Bottombracket

Paris-Roub- I mean Ancaster

2009-04-20T11:32:00.008-04:00

(Hell of the North, Sector 1)

It has been awhile since this blog has seen much of anything in the way of new posts. Naturally the fives of people who read it must be profoundly disappointed. Or something.

Spring is in the air, robins are peeping around, and until today we had a nice dry spell where I got to race the 'cross bike in some long, demanding early season races before the whole roadie thing takes over everything. Yesterday was the second of two Paris-Roubaix Canadian knock-off races, both of which I completed.

Paris-Ancaster is a monster event with over 2000 participants. I was spared the routine of being sandwiched into a school bus at the finish to be bussed to the start as I am now racing for ZM Cycle and got a ride to the start in the team gas guzzler rammed full of middle-aged adventurer men in ridiculous blue and yellow Lycra.

The real deal was the week before, 100 km further up in the 'Hell off the North' which La Bicicletta ran this year (and superbly well I might add). It had 92 racers, and was much colder and longer at 89 kms of road and trail. I bonked with about 25kms to go, but I still pulled off about 30th. That was a really epic bike race.

I finally rode the Mudslide at P-A this year, or tried to anyway, doing a couple of half-crashes in slow motion inside the 250 metre long downhill muck trench filled with big rocks. It was still good fun. All twenty gears seemed to be working fine on my muck-covered bike with the final climb to go at kilometre 59.5. P-A traditionally ends with a steep dirt road climb out of a gully and can say that I was must pleased to be in my 34x27 gear whilst doing it. I even sprinted the last 25 m to nip a guy at the line, 106th of 1202 finishers thank you.

It's hard to describe the whole arc of the process from day before prep to race start and enduring it to hitting peak-working in pacelines-dropping people-final ascent-recovery-return home. A huge journey inside a controlled adventure of a few hours. Endorphins replaying the whole thing in your head hours after.

Yellow.

2009-03-04T11:51:00.000-05:00

The solution to everyone's problems.

Icycle '09 Dufferin Grove Park Rink

2009-02-23T11:17:00.004-05:00

Photo: Frank Theriault
Les pistards sur glace: Panama Jack vs. Pete 'Bones' Breward

The ice race played out in all its icy glory. (Jim 'Ice bear' Kuz chases Ted Ingram in the final. Eventually Kuz crashed on a flat tire in a corner and took Ingram down with him.) There were lots of 'cross machines in attendance. Good weather, fine times and a bit of a crowd too!

WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?

2009-02-17T10:02:00.002-05:00

Tyler Hamilton, riding in the cold and sopping wet Tour of California yesterday, along with two of his boys at Rock Racing who are apparently too tough to wear gloves or rain jackets unlike everyone else. Well, they were defending the leader's jersey. And they are Rock Racing. We are deep in the depths of a not very bad winter here in southern Ontario; the sun has been shining for whole days. Temperatures have been hovering around the O degrees Celsius mark in the last days, and I have been totally uninterested in racing a bike for months now. As in, no training of any kind and disgusted at even the thought of participation in a road race.

Until Sunday. We had one of these one degree and blazing bright days that screamed for a bike ride of one kind or another - even A. felt the urge and that guy can sit in front of his computer in the dark of his bedroom under any circumstances. We rolled out as three, with our wise old Yoda of the bicycle, the one and only D. D. took one look at me with my bib knickers and race-ish white road bike, and said "That's serious, man". What did he mean?

"I've got double overbooties on" was my only reply.

Of course, D., who's been an amateur road racer, pro mechanic, bike messenger, and model train engineer in his days, was running a single speed winter bike with at least 28mm tires and full fenders, as well as foul weather cycling pants. As in pants, not tights. D. has let go of all pretenses to speed and raciness. I, on the other hand, have not. And this sub-two hour roll through the flat, straight streets of a peopleless South Etobicoke confirmed it. Not having done a group ride since early September, I kept finding myself off the front of this mellow, first of the year outing with my two non-racer companions, itching for more.

Yesterday I pulled the trainer out and put my bike in it for the first time since I was racing 'cross in the Fall. It felt good. There, I said it. I enjoyed riding on a stationary bicycle in my living room. The downpour of sweat, my heart rate monitor still not working, my old bike shorts now hideously stretched and deformed, none of it dampened my enthusiasm, not even the 8-speed wheel I had stuck into the rear of my 10-speed setup could bother me. I made a horrible racket for a solid hour and climbed off, feeling good.

Frame of Cuba.

2009-02-12T12:51:00.003-05:00

This brand new machine I found in Cuba in the first house I stayed in. The seat stays are attached to nothing, presumably to take a bolt that would secure/be part of a cargo rack along with the frame itself. Like everything else it Cuba it managed to look old even though it was new. It takes Communist industry to pull that off (I believe).

2009-01-29T10:06:00.002-05:00

Zabel

2009-01-29T09:24:00.004-05:00

What can be said? It is the end of an era.

Erik Zabel's last pro bicycle race ended in triumph in Berlin on 27 January 2009. He and Robart Bartko went into the final night of the Berlin Six in the lead and stayed ahead of Bruno Risi and Franco Marvulli, the Swiss powerhouse defending champions. Was it by gentlemen's agreement? Very possibly, but who cares: a class act went out in style in his home town in front of 13 000 Berliners and other fans.

In the days of Eddie Merckx, it was common for stars to race everything, from the Spring Classics to the indoor winter Six Day track races, as they needed the money. Now that Zabel has finished up, no one will be. The last hard man has gone home. I wanted to be there, to see it happen but it was not to be.

For the record, the lovely photo (Velo News) is from this year's Bremen Six, also won by Zabel and Bartko earlier this month. Zabel was no tourist in the sixes, having won a dozen of them over the years. What were his feelings when he took that final lap of honour, I wonder?

Zabel is one of the last of a dying breed, those pro bike racers raised in the old communist East German sports system, selected as kids and primed to maximum ability (amongst others - Jens Voigt, Rolf Aldag, and one Jan Ullrich). People always associate that system with massive, organized doping for the Olympic Games, but that's not the point to me. Each of these racers brought something special to the sport. From being coerced into into it by the state, they went beyond that to become stars on their own with their own love of the sport, long after the GDR was absorbed into the West.

The trackies do this tribute thing for winners where they line up standing on either side of the straightaway, saluting with their bikes propped up on the back wheel as the victors roll past.
A fitting end for Zabel, so respected amongst the pro ranks.

Ete, werden Sie verfehlt.

(Ete, you will be missed.)

Men at Sea

2009-01-26T16:11:00.003-05:00

Who are the humanlike figures in this photo?
Could they be Canadian national cyclo-cross team members lost in a sea of panic in their current European tour? Is it Floyd Landis and Michael Rasmussen, after having lost their final appeals in their respective doping convictions? 'We're in the same boat, you and I - why not make it a proper shipwreck in an icebox?', said one to the other, maybe.

In fact what we have here are a couple of Burmese fishermen who were found somewhere off the coast of Malaysia or some place, after twenty days shipwrecked at sea. The photo is from the rescuing helicopter. All other hands disappeared in a monsoon/typhoon but these two were smart enough to think of the icebox and use its buoyancy to sail in for weeks.

Perhaps they survived on fish they kept in their icebox while reading that Yann Martel novel about the kid and the tiger in the boat. But the point is that they danced with death in the wide ocean, and lived.

Overbooty Review

2009-01-23T17:05:00.003-05:00

Axiom polyester vs M.E.C. neoprene - of course the neoprene is thicker and tougher and has a rubber sole. Which makes it one hell of a burden to yank on over the bike shoe as opposed to the loose and simple but only wind resistant Axiom booty.
The MEC booty sole is designed to be cut to fit the cleat of your choice and the thick rubber actually creates an opening allowing cold air to rush in. Solution: use a thick insole from a walking shoe as insulation.

Bonepicking: Bike Racers Vs Jews

2009-01-15T12:47:00.009-05:00

'Exercise? We don't need no stinking Jane Fonda!'

So who is tougher - roadies or Ultra-Orthodox Jews? It's a question on the mind of everyone, so let's not shy away from what medical science has to say on this conundrum.

In this bone density study
(ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DiscoveryPanel.Pubmed_Discovery_RA&linkpos=1&log$=relatedarticles&logdbfrom=pubmed) fifty young Hasidim pulled down their black pants and were examined by experts seeking bone mineral density data. In order to be thorough, crotches were investigated first-off, just to be clear there were no Yentl-benders confusing the sample.

In this study of roadie bone density, by Smathers, Bemben & Bemben (most likely godless gentiles), http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11331729, road racers with over nine years (= 7000 pp. of Talmud) of racing under their belts, so to speak, were also tested for bone mineral density but not tzitzit-capaciity. Both groups reveal low-ish bone mineral density, and both pray excessively, leaning forward for lengthy periods, but roadies carry much lighter carbon fibre prayerbooks and have a much more aerodynamic tallis.

As to which group could field a better decathalon team, data projections are unclear. Sorry.

In addition to detailed examinations of Hasidic crotches (itself so unlikely as to be worthy of an entire blog post), speculation was made as to possible causes of osteo-whateveritscalled. "Modest clothing" was cited as it blocks out the sun's rays and the crucia vitamin E. Kosher dining habits were also blamed as "milk products" aren't eaten until six hours after meat is digested.
During that long six hour window, lycra-wearing road racers can plan and execute daring raids on large batches of Hasidic yogurt, a highly sought-after dietary enhancement by men who shave their legs.

Let's Talk About Gaza, Baby

2009-01-13T12:31:00.002-05:00

Gaza is burning.

What else is new? An New Year email from a charity I support in the West Bank is all about Gaza of course, because that's where the action is, that's what gets the moneys flowing in so you're crazy not to write about Gaza, even if your org. doesn't exist in Gaza. Never mind that.

Over at the Guardian by way of the Nation, Naomi Klein's gone all pro-boycott and divestment and sanctions, and backs it up with the example of a Brit telecom that's shut off business with Israel since this latest invasion began 27 December '08. Just a practical business decision, she points out, given the general British feelings about Israel in and its occupying and invading, proving that boycotts aren't only for the bleeding heart liberals, and cites a coalition of Israeli academics etc. calling for a trade boycott themselves.
Apparently trade with Canada has risen by 45% since last year - thanks to the Canadian free trade deal with Israel. And they've got one with Merosur now too!

It all has really gone on too long, this Israeli need to crush all opposition to it, be it Hezbollah or Hamas or whoever. It is a hyper-aggressive strategy that constantly claims all terror will stop through overwhelming lethal force. Just slaughter enough opponents and their resistance ideology will dry up and blow away - nothing could be further from the truth in fact, and eight wars and more sit there reminding us. All Israel does is further anathematize itself to the rest of the world and make the Hamas-style line of reasoning make more and more sense.

Why concede to Israel when its principal goal is to obliterate you? Shaheeds (martyrs) only raise the bar of resistance, obligating everyone else to do the same. Hamas has ambitious goals that go well beyond ending blockades on Gaza's borders. Even beyond a viable Palestinian state. They want a 1947 Palestine with Muslim sharia law in full effect and no Jews in sight. So why make peace in Gaza?
Since Hamas won the last Palestinian election, Israel has been stomping all over them, throwing their elected politicians in prison, forbidding their travel to the national assembly in Ramallah, and of late bombing the Gazan Assembly building to bits. All for a few poorly aimed rockets into southern Israel. The only thing that will break Hamas popularity is good conditions in Gaza, to the point where its jihad against Israel will seem less and less relevant.

Does this mean Hamas actually wins politically by losing militarily as Gaza is smashed to smithereens? Yes.

Gran Piedra

2009-01-12T11:17:00.004-05:00

Architecture of strangeness: government building in Santiago, Avenida de las americas.

Giant hood ornament; these guys were unloading something from their truck and this beast seemed very eye-catching.

Later I wondered what it was like in those buildings - they had to be ten storeys or more - did they have elevators? Power failures are quite common in that country.

La Gran Piedra - actually a rock on top of a mountain outside Santiago de Cuba. Down on that sunny coast I did stay for a couple of days at Playa Siboney. 1500m up the air is cool and fresh.

It was the one time I wished I'd had a bike as the road up is an epic climb by any measure, complete with a huge collapse at one point with half the tarmac missing. Even descending by car takes about thirty minutes. At the summit is the oddity of the Big Rock, a big bald boulder on top.

Cuba, mi Cuba

2009-01-07T13:21:00.007-05:00

Monumento General Maseo (19th c.)

!Deportistas estan revolutionarios!
Typical Cuban shopping attempt.

Santiago de Cuba - full of life, poverty and baseball. I witnessed both the in-stadium national league game and the barefoot in-street game down by the docks where the outfielder kids stand right in the avenida de Los Libertadores. Luckily most of the traffic is donkey-driven around there.

Ride the Boards of Glory You Fool

2008-12-17T16:09:00.005-05:00

The good ole days of track racing: wooden rims on wooden boards.

2008 Olympics - Spanish Madison team: Juan Llaneras and co.

Ah track racing, the original form of cycle-sport. It conjures thoughts of chamois creme, 225 lbs psi 18c tubular tires, and balls-out tactical sprints in elimination races. Come the depths of winter in northern climes, and track is really all there is left.

Which is likely a good thing. People should find something else to do besides obsess on the weight of their drivetrains. Me? I'm Cuba-bound, and I'm not even taking my bike. The closest I'll get is renting a motorina (as in Vespa). I can let go of it, see? That's what I'm telling you, anyway.

In truth, I'd love to take my track bike out to a velodrome, but that'll be an adventure for another day, like a day when there is a track closer than 250km from where I sit.

But the track is on my mind - the Six Day races are well underway in Europe and Zabel will do his 'final' race of any pro variety in Berlin this January. Thoughts of going have come to mind. Inside dope is that the Berlin Six is the best of the circuit, with the hardest racing.

A Six basically features all the track events or nearly: solo and team time trials, elimination races, derny races (w. each racer paced by an electric motorina at crazy high speeds), and the featured event, the Madison, which is a two-man relay race where teammates hand-sling each other into the action for 80 laps or so. It's fast and furious, and pretty damned dangerous. The winning team has travelled the farthest by the time it's over.

Basically, the trick is 'steal' a lap by launching an explosive sprint when the rest of the field are watching each other. To keep things interesting there are sprints for points every so often and a 100 points accumulated gets your team a lap on the rest (usually). In between all these events are either a whole other 'B' level Six or cabaret style entertainments, just to keep the audience entertained. In many velodromes much of the infield itself is given over to spectators, drinking fine Belgian draught beers and doing a lot of yelling.

I've only been to one Six, and it wasn't European but Ontarian. There was still a bit of a crowd, and the elimination race was damned exciting. Madison wasn't bad either, even if they weren't doing proper handslings. Round these parts, they have 'madison shorts', with a bulging thing sewn inside them to push on (No, not in the crotch area thank you).

As can be seen from the two photos, things have been calmed down considerably since the good old days. Spain got the silver medal in the madison at Peking, for the record.

Provincials '08: Bit More

2008-11-26T14:02:00.004-05:00

The off-camber

(photo: M. Clark) and mini-me (photo from J. Safka)

Barriers before the snowy track loop.

Start of M2 race..? Proof that the sun shone that Sunday, anyway.

It was a good day on earth, Sunday 23 November 2008 (at Riverdale Park anyway).

'Cross Provincial Championships 2008

2008-11-24T15:29:00.004-05:00

It was a wet and wild time at Provincials, where the snow melted into muddy off-camber bits like you see above at Riverdale Park. (That's Lorne Anderson in the leopardskin tights in the mixed Master 1/Senior 1,2,3 race, and he's passing Cycle Solutions' Stefan W. who's dealing with the most advanced class of racers he'd ever come across; "I have a plan", he told me before the start).

The crowds were pretty big, the falls were plentiful, and the day was altogether successful. There were 190 racers in total, including two or three organizers from the organizing club, who paradoxically won nothing for change. The Angry Johnny's/Cycle Solutions team is the equivalent of a small town in the little world of Ontario club racing: more bodies in their colours fill the ranks of various events than anyone else. Orange and blue jerseys fill podiums continually, but somehow today was different.
My race went reasonably well, as I navigated the course crash-free. I just didn't have any starting power/energy. It took me to the third of four long laps to get the energy flowing past the awful feeling of weak muscles. In the end I cruised to a 6th/35, forty-eight seconds off the leader.
It was a day of old men: Pierre Perrin (age 51)won my event by a healthy twelve seconds or so over Brian Kelly (approx. 46 years); Had Pierre stayed in M2 where he started the season, he'd have been 15th or so. Smart guy.
It was a great course though, and conditions made for a number of upsets. Peter Mogg, national M1 champion and winner of every single 2008 Southern Series M1 event he entered this year, actually lost - finishing off the podium.

All in all, it was a good first season in 'cross. I had good times and a bunch of top five finishes. I love the grinta (Ital. sort of like 'guts') that 'cross is all about, and the amazing feeling you get after the agony of the race is over, and learning to think past the internal chaos outside to the race itself.

Fast Times at Willow Beach

2008-11-18T14:50:00.005-05:00

It was a cold, wet, mucky affair with a beach on top of all that. The beach was on Lake Ontario. The day was Sunday in November, a cool four degrees Celcius after 20mm of rain the day before.

It was a day for a cyclo-cross race.

We arrived with mere minutes to spare off the highway, I scrambled to take a practice lap on the winding, mostly flat and lightly forested course and forgot my helmet in the car, which preceded to leave altogether. A baker's dozen had made the drive to Port Hope in my event. Half a dozen more readied themselves for the staggered start: Beginner Men. An appeal filtered through to my competitors and suddenly a man was motioning me to follow him. "Bring your bike", he said and off we went to his house 400 metres away, smack in the middle of this circuit in the middle of nowhere.

A helmet was given over, we returned and the commissaires started the race. I let the small field sprint ahead of me towards the beach section - best to make a slower start after the chaos of the previous minutes, I thought. Eric Sanders (Wheels of Bloor) and I rode together at the back, and for the rest of the race. He was coming off a fourth and third place on successive days at the big UCI races in Toronto the week previous; in my case an 11th and a exploded chain off the hot start on the Sunday past.

I never let me get past me, occasionally pulling ahead, passing a Beginner, and marvelling at the sheer exhausting effect of this authentic 'cross grass-and-muck fest. Yet I was the nimbler, figuring to give it my best no matter how far back we were. In the end I got second place, Eric third. That's the strange thing about 'cross. A twisty course, all the concentration you can muster, and somehow you're at or near the front of it with no idea why. My best result so far.

In the midst of pre-start chaos, I'd neglected to even take my chocolate energy gel, but was able to hang in there nonetheless. When you race 'cross, you enter a tunnel of exaggerated experiences. Perceptions distort. Time seems out of whack, indiscernible, as though being held contained in a bag somewhere. The visual field is reduced to a narrow spectrum of the metres in front; the air temperature has no effect. Even the wetness of water splash is minimized in the stress of the task at hand. The key is to focus on the details of the course.

When it is over, relief is palpable and the ensuing minutes bring a continual endorphin rush. You feel excited, sometimes ecstatic, briefly immune to the cold, the dirt, the wet. Jokes and congratulations. A bike to be washed off by the waves.

The Grimace of Joy - Durham

2008-10-21T16:59:00.003-04:00

Photo credits: Unrau (Salienta)

Cyclo-crossing All Barriers

2008-10-20T11:40:00.004-04:00

Yes, another blog about bike racing. I keep meaning to get to other things but races keep happening and the over-excitement must be channelled somewhere. This mildly rediculous photo documents the final moments of my day out at the Southern Ontario 'Cross Series best attended race to date, ZM's 'Turkey Cross', just over a week ago in this very town I live in.

The sun shone on a lovely Fall day, the course was fast yet challenging, and I rolled and hurdled through it without troubles. It was the largest field yet for my category, a whopping 41 riders; I ripped my way to 5th place, trying to pull back the same Mr Cyclossimo for all of the last two laps (15 minutes or so). I got quite close in the last lap, but then he pulled away again in a hairpin turn and I could not pull him back. I just couldn't figure it out - where was the speed I needed? I felt good enough, yet the momentum just wasn't coming through the bike. Mr C. didn't seem that fast, just grinding away in a low gear.

At home, all became clear at last: my chain had been bone-dry the whole time! I'd made this incredible decision to not properly clean the chain/drivetrain, and then wiped it down just before leaving the house. End result - no lube at all. Which is a real handicap.

Durham Cyclocross Classic - 18 October

Saturday morning rose fresh and cool and I off I went by commuter train - once I'd chased it down at Union Station after watching in the darkness as it rolled right through my stop. I de-trained and, riding through the wide roads of Whitby, Ontario I found myself in the 5 degree C cold of Heber Down Conservation Area with nowhere to go inside and warm up, and was reduced to riding in circles in a patch of sunshine attempting to get warm with ninety minutes to go till my race.

Finally I managed a good semblance of warmth, took fourth wheel off the out-and-back opening lap on asphalt, and settled in to a properly twisty, yet flowing course. The grass was still soaking from the dew, making things a bit technical but not overly. Wetter still was the muddy water-crossing, which became deeper and muckier throughout the race. I found myself in a real 'cross race for once, legs and face covered in mud, shoes getting harder and harder to clip into pedals. Dudes kept passing me, despite my good cardio - none of my usual threshold heart-rate panting-like-a-dog yet it didn't matter.

So what then? This week's minor fiasco turned out to be my seatpost - it sank a good three inches into the frame, having been too low from the gun. As the bike got progressively smaller, I got slower. Eventually I realized afterward that my right-side pedal had gotten damaged on one side, making clipping in an extra challenge on top of the muck itself.

