Living For The City

I know this particular bike is old news but I never really paid it much attention but when Antonio Columbo speaks, you sit your ass down and listen. I’ve really come to appreciate this particular project and if I were made of money, not only would I buy one but I’d ride the b’jesus out of it. Pretty cool looking show, beautiful bicycle and nice little video presentation. Enjoy. I did.

Via Tracko

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On a totally unrelated note:

While flipping channels this morning I stumbled across a news piece about the origins of Earth Hour and how it’s grown to become a global phenomenon. Cool. They interviewed this one person who seemed pretty excited about the event who said “For earth hour I’m going to turn off all the lights, put a glow stick on my dog Molly and take her for a walk.”

So, first of all, you normally leave your lights on when you take your little raver dog for a walk? Then, as your last grand gesture towards environmental awareness you’re going to attach a completely useless and disposable, chemical filled piece of plastic to your dog?

Easy on the activism, cupcake; you don’t want to be labeled an eco-terrorist, do you? Some people just take it too far. Sheesh.

When I left the hospital after visiting with Cam on Saturday, I spoke with my better half and she asked me to maintain perspective so that I wouldn’t let my anger get the better of me – it’s nice to have someone around who will help me keep myself in check and keep my energy focused on positive outcomes. I agree, wholeheartedly, that allowing my rage to consume me and reacting to the situation emotionally would not yield positive results but I’ve got a problem; I am angry. Every time a friend of mine ends up in the hospital because someone wasn’t paying attention (and they get away scot-free) my anger will continue to grow.

I’ve mentioned it here before and I’ll mention it again – I don’t think Cab drivers, by nature, are bad people by any stretch but they work within an industry that requires them to be to bad drivers in order to make a good living and feed their families. A variety of job-related factors, no doubt, desensitize them and increase their relative comfort within their big metal boxes while diminishing the comfort of all others around them. It’s not my hate for cab drivers that keeps this issue at the forefront of my thinking – it’s my love for cyclists, and more specifically the love I have for my friends and the desire for them to be safe and secure.

Take Cam’s “accident” for example; we’ve all been in this situation. You’re riding next to or just behind a cab and they think that they see a potential fare and without a second thought (or a glance over their shoulder) they are already pulling over to pick them up – when the potential fare is just someone walking down the street not looking for a cab, the taxi driver zooms off only to do the same thing five seconds later.

Weaving and bobbing, bobbing and weaving – if every person walking down the street is a potential fare then every time you’re within a ten foot radius of a cab you’re a potential victim. So, what’s the solution? Stay away from cabs when you’re on the road? Ok. Deal. Get the cabs off the road and we’ll stay away from them. Not going to happen? Of course it’s not, so something needs to be done to keep these rubbernecking motherfuckers away from us.

How many people have to get seriously hurt before something changes? What has to be done?

Regulation
In Italy, and I suspect in a good number of places across Europe; you cannot hail a cab from the street. You have to call the cab company, they meet you at a pre-defined location and they drop you off at a pre-defined destination.

This city needs this (or some) type of regulation. Would it negatively impact the income of the cab drivers? Of course it would, at least at first. Would it make taking a cab less convenient for patrons? Of course it would, at least at first. Tough noogies.

I’m confident that this type of regulation would increase the level of safety for everyone who has to share the road with taxis by a wide margin. We banned the use of cell phones while driving to improve road safety, why not make this type of fare-hunting illegal, too?

Responsibility
Everyone knows that the cab companies have their cars GPS enabled – my father helped develop the dispatching software that most major companies in this city use so I’m well aware of what their capabilities are. If you get hit by a cab, if you get doored, etc. and you know the time/ place / company they could easily locate the cab – but will they do that for you?

The cab belongs to someone, the license belongs to someone, and in many cases neither of these people are the driver who actually takes you out. Who bears the responsibility? The companies would much rather not be involved at all so in a case where you only know the cab company (and maybe not even that), it’s easier for them to just say “we don’t know anything” unless the police get involved – knowing that most people will get frustrated and give up before pursuing matters legally. Often, you’re just happy to be alive and need to focus on healing over pursuing justice.

