Shock!

The scene as I left my firm's town hall meeting yesterday evening

How do you know when the urban environment is threatening and bullying the green environment?

Well, one thing you can do is pay attention to the trees.

Shocked tree seen on our evening walk

Mother's Day

 You can't make this stuff up!

Our kids organized a very nice Mother's Day brunch at a local restaurant.

There were flowers, and treats, and laughs, and fun with the kids and grandkids.

I enjoyed a little creativity, colouring with crayons with my granddaughter, building and re-building a little pyramid from the usual trash.

I suppose I was inspired by the "trashion couture" art on the wall... I had already taken pictures of six of the works to add to my digital collection. Lora Moore-Kakaletris's work now lives in my collection with works by Andy Warhol, Monet, Lawren Harris, and many, many other artists whose work struck my fancy over the years, including work from museums from Montreal, Athens, Toronto, Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, New York, Vancouver, Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale, Portland, Seattle, Bayeux, and Amboise.

We had a very enjoyable brunch. Then came the funny finale, and the silliness that inspired this post.

I had my credit card handy, waiting my turn to pay, when... a power failure took the restaurant out. There was a collective ooh and ahh from the crowd, questions from the kids, and the wireless card reader that the waiter was offering me became...

That instant irony made me laugh!

We hung around waiting for the power to come back on. Just as I thought of telling our waiter we would return later in the day to settle the score, the power returned, and a few minutes later, their payment software branded as "Toast" returned and I was able to pay.

Soon after, we came home (the restaurant is just down the street from where we live). The music I had left playing, wasn't. That's not good, I thought. You see all my music plays on our network thanks to Apple and the wonder of streaming.

The power failure had been brief at home, but knocked my Mac out. Oh the joy of recovering all my work-related spreadsheets.

Another inconvenience thanks to the law of averages. The one law that never fails to apply. 

Flat Friday

Geared up, unfolded, and good to go, with a plan to cycle my longest loop, but in the opposite direction. 

Wait… why does the front feel… wah, wah, wahhhhhhh.

My early morning ride time was re-allocated to flat repair.

Not so bad really. One puncture in just over 2 years. 

Plus, I got to fix it in the comfort of home, as opposed to outdoors, in the rain, on a cold day…

So here's another reason why I am a huge Brompton fan. Everything I could possibly need to work on my Brompton, is INSIDE the Brompton.

In this photo, you can see it, but unless I pull it out a little, it's almost imperceptible: the comprehensive Brompton tool kit, and the brand new never used spare inner tube.

With a tiny tug, here they are.

No need for a saddle bag, and when the bike is unfolded, the kit is invisible, because both items live inside the main chassis tube. That's an option that only has the potential to exist in a folding bike, and absolutely exists in every single Brompton.

It was my first bicycle flat repair in a long, long, long time. But, like riding a bike, once learned, the skill lasts a lifetime. I more recently fixed Vespa flats, but those are a cinch because Vespa tires are tubeless.

The one disappointment: inside the tool kit, there used to be two patches. My intention was to patch the puncture. Alas, somewhere along the way (the Vancouver trip? The Ogunquit trip?) the patches went AWOL So I replaced the inner tube. I then took the spare inner tube from Susan's bike and put it in mine. So I am back to 100% Boy Scout readiness, but I still need to patch the punctured tube and put it into Susan's bike.

All told, not the morning I was expecting, but you know what they say, experience is what you get... when you were expecting something else.

Go with the flow

I have ridden past this fountain many times in the last few years. Today may be the first time I paid it any attention. If the fountain had become the heart of a contentious issue, and had I been questioned as a potential witness, my response would have been "what fountain?".

It's modern, modest, doesn't splash, and it's a nice touch in a very urban setting.

I stopped to take the photo because I noticed the fountain as I waited for the light to change. Now that I am thinking about how to describe how it fits in this morning's ride, the fountain seems like an expression of my recent post about how change often behaves like ocean currents.

Empty

 This is a very short post.

Today our condo was assessing the underground parking as part of its capital planning and the experts wanted the P1 level empty today.

Condo life is relatively new for Susan and I. It's just over seven years. In all that time, I have never, ever, ever seen the parking empty.

Wow! That's just P1, but still, quite a sight. The other two levels were assessed yesterday and the day before.

The end of an era

Time.

It was time. It's about time. It's time.

In 2010 it was time to begin riding Vespas. The Scoot Commute is what I called it, because, inspired by what I saw so many Parisians doing when I was briefly in Paris in 2008, I decided to commute to work in Montreal on a Vespa.

