great time. We walked down the shore for 10 or 15 minutes, we paddled in the water (cold compared to the sand but warm), we took some picture, did some cute stuff (drew a heart in the sand with our feet) and then decided to head off to Starthroy to spend some time with Kata's mother and step father. We got lost a little leaving Port Stanley, but we worked things out and headed off cross country (again avoiding the 400 series highway) for Strathroy.

We drove for about 24km on paved roads and then we reached the area around Muncey. A sign stated the paved road would end and we entered into the reservation of Oneida. It was all rough track for about 3km and at one point a collie dog was laying in the road and chased at us as we drove past (we were both pretty shook up worrying that we could have hit the dog had it not pulled out of the chase). We passed out of the reservation and back onto paved roads through Muncey, it was my first time in a Native reservation and Kata told me that it was one of the places that Mixed Martial Arts fights take place in Ontario as the Ontario athletic commission won't sanction MMA fights (the reservations being sovereign territory). I've since learned that the area around Muncey has 3 reservations (Chippewas of the Thames, Munsee-Delaware and Oneida).

We made our way to Strathroy and we went to Kata's parent's house and we learned that her parents had a BBQ to go to that evening (they have a very busy social calendar) so we stayed until it was time for them to leave and we left them 6 corn to enjoy, then headed home to London.

It was a wonderful day out, the best I've had so far in Canada, the weather was wonderful, the people were adorable, the drive was fun and everything went smoothly (more or less).

p.s. If you want to see more pics from the Thursday trip, here's Kata's flickr set.

Trees

This post is going to be very London centric (the Ontario London of course), but I'll try and make it more global, at least where possible.

As I've mentioned before London Ontario is nicknamed the Forest City and a tree is the London city logo. There's a good reason for this, London is covered in trees. I'm not exaggerating, there are a crazy number of trees, almost every street is lined with trees. In the older parts of the city they are massive ancient trees, OK maybe not ancient but a good couple of centuries old.

Its not as if they are the stereotypical pine or spruce trees that I'm sure people imagine are in Canada, there's a wide variety of trees. Lots of maple sure, Canada is blessed with lots of maple trees, from the sugar maple, to red maple (after which the Canadian flag is based) and many others in between.

There are a lot of ornamental trees too, this picture shows an ornamental apple tree, with tiny red apples. I've not tried eating one of the apples, but I have eaten an apple from another ornamental tree with apples that were a little smaller than a cox's orange pippin (it wasn't terrible).

Victoria Park in central London is chock full of trees of many different species, maples, horse chestnut, oak, pine and spruce, I even found a Ginko Biloba tree one day. The problem with the trees in the park are they are old, really old, they are close together and they are suffering from disease and competition from the other trees. Its a shame, but the park services will have to do something about it eventually.

Speaking of disease. This picture is of a tree close to our apartment building (that's it in the background) and you can clearly see that there's a diseased growth on the side of the tree. Its not unusual around the city in the more mature trees. Some of it is down to the age of the plants, some is down to earlier management of the trees that left them unprotected from parasite incursion. This has led to a lot of trees dieing and having to be cut down. There's a city truck that carries around a wood chipper throughout the non snowy season, that takes care of the dangerous trees that need to be cut down. Its a good system but is does show how badly many of the trees are suffering around here.


Here's one last picture. Around London's downtown there are a collection of metal trees painted in gaudy colours and "planted" in areas that are a little less tree covered. Apparently these sculptures caused a real stink when they were commissioned by the London District Business Association. They're not terrible to look at, but honestly, what was the point, its not like London lacks real trees. Still, its art I guess.

I really do like the fact that London is covered in trees, it makes things a lot more pleasant (except when the trees rain or snow on you, or when they hit you with masses of seeds, or the pollen makes you sneeze), they provide much needed shade in the summer and help block out some of the noises of the city (especially in the myriad parks in the city) and they provide a nice home for the local black squirrel population and of course the local birds. They even help to reduce the overall temperature in the city (thanks to transpiration).

Excuse me, I think its time to go out and find a tree to hug, one that's not overly diseased anyway.