Most of these guys will drive away so unless you can get a good look at their cab number or license plate when you’ve got your face buried in the pavement, they are gone forever and no one will ever take responsibility for it. Fuck ‘em.

Infrastructure
Whether it’s heightened environmental awareness, recession, fads, high gas prices or greater health consciousness; there are more and more people on bicycles and as long as little to nothing changes more and more people are going to find themselves on the ground, in the hospital or worse.

This city seriously needs to explore harm reduction strategies undertaken in other cities and see how they may apply to our city. We’ve had a city-wide bike plan for how long now? 8 years? How much of that plan has been put into action? There is just no other way to say it – cycling infrastructure in this city needs to improve and it needs to improve rapidly. At the forefront of that infrastructure needs to be comprehensive driver / cyclist education plans focused on rights and responsibilities.

I don’t expect things to happen over night and I don’t expect to live in a world where nothing bad ever happens but god damnit; I’m getting tired of getting these “so and so got hit” phone calls – they leave my blood boiling and my heart heavy.

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On a totally unrelated note: if you haven’t yet given Spoils Of Failure a spin and you like slow/heavy/pant-shitting type stuff then you really should. If nothing else, put on track V, pump up the volume and… well… shit your pants.

USA Today upped some stills from Where The Wild Things Are which has finally be set for a Fall 2009 release. Looks amazing! I hope they didn’t suck all the good out of it.

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Update: Booya!

I was supposed to go out for a ride this morning but I woke up feeling a little bit too under the weather to get my pedal on but when I heard that our boy Cam’ron had been on the losing end of a rousing game of bike vs. car I figured I’d head up to Ideal to meet the crew before heading to l’hôpital for a visit before Cam goes into surgery.

As the story goes; Cam was riding home last night, moving traffic on his left and parked cars on his right. As they will do, the cabbie veered over the dotted line squeezing cam into the parked cars and as he put his hand down on the trunk of the car to stabilize himself the cabbie accelerated sharply, dragging Cam down as he sped off.

Torn MCL, broken knee cap, chipped tibia but spirits intact. Cam is a super friendly, smart and resilient guy – I’m sure that he’ll bounce back from this but in the meantime if anyone has time to spare, I’m sure he’s going to need folks to run around for him, bring him stuff, etc. so let’s all make sure our boy stays comfortable as he heals, y’heard?

Sometimes the aggression will get you, sometimes it’s the inattentiveness but if you spend enough time on the road chances are something will happen so keep your heads up and the rubber side down, please.

Heal well, my friend.

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Update: I just went to up to the hospital to bring Cam some delicious Gandhi Roti (better than hospital food, no doubt) and he is doing well, all things considered. Surgery went well but his leg swelled out of control and he’s been through 2 casts already. With luck, he’ll be out of the hospital tomorrow and he can start trying to get his heal on.

A month or so ago The Brother’s McCracken were visiting a friend in London and came upon a guy with a whole bunch of sweet collections; records, dinky cars, butt plugs* and bikes. They made out pretty good with some cheap records but didn’t have a camera with them to snag photos of the bike collection, which was apparently quite impressive.

What does that have to do with anything? Well, not much, but it reminded of a collection that I’d once seen and loved but couldn’t remember the name of – so today
while perusing Cycling WMD I was stoked to have had my memory refreshed!

The almost 200 roadworthy bikes and the curiosity of the objects makes the Embacher collection unique. Mostly when collectors run riot they happen across just a corner of the bicycle’s history – but here design and fascination with the rare, the strange – and also heroic failures – are at the forefront of the collection.

It would be impossible to pick my favorites from all categories so I’ll just pick a few from the track category and call it a day:

Old**

New***

Aero. So aero.

Check out the Embacher Collection here. Have a good weekend. I’m tired.

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* Ok, not really, but imagine?

** I really felt like that bike should have had track drops instead of the flat bars installed in the original photo, so I photochopped some on it.

*** Yes, I’m aware that the Corima is 15 years old which hardly qualifies it as “new” but it certainly looks newer than the “old”. Am I right, boys? Am I right? Raawl, rawwwl.