End result of what was actually a blast of a fun race: another 5th place, but an utterly dodgy one due to the complete lack of finish line technology - no camera, no actual line on the ground, no sensor of any kind. Just two guys with a notepad, reading numbers off backsides. Unsurprizingly, somebody got placed as lapped when apparently (according to him) he finished ahead of me. We compared notes and it did seem clear that he passed me mid-race. A protest was made, but what recourse did the commissaires have? Tire tracks on the grass?

It was really the only bad note of the whole day - Mill Street showed up with free beers for racers, and there were no tickets either! Organic microbrews at the end of a 'cross race, in sunshine, in a country wood - it doesn't get better than that. I set up on a picnic table on the sandbar by a stream and commenced highly vocal encouragement of anyone willing to ride the whole hillock-to-sandbar-to-singletrack-to footbridge section, which a number did do, to my great satisfaction. That is la grinta.

The Return of the Comeback

2008-10-08T12:17:00.003-04:00

Raul Alcala is not a name I'm familiar with, to be honest. Nevertheless, I have learnt that he made his mark on the pro peloton, winning a couple of Tour stages (pretty remarkable for a Mexican) before he was done.

Alcala triumphantly announced his return to pro racing a week ago, after a scant fourteen years away from the game. His debut being la Vuelta de Chihauhua, where the man lasted all the way into stage two before crashing on a mountain descent and ripping face and body badly enough to pack it in. Alcala declined to comment on the situation, and remained in the team car while holding bandages to his herridos.

¡Qué mala suerte! is a all I can say, being only in the second week of my new Advanced Spanish class. Raul, you'd be happy to know that I'm making a reaparición myself, not having studied any foreign language for some years now. Entonces amigo, creo que es mejor elegir sus batallas sabiamente. At 44 years of age, a man needs to care for his ego gently, I should think.

Pero hay otras reapariciones actualmente, Raul: Atras de Armstrong (37), Laurent Brochard (40), y Ivan Basso (29?) tambien. Yes, the fad is growing madly since Lance announced his return to the pro peloton this Fall, if only to spread everywhere the message of the yellow bracelet.

Now we could speculate madly about Lance's reasons (i.e., for the glory of Kazakhstan), or his chances in le Tour 2009, or the palace coup brewing in his Astana team (la ragia azul de Alberto Contador), but why do that when one can speculate juicily about who will be the next to announce his great reaparición (yes, I've heard about Aleksandr Vinokourov's ludicrous announcement about re-joining the Astana team he founded - that's not going anywhere). Attempts to reapariciónar, so to speak, the peloton back to c. 2002 have only just begun you see.

No, I'm thinking the time-away-from-pro-racing can be vastly improved upon - let's listen carefully to Belgian national news in Flemish - I'm waiting to hear from you, Eddy Merckx. Come back and spank these ignorant young punks, why don't you M. Cannibal?

Cyclocross: My Newest Adventure

2008-10-06T14:25:00.008-04:00

Originally I started this to document some months in the south of Mexico and the intention was to go beyond the usual 'personal album' type of subject matter of the web log. At this point I've abandoned all pretense and barely blog at all, but when I do, what I've succumbed to is this.

Here I am on this past Sunday racing my second ever cyclocross race in the grassy hills of Earl Bales Park, at the 'Octoberfest Cross'. 4th place of 25, thank you much. Missed the podium by ten seconds to that big Cyclossimo bastard. A big, tall road sprinter should not be getting the better of me in the up-and-down twistiness of 'cross.

In first race, over in Steeltown, I pulled off a fabulous 5th/28 after a timid start - a flattish, fast course. Some contraversy followed that excitement after a debate w. one K.M. Seems like I'm always sitting on a toilet somewhere as the minutes countdown to the gun. Better before than during, as I'm sure Stephen Harper would agree. We've all heard about roadies pissing from their bikes (and sometimes on them, says Hayward, who wouldn't know) but imagine bike racers squeezing off excess weight directly au cours. Wow. Already I know it will be the next great thing in race-weight-shaving technique.

Perhaps Lance Armstrong's comeback will be a Livestrong/Ex-lax co-presentation. I can't wait to see him on Mt Venteux, letting it all hang out. Now that would be truly horrible.

And I was one

2008-09-18T14:14:00.007-04:00

Where: Central Park, 6am on a Sunday (09/07/2008).

What: 5000 + going for a ride (Manhattan + Brooklyn + Queens + the Bronx & back to Central Park = 19th NYC Century Ride).

Why: TransAlt fundraiser.

Who: Me included.

Enough

2008-09-02T14:14:00.002-04:00

Here is the truth: I've had a shit racing season, minus some early quasi-success. At this point I'm just sick of it all and I don't even want to think about it. Yes, that is a tandom track crash. As Tofu would say, things could be a lot worse.

Los Olimpicos

2008-08-27T10:50:00.003-04:00

So I spent half of August glued to a television. A remarkable achievement any way you slice it, really, and one rather new to me.

Formerly, I subscribed to the anti-spectacular philosophy of Guy Debord, finding only emtiness and alienation in such mediatized pseudo-festivals of staged importance. Olympic Gold: a vacuous bore from start to finish delivered with an unrelenting nationalist narrative.

But I've outgrown all that critical snobbery - this August I soaked in every televised moment of athletic glory, transfixed by the cavalcade of human endeavour. From the 10m diving board to the indoor volleyball court, to the ladies' softball baseball diamond (w. Canada getting kicked around like everywhere else), to 4 X 100m relay, to marathon, to the British battling only themselves in the velodrome - I sponged it in morning and night, never tiring. I even figured out how to navigate the relentless commercial breaks on CBC, by ingeniously switching to Radio-Canada (the French version of our public broadcaster).

In fact, Radio-Canada was a huge relief, having a smaller market to play to they have a far less commercials so you could see the Olympics without constant interruption and improve your French comprehension simultaneously. As with all French television, a panel discussion was in effect half the time, complete with medaling Canadian athletes being interviewed in English with an instant re-capitulation en francais afterwards by the interviewer speaking to the camera. Which I loved.

It all began with a vain attempt to watch some cycling events ,which track-wise were almost totally ignored by both broadcasters as Lori-Ann Meunser and Kurt Harnett are long-retired. I missed the road events as I was holidaying or working, though accidentally caught a few minutes of the total downpour that was the women's race, while waiting for a commuter train. The track race that CBC did cover was the among the least interesting - team pursuit, where you see nothing more than identical, faceless men riding in single file for 43 seconds. (Worse still, some strange compressed angle shot was used to show both teams riding the front and back of the track at the same time, with the infield looking more like a bowling lane and everything out of focus.) In the drama of good television spectacle, some sports really work on television, others do not.

Gymnastics and beach (and even indoor) volleyball work really well, with lots of close-calls and individual skills (like bikinis) being displayed clearly, and plenty of time for replays. And shorter duration for a whole contest. Cycling has a tough time matching up in this medium. Even diving, though it was on enough to make me go outside, works better as there is a new diver every minute or less. Even something as totally obscure as showjumping works, as it is a tight competition with plenty of triumph-or-failure action and the oddness of people in jackets and ties competing as Olympians while riding horses.

The BMX races were good televisual sport. Thirty-five seconds start-to-finish makes for plenty of action, not to mention a huge 35 foot table jump right in the middle of the race. I compared notes with my self-proclaimed 'BMX scholar' buddy Wade, and even he thought it was good, noting that BMX racing is actually way older than mountain bike racing despite only seeing its first Olympics this year. Finally, a little respect for the 20" bicycle and its Latvian and French world (+ Olympic!) champions. Natually, the only Canadian to make either final crashed out brutally in the first six seconds.

Banks of Sand, Days of Solar Radiation

2008-08-13T15:54:00.005-04:00

Sand Banks Provincial Park, gateway to Lake Ontario. Last week end you could have found me amongst the bacci ballers, frisbee throwers, and Queens University jock types amidst the occasional burka-clad wader on the fine sandy beach.

Rainclouds threatened, but were over-ruled by the sun. People crashed through small waves as they hit the break point. Dead fish and geese piled up upon the rocky far shore, and a fine, holiday air prevailed. Tripmates Miss P and A amused themselves with reading, as did I.

Miss P spend the weekend with pencil in hand, editing a 170 pp master's thesis on the white settlers of Peterborough, Canada. Whether in car, train or beach there she was, marking her way through all 600 paragraphs. Determination. If it would have gone underwater, Miss P would have been there too removing excess commas and conjunctions.

I contented myself with some of the shorter works of Edward Abbey, mostly about floating wild rivers in the American West. The more Abbey I read, the more I despise my life behind a desk working for the local government. I should just move to rural New Mexico and take up a life of desert adventure as he did. Instead I play it safe, and bore myself to death in the big city.

What's amazing about frontcountry camping is the density of people - vastly moreso than in the big city itself. Campsites are all cheek-by-jowl, the beach is a dense pack of vacationing families, etc. In a country where people are supposed to be so desirous of privacy what do they do but run to the densest campground the first chance they get? Yet they seem happy enough.

No Sunday for Old Men.

2008-07-21T15:28:00.005-04:00

I guess this is what I was trying to avoid - here we can see the result of Oscar Pereiro's chute while descending the Col D'Agnel over at the border of France and Italy, where gravity is particularly severe.

One trip to the hospital and a broken arm later, Pereiro's '08 Tour was history; it's too bad, he really had been doing quite well in the service of Alejandro Valverde's current bid for this year's race. Better, I'd say, than the Green Bullet himself, who's been a bit of a disappointment to Spain and likely to poor old Oscar too.

But life is full of disappointments, as readers of Hunter S. Thompson would agree. I spent Sunday watching the epic struggle that was Stage 15, in rain, cold, and heat across the Franco-Italian Alps and I did so because it was raining like hell, not just there but here too.

It poured from about midnight, continuously into the morning when I awoke at 5am to eat, dress, and catch the commuter train to my O-Cup race in a valley at the north end of Burlington. I went nowhere. The thought of that course, one vast puddle in the valley low and clay muddy wet on the flat, laid waste to my motivation. Why kill yourself getting to a race, already soaking wet, only to end up on your ass in some ditch? It's been two races and two crashes and frankly I wasn't looking to pay $75 for a third. Had I not pre-ridden the racecourse the Friday before, perhaps I would have thrown caution to the wind, but I knew too much. The longish descent into the left-right-left at the bottom would be a hydroplane I for one had no ambition to sail on, vertebrae first.

So the day was spent inside increasingly comatose until the darkness of my living room paralyzed me completely. By three p.m. I couldn't do anything but lay on the wood floor, wondering what was happening to me. At last it was clear: caffeine withdrawal had combined with the continual wet to leave me in a state of hideous collapse. What the hell kind of summer was this? And somewhere in the Italian Alps, Oscar Pereiro had to be wondering the same.

CMWC '08 - It happened here.

2008-06-24T09:34:00.004-04:00

Somebody had a friend at FedEx. Carrying these things were good fun (Hayward, that's for you.)
The floating checkpoint had victims.
Hayward (no-helmet man) gives main race instructions - "Don't be an asshole, don't ride like an asshole; assholes will get red cards and be kicked out. And don't be assholic to the dispatchers or you'll be made to re-do the whole race."
Martin de la Rue delivered special 19th c. telegrams (I got one!), and raced in a wool jacket.

It has been a veritable inferno of cycle sport action around here in the last weeks, and being in the maelstrom of that inferno can keep a man away from his tiny little piece of the world wide web for longer than he should do. So much, so fast.

Where to begin? The Cycle Messenger World Championships 2008 came and went amidst thunderstorms of controversy and rain - but in the end it was all a success and people went away bruised, hungover, and jazzed for more. The '08 Worlds were my first-ever, and I did get excited, did race the main race qualifier, did have a lot of fun doing it, and didn't do the sprints, which I have regretted since watching them happen on 14 June in the afternoon Island sun. It was 333 metre match sprints and most interesting. I bet I could have won a heat on my bad-ass track bike (which received complements all weekend long, I'll have you know).

Trackstand and reverse circle competition, bike polo tourney, skids (and sprints at 3 a.m!) on Temperence Street for old time's sake (nice one Nappy), parties galore, at least one alley cat (2nd place/28 for me Sat. night), four-up goldsprints at Navid's parties - it all happened and best of all, hundreds of messengers showed up from the U.S., Europe, Scandanavia, Japan, and maybe even Australia. It was the real thing - kudos to Shino of Tokyo for taking 1st place in the main race final.

It was hugely impressive to see the Japanese show up - about ten of them in total if you count Izumi from New York and Okapi who lives here. They came, they raced, they won - at least Shino did. Somebody explained to me that Shino was the star of the Monster Track movie, where he is brought in to New York by Mike D (who I got to hang out with - one hilarious dude) and co. to race Monster Track in the middle of winter and gets second place. There was no stopping the man this time - apparently Shino finished an entire manifest ahead of everyone else in the main race final amidst the pouring rain on Sunday, or so I heard. And there he was back on the island on Monday to help with clean-up. Classy.

Sure the main race went off four hours late on Saturday, the bike polo tournament had to be rescued from oblivion at the last minute, and the I-beams on the floating dock checkpoint were removed after Hayward (of course) slipped on them. But it all happened, and when it happened it was a great thing - kudos to Hayward as race captain for pulling together the very complicated logistical nightmare that is the two day main race and doing it really well despite the delayed start. Chapeau. The whole organizing crew seemed to have an hour's sleep between them all weekend, and ten hours that week.

With his leftover black eye, sunken eyes, and overall sleep deprivation under massive pressure for weeks, by Saturday Hayward looked like a man who had just set a small town on fire and then shot his way out of it, leaving a trail of dead behind him. I just stayed at least an arm's-length of his way at all times. He told me on Monday that almost no one had complained to him about the race, and those few who did were quite mild about it. Imagine that.

There are a dozen other stories I could tell - Jumbo riding from Montreal to Toronto (575 km)down the 401 in 36 hours, Dangerous Dan Hatcher riding his track bike from Calgary to Thunder Bay, the fight I broke up between the winner of the alley cat and his friend at the finish, the kid who did the skid comp final on his face, Mike D fighting Manny at Sneaky D's over a bowl of taco chips, on and on but it has to stop somewhere, even if messengers never know when to stop.

Down to the County by Train I Went to a Wheelsucking Paradise.

2008-06-10T15:53:00.006-04:00

Close examination of this photo will reveal a) a wrinkly finish line, b) the presence of deep section carbon rims and minimally spoked wheels ($2000/wheel?) being bested by aluminum box rims ($500/wheel), and c) my mysterious absence.

Among other world events this Sunday past was the Milford Cycling Weekend's Ontario Cup road races out in Prince Edward County. Le temps etait bon, le parcours etait glisse et écoulement, et les coureurs etait sans courages. The Senior 4/Master 3 race amounted to a paltry, measly 47 kms; no escape suceeded due to a total lack of initiative, and a wheelsuckers' paradise strolled along at 29 km/hr, or 31 km/hr, or lined out (lined out!) at 35 km/hr with me pulling at the front. What a bad joke.

In bike racing slower is not necessarily safer: everyone rides closer together to the point where one big guy to my immediate left was pedalling away while his quad smacked into my arm repeatedly. The yellow line rule was to blame - all of us confined to the right-hand side of the road, on the narrowest country roads there are in this province. The finish line was on a wider road but the rest of the 15 km rectangle was classic country road with each lane about 10 feet wide, which meant the only route to the front from the back of the pack was the dirt shoulder. Cheap.

By the final two kms I'd had it, and launched an attack in full view of the 30 km/hr main field. As I launched into the sprint with head down the chain came off immediately and I was reduced to pulling over and untangling it. Luckily, the pace was so slow I was able to catch back on, and finished tenth in a hot sprint across a bridge and up a slight hill won by the road hogs you see in the above photo. At least it was a good excuse to spend a weekend in the country.

Pappy's Big Adventure On and Off Screen

2008-06-03T13:14:00.006-04:00

(The early St Lawrence Race.)

What a moment it was. It is mighty rare that you'll see me on the boards anymore, and I don't just mean the velodrome, I mean the theatrical boards, but last Thursday was one of those times.

Just to the left you can see me shoulder-checking a blocked Pee Wee Herman in the opening scene of the Big Adventure, where P. W. fantasizes about winning a stage of the Tour de France on his 50 lb red cruiser. To my right are Cris and John, displaying their cyclo-cross racing abilities to a packed house at the Bloor Cinema.

This Rocky Horror Picture Show-style screening raised well-nigh $14 000 for the new Toronto Cyclists Union and its new sister magazine, Dandy Horse. I guess my 'Espa~na' jersey was a bit wrong - nobody is wearing long sleeves in the movie, just Italia jersies. Nobody has a beard either...

Bike Month is in full swing here in Toronto, and things are busy.

Twenty-four hours after playing in Pee Wee at 7 and 9:30, I was down at the Toronto Criterium @ St Lawrence Market, freezing my tuchus off marshalling in Turn One with a whistle in my mouth and a flag in my hand. It made for a front row seat for a terrific barrier crash that brought down a good four racers, the first of which got squared by his bike. Five riders managed to crash in the neutral lap. What the hell was going on? Perhaps it was those Zipp wheels on offer for the winner of the open Masters race, they just brought these guys over the edge.

In one of the stupidest things I've ever seen in a bike race - no wait, make that the most stupid - three crashees decided to run carrying their bikes from the bottom of Scott Street back towards the start/finish to get their free lap, taking the inside of Turn One to get there. Of course the lead idiot in this footrace to nowhere came within an ace of causing a truly disastrous crash of epic proportions. He got away with this exercise in selfish idiosy extraordinaire - I wanted the paid duty cops to arrest him on the spot but they weren't taking orders from me. In fact they weren't doing much of anything for the first thirty minutes as the crowds of angry commuters swelled, except pulling in $70/hour by standing around.

Luckily some sort of sanity prevailed and a) no racer got maimed for life and b) no mob surged the barriers in search of their commute homeward, and c) thousands of the curious turned out to watch the races. And it didn't even pour rain till well after the whole event was over.

Symmetrics dominated the main race as predicted getting four out of the top five places (1st = new Cervelo for Pinfold, plus Bell won the bunch sprint, Andrew Randell was right there as well...). It all made for super-exciting criterium racing. Friday night bike racing returns to Hogtown!

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Pedaled.

2008-05-22T10:45:00.002-04:00

How many bikes is too many?

In the past I had a clear rule: anything more than two bicycles in my life at one time was a recipe for disaster. This spring I'm up to 4.5, the most I've ever had; my apartment is like a train station for bikes. Everywhere you look there's one, waiting to go somewhere.

The newest is an Opus Stelle, a pearly white 'cross machine, brand-new from the sponsor; then there's the Blue TR250, my bad-ass track racer I've had lying around since this winter, followed by the road bike (Allez Comp) with the new wheels, and the old steel beater track bike for the bad weather. The .5 being my de-commissioned Schwinn road bike w. Campag Athena brakes, now boxed up in the closet. It's just frame, fork, handlebar, and derailleurs at this point and I should really get rid of the damned thing, minus the brakes.

I have a photo of them all jammed into the hallway, that should really be in this very post, but alas it is not. Meanwhile in China, eight million people have no where to live post-earthquake. See? We all have problems.

The Effingham Hill Disaster

2008-05-21T16:26:00.005-04:00

(Effingham Hill, last year.)

I went down to Niagara, and rode the race of the day. The skies were clear to start, a chilly spring day in the green hills and dales of wine country, and when the rains came they were gentle enough.
We were eighty in the race, and things stayed together nicely till the fourth lap or so, when the pace was upped and and I spent a good while chasing back on in the wet, the flashing red lights of the neutral service vehicle (a pickup truck full of spare wheels) just up ahead. I pushed onwards, caught the main field and stayed in at last. On the final kick up Effingham Hill, I felt okay, just kept it steady in 39 x 26 and down in the drops, like Marco Pantani. A few riders passed me, and I didn't contest it. What I was not aware of was what lap we were in - I thought we had two laps still to go! You don't win battles without a good look at a map of the terrain now do you?

Well, I had a map printed off at work, but what the race didn't have was a person ringing a damn bell for the last lap. Twelfth place, 37 seconds behind the winner. Still, I finished delighted with my race, the pain instantly gone.

A Trip to the Isle

2008-05-12T11:59:00.005-04:00

A trip to the Isle indeed was made by me this Sunday past.

Whatever did I find there? Nought but gusty breezes, under-insulated juniors with teeth aclattering, whitecaps sea-spraying the ferry-boat, and myself a forgettable sixth. Yes, I was off to the races as per usual, going out of my way for a bit of Sunday morning cycle-sport suffering. And suffer I did.

I never cease to amaze myself at my capacity for self-sabotage when it comes to many things in life, including bike races. Having carefully planned my whole weekend around this event, Ziggy's "Islander Crit" on Mother's Day, having stayed home the Saturday night carefully observing the state of my derailleur while others were perhaps out enjoying life as still-living people should (and having given the miss to the work-weekend at my place in the country - Wa-hoo!), still I managed to land myself well behind the eightball.

Did I underdress for the raw maritime weather? No.

Did I forget to bring $ for the ferry and make myself late? No.

Did my bike not work in the crucial moments of the race? No.

Did I do a 120 km training ride the day before, with an hour in the headwind? Yes.

Somehow I can't seem to restrain myself - the old phobia against all success-based-planning struck again and off I tore on Saturday a.m. when saner folk lie abed, counting their blessings in a dream. It's the regimen my body adhers to: Donut Time. So off I went to my doom, as it were, without even pumping up my tires for a 4.5 hour ride the day before race day. As my old dad said over brunch on Sunday, 'You left victory on the road to King City'.