Assuming you are so inclined I have a bunch more pictures on my Flickr account.

Cyclists

This post comes from many years of personal experience and from my time here in Canada.

I've been a cyclist for most of my life. I first sat on a bicycle with training wheels when I was 4 and rode without when I was 6. I've fallen off more times than I can remember and I have a nice collection of scars to show for it, I have scars on my right knee when I wiped out on a corner I turned too fast, the index finger of my right hand is deformed thanks to a wipe out when I was trying to show off, my left shoulder has a pink patch where I crashed on a roundabout and slid along the road for 20 meters. I've even broken a bone cycling, well, I kinda broke it, the x-ray was inconclusive but it looked like I had a chip off one of the tarsals in my right foot. That one happened when I wasn't paying attention and tried to ride across a crossing when it wasn't my right of way and a slow moving car collided with me.

All told I've been cycling for more than 30 years and I'm pretty decent at it, on a mountain bike with road tyres I can manage 18mph average speed at a push, or a more leisurely 15mph average without pushing myself too hard.

With that told, I'd like to talk about cycling, cyclists and why its not the solution to our transport problems, at least not yet.

Cyclists fall into a number of categories;

Poor,
Fitness,
Recreational,
Environmental,
Childhood,
Professional.

For most of my cycling life I fell into the fitness category, most recently I've also entered into the environmental camp, as cycling, when used as a main mode of transport around an urban environment, is a very ecologically friendly way to commute.

For most people cycling is a childhood thing, you learn as a kid because its what you do, its a way for you to go visit your friends who live more than a short walk away, its a way to go to the store, to go someplace other than home when you don't have to carry much or have too far to go. Most kids grow out of this, especially in the western world, by the time they get a driver's license, or their parents decide its too dangerous for them to be out on the road without the protection of a car's steel/aluminium/carbon fibre shell.

For some, like myself, its a fitness issue, you cycle to keep fit, you can also use that aspect as a way to travel around, but in the fitness category you'll travel further than most on your cycle. I've ridden 70 miles in a day, just because. You'll also commute on your bike because it keeps you fit, saves you money and is ecologically sound. This group of people, like myself, will cycle most of the year and most of their lives.

Some people look upon their bicycles as a purely recreational tool, they'll strap their bikes onto the back of their SUVs or 4X4s and head off to the wilds where a cycle trail awaits them, they'll cycle around for a while, have some lunch, cycle some more, then strap the bikes back on the vehicles for the drive home. The bikes are then stowed again until the next time the whim takes them.

Professionals are a small extreme group, the cycle courier, the pro/am athlete (road racers, bmx riders, mountain bikers, bike trialists) and the rarity, a job that makes you cycle, e.g. police initiatives. People in this group are either forced into it (cops) or they are driven by the need to ride, live to ride, ride to live. It doesn't matter to them what the weather, what the time of day, they ride for riding's sake, some get paid, many don't.

Environmentalists cycle to prove a point, "look at me I'm saving the planet", sometimes this is true, when they eschew anything with an engine. They make a life choice to prove a point to the rest of the world. This works well in a city where you can travel short distances to find everything you need, but in rural areas, not so much, still, its a start I guess. Politicians have polluted this group of course, they show off their greenness by riding around the city, with 5 bodyguards, 3 cars with all their staff and documents, helicopter escort, you know the kind of thing, typical political hypocrisy masquerading as caring for anything but their own image.

Now I get to the poor. For much of the world, where annual wages are minuscule, where you can barely feed and clothe your family, where a motor vehicle is a lifetime's earnings, the bicycle can be (but not always) a life line, a way to transport goods to and from markets, to travel to and from work, to carry your family. Asia is the perfect example of the bicycle as mass transit. Its almost a unique situation which is slowly dying off as Asia's massive population gradually earns more, pulling themselves out of poverty and rising to moderate (by western terms) affluence.

In the western world however the poor who cycle tend to be those of a "ghetto" persuasion. Those who's lives have been "wasted" in crime, drugs, anti-social behaviour, or just never cared to better themselves in the lands of plenty. These people cycle their ghetto bikes, contravening any laws of the land, not caring about their personal safety, let alone the safety of others. They will ride at night, without lights or reflectors, on the streets or pavements (sidewalks) with total disregard for anyone or anything else. This is the group that above all else who give cyclists a bad name.