Downside; my morning commute has now been doubled. Plus-side; my morning commute was only 5 minutes before. My new morning commute takes me by Dovercourt & Argyle which I don’t think I’ve passed since last November when a Taxi driver mowed down a cyclist, crushing him against a pole and almost completely severing his leg which was later removed in hospital.

The bent pole still stands and serves as a solemn reminder of how vulnerable we are out there so with the weather getting warmer and more of us being out there on the road we’ve got to remember just how bad things can get; stay alert and stay safe, friends.

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On a somewhat related note; for those of you following the case, the trial date for Ahmed Sultan (taxi driver, amateur surgeon and all around good guy) has been set for March 27th at 9am. I guess we’ll wait to see what comes of it.

The other day I took snowbird Harley, fresh off the plane from wintering in Florida, out for a walk and while I was out I picked up some sammies for some co-workers at Reggie’s; egg salad and avacado sammies to be exact.

Growing up, I loved me some egg salad sandwiches but for the last 14 years they’ve been off limits. The other night, after having seen and smelled those sandwiches earlier in the day, I’d had enough… No, I didn’t go buy eggs but I did get down to business on perfecting a vegan egg salad sandwich of my own.

I started with a recipe I found at Post Punk Kitchen and added a potato, some sliced avacado and crushed black pepper on the bread and a little more chopped up in the salad itself.

I’ll tell you what! It’s delicious. Next time ’round I need to add one more potato / use a firmer tofu to get the texture down and let it sit in the fridge over night so that it’ll settle up / hold together better like actual egg salad should.

After a long week of packing and a long couple of days of moving it was amazing to wake up on Sunday and be able to just take the day as it came.

The Killen – Coulter family rolled down and met us for a tour of the new house and a nice relaxing walk in the park with everyone’s favorite bulldog, Mabel.

Afterwords; my lady and I hit up Get Real on Ossington for some much-needed sustenance before heading home for some well deserved downtime.

Later in the day; knowing that I wasn’t really physically up for it but also knowing that I need to start training for a couple of big rides later this season, some of the Curbside / BOW guys got together for a little jaunt out to Port Credit.

The ride is about only about 50k, give or take, which is an ideal ride for me but after a long winter and a hectic couple of weeks it really took the wind out of my sales. I’ve really got to get my strength & endurance up if I plan on making good on any of the cycling goals I’ve set for the summer.

EDIT: This should help make some of those longer rides a little bit more manageable. Thanks, Sean!

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Obligatory Bike Pr0n!

Toby’s new Affinity.

Chad’s classic Merckx.

Team ‘noni in full effect.

My man Aaron hit me up last week to let me know that he had gotten his hands on some wonderful little nuggets of Toronto Cycling history – beautifully preserved photos of High Park races from the 40′s and a bunch of old CNE track photos which I’m going to assume are from the height of the 6-day races; Audy, Torchy Peden, Lew Rush, etc. Some real gems in there!

Thank again Aaron; I really appreciate you thinking of me and hooking me up, frosty beers shall be shared soon enough!. Unfortunately for the rest of you, the rights to the photos do not belong to either of us so they cannot really be shared or placed online but rest assured, they will make fine prints to be hung in my new place.

Which brings me to my next point and the main reason that I haven’t been blogging (or doing much of anything else) for the last week or so. I’ve mentioned it briefly a couple times here without proper explanation so here’s what’s going on. As the story goes; we’ve kicked around the idea for years but with the economy tanking my folks and I decided to go in on a house together as an investment property together.

We set our sights on a beautiful semi-detached late 1800′s Victorian in Beaconsfield village. The bones are good and the location is amazing so we put an offer in and much to our surprise and delight; they accepted it. It’s currently a single family home but over the course of the next few months we’re going to split the house in half so that half can be used as a rental and as of Saturday, the other half is my new home.

Thanks to my folks, my gal and the buds for helping me move all of my junk from one container to another.