Now why do I do these things? To have a built-in excuse for failure? Out of a misguided notion of race-day preparedness? A total loss of short-term memory? All of the above perhaps. In any event, despite being a flat course and no more than 45 minutes or so, the race was pretty hard as the field was very small and the cross winds intense. Bike racers just don't fancy trips to Toronto Island it seems - must be the lack of car access. You have to take a boat, which could sink, for crissakes. That (and Ziggy constantly picking holidays for his race days) makes for small fields and more work for everybody involved.

It is more exciting though - you can see the front of the race because you're constantly at or near the front, and so you feel your chances are really good. My big idea was to attack the race from the gun, with M3 cross champion Dennis Thang. We did that, got a gap right away, and lost it after two exhausting laps, two little guys trying to act like Jens Voigt. Dennis figured we'd gotten respect from the field for doing it nonetheless. I spent the next five laps trying to recover and eventually mostly did. I was just damned tired of there never being a breakaway in an M3/S4 race and I wanted to make one happen for once. But two of us were not enough. In the end I took sixth place out of thirteen.

Dennis likely felt better about the whole failed escape because he won the S4 (from a field of two!), and put in a great move before the final hairpin to be fourth overall. He gave me his prizes, which included a pot of flowers - there you are Mum. Our new plan is to go to Niagara next Sunday for a proper road race - my first ever.

#404 = No. 1!

2008-05-07T09:32:00.005-04:00

Ah, the sweet taste of victory.

Really and truly there is nothing like it. Robbie McKewen, when asked what motivates him now that he's won three Green Jerseys in the Tour, and who has been a pro sprinter for ten years + , did not hesitate - "I still love winning, it never gets old".

I can understand why. Last night I nipped out to Midweek for the first time since last July, did the short, early race of 25 laps, and won it. It felt very nice, very nice indeed. Even though it was only the early race and early in the year to boot, it was a huge boost to the ego as I've never won there before in say, twenty races over the course of a couple of different seasons - about half of them the late race, i.e., elite.
It was criterium racing near its lamest, I admit. I think they skipped laps 10 and 8 just to get the whole thing done in the alotted 30 minutes, that's how tortoise it was. Its the same old same old: nobody wants to work off the front, and any breakaway attempt fails instantly, and anyone left at the front refuses to work at all so a 30 minute race seems to get progressively slower, all in anticipation of the final lap where carefully conserved energies will be spent of a sudden.

What this ultra-conservative racing strategy lead to last night was... a minor disaster. A fattish middle-aged guy in Brampton Cycle Club shorts, who I had spent the race keeping a close eye on (he was whipping the bike side to side for the most minor accelerations), started his sprint and cut off another guy hitting him and sending both down. I had a front row seat for guy number two, at 40 km/hour, as he flew head-first over handlebars, his bike jackknifing sideways, so that I was just able to avoid its back wheel. Then I decided to take leave of them all and bolted to victory unaccompanied as the other racers who'd had position ahead of me post-crash simply faded away.
They gave me #404 for the season. I love that - reads the same in either direction and reminds my of my number when I was in Little League.

I look forward to moving to the faster, safer late race.

Alley Cat Racing: Springtastic!

2008-05-05T10:05:00.005-04:00

Springtastic went off Saturday night as per schedule. For the first time, I didn't race but served as a checkpoint. Hayward had promised me Casa Loma but did not deliver, so I ended up with the Glen Road bridge in the riches of Rosedale, on a quiet, wet Saturday night.

And there my troubles began.

I settled in, armed with rain hat, rain coat and a few cans of beer + stickers, one for each racer manifest as they stopped by. There was plenty of time to hang about in the semi-darkness, small mansions all about me, and I admit to feeling a little paranoid about being there, just hanging around doing nothing with a beer at my side and a red light blinking away. Would some paranoid manion-owner call the police on me? And what would be my story if they happened upon me? 'Doing a traffic study officer', I could have said flashing City ID if I had had it with me. Pretty ludicrous.

The only harassment I got was from a racoon who kept emerging from his side of the bridge, as though he wanted my can of beer, which annoyed me thoroughly. I hissed at him enough and finally Racoon stopped coming around.

After seven racers showed up (1/2 the field), I had a new problem: I was in the wrong place. The proper checkpoint location was the Glen Road pedestrian bridge. Smitty and Kuz went away very pissed with the race organizer who shall remain nameless (but who answers to Tofu), who had never given me a manifest where this proper location was written, along with all the others.

Off I went to the correct location, and started waiting again. Eventually a few more racers rolled in, some admitting that they'd gone to the other bridge. I said nothing.

Alley cats, for all the excitement and adventure, tend to have a very small buffer where chaos often reigns. For instance, this race had the added feature of three separate phases in its structure. The first phase was five checkpoints to be done in any order, with a secret location to be asked for/told after the racer completed all five. From there a time trial started (200 Queens Quay East ending at 388 Carlaw); after this race-within-the-race, three more checkpoints had be completed, including the finish, where finishers posted their names on the wall. The secret within the secret of the time trial was that it featured a separate prize entirely, discreet from the main race.

For the record, two people were dq-ed for missing the time-trial, and Charlie Randall, youngster with the legs of fire, won the race proper. Most eveybody thought it was a great time and were thoroughly entertained. Wish I'd have been one of them.

Pinning on numbers once more.

2008-04-30T10:34:00.008-04:00

L. vs J., c. 2001, with both running downtube shifters to save the grams.

The sun shone without heat, the wind was calm by the lake and being some kind of glutton for punishment, I went out and spent $45 to race for less than an hour last Sunday, in criterium race a five minute ride away from my place. But I had my reasons.

The course was actually our lakeside bike path, meaning it was damned narrow, ie, three metres across if that, and featured not one but two hairpin turns. Naturally the second turned onto the final straightaway and meant that good position was crucial in the final lap, as there was no breakaway group to be in.

And so it went that I found myself a good thirteen or more wheels back going into that turn, and sprinted to an uninteresting 11th place out of twenty-five. It was a thoroughly unsatifying conclusion to $45 worth of nervously sitting in the wheels, trying not to get run off the path into a tree by some over-zealous junior.

And it makes me wonder.

Alley cat races are vastly more fun, creative, and dynamic. They seem to win on every front: cheaper to enter (ie $10), you get to see people you know and like, all sorts of creative curveballs can be thrown in (ie, store checkpoint where you have to buy a can of beans, or park where a particular plaque on a statue must be found), and the sponsors' prizes are vastly cooler as well. There is also this complete lack of equipment sport snobbery and attitude that road racing is notorious for, and which I continue to find nauseating.

So why do I even think about sanctioned races, all of which are hill-less around here and meant only for sprinters anyway? Just because.

Hincapie Enigma Revealed

2008-04-23T16:53:00.003-04:00

So I had been wondering what made George Hincapie keep ticking what with all those broken wrists and heartbreaking losses, and now thanks to the power of the Internet I know: his line of sportswear.

The man is not so busy he can't give the cycling public a chance to get inside his very own shorts, for a mere $189 + tax and shipping. And just what lies inside these specials? Why ceramic panelling no less.

Whilst you absorb the cultural implications of the leap ceramic has made from wheel bearings to inside leg, let me say this - George, you must be racing too much, because your hand looks like it is made of carbon fibre. I know carbon is all the rage these days, but really? Carbon fibre hands? That's just going too far. I'm sure they're not cheap either, a pair of those, and that's perhaps why Hincapie is selling his shorts to the general public.

G.G. '08

2008-04-22T13:53:00.004-04:00

It was time for Global Gutz 2008 this past Sunday aft. This time I was out for racing enjoyment and not winning, and to baptize the new track bike. And I was three for three!

It was really a blast to be back in the saddle again, careening around like a semi-madman, following a few others from Lakeshore Blvd to St Clair to Dufferin down to College over to Unie, down to the Roundhouse for the big finale. I decided to ride 'within myself' as they say, and finished 10th, which was good enough for me. The fact that Hofman made this one go uphill and then downhill did not favour the track bikes, but it was still a great time.

I wasn't going for it; once you've been off the road a good while, getting the timing right through intersections becomes a whole different thing, and it was all just too committed for the bike I was riding. There was also a big east wind to contend with on an otherwise lovely day, but that only made the battle feel like a proper battle. I beat Toby anyway, which isn't saying that much.

The cameraderie of those races and afterparties is the real joy of it - a big adrenalin blast and then the laughs later on (i.e., Pete Brewer falling on his ass crossing Lakeshore on foot - a classic ciertes).
Worldwide ranking aganst 220 riders in twenty-six cities:
105 (Pappy) Toronto 0:44:06.

And I'm fine with that.

Scottish city, Cuban playa.

2008-04-20T09:31:00.001-04:00

Untruth: R. Remembers the Beef & Calixto Garcia (Rush Hour, Holguin)

2008-04-20T09:25:00.002-04:00

Babies, Baby Sprocket, Scotland.

2008-04-20T09:08:00.002-04:00

Winters of Canada.

2008-04-20T08:52:00.003-04:00

Winter, T.O.

Purple Face

2008-04-20T08:42:00.001-04:00

Afghanada

2008-04-16T09:39:00.009-04:00

Another coffin is loaded up in Kandahar:

What are we doing in Afghanistan?

If you look at the domestic media, you'd think we are there for completely self-involved reasons: to strengthen our military (Stephen Harper), to honour those who have already died fighting there (Man in the Street), to keep Canadians safe from terrorist Islamikaze attack (General Hillier), and to finish what we started, that is, 'operational objectives' (Lewis Mackenzie, ex- general whoes expertise consists of having presided over one long screwup in Bosnia in the 1990's).
And what exactly is it we started? There is the securing civil society angle - can't leave until little girls can go to school without threat of violent retribution - that'll keep us there for a good 140 years or so, at least. Then there is the security of the periphery, or something, that is Kandahar Province. We can pronounce it, but we can't secure it. After six years in Kandahar city, people are still suicide-bombing the place, people recruited by the Students.

The Students are our lethal enemy. They weren't our enemy until we brought a war to them. Ah, that is, joined a war brought by our friendly neighbour to the south, USA. Which brings me to the central military objective, the eradication of the Students, who previously ran Afghanada when it was Afghanistan and nobody cared about it besides Pakistani military people and heroin dealers (that is, Pakistani military people). The fun thing about a counter-insurgency war of occupation is that your presence causes the problem - the longer you are there the greater the motivation of the resister (the Students) to kill people, any people, in order to sabotage all progress being claimed on the 'security' front. Sort of like bombing fish in a barrel, but not exactly.
After six years occupying Kandahar city, we've secured a limited perimeter that is commonly called "the Wire" by our boys (I mean, media) - that is that base they live in. The governor of the province is a warlord who has been personally involved in torturing his enemies, etc. - now how can he behave this way?
Perhaps it is because he is like all the other warlords who ended up in top jobs in the Kharzai (I think that's Pashtun for 'puppet') government, as USA did not want to struggle with these guys while fighting the Students, who are hard enough to find let alone fight. Yes, what we have here is a farce, and the central motif of this farce is political, not military: the idea that we can make Afghanada last longer that a week or two after we leave, if that long. This gender equality- loving, constitutionalist-government thing we like is just not what that country is about, let's face it. The Afghans do things differently. Very differently.
The only solution we can really offer those who want to live with our rights and freedoms is simple: immigration papers for the model country upon which Afghanada is based. You know the place - the home of the Timbit. Or the home of the giant pretzel.

(By the way, I must have been in Mexico or somewhere when it happened, but since when did the French join NATO? I have been mystified about this for months, as all this talk of France sending a thousand soldiers to Afghanada has been bouncing around, then finally I saw a TV5 show about the Champs Elysee and there was the acronym, stuck on the automatic doors at Navy headquarters: 'OTAN'. Perhaps they confused me by spelling it backwards.)

Track Bike Revolution.

2008-04-09T11:01:00.003-04:00

Yes, the track bike is now sort of ubiquitous, seen on the streets of the developed world's great cities from ___n to ____k. So what? Naturally one grows to dislike the overweening nature of fixed gear style properly mocked in the above illustration.

Yet it all came from a good, solid place, that of the working class pride of the bicycle messenger. I'm thinking of all this because I've finally got my hot-ass new track bike set up and rolling. At first I felt exactly like one of these posing twenty year old hip-ster people, over-matched by an ill-setup machine meant purely for the velodrome. Now I've got my old school toeclips on, and a proper seat that doesn't keep tipping up and down, so I'm feeling good about my totally over-the-top Blue TR250, complete w. removable dropouts and gleaming Major Taylor handlebar, set up high on a flipped over stem Hayward gave me.

If only I had a) a normal stomach and b) proper form then I would be getting the proper kick out of my riding. And c) Global Gutz 2008 is ten days away...

My Weekend of Hideousness & Ikea.

2008-04-07T10:36:00.003-04:00

Here are two micro-shots of Cuba that I nabbed off of Google in the absence of my own. I did hire a bici-taxi, and I did ride up to la Loma de le Casa, Holguin city, for the record.

In other news, I'm in my worst physical condition in approximately two years. I will not be racing bikes any time soon. Ever since the Jet Fuel Party of April 1, the stomach has been abnormal. Then there are the legs, both of which are devoid of strength at this point. Then there is the bike, of which the carbon seatpost is refusing its seat pin since I took it apart Saturday on the advice of my surly mechanic.

My second Donut Ride this year on Sunday was how shall we say, a mitigated disaster, that is, mitigated by no crashes or parts falling off but disastrous in terms of my horrible form, and the seatpost constantly sinking into the frame when it wasn't moving from left to right. It makes me want to hang my bikes in a closet and take up walking once and for all.

The only detour from all this self-induced crap was a forced trip to Ikea from my married friends, who'd got hold of someone's car. They bought four miniature wooden pinic tables for everyone else they know with kids. Properly over-exhausted from riding, I stumbled about in a daze, surrounded by cart-wielding Sunday shoppers and playing house with their two-year old, until they took me home from suburbia.

Holguin, mi Holguin

2008-04-03T15:29:00.006-04:00

So I up and went to Cuba 22-29 March. Yes I took a bicycle with me, my road racer no less, which got very, very dirty. El camino socialista es muy dura y sucia tambien. Half my luggage never showed when I arrived yet I forged onward, riding with the bare essentials on my back in a stinky little canvas bag, getting sunburned despite my spf 50 block. That's cycling, companero.

I had hoped to throw some photos up on the blog, but two conditions prevent me from doing so - a near total lack of interesting pictures and this damned machine, which saved the first one I threw at it as a .tif, which Blogger won't accept. Normally my personal camera produces jpegs, even from work but this time, no dice. Instead you find a scaled drawing my colleague Ms C. made of a little park in the downtown core of... Toronto. I needed to save it for work and I liked it, so be happy there is something to look at. (In fact what you see here is a special advance rendering of part of a new bike racecourse coming to this town 30 May around St Lawrence Market, final approval pending. It's the staging area.)

If it were more thematically correct, it would be Parque Calixto Garcia in the city of Holguin, pop. 200 000 +. Imagine a big rectange with a statue in the middle of a man on a pedestal and a ring of benches facing inwards. Latinos always know how to make a city park: a place for people to be in, not move through, as they are here. In Mexico you see that to the max - you can't even walk from one end to the other of some, they play out like a sort of maze. They're just not meant for transportation, dogwalking, or athletics. They're meant for socializing.

There are so many unique things about Cuba, besides just the potholes that buses do huge swerves to get around in order to preserve their ball joints. I love the advanced state of decay of almost everything, the absence of commerical propaganda, the women in mini-skirt uniforms, the bici-taxies (tons of them, sometimes all lined up w. parasols), the casual thrown-together quality of things, the uniformed airport customs workers riding home at the end of the day on their bicycles, the dignity of paisanos who really have next to nothing but are too proud to try to rook you. And the piglets boxed up on homemade racks; I even saw a mostly full-grown live cochino tied to a homemade carrier. Marvelous.

In short, I love the sights in Cuba because I am a stinking rich scumbag-person. Why else would I have such an appetite for all that decay and poverty? Because I don't live in it, obviously. When I returned I was feeling spent from my travels and I took the streetcar on its lazy route across the city to see mis padres for the first time in a while. And I was struck by what I saw and was temporarily un-blind to: slick little clothing shops, intense variety of goods for sale all over the place, well-dressed people in sunglasses and cellulars riding the public transit-thingy. All the things you take for granted living in el fabuloso rico pais de Canada.

You can't hire a horse-and-cart to take you and your oversize luggage to the airport in this town, but I did it in Holguin, Cuba for four pesos and four Canadian.

Goodbye Little Friend.

2008-04-02T09:20:00.002-04:00

In the fine tradition of internet mourning, I post this picture of Rasmussen tearing into a sandal I got at a market in Puerto Escondido a few years back when he wasn't even a gleam in my eye.

Now he is gone, and my wretched apartment is as empty as ever with only Rasmussen's useless litter box hanging around to remind me, and the occasional busted claw.

Cat-owner's lesson learned: do not remove cat from house unless totally necessary. He most certainly had no desire to leave, I foolishly insisted and Rasmussen escaped en route to his home away-from-home to be, running into the night after my over-loaded bike trailer popped open on a darkened Brock Street over a rough patch of asphalt. I searched in vain for an hour, peering into little alleyways between houses with a bike light, to no avail.

I think of him, in the chilling cold rains that have been coming down lately, and hope for the best.

The Enigma of G. Hincapie

2008-03-18T14:08:00.002-04:00

I've often wondered just what makes this man tick. Consider the case of George Hincapie, reigning American road cycling champion and chronic wrist-breaker.

In this sad photo dating from Paris-Roubaix 2006 I believe, Hincapie sobs at the side of the road, his hopes dashed after his bike's aluminum stem broke under the relentless pressure of the cobblestones and spilled him in a heap at the roadside. Hincapie had been in an ideal position in the race; instead he got a free trip to the hospital with a broken something.

Even though I know little about him, never search for details of his career, still I have long wondered what keeps G.H. in the game. He was Lance's loyal lieutenant for all seven Tours de France, somehow having that moment of gloire on the Queen stage in the Pyranees a couple of years ago, when he took victory in the hardest climbing stage of the Tour.

But how do you stay motivated George? After ten years + in the pro racing game, haven't you seen it all? I am reminded of the Hincapie Enigma after reading today of the closing circuits of Tirrano-Adriatico, "the race of two seas" in that sets up the early season in Italy. Needless to say, G.H. took a slam likely due to someone's bad move. There is a great photo of him I am prevented from stealing for annoying reasons, where he stands over his bike in the High Road jersey, a smear on the sleeve and a can of pop in one hand. Clearly, the day is finished for him, yet again.

Now of all people to feel sorry for and to worry about the career choices of, me even thinking about George Hincapie is pretty strange, some might say ludicrous. And yet, life is frequently ludicrous and when the alternative is sifting through a massive accounting database looking for small amounts of money attached to long tracking numbers, thoughts of G.H.'s overall wellbeing seem perfectly reasonable. While George has had plenty of victories, fame, large paycheques, and likely a fancy watch or three, I still see his career in terms of failure. Not that Hincapie is a failure. Anyone who meets his girlfriend on a podium at the Tour de France is not a failure in the world of cycling.

It's more the constant wrist and shoulder blade fractures. How does a racer stay motivated when all the work of training ends in disaster so often? George, if you're reading this, explain yourself in the Comments section. Do you read Nietsche?

The Vital Importance of Being a Suffering Bastard

2008-03-17T15:04:00.006-04:00

Another tale of cycling daring-do: On Sunday I jumped out of bed fresh from a night at the cinema and promptly set about readying my road bike for the Donut Ride, my first since September. The Ides of March had been calling my name you see, and here I was, about to answer.

I've been doing this sort of madness long enough to know that 7am is not the time to be switching tires around, etc., but why let the knowledge years of messenger experience provides stop me from a little of the old last-minute-mechanics? (Note the bizarre-scarfwearing going on amidst the Astana team - is it Tour campionissimo Alberto Contador, his lymph glands extra-sensitive from early years of special injections at the old Liberty Seguros team?)

Well, I threw on some layers, including taping my old cheapie neoprene overbooties on over my sleek, formfitting and almost useless new Pearl Izumi overbooties. The neoprenes are so wrecked that the only way to keep them on is either with elastics (a dubious windproofer) or packing tape, and with four hours plus of 0 Celcius + windchill ahead of me I was busting out the Egyptian mummy style, no mistaking. And it did keep them from flapping into my drivetrain too much. Next step is to keep the feet warm, but one thing at a time. It looked ridiculous but frankly I didn't care.

There were 25 or so 'hardcore' people out on the sunny and cold morning ride, and I kept an eye out for wintry footwear; inevitably, some had winter-specific highcut cycle shoes (one or two even 'road' winter shoes). Most had some higher end overbooty thing happening. We had a northwesterly wind against us, making the trip up to King City a very slow and chilly affair. I stayed at the back, suffering mightily and sucking wheel as hard as possible.

There is nothing like the first 100km + ride after a few months off and in the cold too. Forget riding to work and back every day and two hours a week sweating my b-$%s off on the trainer in my apartment. All that is well and good. One hundred and twenty-two km and one post-bonk hamburger later, I was home and stretching out in the tub, invigourated to the full. They call it suffering for a good reason, by Christ. I really didn't help my case by neglecting a) sunglasses, b) a banana c) to oil my f!*#-ing chain beforehand.

A Note:

Was out for a beer with Hayward and the skin-headed trackmaster himself, Tofu, on Friday night. These two were planning a spring alley cat and swore me to secrecy on pain of dismemberment, as to the details of said epic. Apparently, I'll be manning a checkpoint all night, which sounds boring as hell. But perhaps better than the general insanity they've cooked up for the tens of people competing. Good for them.