It all kicked off in the early spring of 2010. I won't go into too much detail on what followed. It's all laid out in minute detail in this journal (blog? I like journal. I don't like that it sounds hoity-toity though. Oh well.). To make things easier there is a link to a chronological list of posts above, or you can click here.

That decision to live more of my life on two wheels affected so many things. I learned to be even more different than in the past. Although, to be honest, I was always different. A lefty, bilingual, raised a Catholic, but married a beloved Jew, disowned by my parents, then forgiven. The list goes on. Commuting sixty kilometres a day on a Vespa in a busy city, rain or shine, in the heat or the cold? That's not 'normal', but...

I made friends. Not in my neighbourhood, like 'normal' people do, but all over the place. In Ontario, in British Columbia, in Pennsylvania, in New York State, in Florida, in Germany. I rode scooters in all those places. I rode a scooter to the Piaggio plant in Pontedera, Italy (to be fair, Italy is not exactly Germany, but I was riding with my German friends, so there's that). Never in my wildest dreams could I have pictured all the joy my Vespas would bring.

Today it's time.

Journeys all have places where experience shifts. Sometimes change is abrupt and jarring. Mostly though, there is a gentle drift, when the dominant theme and a new theme join paths, like ocean currents, unseen, seamless, relentless, eventually drifting apart, each going their own way.

Miata, meet Vespa. David sails off on a dragon red Vespa, and the mid-life-crisis-red Miata (Susan coined that colour) is left behind, and eventually, over time, takes a different path (from David to Marc, and beyond).

Vespa meet Brompton. David pedals off, folding, unfolding, folding, unfolding... and just like a Brompton, the journey must always be unfolding and shifting. Now the dragon red Vespa sits idle, and soon, in a matter of days, it will take a different path (from David, to Adam, and beyond).

A note to Adam.

Adam, my wish for you, is that your new Vespa will light up your life, the way Vespas lit mine.

Flaming Roseway

Would you be content to live there?

I know, what kind of a question is that?

Context often makes the difference between the head-scratch-and-cock-eyed-stare, and the nod.

It's a little street, or laneway, that meanders along a row of townhouses, closer to the eastern tip of one of my usual morning rides.

Approximately two years of riding that route, once or twice a week, from early spring to late fall, and I never managed to notice the street name before this morning.

What a great name!

Early this morning, eleven degrees Celsius, with blue skies and gorgeous puffy white clouds, headed to 26C (if you can believe it), that street sign seemed like the harbinger of a great outdoor riding season to come.

So long P2 Loop, hello Flaming Roseway!

PS: it's now quarter to six and twenty-six degrees Celsius on April 12, 2023!!!!! And my Brompton cycling adventures in the early morning now total 2,422 kilometres!!!!!! 

PPS: 20230425 My friend Ed (see the comments on this post) is a very creative guy. I often think that there isn't anything he could set his mind to that he wouldn't be able to do. Ed sent me these images of his handy work in designing and building an actual Roseway. Here is Ed's Roseway:

Progress

If there is one thing that seems clear to me at this point in my life, it's that you and I have a love-hate relationship with progress.

Many people might say they enjoy progress.

Progress and the colourful merry-go-round at the town fair have many things in common.

The gentle spin as the ride begins is delightful; we happily anticipate more to come; the slow swirl of the early rotation has us wanting more; a twirl that makes us flick our heads left and right to make sense of the scene beyond the prancing horses makes us tighten our grip on the pole; all too soon, we begin to have had our fill of the ride; any faster and we fear losing our grip... 

My grandfather was a published author. I only recently read some of this books. I can safely say that unless you studied French-Canadian literature at a Quebec university, you have never, ever heard of Oscar Masse.

I never met him, he passed three years before I was born.

The novel I am reading now, published in 1922, begins in his present but quickly shifts to explore what life was in the 17th century, in what was then neither Canada, nor the U.S.

Oscar began his book with his impression of progress. He wrote of the modern wonder of steam and electricity, how cars replaced his father's horse and carriage, cinema replaced theatre, how planes seemed destined to replace cars, and he foretold a crazy future where telephones might become wireless. His narrative then slips back in time, to the early days of the colony and he paints a picture of a very different world.

For many, 1922 has left no trace in our present. Here in Toronto, that past has been mostly erased as the new replaces the old at a crazy pace. The skyline seen from the lake no longer looks like what it did even ten years ago.

The truth is that all technology progresses at an exponential pace, whether it's the industrial revolution, or the digital one.

In large measure progress today is driven by computer chips, either directly, like our 'smart' phones, or indirectly where data networks, container shipping, and air travel result in our global economy. We have shrunk the world. North America, Europe, and Asia were, not that long ago, worlds apart, and now are only hours apart. What happens in Moscow and Beijing, affects the price of our bread and butter within just a few days.