The problem for cycling as a solution for traffic emissions and congestion? Well there's the image problem for one, some see it as a childish pursuit that should be abandoned when you're capable of owning a vehicle and there's the "ghetto" types, who paint an extremely poor image of the cyclist. Add to this the fact that motorists feel entitled to the road, hate to share it with other vehicles, let alone human powered bicycles. As a cyclist I've many times been close to death thanks to a motorist who either didn't care to look out for me, or had no regard for my life whatsoever, only my own ability to protect myself on the road has kept me safe.

Until there's an overriding incentive for people to get out of their cars and onto bicycles in a safe(ish) environment, it won't happen, it may never happen if alternative fuels for vehicles actually turn out to be the solution that most of us hope they can be, but certainly not yet and not for 20 years possibly.

I hate to be negative, because I love cycling, but its a fact of life, a few people using a 140 year old technology won't change the world, unfortunately, but for the time being, I'll keep cycling and looking out for myself.

Multiculturalism and Mongrels

I felt my other post today was a bit short. It was going to be a bit different, but I ended up with what I posted. So I thought I'd post another entry to make up for it...

In part this post comes out of my post about pets, more specifically mutts, also known as mongrels.

I grew up in the UK, a country influenced by its history of invasion, empire building and post war immigration. In London especially you can find people from all nations of the world (like pretty much every other major city in the western world) and this mix of cultures, creeds and colours has given the UK a wonderful mix of viewpoints, skin colours and culture.

I myself am a mix of 3 different nations (from my parents and many more from my grandparents and beyond), Scotland, Lithuania and Italy (via Israel). This doesn't make me anything unusual in terms of people of my generation born in Israel as there has been a massive influx of Jews from all over the globe to the country which led to a tumultuous mix of people united under one culture.

I grew up in Scotland, as I've mentioned before, and we were the only Jewish family in our neighbourhood for all of my formative years, we were also the only family who spoke a foreign language (Hebrew around the house and sometimes outside) and my mother was the only clearly foreign person for miles around (she still to this day speaks with a European accent even though she speaks fluent English).

Sometimes this wasn't such a great thing, I suffered some racial abuse (if you call Jews a race) and bullying, which wasn't helped by my being a fat kid for a long time (not super fat, but enough to get teased).

It took a long time before I realised that my family and my cultural mix made me more interesting than your average local who's family could trace generations of predecessors to the same insular area. I became proud to be a mongrel, rather than ashamed.

In the last 10 years, Scotland in particular has seen an influx of immigrants, certainly there were always Chinese and Pakistani populations while I was growing up (one thing that most bigots won't turn their noses at are the delicious foods that immigrants brought with them), Chinese and more recently Indo-Pakistani foods have been staples for most households, but now there's an even wider range of people and foods. Proper Mexican, Thai, Lebanese, Turkish, Ethiopian, Mongol, Caribbean, well you get my point.

As I've said, as far as multicultarlity (i hope that's a proper word) goes I'm nothing special, my parents and their parents all came from Europe, but considering the diverse cultures that developed in Europe, its still and interesting mix. What I'm trying to get at is I love multicultural societies and in Canada I've found a good one.

It took me a while to find this page and I hope it works, but just in case I'll summarise it briefly. In 2006 there were 31 million people in Canada, of that the majority are British and French, but after that most of the nations of the world are represented with a large skew to Europe, but there's more than 3 million of Asian origin and more than a million of African origin.

What can I say, I'm proud to be a mongrel and I'm proud to live in a multicultural society.

Downtown Architecture

Kata and I decided to go downtown today (the commercial part of downtown) as we had a package to pick up from the Galleria Tuck Shop post office... (1) and on the walk down it brought back to me the quaint nature of the architecture in some parts of London and the way that, due to its very nature, North America cherishes its "older" buildings.