A Bloody Sunday @ the Bike Show.

2008-03-10T11:14:00.004-04:00

This fine piece of industrial cycle machinery is from Quebec. It's called "le Voiturier".

Now just what could we fill this cargo-carrying crackerjack with if we had ever the chance? Perhaps a fresh pile of composted material, ready for the sprintime garden soil. Or perchance a bouuet or six of your finest flowers, that would shine forth the sunlight of oncoming spring, still so distant in these wintry parts.

Better yet, why not wheel round the snowy town bearing a load of shiny new bike kit hauled down from that annual orgy of retail binging we call the Toronto International Bike Show? I had to work two shifts of this three extravaganza this past weekend, and let me say to one and all, it was 'pas grande chose', as they say in the province next door. After doing my duty, demonstrating the bus bike rack forty times or so, I wandered over to the booth of Racer Sportif to look over the 'blow-out' wheelsets, which included the 'Anniversaire' Mavic Ksyrium with that stunning red anodised spoke amidst the black ones. A steal at $890 + taxes, my inside connection, Jeffrey, informed me. My other Insider, Alberto, couldn't believe I was hesitating over mere matters of money.

"What, David Miller not paying you enough, buddy?", Alberto fairly yelled into my ear over the din of the Show, from a good four inches away, his grey toothy grin beaming in the odours. For a second I was totally confused - thought he was referring to David Millar, the Scottish Time Trial pro now co-owner of the new American outfit, Slipstream. But no, a different argyle sock-wearer was being referred to, our local anti-disestablishmentarian and sitting mayor. Of course, I work for the union-loving bastard, don't I? There's the typically graceless beaurocrat for you, eh Alberto, you son of a gun you.

Instead I threw down the ATM card for some blow-out tires and wandered over to La Bicicletta (the most high-end snobfest in city limits), where $3000 wheelsets lay strewn about the racks, secured by nothing. They were blowing out the same Ksyriums for $899 and had a slightly lower grade model of same for a eye-watering $780. I hesitated. I hemmed, hawed, and chewed the lower lip awhile. It was Sunday, last-chance day for the show, bargains or no. Finally, I walked away from it all with the most spectacular piece of my haul being a long-sleeved national jersey of Espana a pretend-deal at $80. I doubt if it'll make me any faster, but perhaps will up my chances of Spanish conversation at the Donuts Ride.

Naturally I came to regret the whole no-buy thing on the wheelsets, once home and looking at my unchanged '06 road racer, clamped into the trainer. Why can't I ever just let myself go and blow $1000 on something for once? No one else is going to do it for me, goddamit. What's point of having the Voiturier, if you're not going to fill that trunk with gilded booty?

What is the Worst Job?

2008-03-05T09:34:00.002-05:00

There are many bad jobs in the city I live in. But what is the worst? A difficult question to answer with so much to choose from, but consider for a moment the humble cab driver. Imagine working all day in today's full-on snowstorm, cruising about endlessly on expensive gas, in slow-moving bumper-to-bumper traffic, wrecking ball-joints in fresh potholes springing up all about you as the asphalt heaves, and working on commission only all the while.
Then there is the clientele, who may be a pack of assholic drunk guys threatening you or just being verbally abusive, and let's not forget the police and parking enforcement waiting to write you up on that moving violation, the insurance issues, fares not showing up when you drive way out of the way to find them at home somewhere. And this is only a short list of their problems, saying nothing of licencing fees, criminals, dispatchers, fares who don't pay, and in some cases starting everyday $90 (!) in the hole to the cab company. Ugh. Let's face it, taxicab driver is the city's worst job for stress, hassle, and general workplace misery per dollar earned.

Amazing that a 'hardcore' winter cyclist like myself suddenly expresses this outpouring of grief over the lot of the displaced Pakistani dental technologist behind the wheel of a Buick in the next lane, but there it is. Of course bike messenger is a short step behind taxi driver in the long list, but there at least, there is no ongoing slavery to the customer involved. It's a momentary interaction, usually. And little to no regulation and no licencing at all.

So be happy you're not a cabbie.

High Road Pro Cycling

2008-02-25T13:50:00.003-05:00

Who is this wanker and what does he do for a living? Perhaps he is a donut chef on a competitive donutmaking team. No, too healthy-looking . Or possibly a moto-cross dirtjumper guy blasting his motorbike over huge lumps of dirt no-handedly. But he's so dirtless. Or perhaps he's a road racing professional cyclist pretending he's Tom Cruise.

The subject of today's complaint is aesthetic: this name and design spat out by the entity formerly known as T-Mobile Team annoys me considerably. Of course the telephony giant withdrew their long sponsorship after the three-scandals-too-many year of 2007, having hung in there after the Jan Ullrich doping disaster/public disembowelment at the Tour launch of 2006. The complete re-jigging of T-Mob as a squeaky clean, drug-free squadra (+ Torontonian pro Mike Barry!) fell to bits last year and the German sponsor finally called it quits. It was the end of an era that saw the some of the best (if dopey) days of Ullrich, Vinokourov, Kloeden, and my man Erik Zabel, but better yet, it was the last end of the hideous pink/black uniform supplied by Adidas. I never liked it, particularly the 'magenta' aspect.
The above picture details what the new team strip looks like. White is fine, a good fresh start type colour, but what of this Fast Food bubble font in bright red and yellow? Does it mean that if this new, principle sponsorless team fails, all employees will have a leg up on Wimpy serving High Road hormone-free high protein burgers?
There is such a plethora of hideous designs in the spandexed world of road racing that it pains me to see a new opportunity to improve (and here without even the constraint of a title sponsor) basically ruined. I mean, would you go out and spend $125 on THAT jersey? Good god.

Is Elk Man Canadian?

2008-02-21T10:44:00.001-05:00

Perhaps Elk Man was inspired by this fine government program dedicated to making the world a better place for all.

Elk Man vs. Four Wheels of Power

2008-02-21T09:51:00.003-05:00

The Tour of California is rolling through places like Santa Rosa and Sacremento these days, chock full of the pro peloton's stars (Boonen, Bettini, even Mario Cipollini in a comeback from retirement). And Elk Man from Montana, who appears to have run all the way to California in his cycling shoes, in order to pace insurance salesman-disguised as bike racer Levi Leipheimer up super-steep Mt Hamilton yesterday.

I assume he's not working for the Rabobank rider, who seems to be ahead of him and is a foreigner anyway. No, Elk Man has his priorities straight. I only wonder if he was feeling frisky enough to pace the 'autobus' when it arrived about eighteen minutes later. Was he slapping Cipo's behind? Poking Bettini's world champion stripes with his antlers? We can only wonder.

It all reminds me of that literary giant of 1960's northern California, Richard Brautigan, author of In Watermelon Sugar, The Pill Vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster and other works I have also not read. His style was absurdist and whimsical. Every paperback he published had a b & w photo of his latest dorky girlfriend on the cover. I think Brautigan would have liked the gesture of Elk Man, who might even have heard of Richard Brautigan but somehow I really doubt it.

Whoops! and Goodbye.

2008-02-20T12:48:00.006-05:00

Nada mas:

Duke's Cycle burnt right to the ground this morning, as did a few other buildings, sending a huge plume of smoke all over the downtown, including into the subways. Miss P. called from Metro Hall to report she could see it from her window on the twenty-second floor, and could smell the smoke too.

May I admit that I never much cared for Mr Duke and his cycle shop?

In fact, the general consensus seems to be that three generations of the family business contributed virtually nothing to the cycling community here in Toronto. So it's on to the insurance claims - surely the Duke Boys will come out of it a couple of million to the good.

Prior to this fiery carbon fibre furnace, I left work last night feeling a touch of foreboding. When you've ridden as much as I there is a little instinct inside you learn to listen to, when it's telling you to pay attention to possible dangers. It had been snowing, night was falling, and Mortimer Avenue was looking extra-narrow with its huge banks of snow. Sure enough, three-quarters of the way home on Bloor Street I was doored by a teenager being dropped off by Mommy in a gleaming silver 4x4.

One good smash on the left hand and forearm later, my temper was thoroughly riled, and I didn't hesitate: I doored him right back as SonnyBoy sat blank-faced with the door still partly opened. Mommy uttered a shocked sigh, having been the one with the brilliant idea of letting her precious out on a major arterial in the darkness of wintertime rush hour, naturally paying no attention to her side mirror (my headlight was definitely flashing white light I assure you). A little road rage in the proper direction can really help sometimes. It definitely took the edge off my sore left side last evening. The road can be a nasty place sometimes, let's face it.

Can you spot Obama?

2008-02-19T11:59:00.003-05:00

Barack Obama does not appear in this photograph. But clearly, all subjects are thinking of Him, of what He might do, where He might appear next in his quest for Supreme USA Commander status ('cept the bearded guy, who's clearly unexcited).

My question is, Who cares? The answer is Everyone in the World. On the international French channel TV5, they care. In Toronto, people I know care, and all the Canadian mass media care so deeply they report about Him constantly, whether He blew his nose or even sneezed.

Of course the alternative is covering Canadian politics, ie, how are we getting out of Afghanistan with without brown stains on our bloomers showing visibly and how many brown stains Stephane Dion can accumulate on his before the Liberal Party digs a hole and dumps Dion into it. Yet I find these issues much MORE interesting than this Obama=black JFK narrative that is so predictable and boring to me. The problem is, we're Canadian and naturally are completely seduced by American politics even if no one even understands how it all works. The mystery of primaries and delegates and facepainting is so great no Canadian can resist, except myself and two polar bears in Churchill, Man.

A Long Walk Home in a Great Blizzard

2008-02-13T11:31:00.002-05:00

This what walking home last night in T.O. looked like.
Sidestreets looked like this.
Here is a smart approach to moving the groceries in inclement weather. All photos from Toronto Flickr Pool.

Twenty centimetres of the white fluff known locally as "snow" floated down upon our heads yesterday, adding nicely to the collected crust on the city's surface. It blew horizontally by the east winds, it piled lightly on sidewalks and swirled off roofs of buildings. My boss advised me twice during the day to leave my bike at the office and take the subway. And for once, I more or less listened as the daylight disappeared while the blowing snow took over. It had been snowing since 9:20am. He, on the other hand rode home, but that is a different matter of course.

Myself, I elected to walk. After a hard day's mindless surfing the 'net and doing the occasional middling office task I wanted to experience the storm in all its glory and on foot is the way to go. It was of course do-able by bike, but then you have to focus on all the wrong things - the car just behind, the stoplight up ahead, tell-tale signs of ice in the curb lane about to spill you over in a heap.

So I walked across Mortimer through the whiteness of East York, down Broadview (briefly contemplating a real snow-hike through the Don Valley at Pottery Road), and finally west again over the Viaduct where the red eyes of a thousand brake lights shined in the bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Parkway and on Bayview Avenue. Thoughts of the lunacy of a society based around daily commuting by automobile from city to city drifted through my giggling brain - everyone at a standstill 10% of their way home to northern suburbs at 6:30pm would be back at it at 7am the very next day.

What's the point? Why not just sleep in the office, order a pizza and have a pyjama party right there in the workplace for once? But no, the religious devotion to the norm had prevail no matter what. Drive man, drive till it kills you, me and everyone we know. It's only natural.

At Bloor and Mt Pleasant the story was the same - bumper to bumper to the east and west and northbound on Mt P - of course. What did I care, I was walking along faster than car traffic. By Bay street, I knew the crush of rush hour was past its peak, and I was feeling just slightly shivery so with mental apologies to generations of failed Arctic explorers gamely freezing while dying of scurvy and still man-hauling 800 lb sledges over frozen hummocks of ice, I nipped into the station and caught a not-too-packed train to Dufferin street, and a full bus home.

Of Snow & Men

2008-02-12T10:51:00.000-05:00

Photo: Susheela Nirmalan-Nathan.

I stole this off the Spacing photoblog for your viewing pleasure so click on it to enjoy fully. It's the opposite of today in Toronto (where this was taken) where it's about -10C and snowing heavily. Actually it is really quite lovely; this winter is looking and feeling the way winter is supposed to feel in these parts. Back in the Fall, the long-range forecast was for the coldest winter in fifteen years and so it is.
Went skate-skiing up in the country on Sunday and the whole drive had huge gusts of blowing snow to the point where the road disappeared. And the skiing was good too, tho' damned difficult for a rusty X-country man like my rickety old self. I ended up on the long loop and got progressively slower as the silent km's went by. A fine thing, a groomed trail of hard snow through a quiet wood is, skating along unbothered by skiers' tracks nor traffic. What isn't fine is getting so slow that you come to a stop, exhausted. Skate skiing is a technique-heavy business.

The morning commute of 12.5 km was just a tad icy in the curb lane; that's what you get in multiple days of -10C and lower. Of course the other lanes were perfectly dry and clean on Bloor Street. Somehow, the Plow Boys couldn't quite scrape up the lane a cyclist/madman has to use around here and I don't mind telling you, even for a veteran of the snow, ice and slush, my 23 mm tires were slipping and sliding in the rushour traffic more than once. It was enough to make me keep my 30 mm arse seat-bound.
Moreover, it made me think of the Icycle Race to be held at Dufferin Grove park's ice rink this Saturday. I'm supposed to head up to my country hideaway for a few days of deep snow, hard liquor, and Ipod-speaker-driven dance parties by candlelight, but I've really been feeling the pull of the ice every day for the past week. I've never raced any ice race, and I so want to do it. My blood tickles and burps at the thought of tight turns on studded tires. !Que adventura!

Last Night at a Party

2008-02-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

Miss P. has demanded an account of some things.

Last night at a fundraising event for a fine local Ngo that I occasionally move myself to be involved with, an exchange of a kind I sometimes have took place. I was asked what I do for a living, which in the sort of people I tend to meet is typically met with smiles of approval. After all, what urbane progressive type wouldn't be impressed by someone 'involved in bicycle planning' (as I liked to put it these days)?
Knowing more than my fair share of urbanism-activists results sometimes in more than just general approval. Last night I ran across the young J., a true blue urban planning geek of the first water, who positively cooed with delight when he heard just what I get myself up to here at the office.
"Transportation Planning or Transportation Services?", he demanded, pimpled cheeks fairly bubbling with joy. "Oh, it must be a dream job! It must be - to work on your passion and get paid for it!" His little black eyes shone with wonder, his little legs nearly danced a jig of delight.

"Well, it's a good job, I guess" said I, not knowing what else to say. You really can't say anything else. To suddenly be transformed into a Master of the Universe before innocent eyes, all due to your slightly unique position as a low-level government clerk - yet a position on the Inside, firmly Behind Closed Doors of government business. Ooh.

And there are moments of insider excitement I guess. That very day I got to see a presentation on the re-design of Union Station, complete with animated pedestrian flow computer modelling in a CAD mockup of the new designs, and well-shaved senior planners in crisp shirts and good ties talking about 'building porosity' and laser pointering 'pedestrian desire lines' that fanned out in all directions in purple; you could even interrupt with a question here and there if you wanted. I guess young J., still wet enough behind the ears to have achne, would have verrily peed himself with over-excitement.
Oh dear. I am so terrible.

Something So Cool It's Almost Rediculous

2008-02-07T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is real and it's from an art project in the Netherlands, designed to facilitate interaction between neighbours in a new neighbourhood that's been built there.

That's right, the fact that a classy working bike pump has been installed into a bike-lockable railing isn't even the point, to the designers.

That's the Dutch for you - too cool in urban design improvements to even know what to say about them...

1500 Pots of Flaming Flames.

2008-01-29T15:03:00.000-05:00

from Torontoist.

Last Saturday eve I gathered up some people and deposited them at WinterCity, Hogtown's trompe l'oeil to the long, dull days and nights between November and April.
This French troupe of fire sculptors were paid to distribute hundreds and hundreds of pots of fire upon the town square, some of which were ingenious mechanical sculptures like the chimney of heat depicted in the photo, and others too various to describe. There were also cylindrical coal warmers that sparked when you blew on them.
I billed the party "Fire and Ice" as skating on the rink at City Hall was to be involved. Only two of us skated in the end, but so what. The atmosphere of that normally dead square was positively transformed as snow drifted down and a thousand fires burned against the darkness of the winter night. A bottle of spiced rum I'd actually had the foresight to bring made things even better. We city workers were just amazed at the absence of barriers, barricades, and guards barring the public from the sculptures. I even got a free all-white touque just for walking into a tent hung with single mittens.
"I could have burnt my hand fifteen hundred times over!" my colleague Cris reported gleefully to our liability-obsessed boss today.
More incredible still: They're at it again this Friday and Saturday eve, so get thee to 100 Queen Street West to sup full with wintry fire.

We Call It 'Bike Winter' Because We Bike in Winter

2008-01-24T11:11:00.000-05:00

Bike Winter is here.

A Snowy Day in the Big City

2008-01-22T14:38:00.000-05:00

No, this is NOT my city.

1. It snowed yesterday in what was once upon a time known as York County.

2. A Dean Sighting occurred yesterday, at Adelaide West and John Street. Longtime readers of Bottombracket shall recall me writing about Dean, Eternal Cycle Courier, the man who always appears to be sponsored by Assos clothing, etc. Today, on a snowy January Tuesday I saw Dean cruising eastward on a beautiful white Cinelli track machine, with dainty rear fender to separate the Eustace Tilley of bike messengers from the slop and slush of the metropolis floor. I really need to augment this with a photo of Dean, ideally with another courier sliding along behind him with a crappy thrown-together winter work bike and clothing.

Hayward, who's been around long enough to know, calls Dean 'the last one', the last of a breed of messengers who ride only the really high end machines in absolute defiance of all economics/common sense/etc. Last spring, Dean was rolling about on a BMC full carbon track machine - even the seat was carbon. I could list the others rides of his I've seen, but that would be boring.

3. Black Chevy Suburban. I had to pull foward enough to see his face; if only I'd had a camera to capture the look absolute contempt and disgust on his tough white guy face as he looked over at me, winter cyclist and subhuman . I'd started my commute in the rushour traffic of King Street West this morning as the snow fell, keeping nicely to my curb lane gutter and fortified w. helmet and visor, when 12v Douchebag accelerates past me up to a red light, followed by another red 300 metres later. On the first one he managed to roll past the white line and into the middle of the T intersection - where out-sized 4x4 trucks BELONG, of course.

I ended up riding past him for good a few blocks later, effortlessly.

4. Slush City! Finally today I am gratified by the slush and the slop, as my front fender was in full force today. The 2-4 cm of powdery whiteness in the bike lanes is nothing to be avoided, as you can cruise right through the fresh stuff, 'specially on a fixie; the problems begin with the cars who park/stop/drive in the bike lanes and crunch the snow down, compacting it too the point where road tires just bounce over it and traction is minimized. How annoying!

The Summer Past: My CHIN Race Movie.

2008-01-16T10:19:00.000-05:00

In the dead of winter, what is a sometime cycle-sportist like myself to do, but close the eyes and daydream of summer days? Actually, I rode to work today as I do most everyday, this time fortified against the elements of road filth with a newly applied front fender.

After a mere eight years of owning my 'Paulie' black steel track bicycle, now in its fourth local winter, yesterday I ended an era and finally afixed a road-filth-blocking mountain bike mud guard to the rear of the front brake. When I did the test ride home, the roads were clean and dry, unlike in the snowy a.m. ride. Today is colder, cleaner and drier still on these Toronto streets. In fact we are into the Coldest Days of the Year now, which always come in late January and early February, when it is too cold to snow and anything on the pavement is frozen solid. (Finally a clear cold day today!)

So after a good few months of cleaning well-engrained filth from shoes, socks, shins, and of course bicycle drivetrain, I have finally taken action, using the free supply of fenders piled in the photocopy room at my most cycling-positive office. All after the @#$-ing fact.

Now I finally undertake another action: the short film of my race from the CHIN picnic criterium, which occurred seven short months ago at the end of June. I only saw this footage the other day, and it features a few blurry shots of a beard-and-legwarmer wearing chancer on a white bike clashing somewhat horribly with teal shorts. I spent that race hiding strategically in the first seven or eight wheels, so you can't see me so much. Tucked carefully behind the windblocking wideness beefy 'sprinters' (who of course fell away in the final lap or two), I conserved my energy perfectly for my final move, a trip to Florida. Seriously, you can just see me holding my position in the last lap for a fine 7th place finish in a field of over seventy:
http://www.veloomedia.com/2007_pages/2007_road/2007_CHIN_Cadet_Sr4_M3_Men.html

The editor of this fine piece of cycle sport documentary neglected to allow for a continuous shot from the pace car, which would give the viewer a clear sense of the technical course, with all its chicanes plus 100 degree lefthander. But still, kudos to Veloo Media who, for those especially interested, have films from road, cyclocross and even track racing from all of the southern Ontario 2007 on their website.

And now, Back to Work...

Route to an End Goal

2008-01-09T11:38:00.000-05:00

New Year at Springreen

2008-01-03T12:48:00.001-05:00

A simple winter sunset at the Farm where the snows were deep and the liquor flowed free. Andrew Bee made a rum-addled New Year's day brunch that was deep and delicious. "I drank more last night than have in the last six months", said he. And he seemed fine, labouring away over his oat-encrusted sausage balls and mountains of rum/cinnamon/brown sugar/maple syrup french toast. How did he do it? "You don't get hungover if you don't stop drinking", Mr Bee declared with a sparkle in his eye. And he returned to singing the Golden Girls theme song at full blast.