I’ll post a bunch of pictures once I get things more set up / put away which will be the “before” pictures because after a few months the house is going to be completely transformed. It’s going to be a lot of work, take a lot of time and money but in the end I think it’s a sound investment and is going to be a very exciting learning experience for me.

Thanks to everyone for your help and support going into this project / next stage in my life; it’s weird to wake up one day and realize that you’re starting to become an adult. If the bald spot didn’t put the nail in that particular coffin – this has.

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I’ve been wanting for a while to experiment with different clipless setups to see what I like the most before sinking any serious money into a system that I may or may not be totally happy with. In the end; I think I’ll do most of my day to day riding with sneakers / clips / straps but I like the idea of having a solid clipless system and knowing how to use it properly for longer rides so in the name of skills development, it’s time to play…

I started with the old Speedplay Frogs that I got for free late last year but didn’t like the lack of a discernible “click”. I loved how comfortable they were due to unrestricted free float but not knowing whether or not the cleat and the pedal were engaged until pulling up didn’t make me feel all that comfortable riding a brakeless fixed gear in the city, where foot retention is of the utmost importance.

A testament to the use of grease on all threaded components; the cleats were a breeze to remove. These have probably been on there for at very least 10 years and, as solid as they were, they came off incredibly easy because the previous owner had the good sense to use just the right amount of grease when he installed them. Nice!

Liam was kind / generous enough to lace me with his spare Crank Brothers Eggbeaters so that I could give them a whirl. Thanks again, hombre.

I installed the cleats initially with a 20° release angle because that was what I was used to with the Frogs but tried out the optional 15° release angle and found that it made disengaging that much easier. I didn’t notice it in the instructions until after the fact (who really reads these things, anyway? Are we not men?) but Crank Bros recommend the 15° for inexperienced users so I probably made the right choice.

I’ve found that having 4 points of entry makes the Eggbeaters incredibly easy to get into; a definite plus as the last thing I want to be doing in traffic is fussing about getting my feet into my pedals.

The Eggbeaters have a fairly comfortable 6° of float – certainly not as much as I was used to with the Frogs but the tradeoff works in favor of the Eggbeaters. See, having unrestricted free float up to 20° is pretty nice and very easy on the knees – but when 20° is also the release angle, the potential for problems is a little more than I’d like to deal with. With that said; I didn’t ever really have a problem in that regard but the obvious “click in / click out” of the Eggbeaters is much, much more favorable for a worry wart like myself.

I expect that I’ll ride the Eggbeaters for a while (or until they explode, which hopefully doesn’t happen while I’m trying to stop at the end of a long hill) as I’ve enjoyed them thus far but I’d like to try out some of the old grey Time Atac pedals. Some of the fellas ’round these parts swear by them and won’t ride much of anything else. Not that I expect that any of those guys will want to give them up but If anyone has any kickin’ around that they don’t want / use any more, holla at ya boy! Me love you long time.

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On an unrelated note; Photographer extraordinaire and all around good fella Jess sent me this video of some of the perils of cycling, even in (perhaps especially in) the bike lane. Watch the video the whole way through – it would be funny if it weren’t so aggravating. Retardo drivers get the gas face, as do the retardo cops that fail to penalize them.

This weekend my dear old friend Keith got married to his longtime sweetheart Kristina. They’ve already got the house, the cars and the dogs so I guess this was a bit of a formality at this point but I’m glad they did it and even more glad to have been invited.

Unfortunately I missed the service because I was helping my special lady friend move into her new place (thanks again Spark, Rob & especially Hayden for all your help – I’m glad no one died) but, despite the dreaded cab ride to Woodbridge, I made it out to the reception and had a great time celebrating with some great old friends.

Joey, in fine form.

The first dance…

Oh, there it is.

Momma Clarke tears up the dance floor.

Oh, there it is.

Pasquale workin’ the floor like only Pasquale can.

We clean up ok, I guess.

Ruth, Keith & Alex; so comfortable.

Friends forever.

The night ended the way any respectable open bar wedding should…

…In party mode.

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On an unrelated note; writing the card allowed me to use my new/old writing desk. She’s a beaut, bahd!