Coming from the UK we have a strange mix of views on architecture, many love the modern buildings that show off the new thinking on style and functionality which attempts to make the smallest impact on the environment whilst still being spectacularly pretty or at the very least impressive. A good example of recent(ish) architecture is the London Gherkin as its fondly, or not so fondly called. It was designed by Sir Norman Foster and was built on the site of the old Baltic Exchange, which was destroyed by the IRA in 1992 (gotta love wikipedia). Its actual name is St Mary Axe, but its nickname shows off the human ability to lampoon any and everything with impunity. An older but still modern building is the Lloyds of London building which has most of what would be internal sturcture, pipework, ductwork and other such things, are on the outside.

Then there's people who hanker after the old. Being the "old world" of course there's lots of really REALLY old buildings hanging around, stuff dating to the Roman era, e.g. the Roman baths in Bath which date to the 1st century AD. There's umpteen stately homes, castles, places of worship, old houses and such, going through many centuries of architectural styles.

OK going a little of message here, but the point is we've lots of nice old stuff and lots of new stuff, much of the new stuff exists thanks to World War 2, when the Luftwaffe bombing campaign destroyed a huge amount of the UK's cities. After the war the government had to rebuild and rehouse millions of people (most of Europe had to do this of course) and in the 50s and 60s a lot of terrible prefabricated housing was constructed, with varying levels of disaster and loss of life.

In London Ontario , as its my main point of reference, in the downtown area there's a large number of businesses using converted town houses for their premises. Most are law firms or financial consultants, some are opticians and architects, there's even a hair salon ironically named "Brunner, Moore & Ross Hairisters" a pun on the other firms which neighbour it which are mostly law firms. Its interesting to see this being done and its due to the London Heritage Council who's job it is to look after the "historical buildings" in London.

I'm pretty sure there's one of these groups in most cities in North America over the age of 100, but its that very aspect that's the weird thing to me. Its the difference in magnitude of the age of the buildings. In the UK 100 years old is nothing for a building, its barely an adult, its had all its wrinkles worked out and its starting to settle in for middle age. In North America 100 years is ancient, its revered and cared for like a fragile treasure.

On Richmond, one of the main streets in London, in the northern part of downtown, there are many bars and restaurants, stores, spas and even a tattoo parlour all in converted town houses. Its sweet and a good use of a premises that long ago stopped being used as a single family home.

The obvious fly in the ointment however is the North American love affair with the Mall, especially strip malls, as they are called, boxy stores that are homogeneous from mall to mall, city to city, country to country (OK mostly the USA and Canada). I guess they're functional and since most of them are built on the outskirts of the city/town they don't need to fit into any pre-existing buildings or have a limited space to be built on (after all Canada and the USA have so much empty space to expand into).

I guess I'll get to see how things continue to develop in the future, if the strip malls continue to proliferate or if people turn against them, what with the inevitable increase in the price of petrol (gasoline).

(1) We are having a problem with the Canada Post parcel delivery side of things, the regular postal worker has the key to our apartment building and generally there's no problem delivering mail to our door when needed (for things that need to be signed for or are too big for the mail box that she'd be delivering). The delivery man who comes in the Canada Post truck however, well he's another story entirely. Now sure our intercom isn't well marked (it was written in ink but since the board is in direct sunlight on the south side of the building its long faded) but, the LCD display does say "enter # and the apartment number to contact residents". Many a cab driver has managed to work this magic out, as have food delivery drivers (for the few times we order out), but the Mail man, well, I don't get it. One day he does it right, but OK, we're out, he doesn't leave a message (its tied into the phone system so it will go to our voicemail) and then we get a delivery card the next day in our mail box. Fine. But then another day, yesterday for example, he didn't even try dialing our apartment, he decided there was no answer and went. In this case the order was one Kata had made with Knit Picks (she's an avid knitter) and they have full tracking on their deliveries, so we discovered that "supposedly" a delivery attempt had been made at 11:00am, which was far from the truth as we were both in the apartment, awake, hanging out waiting to go out for lunch with our friend John aka picard, aka Leschinski Design and we didn't leave until close to 12:30. Its just a galling issue but not a life ruiner.