My good friend Marlena got some time in on the 'shoes. I took the technical pair and had fine times ascending and descending the forests hillocks in at least two feet of snow. That's the way to spend the final days of the year: in a silent winter wonder world following animal tracks over hill and dale.
My favorite moment was ending round one of a snowball fight from my rooftop redoubt by lobbing one over the front of the house blind and hitting the snowball poised in Kris King's hand, obliterating it. Cheers went up from my foes.

Global Gutz Friday 13th July 2007: The Movie!

2007-12-21T15:17:00.000-05:00

Even though I crashed and lost my awesome lead-out, this remains my favorite racing memory of 2007 - a worldwide simulaneous race in a dozen different cities, with the local winner getting a free round-trip ticket to the Worlds in Dublin (which was total crap by all accounts, but that's another story).
This was filmed in-race by Smitty and posted a short time afterwards. You can barely tell its me, because I'm so faaar ahead... from High Park til around Bay street. Those are the fastest couriers in all Hogtown chasing after me. He cut the crash out of his helmet-cam footage for some reason. Enjoy a tiny piece of history. In part two, I am featured at the finish line looking extremely skinny and showing off my bloody knee.

Happy new year.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os6cXdSmp_I

I live in an urban paradise.

2007-12-20T16:38:00.000-05:00

Photos: S.Wheldrake

Vuelta a Scarborough, August.

THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN, SCOTLAND.

2007-12-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

I walked under this bridge in 2007, and took this photo.

Nuts Roasting on an Open Fire

2007-12-17T11:26:00.000-05:00

What a snow storm!

We had 25 cm drop on the city yesterday. Marlena and I went for a long hike into HIgh Park where branches hung low with snowy boughs and redbirds dallied in sorties hither and yon above our heads in a hollow by Grenadier Pond. I made a point of stopping there as I had noticed the fine cardinals standing out against the snow last winter. Its a magical little spot removed from the wind, where the birds flutter and skirl above you onto the snowy sumach boughs.

My feet ended up good and wet from t he deep cracks in my Columbia boots - after seven years they've had it. Not that it will make me stop wearing them - bit of shoe goo and they'll be right enough.

Still, it was epic stuff for this town. I rode to work today in the sunny aftermath of it all - and the snowplows working all night. It was slushy but my deep experience in bad weather on my fixed wheel machine had me passing cars on the right without trouble. Ah, winter.

Three Thousand Dollars and 1/2 a race.

2007-11-19T12:43:00.000-05:00

Saturday 20 November:

Finally I had my bike ready and it worked perfectly during the now infamous race: a ninety km, fourteen checkpoint hurter in still two degree Celcius air. Nadir had hooked up the Red Bull sponsorship to the tune of an off-the-scales $3000 winner-take-all. I went into it with sore ribs from an idiot slamming into me on his mountain bike last Monday; sore ribs really last, I assure you.
I wasn't over-excited about the whole affair (just very, very excited), as I haven't been training for months and knew a long, cool-weather sufferfest was in order.

Even before the first checkpoint, the police were on us, chasing the race on Wellesley East en route to Jet Fuel Cafe. Kuz took one for the team like the grand old man he is, by pulling over and admitting that "a little race" was underway. I hopped the curb and passed by them on the sidewalk (he ended up flatting twice over on top of this). From the Fuel, it was to the very end of Leslie Street Spit, a good three flat straight and dark km's out to the lighthouse, where I found some very pissed off racers from the front group, who'd been waiting for five minutes. JP was there with a car and started signing manifests, barking out directions to Fallingbrook Road deep to the east of us at the very end of Queen street east.

I teamed up with Panama Jack and rode out of the Spit and along the Waterfront Trail to my childhood stomping ground the Beaches, then back onto Queen street, each taking pulls and grinding along at 31 km/hr or so. Then I picked up Ernesto at Fallingbrook (that is, we wasted a minute looking for the actual checkpoint and E. cruised in with Jody from my work doing her first race ever), where we had to stop halfway up the steep hill. That was a mere prelude for the deep push into Scarbourough and the near-bottom of Brimly road, a truly steep, winding dive down towards the bottom of the Bloughs.
I pulled a banana out of my vest pocket to find it massively smushed and threw it away, then ascended marking Ernesto. Overtaking E. ( who'd dropped out of 'cross season after hurting his back) on Kingston Rd, I noticed he stayed back. Onwards I drove it over the rollers of Danforth Ave in the deep dark suburban wasteland, one of those beautiful moments of serenity and speed. But the mind was working, taking in the state of my post-Brimly legs and I could only think of the adjacent subway line. 'Guatamalan rules' Nadir had said at the start-line, and my conscience was clear. I rode to Main station where I knew access would be perfect and cruised inside the bus exit, clattering downstairs. My train came promptly and I chatted with a guy while downing a gel I'd found in my bag. Things were improving.

At Yonge I clattered to the surface and rolled over to Keith MacDonald who looked surprized to see me and declared I was "rocking" four minutes behind fourth place. I was still out of it enough that I kept looking for my manifest after I had already given it to Keith - then I headed to Dundas Square, the leg pains coming sharply. I never get leg cramps but the cold and my lazy days were taking their toll in the chill. Nonetheless the race was back in familiar territory and it was time to step it up with half the distance to go. At Dundas Square I received directions to City Hall, having caught back Charlie, who'd lost his manifest completely. I rode through the Eaton Centre mall towards Bay Street and onto Nathan Phillips Square, spotting Charlie and riding up to JP who announced that the whole thing was over, called off due to massive, cascading organizational failure. (My words, not his.)
Nadir held a post-mess meeting outside his shop to decide what to do, offering us all our race fee + $20. But the guy who'd been winning (apparently 1o minutes ahead) threw a stomping fit about only getting half the prize money for winning half the race. I knew he was one of Nadir's 'boys', and I could see what was happening. Nadir wasn't about to say no to him, as there was egg all over his face; he'd organized the most high-profile messenger race in years and hadn't had enough volunteers to man every checkpoint. Rule number one: never leave your checkpoint during a race. Yet people had to leave to get to another one and disaster struck again and again.

It was a sad end to a potentially great race. Nadir I only felt bad for. He's like the paterfamilias of the messenger scene, giving so much time and energy and now it was a gross embarassment. The party continued with A Man Called Warwick spinning, the specially-painted-by-Futura 2000 Colnogos shone brightly, and the swag was piled high behind a counter. I ended up with a container of massage creme for all my pains. Knappy didn't even race but got a bunch of new Italian tires: there's no justice.
Then it was time for drinks and forgetting.

A Night of Sprints

2007-11-15T11:48:00.000-05:00

Last night I made a new twist in my short racing career: match sprints. I am not a track sprinter, though this was well known to me beforehand, I confess.

Upon a darkening service road alongside the major arterial known to locals as Lakeshore Boulevard West, I spotted them. They were few in number but visible slightly with their blinking white and red lights against the darkness of the November night. Having spend forty-five minutes doing warm-up laps around the fairgrounds on the other side of Lakeshore, I felt as ready as my rusted old Paulie bike would ever be. Nadir saw me head to toe in lycra and slapped my hand with a laugh.
I had made my preparations: switched out my old French toeclip pedals for new French roadies, my heavy front track wheel for my twenty spoke road wheel and GP Attack 22C tire, and removed the rear fender. Lycra was applied in club-style layers. All wrong for this underground-style messenger sprinting event, but I thought it best anyway. Everyone else was in jeans and black hoodies, faces pierced and riser bars chopped, as per current styles. Some even raced converted road frames or freewheel bikes; the best time of the night was put down by a guy in street clothes riding something that vaguely resembled the first proper road bike I ever owned, a chipped and scratched Miata with a sagging chain.
I chose to race Daniel, who I used to work with at the Path. A good young guy. He broke his collarbone getting doored in Berlin this past summer. Hey, if you're going to get f#$ed up, best to do it somewhere stylish. I was hoping he wasn't yet fully healed as I too am nursing a bike- related wound. A young twit on a mountain bike plowed into me last Monday evening as I made my way carefully home in the dark and the rain of rush hour. I was just careful enough to slow up at a green-turning yellow where a car was turning into my path in the streetcar-tracked intersection, when Idiot slams right into me, handlebar into ribs. Never mind my two blinking red turtle lights and reflective tape on my courier bag, this young fool saw nothing.

Point is, Daniel had me in the first and second round rematch. My spinney gear ratio, tight chain, bruised ribs (and therefore reduced core strength) were all major marks against me. A loose chain reduces rolling resistance at the start, I learned. I canvassed him for a third chance but boredom/distaste had set in, and I had to make do with a much bigger, younger and faster opponent who dropped me at the start line. Oh well.

A two hundred metre standing-start track sprint really has no subtlety. There is no psychological element around who gets the jump on who - in this case it was about overall times for the night. The guy who won did it time-trialing (14.79 sec.), with no opponent to race against. He beat the guy who showed up in a minivan with a lovely white Cinelli and a $2000+ Zipp disc wheel that made a popping sound when he started, as though it had cracked at first pedalstroke. High tech and light weight = extreme brittleness.
I got closer in the re-match but still got smoked - didn't really even know where the finish was and surged past after it. We actually bumped right after the start, that's how close it was.

Track or Treat

2007-10-31T16:38:00.000-04:00

Last night I did my first messenger race since the Bike Film Fest back in August. I felt like crap then but did it just to get my body in gear. This time I felt good, and rode the track bike as it was a fixed gear machine exclusive situation. Costumes were also in order. I made a last minute decision to go as a commuting office worker, a kind of joke on myself. Jacket, tie, dress pants and pink T-Mobile cap plus old black steel track bike with many a paint chip and 'new' (to me that is) steel pedals made in France the last century (Atom).

The air was cool and calm, the sky clear, and the mood positive as the couriers gathered on the blasted heath of Trinity Bellwoods park. Toby was the organizer, and kept delaying the start time as people sipped their pre-race beers on the hockey rink. Finally the Red Bull girls appeared in their Mini and dosed the racers with their hideous poison; I declined but took a bottled water. Victory is in the details.
Toby had us lay the bikes down and do a Le Mans running start from inside the yet-to-be-iced rink. We piled through the narrow rink door and I jumped on the iron horse which I'd carefully placed facing southward. I had decided to defy my initial plan and do the 'core' waypoints first: two Queens and a Richmond, then off to the Necropolis in Cabbagetown. At each stop we were handed those little candies that come in a row and turn to powder when you eat them. I kept stuffing them in my jacket pocket. I caught back a guy with a death mask on the east side and we marked each other heading up Parliament to the cemetary.

Because of the popularity of track bikes with young hip kids these days, there's a crossover effect into courier races and I must say, I like it. Instead of nothing but real competition, there are all these "kids" as they call themselves, who know nothing about racing/aren't too quick. It does my 35 year old heart good to hammer these Kids into the ground. In this case, the two of us rode together till Yonge street and the St Clair Hill on the way to cemetary II: Mt Pleasant, where I dropped Death Mask by 10 seconds or so, then tore off to Casa Loma to whip a raw egg off the hill and stumble down the 8-10 flights of stairs.

From then on I felt better and better as the natural tilt of the landscape declined toward the lake. Death Mask caught me back on College street after I right-turned against the red light at Bloor and weaved my way through traffic navigating my way to a coffee shop called Manic. He overrode it and I jumped in ahead to snatch a candy from the counter and tear off again. From there it was to the final two: Toby's house (a block from me! no route problems there) and the final leg to Trinity Bellwoods.
There's nothing so fine as knowing a city you're racing through like the back of your hand, not stressing over navigation at all, just flowing it smooth and fast through darkened back streets. The whole second half I felt more and more comfortable with it all, and started to fantasize that things could really be shaping up ideally. The thing about a messenger race is that you never really know exactly what's happening - most everybody does it slightly differently and most you're alone or with one or two others.
In the end I took third place, a good five minutes back of Charlie, who was a rookie at the Path when I came on there last year, and Chris 50, a seasoned pro who I figured would beat me. Ironically, Charlie and I were devising the same plan as we studied the manifest pre-race, but I decided to switch my whole routing strategy just beforehand. Charlie's a great kid, always excited about things, and was pretty damned humble in victory. He won a giant receipt for a pair of Adidas. 50 won a nice bag, and I got my pick of touques and a large yellow T-shirt that says FUCK OFF! IT'S MY LANE TOO! in gigantic black letters.

I'm really liking the messenger racing scene this whole year long - nothing but good feelings and fun on top of the adrenilin adventures. Its a powerful community-builder. The respect I get from those guys even now that I'm riding a desk is remarkable, and much of it is due to the races. Well, Wednesday sprints are tonight at the CNE...

Happy Hallow's Eve!

From Fixed Gear to Fast Fridays

2007-10-11T17:01:00.000-04:00

What is going on here?

The place is NYC, Fall of '07. What you see is a crossover phenomenon that's been in full swing for a couple of years at least: people turning fixed wheel bicycles into trick machines in the style of bmx street-riding. Muscular bikes for muscular tricks.

First it was skids and trackstands and reverse circles. Then one-footed skids with a leg up and over the handlebar with a 180 degree powerslide thrown in for good measure. And now its turned into this madness. Banks and jumps, with barspins close behind no doubt. These young punks are building their track bikes with super-tight riser handlebars, incredibly tight bmx-like geometry and even neon magwheels and platform pedals. I know a kid named Toby whose NYC bike is so small (47cm say) and tight that it feels just like a bmx.

Its no more about racing on a track than freestyle bmx street is. These people are out for style and rip-it-out street trickery. They say it's on the subcultural margins where the innovations occur and I would have to agree. Its starting to feel like a trip to New York for an alley cat race might find no drop bars to be found on a 'track' bike. This past summer I watched an Ottawa courier in town for bike polo produce a hacksaw from nowhere and pare down his riser handlebars to about 10" across in between bike polo games. Or was it even less?

As for me, a track machine built for keiran racing would suit fine. My old steel paulie has fresh tape on the bars and gleaming toeclips on the pedals for the first time. Its good. I took her out to some match-sprints last night under the arch of the Prince's Gate, as the autumn winds howled. Nobody showed except a very baggy camoflaged kid on a weatherbeaten road bike with a traffic safety vest and flat pedals. We waited a couple of minutes and then hit it.

As we left I suggested we might as well do one match sprint to make it official - we were both headed west anyhow. He agreed and I let him charge towards the traffic light/finish line 600m away. I got onto his wheel for a bit, then surged past him. He had no answer and I thought he'd simply turned off at the intersection, but no, he reappeared finally. An easy victory, but somehow they're the best kind these days.

These citizens want something.

2007-10-02T11:14:00.000-04:00

Air-conditioned Nightmares

2007-08-13T12:30:00.000-04:00

The chicken has come home to roost.

That is not a reference to Michael Rasmussen, ex-Rabobank professional and Maillot Jaune nightmare. That is a reference to myself, longtime organizational neurotic now behind a bureau guiding the affairs of a few quiet bike lockers, a monthly e-newsletter, and other little odds and ends. The sheen of this desk-riding, air-conditioned whirligig is disappearing.
The point is that the prospect of what I'm forgetting is so nerve-wracking that I waste energy in useless handwringing that's makes the whole mess a fait accompli. Last Friday was the supreme example, or was it Thursday? All this pseudo-productivity of email sending and meeting attending, spastic rule-following and rule-assaulting of members of the public is wearing goddamned thin by August when one would rather be canoeing gently across the waterways of rural Ontario or getting drunk in Galicia or out-of-control in Amsterdam.

Must get the damned newletter out before another subscriber dies off or I die off or you do.

My Cat Rasmussen

2007-07-30T13:52:00.000-04:00

First, a happy tale:

On what happened to be my birthday, three ladies from the maintenance committee at my co-op apartment building knocked on the door and offered me a cat. The cat had been abandoned by some evictees, who left the cat but stole their front door. I surveyed the animal and decided to take it. Eventually I named him for the Yellow Jersey of the day, Michael Rasmussen of Denmark.

Admission of bias: I like Rasmussen. I like his style of racing - a strategic, pure climber with two mountains points jerseys to his credit already and here he was about to triumph in the crucial overall category. In fact, he'd just won the final stage in the Pyrenees by over twenty seconds from his nearest competitor, giving him a possibly unassailable three minute lead going into the closing days of the race. It was his hour of triumph and it did not last. In fact, you could hear booing from the crowd as he rolled over the line giving the victory salute. Rumours had been swirling around Rasmussen for days about missed doping tests before the Tour, and about really being home in Italy training when his whereabouts forms (yes, out-of-competition testing demands ProTour racers state their future locations at all times) said he would be in Mexico visiting his wife's family. He was caught in a lie by an Italian ex-racer and broadcaster, who called Danish TV and busted him (proof?) during the Pyrenees stages.

So on the eve of triumph, Rasmussen was called into the team bus and fired. The race organizers reserve the right to bar anyone from entering the race even if suspected of that great evil, performance-doping. Once the race is on, any rider can be chucked if caught out with the wrong blood oxygen values, etc. But in Rasmussen's case, he was caught in a kind of lie, and in came the behind-the-scenes pressure either from the sponsor, Rabobank, or the Tour organizers or both. Only Denis Menchov had the balls to quit in solidarity, no other rider had the nerve to protest for a moment.

If the top five overall riders behind Rasmussen had refused to ride, the whole putsch would have failed miserably, becoming a P.R. fiasco of epic proportions. But of course no one could see past their own nose and team manager as per usual, Menchov excepted.

Now you could argue that it was all true, that Rasmussen was caught lieing to avoid being tested and that could have only meant he was doping, and that his team firing him represents a great leap forward for 'drug-free sport'. Except for the fact that the team had begun by defending Rasmussen and then flipped; and further, that he had just been 'kicked off' a national team (for missing their doping tests) that he had not even been a member of (as national selections for the Worlds are normally made after August).

No, it was all done in the hallowed name of the Tour of France and in the wake of the Floyd Landis fiasco that has yet to be resolved. And in the wake of the Bjarne Riis (hmm, another Dane and '96 Tour winner) confession, the Vinokourov testosterone busting only days before, and others too numerous to name. Rasmussen was made an example of to protect the already tarnished brandname and symbol (Maillot Jaune) of the most prestigious bike race in the world.

It all makes me sick.

Rasmussen was having the Tour of his life, fighting off young Contador's relentless attacks in the mountain stages and making for the most exciting racing I've witnessed in years, and his team was controlling the race perfectly with Menchov, Dekker, Boogerd, and even Fleche all killing themselves everyday for the man called Chicken. I couldn't even watch the day I heard the news, and I'm NOT sorry I missed the final time trial because I was up at the farm. What a pack of lies.

Rasmussen my cat is a good climber and loyal.

Global Gutz All Over the Road

2007-07-16T11:31:00.000-04:00

And the results are in.
Friday the 13th turned out to be less than lucky for me, as per my prediction - I prepared perfectly for the 10pm race, slamming a can of Coke an hour beforehand. Yes, I also checked the bike and topped up the air pressure with Hayward's leaky pump. Even better, I nipped by the Co-op and snapped up a Grand Prix Attack front tire (handmade in Germany!) 22mm of 370 (!) threads-per-inch advantage. A cool eighty dollars. I was ready.
Perhaps I had more speed than I was entirely ready for. We lit out from the darkness of High Park (from the lawn and around a stump no less!). Once into the Bloor/Keele down-and-up I accelerated away with Tofu and Jim Kuz. We were hammering at over forty km/hour and it was clear that this would be the selection. I beat them at one small intersection and re-accelerated.

Through my racing brain ran a couple of key thoughts. The first being: Great, I'm right where I want to be, with the main field of thirty already dropped behind us. Second: I'm racing Kuz, a man with over a decade of alley cat-winning knowledge and he's got gears for a change. Plus Tofu, who I used to work with at the Path, and who goes to the Worlds every year and does quite well on his brakeless track machine, strapped in old-school styles (kitted out w. vintage 7-11 team cap and jersey no less). Two deeply talented competitors, with serious abilities in the cats, ie, blasting through city traffic steadily and fearlessly in the late-night hours. I was breaking away, leading out the sprint for the first checkpoint.
I knew I was going harder than I should have been as those who go 110% in the first part of race have a way of being swallowed up towards the end part, but the adrenaline got the better of me. There's nothing like that feeling of strength in the legs and lungs when you're going really hard and still feel like its sustainable. And there my troubles began. Going the speed of traffic or slightly faster or slower is fine but when you're going more than twice the speed (or even three times) you can get into real trouble. There are three lines you can take: the curb lane/to the right of parked cars; the yellow line dividing the road; or between the two lanes of traffic on your side, which is what I was doing. It feels safer than the curb lane because you needn't worry about pedestrians or getting doored, so there I attacked. But the best line is ultimately the yellow line because there you will find no pedestrians, no doors opening, and no cars changing lanes to your left, and with maxium cheating room to charge four way reds. But I wasn' t there and suddenly a cabbie decided to start pushing into the left lane (as they're forever trying to switch into the faster lane after picking up a fare) even though there was no opening.
I was forced to swerve left in my narrow lane-within-a-lane, doing it pinball style against cabs that were barely moving, using a free hand to push off the first car, careen to the second and push away again. By the third one I was starting to lose control and hit the right side mirror, apparently severing it completely. I didn't notice being too busy crashing to the ground in front of the stopped cab in the left lane, grinding in with both knees as Kuz and Tofu shot by on either side asking if I was okay. 'I'm okay', I called, even as I continued sliding along on the shins. For a second I was worried I'd broken my Look pedals and wouldn't be able to re-clip in, but in fact the bike had no damage due to my finely executed controlled wipeout, and I continued on with the knees crying out their shock and disgust, seeing red you might say.
Adrenalin prevailed over dismay at my lost advantage and I picked up speed again, heading for Parliamen and making mental note not to stop too soon, which I then proceeded to do anyway. That desperate mental state is the racer's greatest enemy, proven once again as I decided Sherbourne was Parliament and watched four more zip past me, not to be seen again. Ultimately, I took a respectable eighth place (though Hoffman didn't bother submitting it to the overall global standings).
Perhaps it was just - Tofu (currently on the road) won in 30.5 minutes over 21 km, about 40/km an hour. With my form I knew I could have been right there, but it wasn't to be. Kuz (currently on the road) hung on for third about forty seconds off Tofu's winning pace and so the bald-headed vegan gets his free trip to the Worlds in Dublin this August. I should go just to race against him once more.
And the knees? Still a bit sore on Monday with the scabs holding out nicely, eitherwise fine. Couldn't upload the picture I took of them, sorry.

There are races to race.

2007-07-12T14:55:00.000-04:00

Oftentimes life is made dull by the web-log. As I creep back into the whole business I wonder just how to keep it compelling.

Choices and decisions have oft made me nervous in this life, much to my regret. This weekend has loomed with several choices hanging upon me:

1. Go to the farm w M & her band.

2. Go past the farm to Ottawa and race the Ontario Crit Champs + OBC Road Race.

3. Race Global Gutz messenger race Friday the 13th to win a free plane ticket to Ireland for the Worlds in August.

4. Forget it all and go birdwatching.

I've decided to go with Global Gutz. A worldwide simultaneous courier race with similar courses and a local prize. It should be high excitement to say the least. Just writing about it sends a shiver of energy through my gurgling veins, seeing as I was the winner of the last courier race in this town. Just because I'm an ex-courier doesn't mean I can't still race the race,

I'll have you know. It occurred to me in passing, more than a month (nearly two) after retiring from that line of work that I might very well have been one of the five fastest couriers in town, out of maybe 200 or so; or maybe 100. No one really seems to know how many there are any more, though once upon a time there were 500 or so (when I started last century). Those were the days, days when I didn't race at all, being too green and with too crappy a bike. I've gotten older and much more daring.

My courier racing career is pretty short: The first one was called Blood Bath a few years back, and my goals were to finish and not be last. Accomplished both. Then this past spring I did the Friday the 13th treasure hunt, 'Lucky 13'. 3rd place. Then a hastily organized post-polo Saturday night 'cat where I prevailed against a field of seven. Forty bucks and a baseball practice jersey were mine.

A pretty decent record so far.

On the legitimate racing side, I've done alright this year. Fifth in a short points race at the club (which I now dispise), and seventh overall and fifth in my category (Senior 4) at the CHIN International Races, in a field of over 70. That was really my best going.

So I'm primed for a top finish this Friday the 13th at Global Gutz. Did I just massively jinx myself? Yes, yes I did. Who cares really, courier races are a big adventure where we transform the whole city into our adventure playground, which is the size of playground you want to have when you're my age. Its a wholely different deal than 'proper' racing, and vastly more entertaining, involving on-the-fly orienteering skills, historical plaque facts, waypoint approaches like subway escalators and turnstiles, and finishes that sometimes involve postsprint multi-story stairclimbs with the bike in one hand. And of course open traffic all night along. A mad, bad business only for the maddest and baddest.

Like me.

From the Office

2007-06-22T12:52:00.000-04:00

Attention Management Team Cluster 'BB' Members,

Be advised that after a five month hiatus this blog is now in operation once again.

Certain changes have occurred. Pappy is now an office worker and commuter having left Bike Messenger-ing behind in time for spring and summer.

Now I ride a desk. The desk is inside the office with its own locked door. There are filing cabinets, intranet, and multiple email addresses. Do not email any of them. I administer storage units for use by the public. Do not vandalize.

Please carry on with your work.

Fucko and Dean

2007-02-01T22:33:00.000-05:00

Another day on the job. A couple of months ago one sunny Saturday I was hailed by a fellow cyclist, lycra-clad astride a Cervelo, no less, who turned out to be an ex-messenger working at Cervelo. He had a flat tire and needed a pump, and I sorted him out.

As we rode off together we started into the inevitable courier vs off the road jobs debate.

"Couriering is the perfect job, you get paid to ride your bike", said Dave Lycraman, who quit only to "become a faster cyclist" as he was a young racer. (In fact I'd seen him dominate the messenger criterium race at Downsview in the fall of 2005.) I found the comment incredible when I heard it. Its the perfect job when a) the sun's shining b) hot calls are flowing your way, and c) you arrive at a six storey building on Spadina to deliver on the sixth floor to find an 'Out of Order' sign on the elevator door and twenty pounds of evelopes in your bag as you turn to run up the stairwell in your cloglike bike shoes, swearing a blue streak the whole way.

Yes, the perfect job except for the long hours, low pay, zero benefits or employment standards, and no infrastructure to support you in your work beyond pavement and elevators.

But today, as I hauled my track bike hither and yon along the east-west corridors, with and against the westerly wind, the words of Fucko (aka Dave Lycraman) rang in my brain. A powerful voice of positivity, shall we say, because if you can't enjoy the fact that you're riding then the whole thing is for naught, and the bike messenger only lives to suffer and die. And I was enjoying it, treating the whole experience as a privilege - I may not be a pro racer but I am certainly a professional cyclist and not so many can say that.

It all makes me think of Dean. Dean is a longtime messenger here in town, though I only met him this fall when both of us were on the road. The thing about Dean is his look. Another Lycraman, Dean never fails to astound me - does his brother own a high-end bike shop? How, on the salary (if we can call it that) of a bicycle messenger does Dean manage to dress like a sponsored pro, from the Gortex shoe covers to the Oakley sunglasses and everything in between? And not just dress the part. When I first talked to Dean in the good weather of September he rode a Time Machine, a full-carbon frame from France that complete-bike would run you a good oh, $8000 or so. Maybe he got it on sale. His bad weather bike was a Ridley cyclo-crosser, full-carbon as well. I remember asking him, as it was the season, if he was riding 'cross races. "Oh no, its enough eh?, Its enough eh?" he kept saying to me over his shoulder. Enough meaning the job. I agreed.

Still the issue of Dean continues to haunt me. His winter bike is a gleaming red Trek (carbon fork) track bike, that he cruises about on, shielded from the Arctic winds by an Assos vest. I've never seen the man with one normal piece of clothing yet. Maybe a tuque.

And here's the gossipy bit about Dean: he rides never faster than 20km/hr. Yes, that's right, this fiend of carbon fibre never in my dozens of sightings have I seen going fast or anything approaching fast. Dean just cruises about like a grazing llama of lycra, pedalling placidly forward.

It used to amaze me. I concluded that Dean (who was always amazed at my occasional B.O.B. trailer use - so unstreamlined) was a big poser - slow as snot, only looked fast. But now I see it, after months on the road, my thirtysomething body in perpetual neck muscle agony, the Epsom salt recovery baths every other night, the multiple applications of Deep Cold after and before work. Now I see it. Dean is really a Jedi master, a Yoda-taught disciple of the old saw 'Steady wins the race', which in fact was the first thing I ever learned when I fell into this game years back.

Instead of being all caught up like me in meeting urgent delivery times and the racy, breathless challenges they demand, Dean just cruises everywhere because he knows his thirtysomething body, and he knows that he's got the perfect job. Steady wins the race, the long, long race of time that is the only race a messenger ultimately is in.

So good for Dean, the lycra-machine.

$10/hour!

2007-01-25T00:05:00.000-05:00

Tonight a community meeting - raise the minimum wage to $10/hr. At the moment the new member of provincial parliament for my riding, Cheri de Novo, has a private member's bill to that effect that's made it through second reading.

The federal M.P. for the riding, Peggy Nash, has the same bill before federal parliament, and they were both at the meeting. This meeting was filled with energy, all the good Torontonians talking about how a living wage is what everybody deserves. It was one of those moments where I felt kind of proud to be a Torontonian (not something easy to achieve), with a 150 people of all different ethnic backgrounds, unionists, new immigrants, old and young all listening to each other in roundtable discussions and all sorts of enthusiasm for this new political campaign.

Well, I guess it makes sense: all the cynics stay home. The people who want to do something come out. It had this interesting, people-telling-politicians-what-to-do and not the usual other way around business. Good for you, Cheri.

Track bike!

Have you seen my black track bike around town, the one with the blue anodized rims and Michee hubs? Well, if you did, its because I've been riding it as of today. I've been trying to get that bike up and running for months now, and good for me, because it finally happened and boy was it fun!

I rode that bike for two years, came within an ace of selling it to a courier one time, then backed out the next day, and I'm glad I did. That bike is about one third lighter than my road bike and so much more fun to ride. Damn, that's good, especially in the Coldest Days of the Year, which are now upon us here in Hogtown.

Gotta go bed.

Winter thoughts

2007-01-14T11:20:00.000-05:00

A few years ago I found myself in a cafe in a whitewashed coastal town in Morocco (where Europeans owned the best traditional houses), surrounded by local men watching an American tv movie while drinking the famous sugary mint tea in large glasses. I was there with a couple of locals who were 'hosting' me.

The movie was already into its second act,if I remember correctly, and was dubbed into Spanish with Arabic subtitles.

The film was a drama about a neo-nazi group in Los Angeles who are attempting to shanghai the broadcast of a Holocaust remembrance ceremony where an important Jewish Nazi-hunter was receiving an award. I think the plan was to assassinate the Nazi-hunter while broadcasting a speech by the Holocaust-denying neo-nazi leader, using the hijacked tv station that was filming the ceremony.

Morocco is a kingdom where polical expression is tightly controlled, especially in two areas: the ruling monarchy and Islam.

It was a bit like watching a prison-revolt drama from inside the day-room of a jail (which I've also done). I kept wondering just who these Moroccans were thinking of as the villains in this cheap tv drama. The film ended with the neo-nazis getting caught and the Jewish human rights defender being saved, just as we all knew it would in an American film featuring murderous antisemites, the memory of the Holocaust, and Jewish targets. We all know how that script goes - all of us - Arabs and Spaniards and Canucks and Malaysians, anybody. Its the successful confluence of history, Western media and Western morality since World War Two.

As the credits rolled, one guy said something in Arabic to the general agreement of the others. I asked what he had said and was told, "He said that the Americans try to fool us Moroccans with their propaganda but we are not fooled by them". That was all that was said on the subject and we left.

This was the winter of 2005, in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombings of 2004, the vicious targeting and killing of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh (who made an incendiary film criticizing women's place in Islam, and was shot and stabbed to death in the street in Amsterdam with a note left in his body explaining why, and also the bombing of a Casablanca synagogue the year before that left many dead). The point is that in all cases the killers were Islamists of Moroccan origin. Times were a bit tense.

That subject had already come up over tea in the house of my hosts and I had rhymed off all of the above, minus the synagogue bombings (I'm now forgetting yet another European incident of the time that really cemented the 'low-ebb' of Euro-Moroccan relations in the whole context of Arabs-vs-the-West crisis we're living in these days), and was met with much nervous laughter and embarrassed smiling, in particular by the older brother, a failed gambler who'd married a Danish woman and then given up his life there having lost a custody battle over his daughter. He hated Denmark.

The Moroccans saw the film simply as the propaganda of the imperialist, who re-writes history to reinforce his agenda, in this case sympathy for the Jews to justify and reinforce the state of Israel, that perpetual insult and humiliation to the whole Arab nation. In Morocco and in all the Arab world, America is seen as a "Jewish country", dominated completely by Israel with a 100% pro-Jewish, anti-Arab bias in the mass media, Congress, and of course the White House. The political use of the Holocaust by Israel to justify a) its creation and b) its defense has manifested the inevitable: an equally politicized Arab rejection of the historical reality of the Holocaust as an imperialist Jewish lie.

I guess at this point all this is common knowledge, and yet I'm pointing it out. Something about that two weeks or so trip to Morocco still sticks in my craw, a trip only taken because it was an easy ferry-ride away from where I was staying in the south of Spain, a bit of utterly gratuitous Westerner-in-the-east backpacking slid into at the casual invite of a couple of young Aussies.

Of course my town hosts were in the process of attempting to rip me off through an bit of extra-billing at the end of my little stay with them. The trick being that the price of the bed, meals, etc. was a non-issue until payment time, with a huge outburst of rage and shock when I politely refused their price. I had fallen for their game but wasn't going to fall all the way, as I'd traveled in enough Arab countries before to know how outrageous their whole ploy was. It was an ugly ending, but the law of the land was completely on my side and while they tried to pretend otherwise everyone knew it, and finally the three of them faded away, having boarded my bus for Tangiers, after following me through the streets determined to get their rip-off price no matter what.

It all left the open question of just what the hell I was doing in a poor, Muslim country that faced onto rich Europe directly, where scores of young men calling themselves "guides" attach themselves to tourists, relentlessly determined to scam themselves into a few hundred diram for an hour of hustling the said ignoramus of the pink-skinned variety around town. Got to make a living somehow.

It was pretty hard to argue with Moroccans when they made the point: the world's hyper-power is of course 1000% pro-Israel, and so are the other western countries despite whatever gloss of criticism a France or Italy might make whenever Israel starts another invasion of Gaza or Lebanon or the West Bank. In every corner of the Arab world people watch Al Jazeera each night and see Israeli tanks and warplanes ripping the army-less Palestinians apart, and have been watching all of it helplessly since June, 1967 and even before. Even without mentioning the parallel American occupation of Iraq its totally obvious to Arab eyes just who the West loves, and who the West despises. Its as though the sickening, bloody history of the Crusades has taught us nothing.

A wintry veil indeed hangs over us all, in this age of carbon-fuel induced world-warming. This 'new year' won't hold so much new-ness I think, but only so much more of the same.

The Holidays

2007-01-08T22:16:00.000-05:00

Holidays. I had a pretty good set of holidays because I got out of town and up to the farmhouse retreat I co-own up in the Ottawa valley. Just four days away, but what a difference it makes, no electricity, no plumbing, just a lot of woodburning and skiing and good wholesome meals by candlelight.

To make my overworked biker's body even happier, I didn't deliver anything for about nine days in a row. That made being back on the road come the new year feel vastly better; its called recovery time for a goddamned reason isn't it? My new year's resolution is to work only four days a week - Workless Wednesdays here I come!

After overhearing a few dozen office/elevator conversations about the stressbag mess that Xmas causes the citizens of Christiandom, it made me reflect on the work-mad nature of our fabulous Northernish European-derived culture. In some countries it is not unknown to have six weeks of paid holidays per year. Yes, that's correct, six weeks. But we couldn't handle such a thing here (especially here in Protestant Hogtown), because holidays are so incredibly stressful, what with the annual explosion of over-consumption that is the Xmas season.

Its such a fine piece of industrial society conspiracy: let the masses exhaust themselves with celebration fatigue so that they are positively relieved to get back to the calming rhythms of the daily grind. Instead of the craziness of Carnival in Brazil or the month long festival in Valencia, Spain which culminates in a huge blast of TNT and giant puppet-burning in the city square, or the Tomatino (a huge, drunken tomato fight in public), there isn't a real release of collective tension at Xmas. Its more like the opposite, an increase through the added traffic, parties and dinners to plan, and the miseries of gift-buying, all in the midst of the usual workload until 24 December. Then there is all the work and stress of organizing vacations to faraway, calmer places, which may or may not be combined with the Xmas/New Year holidays.

But don't you all know all this already? Of course you do, but that's what our overdeveloped industrial-consumer society is for, the exclusive use of time for relentless productivity, no matter how useless or destructive it may be.

Ah, January

2007-01-04T23:51:00.000-05:00

I've been neglecting the blog, being off-line as I have been until today. Nicolas came over and worked away at my alien-to-him iBook of 2001 until finally, a couple of Mac-friend phone calls later, he had me back up and surfing like everyone else.

Its interesting, this world wide web. In N. America its an absolute passion, nothing less, for millions of people. It seems like every single person I know has their own website/blog/flickr account/whatever. In Mexico (which I am quite aware qualifies as "North America" according to whoever's in charge) people use the net all the time but its not the same, its MSN-ing and websurfing, not this absolute life passion that it is in these parts. But that's N. America for you, life through glowing screens.

One of those screens was set up in the lobby at 181 University yesterday, to show Canada vs. USA in a world junior hockey tournament. It was great, a 1-1 tie after sudden death overtime when I arrived. Frank told me to stay there and give him updates instead of fetching some waybill I'd left over at the Dungeon. So I obeyed my dispatcher and got really pumped watching tomorrows hockey stars trade penalty shots for admission to the final game.

Its not like soccer where the goalie is at a huge disadvantage because the net is so big, a hockey net makes the whole confrontation just about even. And a hockey shooter doesn't just shook from a fixed point as in soccer/futbol, he skates in from centre ice to add to the drama. Canada won it 6-5 or so. All the office workers cheered. It was more joy than I'd ever seen expressed in one of those buildings so stark in their perpetual absence of human emotion. I felt great for the rest of the day, a non-hockey fan thrilled by what I had seen and a non-patriot actually proud of 'our boys' holding the national game up.

Half the country on the edge of its seat, so it seemed, while doubtless in the U.S. of A no one even noticed. Hell, in Sweden, no one seemed to notice: the rink was empty. Of course, the Swedish team was no nowhere to be seen at that point.

a bad day

2006-12-14T20:31:00.000-05:00


This is really a classic, so I had to put it here.

2006-12-12T22:57:00.000-05:00

A Queen Street East mural

2006-12-12T22:54:00.000-05:00

Bike Messenger: The Crust of the Shit.

2006-12-01T16:48:00.000-05:00

DAMNIT.

A pall sits over this wet, freezing Hogtown: November has given way to December and with it every courier's nightmare, the hideous cold rains that last all day and make you hate everything. Normally its November when the really ugly weather kicks in, and of course it did, but it was mostly a decent fall what with global warming and the lake-effect and all.

Take yesterday. It was a dull rainy day, but a bit of transplanted Vancouver weather - a balmy 15 degrees till 12:30 - so I wasn't getting miserable as I rolled around the city picking and dropping other people's business. Frank (my dispatcher) let me break for lunch around noon and by the time I'd decided to move again everything was cold, with a harbinger that 15C was not to be seen again till April.

Today was of course cold, wet, and miserable from the gun, and Frank let me sit inside as long as possible. My radio, ringtone set to the Battle Hymn of the Republic, went off at 10am with a double at Queen's Quay. Off I went, feeling pretty fine about what I was getting into, the memory of yesterday's hours of wet, cold feet somewhat fading away under my wheels. I turned down towards the lakefront and nearly lost my sou'wester in the howling wind. There were ponds with little waves on bits of Lakeshore Blvd, and I was nearly windbound as I turned the bike eastward. A massive south wind. Whitecaps were rolling up to and over the quay; it was more wind and rain than I could ever remember riding in, and I've ridden in Holland. Epic! I thought. Its the kind of day when you don't even think about making money, just being out there is such an adventure.

It was so wet and the wind so fierce I found a bit of sidewalk to roll east on, so hideous looked the big metal beasts driving beside me. By 12:30 I was a soaking, freezing 'popsicle' and neither inner bootliner nor thickest wool sock nor neoprene overbooty was stopping both feet from the same process: first the damp, the wet, the cold, the numbness and the final stage, a hideous stabbing pain like being crucified with icepicks through the feet. I quit before that stage as it was only raining heavier as the morning became noon.

Frank was not happy, as I was the third bike to book off since the whole death march had begun that morning. On a Friday yet. But I wasn't making the sacrifice, and I dropped my bills and then tore home as fast as my soaking legs would carry me, the water leaking into and spreading around the hands, feet, arms, and even back, as it had been for three hours. If I'd made thirty bucks I'd be suprized but I didn't care.

At home I peeled it all off me and tried to forget it all.

Oaxaca news

2006-10-31T22:08:00.000-05:00

The revolt of the Oaxacan people against their governor, Ulysis Ruiz Ortiz, has come to a critical stage in the last week. Oaxaca City is basically under siege by federal anti-riot police, and resistence is strong on the streets.

Last Friday an American Indymedia journalist was killed by police while standing with protesters and filming the assault. His name was Brad Will, an anarchist from NYC who'd been reporting on the whole insurrection for some time. Two other locals were also killed in the police assault. Their deaths are by no means the first.

Ruiz's state government has been paralyzed for quite some time due to the ever-widening solidarity in this struggle against his autocratic rule and current "dirty war", to the point where in the last couple of days the Mexican congress has actually voted that he should resign. This is a totally non-binding decision but it speaks loudly to the events of the last four or five months, especially the intimidation, killings, and disappearances of a number of the popular assembly's leading members, not to mention the fact of the police state Oaxacans have been generally confronted with since the teachers' union protest for better wages and educational standards began back in June.

Go to Oaxaca Indymedia to learn more, or google the Mexican newspaper La Jornada or the newsweekly El Proceso (if you've got the Spanish).

A road moment

2006-10-12T23:51:00.000-04:00

Today was a good day on the road. Why? I didn't make any money, so the pace was relaxed. The air was brisk, the bike rolled around without any complications, minus the new front tire I threw on it the other day. Its a spongy piece of crap, the fourteen dollar result of riding the old one to the bitter end of its life in the middle of the day with calls on board.

Around 4:30, into the ninth inning as it were, the winds got especially gusty and white stuff was swirling around in the air - snow! I was hammering up Yonge street north of Bloor to pick at Price street when the stuff was all around me. It was one of those magic times as a messenger, when you can only really appreciate the raw force of nature in the middle of the city because you're doing a job on a bike.

Rush hour was well underway as I grabbed my piece and rushed out to get it down to a fancy cocktail bar on Bay street within thirty minutes, not a difficult thing to do in this case, but definitely a good excuse to be playing in traffic with snowflakes going sideways. I'd already had the good fortune to have been sent to drop a piece within a few blocks of my place the hour before, where I'd seized the opportunity to nip home and grab my other pair of gloves. For the first time ever I doubled up on cycling gloves, figuring it would be that much warmer. My old pair fit right over my newer pair so I went for it, and it worked as well as could be for half-fingered gloves in mid-October. That's bike courier thinking for you.

As I rolled south, this amazing thing was happening. The wind swirled madly, asphalt turning to wet and threatening slickness in the bumper-to-bumper rush hour traffic. In the western sky, the sun was shining a late afternoon golden glow that seemed to emerge out of nowhere, right in the middle of this crazy little snowsquall. It was like the city, split down the centre by Yonge street, was atmospherically split as well. It made sense if you were riding a bike down Yonge at the time, it was palpable for a few key minutes and made my little mission seem all that much more important and adventurous. Those moments are the kind that keep you getting back on your courier bike, the feeling of freedom that stays with you long after you hang it up and move on to other things in life.

Rush hour is an amazing manifestation of the feeling that right now is crucial. There is this real sense of drama, that people aren't just moving around as always, but are seized with an urgency in their movement, as though a kind of race were on. Well, a kind of race is on, the race to home, to beat the traffic on the expressways, to the next set of tasks and responsibilities at the end of the day, a release from the day's confinements at work.

Two office girls were waiting at a desk in the cocktail bar, which had no less than three wall- mounted large flat-screen televisions, all cheek by jowl. Even offices are starting to have these tv screens, with their perpetual supply of CNN rolling news keeping everyone preoccupied with nothing.

The one who was expecting a package signed with an excited smile, Desiree something, and took off towards the back. The other remained with nothing to do, so I asked her the time and wrote it on my waybill. Outside, it had cleared up and the sky was calm.

Back in the courier game.

2006-10-04T23:21:00.000-04:00

29 September

A last Friday of the month completed. In the courier business, this day is always going to be a biggie, because a lot of bills are getting paid, and other business being concluded. In the mythology of the game, its a big payday with a good hammering pile of work to be done.

It was a classic fall day in Toronto with the sun shining and the air cool and gusty. What's considered great riding weather in these parts. For me, it was like one of those baseball games that goes to extra innings, becomes a kind of epic affair even though nothing spectacular is happening. In my case it was just that I had no money and no food or drink to push me onwards.

It's the classic bike courier scenario: so broke you need an advance to keep working, so i asked for one two days ago and got it yesterday, but it took all day to arrive so I couldn't bank it, then when I had the chance today I realized I had nothing to cover it, meaning it wouldn't clear till Tuesday and of course I'd run out of money last night. As I muddled through the situation while fully absorbed in the war of packages, pages, and waybills, I finally realized a plan: my old trick of taking the cheque to the very branch where it was drawn and cashing it there. In this case it was 20 King W., so I had the whole business coming together as I rolled into the core with a few Same Day calls in my bag.

Part of the fun of being a courier is trying to work your own errands in on company time, time that never belongs to you and is nearly always in short supply, so it takes all this logistical strategizing just to do something like go to the bank. In this case there was the added hurdle of getting the Royal Bank to hand over my miserable two hundred dollars; it was two o'clock and several trips to Eglinton and back later, quite badly needed. But desperation is rarely your friend in matters of banking or beaurocracy, and the tellers sent me away after I could only provide a driver's licence and health card as identification.

So having scrimped till the bitter end of the week (and for three weeks since returning from Mexico), I threw down my usual biking breakfast of hot muesli and a bowl of coffee, and tore off to my first call of the day. Eight or nine hours later I was walking to Money Mart to cash my advance, and saw nothing but veteran bike couriers, including the legendary Dogboy, or Stefano by his real name.

I've known him for years, as everyone does, an absolute hard man who rides with the most insane, kamikaze style ever seen - left turns into the oncoming lane at full speed - and never backs off for anything. Helmetless, headset blasting music, Stefano is a true soldier of the road wars since fifteen years, I think. He showed me a cheque for two hundred dollars or so, an advance off a two week commission of $689 he made at my old company, Turtle Express. He had already quit and joined the same outfit as me two or three days previously.

Stefano showed me his manifest of calls, pointing out the more valuable ones. I was stunned by the sheer tininess of his pay for such and absolute legend amongst couriers. In all my time back when I was first a courier, on and off for three years or so, I had never once seen him on standby. i had watched him make an brilliant comeback at the Courier Classic, an Alleycat race through Trinity-Bellwoods park, to win his leg of the team relay only to be hit full on by the second place finisher on a track bike, who couldn't avoid him as Stefano had stopped and dropped his bike immediately after crossing the line. Undaunted, Stefano picked himself up and raced the next round.

Legends of the man's behaviour have circulated for years. One time Stefano lost his temper and punched a guy in TD Centre, one of the bank skyscrapers. The police just monitered his wherabouts through his company radio and then sent about 8-10 cops to arrest him. The story perfectly captures all the elements of the man: the explosive temper at work, the fact that he's built thick as a brick shithouse so that you need eight times the manpower to bring him down.

One time Stefano was roaring down Yonge street at full clip and went into his lefthander on Wellesley in his usual mode, i.e., straight into oncoming westbound traffic, except that a car had stopped completely while turning and Stefano went through the windshield helmetless headfirst. He was working the next day.

What astounded me about seeing him today was his absolute lack of ego, no sense of his fame in the courier world. He jabbered on about busting through the next two weeks on $180, even showing me some of those peanut butter and jam packets you find at the Golden Griddle as a survival tip. He was all smiles about it, while saying things like, "At least I have a roof over my head", and "We're just like prostitutes, drug dealers, and those guys in Guantanemo Bay, we're nothing, nothing at all. Just call them something else and they don't have no fucking rights at all. Well, that's life man." He said it with a smile.

There it was, the awareness of the relentless exploitation of it all, driven home as a brutal truth, but Stefan didn't seem angry or even particularly disgusted by it. He was past all that. Now it was just an observation, a simple fact of life, unchangable. He stood there in the fading sunlight of a fall day, sunburnt in his crew cut, smiling away. He was the picture of blue collar addiction to work no matter how bad the deal, with his beat-up looking street-ified mountain bike seemingly all he had after years and years as a professional cyclist. It all shocked me a little, but only out of a naive assumption that things could somehow be better for a guy who rides so hard.

Oaxaca Update (Indymedia)

2006-09-25T20:24:00.000-04:00

I wrote about the civil unrest and insurrectionary movement in Oaxaca City in August. This article supplies some very important context.

LOCAL ACTION ALERT

In 2004, Ruiz Ortiz came to power through an election viewed by many as illegitimate and corrupt. His policies and practices are widely unpopular. His support for neoliberal projects enrich a select few leaving the rest of the state in grinding poverty. His commodification of Oaxaca’s fiercely guarded cultural pride in the pursuit of tourism is disdained. The political and economic regimes of Oaxaca are a certain shade of barbarous. In a state still ruled by the PRI, election rigging ensures political control, lands conflicts are exacerbated by the government, and politically motivated killings and detentions are common. Ruiz Ortiz has been internationally condemned over and over again for such acts. The chief architect of the State's counter-insurgency program against the movement, Jorge Franco Vargas, is affectionately known as 'Chucky' of Hollywood killer doll fame.

But, after years of organizing, social movements are poised to take him out. Over the course of four months, a teachers’ strike has morphed into an all-out popular revolt. Protestors have reclaimed a state-owned television station and numerous state and corporate radio stations. All seats of government have been blockaded, forcing legislators to meet in secret and remote hotels outside the City of Oaxaca. A parallel and popular governance has formed and is gaining legitimacy as the true authority in the state. Ruiz Ortiz’s exit is whispered through the streets, painted on city walls, and demanded by daily direct actions.

In their desperation and depravation, Ruiz Ortiz and his cohorts are directing their violence underground in a systematic campaign of paramilitary and police violence and sabotage aimed at undermining the popular social movements.
Eviction Attempt
For close to two months, thousands of teachers, families, and students affiliated with the National Education Workers Union - Section 22 (SNTE in its Spanish initials) occupied the city center demanding economic relief for teachers and schools. Section 22 has made the journey to the capital city for a number of years with similar demands. For many teachers it was routine. Occupy the city center at the end of school and expect a small raise.

Around 50 city blocks had been transformed into a vast tarp city where striking teachers and supporters escaped the sun and daily rains. Barricades were set up to block cars and potential intruders. In a city choked with automobile traffic, the plantón (sit-in) also was a car-free refuge in the center city. Banners representing the plethora of social movements provided a visual confirmation of the breadth of the movement. Posters advertising marches plastered the city walls, scrawling Ricardo Flores Magón quotes adorned buildings, and full-length murals depicted Ruiz Ortiz as a raccoon and rat. With no beat-cops willing to dare the occupation, the city was a risk-free canvas. The atmosphere created was one of a vibrant community living in the streets and of constant political dialogue and action. Simultaneously, the plantón critically reclaimed a symbolic space dominated by capitalist economic and political interests.

Around four in the early morning of June 14, 2006, while teachers, families, and supporters slept then governor Ruiz Ortiz sent roughly 3,000 police elements to evict the protestors from the city center. Perhaps Ruiz Ortiz figured that one violent swoop would destroy the teachers’ movement and ‘clean’ the city center for the approaching height of the tourist season.

Riot-clad cops beat, burned, and gassed the teachers’ encampment. At 9AM, five hours after the police offensive, the smoldering remains of plastic tarps mixed with lingering tear gas still burned the eyes of passers-by. A low-flying helicopter hovered above the scene for hours launching tear gas on protestors below. Police elements smashed the transmitting equipment of independent Radio Plantón. Smashed-up buses littered the streets and everyone carried a stick in fear of another police attack. Hundreds, mostly police officers, sought medical treatment from area hospitals. After five hours of riotous confrontation in the streets, the plantón was reestablished. VIDEO

Ruiz Ortiz attempted to destroy the nascent revolution with this violent, public eviction of the teachers’ plantón. The ex-governor eventually recognized the error of this action in a televised apology. Not so much out of remorse, but out of a pleading self-interest for the social movement to relent. In his attempt to evict the teachers’ movement, he inadvertently provoked his own demise and the rise of the emerging movements in Oaxaca. The struggle is no longer just about the teachers. Rather, it is a collective demand for his exit from power and the collective desire for popular governance.

Already Fallen/Fallen Already
Post-eviction, the teachers’ movement and other movements joined in a campaign to demand the exit of Ruiz Ortiz and the desire for popular governance. In the face of such popular insurrection the legitimacy of state government crumbled and lost its ability to function.

Through an escalating series of actions the movement targeted pillars of the state government diminishing its ability to function thereby greatly pressuring URO to exit his seat of power. Oaxaca witnessed, and continues to witness: rolling highway blockades, occupations of municipal governments (in over 20 towns throughout the state), and the seats of government power blockaded.

The cancellation of the annual Guelaguetaza was perhaps most embarrassing to Ruiz Ortiz. The government/corporate-sponsored Guelaguetza is widely viewed as a tourist spectacle driven by profits rather than the celebration’s true communal roots. It is also the most important cultural celebration in Oaxaca, which brings thousands of foreigners and their money to Oaxaca. The social movements identified boycotting the Guelaguetza as a way of pressuring Ruiz Ortiz to leave power.

Ruiz Ortiz’s government was racing to complete unfinished ‘improvements’ to the Guelaguetza auditorium. Road blockades denied access to work crews and vehicles. The auditorium was burned three separate occasions and bathroom facilities destroyed. The morning of the Lunes de Cerro, Ruiz Ortiz canceled the Guelaguetza truncating 74 years of the celebration. A few weeks later, commercial vendors of mezcal, did not show up to the annual Mezcal Festival out of mere fear of a boycott.

Thousands attended a free, community-centered Guelaguetza hosted by the social movements. The spectacle of an event driven by profits was unmasked. And the coordination of a community-centered alternative proved that indeed people can organized themselves. In a state where the vast majority of townships use traditional forms of decision-making outside the state framework and Magón is everyone’s favorite anarchist hero, it really only makes sense.

On the streets the day of the eviction, the movements’ rallying ‘Ya Cayó,’ (He’s Already Fell or He's Fell Already) rang through the streets. The simple two-word slogan reflects the movements’ complicated successes and realities. Ruiz Ortiz may be trying to hang on to complete a full two years of his term. If he completes them the PRI-controlled legislative can appoint a new governor rather than hold a new general election. But, in many senses he has already fallen and it is almost beside the point. Already, Oaxaqueñ@ social movements are constructing different realities within the imposed one.

There is the social reality that people live regardless of the government (or conversely struggling to live because of the government). Further, the social movements created the People’s Popular Assembly of Oaxaca (APPO in its Spanish initials) to not only guide the movements’ campaigns, but also create a space of horizontal and popular decision-making. APPOs are operating in townships and neighborhoods all over the state. Mega-marches, the latest close to a million people, demonstrated the popular support of the movements. August 20, 80,000 civil workers held a strike in support of the social movement. August 1, a contingent of 3,000 women took the streets and ended their march by occupying the state-owned television station indicating a critical reflexivity of the social issues in Oaxaca and the within the movements. VIDEO

Dirty Repression
con-impunidad_6-28-06 copy.jpg

The movements’ successes are getting out of control for state and business leaders. City center business owners have solicited the federal government for disaster relief funds. Ruiz Ortiz has proved completely ineffective at resolving the conflict and the lame-duck president Vicente Fox has refused to use federal intervention (although reports state that Calderon, Fox's possible successor, and Ruiz Ortiz recently met at a Oaxacan beach resort in Huatulco). Public repression has not worked and the situation from the state’s point of view is only deteriorating. Ruiz Ortiz has gotten desperate and is resorting to clandestine violent actions aimed at destroying the movements and systematic violation of human rights.

Silence the Voices
July 21 two molotov bomb are lobbed at the house of Alejandro Cruz López. The next evening, Radio Universidad is subject to a drive-by. Nobody is hurt or killed, but the action sends a message. Three weeks later, unknown elements threw acid on the radio transmitter taking Radio Universidad off-air.

By the time Radio Universidad lost its signal, a group of women had occupied state-owned Channel 9 and two other state-owned radio stations. Channel 9 began live broadcasts and screening social documentaries about the Zapatistas or social movements in Guatemala. August 21, once again in the middle of the night, unknown agents fired upon the Channel 9. Unknown agents burned production equipment while another group destroyed the station’s antenna. Occupiers were evicted, but nobody was seriously injured.

The social movement reacted by occupying at least nine corporate-owned radio stations, one of which, La Ley, is strafed with gunfire. Lorenzo San Pablo is hurt and taken to a hospital. He dies a few hours later. La Ley is owned by Clear Channel and the signal has recently been cut-off. The same agents burn an automobile with its occupants inside, Filiberto López y Pedro Solís. López y Solís escape, but suffer first-degree burns. High-powered gunfire was reported at many installations of the social movements across the city.

Cut the Heads
The government also is engaging in a campaign of disappearing activists off the streets, who reappear tortured or in prison. The state government has issued arrest warrants for 50 leaders of APPO. Someone published a website encouraging vigilantly action against the movement. A website, called ‘Oaxaca en Paz,’ contains pictures and home addresses of social organization leaders exhorting readers to ‘find them and detain them.’ A protestor killed by police elements is crossed-out with a red ‘X’ across his face.

In five days, eight social leaders are nabbed off the streets. On August 7, Catarino Torres Pereda, spokesman for the Citizens Defense Committee, member of APPO, is one of the first to be detained. Germán Mendoza Nube and his accompaniers Leobaldo López Palacios y Eliel Vázquez Castro were beaten and sequestered by well-armed police dressed as civilians. Mendoza Nube is a representative of the Revolutionary Popular Front (FPR), integrant of APPO, and founder of Teachers Commission of Human Rights. López Palacios and Vázquez Castro reportedly do not have ‘militant politics’ and only were supporting Nube, who uses a wheelchair and has health issues needing medical attention. August 10, professors Juan Gabriel Ríos, Elonaí Santiago Sánchez and biologist Ramiro Aragón Pérez are disappeared off the streets by unknown agents, presumably police forces or paramilitaries. They were reportedly looking for Mendoza Nube, detained the day before.

Two days later, the former General Secretary of the SNTE Section 22, Erangelio Mendoza González is detained by State Police. The same day, two teachers give a press conference denouncing torture implemented by police during their detention and appear visibly beaten. The biologist Aragón Pérez remains detained, charged of ‘grave’ crimes, and a picture of a visibly beaten Aragón Pérez surfaces to the press.

Later that day another snatch is averted through security vigilance and radio alerts. An APPO mobile security brigade identified a Ford used in the arrest of former General Secretary of Section 22 Erangelio Mendoza González. It is spotted circling a house of a known movement leader. The mobile brigades detain the vehicle and find municipal mayor of Santa María Atzompa, Sergio Atalo Enríquez Aguilar, and an AR-15.

On August 15, José Luis Díaz Cruz and Joaquín Jiménez Ogarrio armed with a pistol enter the residence of the leader of the New Left and APPO leader, Flavio Sosa Villavicencio. They threaten to kill and put a gun to the chest of his wife, Beatriz Castañeda Pedro. Cries for help alerted neighbors, who mobilized, adverted the attack, and detained the aggressors.

Shoot to Kill
During a protest of a government-sponsored cultural event in a public park, a police element, dressed as a civilian, fires a weapon. No one is hurt, but the aggressor was detained by APPO. Isaías Pérez Hernández was marched through the streets carrying a homemade poster proclaiming, ‘I am an aggressor sent by Ulises Ruiz.’

August 7, Aristeo López Martínez, General Coordinator of Public Security, Vitality and Municipal Transit, and agents of said agency fire upon APPO adherents peacefully occupying the Secretary of Economy. People are hurt, but there are no deaths.

On August 10, during a march denouncing the detentions and disappearances of various social leaders, police forces shot and killed José Jiménez Colmenares, husband of a striking teacher. Protestors chased the suspects and burned a house where they suspect an aggressor to have taken refuge.

A day earlier, Andrés Santiago Cruz, Pedro Martínez Martínez, and Pablo Martìnez Martìnez are suspiciously shot and killed on a highway by unknown agents. Four others in the caravan are hurt. Andrés Santiago Cruz was a leader of the Independent Triqui Unification Movement, a member of APPO, and Pablo Martínez Martínez was of eleven years of age. APPO publicly denounces Ulises Ruiz Ortiz, Rufino Merino Zaragoza (Popular Unity Party Deputy), and Heriberto Pazos Ortiz (leader of MULT, PRI front group) as intellectual authors of the attack and point to political motivations.

Already Already
The stakes are high on both sides. Oaxaca is a crucial cross-roads for neoliberalism and authoritarian politics versus the visions of popular governance and community-guided economic development. The Oaxaqueñ@ movements have made political and economic machinations inoperable, or ungovernable. And in that vacuum they have lifted up visions and practices of popular governance and community-centered economics. Through a tactic of creating ungovernability, the state has nearly ceased to exist expect in its stripped-down inherent nature—violent repression. As the movements are more successful, the level of repression escalates. Invisible repression always complements the invisible hand.

The social movements have gone so far there is no turning back and they do expect more massive reprisals from the state government. In the heightened political atmosphere of a presidential election season, Oaxaca is a crucible of the acute political struggles currently waged. Oaxaca foreshadows what is to potentially pass in Mexico. Please pay attention.

International solidarity is urgently needed to support the work of the social movements of Oaxaca. Please take action.

Mexico City, D.F.

2006-09-04T00:16:00.000-04:00

Distrito Federal

I've been to some large cities in my day, but nothing really compares (in my experience) to D.F. Never before have I had the pleasure of being trapped in a subway car with the doors open at my stop, unable to leave because fifteen guys had jammed themselves in to the already stuffed train before I could get off, pushing themselves forward like an American football defensive line.
My rescue was facilitated by two giggling Metro inspectors, after I'd shouted "!Quiero salir!" enough times. Each one took one of my hands and yanked me through the packed bodies, my daypack disappearing down my waist as I traveled outward. Sometimes its a good thing to be skinny.

Travel lesson: never take the Metro in D.F. between 5:00-7:30pm (at the least) on a weekday.

Other subway notes: The constant stream of beggers, musicians, and vendors hawking 15 peso cd's (via portable speaker, and playing the worst in soft rock), peanuts, chicklets, band-aids, suckers, etc. One lame woman drags herself across the floor of the entire Pantitlan-Taxquenia train all day every day, 'shining' peoples' shoes with a filthy rag while making the same pitch over and over in a mechanical voice.

I was stunned and embarrassed by the sheer misery of her dragging herself past people's feet, but couldn't give her money being too shocked to respond to such a powerful spectacle of poverty. No one else seemed interested. Odet assured me it was a daily occurrence, and I saw her again the next day and again after that. By the third time she struck not as pathetic at all, but as someone of incredible personal strength. Her voice was not pleading at but sharp and professional in its automatic repetition. Could you drag yourself along the floor of a subway train by other people's feet day after day without end, as a way of making a living?

It makes me think of a New York performance artist I once read about, a black guy who did this performance of dragging himself (while wearing a suit and tie) the length of Wall street. It was a statement of how capitalism makes people crawl, particularly his people, and it worked so well as an intervention that other black men would come up and start shouting at him to stop. The difference of course, is that this was no performance art but simply everyday life.

There were the two shirtless guys, one with a pile of broken glass in his t-shirt. The shirt was placed on the floor, while they took turns ramming their bare backs into it. Then the pitch for a donation for this exercise. It amazed me that they thought people would pay for such a hideous spectacle, but they were just using whatever they had. I was struck by the sheer oxygen-like necessity of money in human life in moments like these, the food chain of urban existence being totally determined by the pursuit of a few pesos, not just for these guys, but everyone a money addict whether they wanted to be or not. The shirtless pair had the vague, flushed faces of drug addicts, and it was clear that they felt no pain as a result of their efforts. All this occurs in the dense, crowded atmosphere of the rush hour subway, with its grim-faced commuters, the same grim, joyless feeling you find on crowded subway trains the world over, the weariness of a daily grind that never eases. Life in the megalopolis that can never stop growing.

It was exhausting enough that I took myself an hour out of town, to the pleasant state of Morelos, and to a very touristed pueblito called Tepoztlan, surrounded on three sides by green mountains, and one summit that is topped by an ancient pyramid. A truly enchanting place aside from the centro filled with touristic noise, and the travel time equivelent of one micro-bus trip from my friend's house to the terminus of the subway line in D.F. To make the side-trip is like leaving hell and entering paradise. I actually returned to Tepoztlan a day after leaving, so enchanting was its fresh air, stone walls, gardens, and forested hills. Massive trees stood up out of a mountain creek.

Its good to actually have fun being a tourist from time to time. That is the point after all, isn't it?

Some Aspects of Travel in Mesoamerica

2006-08-27T16:40:00.000-04:00

1.The food.

I´ve never been so affected by the public and intestinal presence of fried meat. It is more common than bread in this country, impossible to get away from, so why resist? As a result, I have been on some accidental version of the Atkins diet for four months now, and the results have been as advetised. The idea of me eating to lose weight is thoroughly insane of course, but what can you do when you live in a shoe, hecho en Mexico?

That´s been my policy from the start, and 500 or so tacos de bistec later, I feel this strange absence of... fresh vegetables and fruit, most grains, anything steamed, etc. The cornucopia of bistec, chorizo, rais, pollo, carnitas, and so on is so omnipresent that it becomes difficult to disassociate food and eating from the inevitable heaps of fried meat piled in every corner.

In Mazunte, I discussed the dietary situation with a medical student from Conneticut, who corroberated the symtoms I was experiencing: a very slight light-headedness/other-worldliness combined with a distinctly hollow feeling around the solar plexus, as though having just been probed with a cow tongue. Unhealthy, but survivable was the conclusion.

The interesting thing is, of course, that Mexican food, as Mexicans themselves are always saying, is

muy sabroso, muy rica, que delicioso

. The quickest way to get a Mexican totally excited is to ask him/her what good foods are available for consumption. The eyes widen in excitement as the long list of chalupes, chiliquiles, enchiladas, ceviches, sopas, tlayudas, tamales, etc is revealed with great detail, hand-to-pursed lips gestures, and general fervour. Too much for an aphasic like myself to remember in proper detail of course, but the fine and rich mole, a semi-unsweetened chocolate sauce covering chicken, rice, tamal/anything edible, has not gone unnoticed I happy to say.

A typical example of all this being the other night when I wandered back to my friend Odet´s house to find the courtyard covered in streamers, and a surprize birthday party for her mother in full swing, including a band blasting out the best country music of the state of Tabasco.

I had some bread rolls in hand, my idea of a meat-free dinner, and Odet kept asking me if I wished to feed properly. Like a typically guilt-ridden norteño guest, I protested repeatedly throughout the evening until finally I wandered into the cocina at about 1am to find enough uneaten pollo de mole con arroz to feed an army. Having been primed by a few ´taqilas de refresco´, i.e., hard liquor hideously mixed with goldish yellow pop, I finally indulged a little while being interrogated about the translations of ´puta´,
´fuck you´, ´mierde´, ´cabron´, etc. by a gang of sweet-faced 12 year old schoolgirls and boys(some still in their uniforms), cousins of Odet, who I was meeting properly for the first time. In such moments of pure Mexican hospitality you quickly learn to forgive other moments of pure Mexican lieing, filth, and general city-of-20-million-people craziness.

2. Cycling.

Some people have asked if I, bicycle addict, have done any cycling in this country, with its incredible mountain vistas, etc. Cycling in Mexico has much potential, and I of course regret not bring my own bike along. While teaching in Chiapas I was lent a kids 24¨ mountain bike of the K-mart variety for a month or so. It had been in a crash and had the mild issue of a permanently loose steerer tube, one half-broken pedal, and bottom-of-the-line untightenable brakes didn´t stop me from ascending from the bottom of the Chiapas valley to the mountain pass and descending to the next valley (Suchiapas)whenever I had the chance. The one thing that worked on that bike were the gears, and despite its overall heaviness, I could climb reasonably well on it. Well, that is, for a bike with a maximum (knobby) tire pressure of 45 lbs., which is lower than what´s on my dad´s 1963 Raleigh cruiser. When you have nothing at all to ride you learn to appreciate a piece of crap that gets you out of a hot, polluted city and over a lush, cool green mountain or two, and back again in a couple of hours.

I rented a couple times and rode mountain bikes at altitude, in St Cristobal and Oaxaca City. The trouble is, the Mexican idea of mountain biking, at least to those renting bikes to touristas of unknown experience, is hilly roads, some possibly without pavement. Despite repeated pleas for ¨senderos de bici de montaña¨, I was always handed a roadmap with hills.

In Oaxaca, this amounted to a large circuit through a part of the Valle Central, which began with the ascent of Monte Alban, a proper 2000 metre ¨puerto¨ that nearly hospitalized my hapless Danish companion of the day, Martin, who was already having trouble just living and breathing in the general altitude of the state. Well, he looked young and strong enough. It turned out that Martin´s primary knowledge of mountain biking was being acquainted with his neighbour back in the very flat Danmark, who was on the Danish Olympic mountain bike team.

At more than one point, I was riding with one hand on Martin´s back (which was mostly covered by a horribly swaying Guatamalan dufflebag full of odds and ends), pushing him upwards. It was slow.

After we finally summitted at the semi-famous Zapotec pyrimid and registered the complete insult of a 45 peso entrance fee, we descended a ways to the dirt roads of the countryside, and I sent Martin packing after a short discussion weighing the mild shame of returning a full day´s rental after an hour-and-a-half versus that of abandoning and being stranded halfway through a 50km loop in the heat of the day.

The real lesson is that having your own bike is the answer, as you can ride it all you like, where you like, for as long as you like, without Martin coming along.

The Revolt of the OaxacaqeÃ±as

2006-08-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

Oaxaca City

If you go far enough in Mexico you will eventually run smack into a political crisis, a scandal, or an open revolt, or possibly all three at once. Far enough being usually about 200 metres. In Oaxoaca City, the heart of a pleasant mountainous state known for its carpetweavers, Zapatec ruins, and heaps of expatriots living the easy life under sunny skies, there is definately an open revolt.

Since a march by the teachers´ union on 14 June was attacked brutally by 3000 state police, the city has seen the quick form alliance of different civil society groups: indigenous, socialist parties, and unions demanding the immediate resignation/impeachment/overthrow/fucking off of the state`s iron-fisted governor, Ulises Ruiz Ortiz who naturally is seen as being behind the whole no-negociation, shoot-first, arrest later policy. Ulises, as the protesters refer to him, is generally thought to have come to power through traditional means, that is, by vote-rigging and intimidation and has ruled in the traditional way.

For two months, a planton(a street takeover/protest camp) has made the struggle visible all over the normally tourist-filled zocalo. A small poster in English stands out amidst the Spanish political graffiti:

Please excuse the inconvenience while we
are making our history.
Once we have finished you will be able to
return to your regular tourist experience.

Streets have been barricaded, asphalt ripped up, trucks with ¨APPO¨ (Asemblea Popular del Pueblo Oaxoaqueña) spray-painted on them block off roadways. This is not a protest that goes home at three o´clock. The original issue the teachers were protesting against was the total lack of desks, textbooks, pencils, etc., in much of the state schools, plus the general lacking of the youngest students: without shoes, clothes or any food in their stomachs in many cases. The same level of public education for all Mexicans is guarenteed by the Constitution, and they wanted the governor to do something about it at last. This June march and planton was met with a 4 a.m. military-style assault (helicopters, tear gas, live ammunition) that left many wounded, half a dozen dead, and an explosion of political rage that has yet to subside.

Just yesterday another march of twenty thousand here in the city was attacked by police and a 50 year old mechanic who was marching with his wife (a biology teacher), was shot to death by riot police. If it wern´t for the planton of PRDistas five kilometres long in Mexico City (where thousands of supporters of Manuel Andres Lopez Obrador have successfully demanded a recount of the narrowly lost presidential election, by .6% of dubiously scrutinised 41 million votes), this regional struggle would be the top of the news. With this new killing yesterday (complete with photos of the dying man), in fact it IS in many front pages.

Mexican politics is a three-ringed circus of huge gestures and booming rhetorical sweep to match. Behind that there is a great frustration with the status quo in this economically expanding country of over 100 million. Legitimacy is badly wanted in a sea of corruption and incompetence. I saw a photo of the first ¨reconteo¨ in progess in the newspaper with a caption that read something like,

Counting is closely watched in the first of the votes to be re-examined.

In the photo an armed federale scrutinizes the IFE workers re-tabulating results at a table. One can imagine thirty more photographers in front of them. It is a ¨Ya basta¨ moment from a mainstream perspective, where the suggestions of a rigged election are being investigated ´voto por voto´ and damnit, this time it better be done properly. Its like every Mexican´s self-respect is on the line now - if this re-count can´t be done without interference then NOTHING can be done properly by Mexicans in the name of their own governance. It´ll be interesting to see the results, especially if Calderon wins a second time, but by an even smaller margin.

The contradictions of a modernizing society that is a constitutional democracy run by oligarchs are evermore rising to the surface. But contradictions of honesty are a part of the Mexican culture and character. While teaching English to teenagers, I was forced to confront the fact that half of my most advanced students plagiarized their final essays completely from the internet, even after I had caught nearly all of them doing it to some degree on the first draft of their initial essays and given them copies of the MLA guidelines for documenting sources plus the obvious lecture with embarassing examples.

The human urge to cheat in the face of difficulty is very great it seems, especially here.

Mayan if I smoke?

2006-08-03T15:02:00.000-04:00

What is it about the indigenous of Chiapas?

The Bishop of San Cristobal de las Casas, Samuel Ruiz, took a tour through his new diocese in 1962 and came to a realization, the same one that Bartolome de las Casas understood when he arrived in 1523: these people are already the children of god. That is, the Indian is so modest and generous and good that he or she only needs to be steered towards the door of the church, not corrected by it, and having spent a very little bit of time in the Bishop´s diocese, I must say that I agree.

Take last night for example. I found myself in the very fine plaza of Comitan de Domingez, around eleven p.m., feeling a little peckish. The square was nearly deserted, just a handful of teenagers and some Mariachis drifting around in the semi-darkness, making a few strains on the old mandolin. An old woman stood by her buckets, and modestly inquired if I was interested in a tamalito de mole or two.

Well indeed I was, and I sat myself down and tucked into a couple that she served me, still hot from the banana leaf each was wrapped in. And damn me if they weren´t the finest tameles de mole I´ve ever had in my whole meandering life of sordid travels. Eight pesos worth of pure gastronomic goodness. You´ll rarely find a more inept and unethusiastic traveler than I, but at that moment I felt the sweet taste of victory right there in el centro de Comitan. But that´s not the point I was trying to make.

The point was that this woman embodied all that is so good about the Mayans, the calmness, the grace, the absolute grandmotherly sweetness of that lady. Its these very traits that the Spanish conqistadores must have come across, and promptly set about raping, enslaving, and killing in just the way a good European will when they´re far from home and feeling relaxed. More recently, we can say with perhaps greater authority (which one always wants), these are the traits that have kept Chiapanecan indigenous people totally ignored by the political process, and totally exploited by the economic one.

Is this an attempt to blame the Mayans for the exploited misery that they have lived in for for five centuries, a nasty, backhanded compliment that nice guys finish last? Well, not exactly. Its more a comment on the behaviour of the mestizo society here in Mexico, which is of course little different from that of you-know-who in you-know-where. And still the Mayans keep their dignity.

(It must be said that most of the Mayan communities high in the highlands of the Lacandon forest and elsewhere really are scared witless of outsiders and want nothing to do with them, for very good reasons that you may have heard about already. But the need to make a peso or three drives many of them into town to sell whatever they can cobble together. The truth is, I don´t know a goddamn thing about what the Mayans are like with each other, just through the inevitiably limited interaction I´ve had buying a bottle of water, etc. But from that and a bit of reading I´m happily making sweeping generalizations. If you don´t like it, denounce me in front of the Comintern and satisfy yourselves by reading blog entries about the long-drop toilets of darkest Siberia, a freezing hell I´ll never see the end of.)

Bits and bobs

2006-07-25T13:53:00.000-04:00

1. So Israel is at it again, if one can say that they
ever cease. A policy of absolute aggression, it would
seem. Whenever the Gazans act up, Israel says,
¨Either you control the militants or we will have to
do it¨. Could it be anymore blatant? The only way to
stop us from assaulting you/continuing to assault you
further is if you declare war upon yourselves, hunt
down yourselves and slaughter yourselves so we do not
have to.

Same thing straightaway with the Hizballah in Lebanon.
No chance of a prisoner swap this time, we´re too
busy obliterating you bastards and thank you for the
opportunity.

But if you`d like this carnage to stop, if you´d like
this airforce/artillery/tank/naval blockade and
general shooting-fish-in-a-barrel invasion to stop,
Lebanon, you can do it very simply: Start a civil war
right now to ¨control¨ the Hizballah, never mind that
they are the strongest military force in the country.
Its a foreign policy of hyperaggression. Naturally
the West sits back and does nothing, as usual. Must
wait for Israel to finish its job first, of course.

Will Syria take this opportunity to re-occupy Lebanon
as Hizballah takes a huge shitkicking? Of course that
would be lining up to be the next fish in the barrel,
but if they could re-trench themselves, it would be
quite a political victory for them. Likely they´ll
not have the nerve, as Israel wouldn´t hesitate to
pound them into the stone age at the slightest
opportunity. But if Israel attacks Hiz. near the
Syrian border...

It made me think of all that Colin Powell b.s. about the military doctrine of
`overwhelming force`, ie, the American high-tech, low risk death-from-above approach
to warfare. Basically the doctrine says, never go to war, until you have a 9 to 1 advantage,
or is that 19 to 1? That way you can achieve your miltary objective easily and put the fear of
hellfire into the rest of world. Of course its attributed to the deep military thinking of Powell
and his Pentagon boys, but let`s give credit where credit is due: the Israelis, who`ve been pounding
the shit out of civilian populations since decades. And look at what it has gotten them:
occupation without end.

2.Congratulations Floyd $%&!ing Landis! (Yes, Floyd
reads my blog all the time.) That 17th stage victory
was worthy of the hallowed name of Eddy Merckx. What a
piece of riding, what a spectacular attack the like of
which you never see anymore. Well, I never do anyway.
Truth is, I was rooting for Landis to win the Tour
ever since that poor bastard Jan Ullrich got
blackballed the day before the Tour de France was due
to start. And now Ullrich has been fired from
T-Mobile Team, of which he has been the pillar since
1997. What a disaster.

In a sense I liked Landis for a similar reason to
liking Ullrich: attitude. Landis never shows that
Lance Armstrong, I-am-the-centre-of-the-Universe
attitude, just this laid-back but very determined
understated sort of thing. I like that. And Landis
did it without a powerhouse team like T-Mobile much less Armstrong`s New
York Yankees of cycling.

Still, the Phonak boys really busted their arses the
whole way for him, sacrificing everything for the
leader, as it should be.

Enough.

Tour de Fr., 9me etape

2006-07-11T14:05:00.000-04:00

Hello to All Seven of You

One nice thing about my current job is the fact that I am done with work by nine a.m. and can scoot home in time to watch the Tour coverage on tv. I´m always in time to get the last 45 km of live racing from the highways and byways of good old France, with somewhat clueless Hispanic announcers yammering on.

Today was a sprinter´s stage, the last before the Pyranees (I think its the P´s), ending in the city of Dax, wherever that is. It was an awesome bunch sprint yet again with McKewen losing to the great Oscar Freire of Spain by less than half a wheel, with my man Zabel ripping up the inside line and past Tom Boonen no less to take third, his best finish yet this Tour. The way Zabel just keeps going at it, years after his peak, still giving everything against the world´s best never ceases to inspire me. I know he just wants one more stage win in the Tour so much. He´s got more victories than anyone else in the peloton, won the Tour´s Green Jersey six times over but he´s still totally hungry and won´t give up at thirty-five.

Zabel wasn´t even supposed to get much of a chance in the Tour with this new Milram team, as they had signed the superfast sprinter Alessandro Petacchi and the team would have been working for Ale-Jet had he not broken his kneecap in the Giro. So after the snub of not being picked for T-Mobile´s Tour squad last year after thirteen years with them, Zabel is back in action, always getting top ten finishes in the opening week´s sprinting stages.

I really needed to get that off my chest, I don´t care how irrelevant it is to any of you. I actually got to see my man Zabel in action at the World´s in Verona, Italy in 2004, if only briefly. It was the final, excruciating lap, and I had spent the previous forty-five minutes of the six-and-a-half hour race climbing the mountainous part of the course. Finally the front end of the race showed up and there was Zabel in first place, just giving it with full force in the heat of the 16th lap. To see a pure sprinter hammering up a mountain like that after 240+ km and in October no less (after eight months of racing), was really amazing. Of course, Freire beat him in the sprint and Zabel had to live with second, tears streaming down his face after a final furious effort over the cobblestones. It was particularly frustrating for Zabel because a) in the World´s your team is ill-practiced and the race is so long and difficult that making your move at the right time without something going wrong is hard enough, and b) Freire had beat him that spring right at the line in San Remo at the longest one-day race of the year.

It had been a spectacular fiasco for such a seasoned sprinting pro, that loss in Milano-San Remo, because Zabel (who´s won that race four times) went into the victory salute five metres from the line, not realizing that Freire was about to explode past him, which of course he did to Zabel´s eternal humiliation. Much later he said, ¨I didn´t see him there, I didn´t hear him, I didn´t feel him there¨.

Freire, who´s won three world championships, is a specialist at the long-range one day race with the possibly the best punchout speed in the final metres of a bunch sprint. It was his second stage win of this Tour, and it was typically amazing. Freire just exploding forwards and even the Aussie pocketrocket himself, Robbie McKuwen couldn´t reel him in despite his typical last-ditch move to leftwards off somebody else´s wheel. Robbie, who´d won three of the first eight stages (which is incredibly dominant), immediately gave Freire the congratulatory slap on the back after almost sideswiping him at 70km/hour. Ahh, biking racing...

A little good news

2006-07-05T12:55:00.000-04:00

I feel bad. I have the weight of a certain guilt upon my shoulders. Thing is, I never say a nice thing about Mexico, Tuxtla, my school, or my job, and soon enough its all going to be history and I won´t be able to remember such details.

1. Mexicans are good.
That´s right, you read correctly a blatent gneralization that I may proceed to back up with evidence. If you find yourself standing in a 27 person long line on a Sunday afternoon in an utterly obscure part of an obscure city in a general store, people do not just step right in front of you, because you are just some stupid-looking tourista. Not at all, they treat you as politely as they do all the others. The Chiapanecas are some of the most decent and fair people you´re likely to meet in this world. And that includes most of my students, despite my oft-stated desire to bind, beat, banish, or fling them out of helicopter, the simple truth is that most of them have the grace of Jesus deeply set into them. Some do not and they should be held underwater for periods of time.

2. My bosses.
A case in point. I am continually in trouble, behind or too far ahead in the material, constantly allowing all the wrong things to happen, whole classes failing tests and such, and they just keep dealing with me respectfully, only with a hint of passive agressivity now and then. They would be somewhat justified in really cracking down, but that´s not their style. They do it with the softer touch, the chain of panoptic surveillence ends only in explanations and problem-solving. Many things have driven me and plenty of other mastros extraños batty at this little school (and country), but I have to say that they´ve had aplenty incompetence in return. And they pay on time in full.

3. Football.
I too have the World Cup fever, and this time of year its a good thing to have. Did you see that Thierry Henry goal when France played Brazil? That was... ¡STUPENDO! That guy is my new superhero - the speed, power, and ball-dribbling grace that man pravails with rocks my world. And against the greatest team in the world. All Brazil needed to do was neautralize Henry and they couldn´t, not with all the king´s men and horses. The %&/!!ing Tour of France is on and I´m mildly infuriated with missing it while they show pingpong matches from Ohio on %$"!ing ESPN. But only mildly.

4. The heat, mosquitos, cars, pollution etc.
Despite my rampant disgust, kvetching, and general hatred of everything, its not really so bad, except for the skeeters, which have turned me into a hotblooded killer. Nothing like a little hunting with yourself as bait. Rationality suffers in the tropical heat, as you can imagine. But its not always so hot.

5. The Mexican Elections. I haven´t seen La Jaffafa (the señora whose house i live in) since the final days, and now they´re deep into the recounts, supposedly with an announcement today of this closest-ever presential race. Lefty PRDista Obrador vs. centrist/righty PANista Caldaron (maybe? what do I know of it all?) Still, pretty fascinating to a political junkie like me. Everyone´s being so... Mexican about it. As in so calm you wouldn´t know its even happening. They´ve only had democracy for 15 years and already they´re bored with it. Surprize, surprize. 60% voter turnout, just like in Canada. (Yes, yes, I know, it was 62.5% last time so good for us.)

And off I go, full of joy and gratitude.