Some of us want off that carousel. To return to a time that made more sense to us, when our neighbours were more like us, spoke like us, ate as we ate. When we didn't need to update our software, when our cars didn't sense their surroundings...

I have to admit that the pace of change once really frightened me, freaked me out, when I was sure that younger, computer-armed generations, would surely obliterate my career because computers and I were strangers.

I survived, unscathed, and even prospered, once I learned to type and made computers my friends. 

Today I gave up my morning bike ride in the sub-basement to share these thoughts with you.

I enjoy writing and sharing. It's something that allows me to express the essence of my self. To be artistic, to share my thoughts, and perhaps to persuade...?

ChatGPT4. What the heck...? What are you doing here?

Hey ChatGPT! Can I call you AI...? Write me an article about how the exponential pace of change is challenging our capacity to adapt, making people long for a return to simpler times.

In recent years, the world has witnessed a rapid and exponential pace of change in various aspects of life. The advancement in technology, globalization, and demographic shifts have accelerated the pace of change, making it challenging for individuals, societies, and even institutions to keep up. The exponential pace of change has been so rapid and unprecedented that it has made people long for a return to simpler times.

The capacity to adapt to change is an essential aspect of human life. However, rapid, complex, and unrelenting changes can overwhelm even the most adaptable humans. The exponential pace of change has been so rapid that people are struggling to adapt to its consequences. This struggle to adapt is evident in many aspects of our lives, including our social, economic, and political lives.

People's longing for a return to simpler times can be attributed to the fears and uncertainties brought about by change. The rapid pace of change has left people feeling vulnerable, overwhelmed by its negative impacts, and uncertain about the future. As technology and globalization continue to shape the world's landscape, people fear that they may be left behind if they do not keep up. For instance, the exponential pace of technological change has created anxiety about job loss, privacy concerns, and social isolation, making people nostalgic for simpler times.

The pace of change is also affecting social values and norms. The traditional social norms and values that have governed human societies for generations are undergoing rapid changes. The internet and social media have fundamentally changed how people communicate, interact, and form relationships. The traditional social norms that helped build communities and social cohesion now face significant challenges. This loss of traditional social norms is generating a longing for a return to simpler times when the community and interpersonal relationships were the backbone of society.

Moreover, the exponential pace of change is driving the demand for quick fixes and immediate gratification. People are used to getting anything they want, whenever they want it. This kind of instantaneous gratification is making people impatient, making them desire simpler times when life was more predictable and manageable.

In conclusion, the exponential pace of change is outpacing our capacity to adapt to it. As a result, people are uneasy about the consequences of change, and they long for a return to simpler times. However, change is inevitable, and we need to come up with strategies to adapt to it without losing the positive elements of our traditional values and norms. Rather than fighting or resisting change, we should embrace it, learn from it, and take steps to mitigate its negative effects.

Oh wow... Let's see... literally as I ate my breakfast, a) I searched on Google on my iPad for "ChatGPT"; b) I downloaded the app from the Apple App store;  c) I posed the question; d) I hit enter;  e) I waited maybe three minutes, maybe less, and BINGO! In all, in well under ten minutes I went from almost no knowledge or experience with AI, to that article.

The app wouldn't let me copy the output, or even my own input. I'm guessing that it "thinks" that it owns the copyright to my input as well as to its output? Let's see, as between one who sows the seeds and reaps the crop, that nature produces, who owns the crop, Mother Nature or MOI? I suppose that, for now, its intelligence is truly artificial.

I should add that it took my tools and my knowledge of computers to do a screenshot of the output, airdrop it to my desktop, feed the screenshot to my text scanner, edit the transcription in my word processor to remove spurious carriage returns, and paste it into blogger.

OK, so now I'm both lawyering AND bragging.

ChatGPT for its part just kept its mouth shut and instantly produced, claiming no credit, as far as I can tell.

So what do you think? Who wrote the better article? Was it me, or my 'buddy' AI? 

I spent hours, thinking, conceiving, writing, editing, preening, re-reading, tweaking, from 7:15 until I published this at 12:17.

AI puked out its text in mere minutes.

So that's now. And in two years, four years, a decade? If computers as we knew them spawned social media that might just be rotting society to its core, what will AI do?

I have no fear for my future. That's because I basically no longer have a future to speak of. I'll be 71 in June.

How does all this make you feel?

I'm curious.

Surprises

 Surprise!

This morning I was surprised.

"Surprise" is a word that gets lots of use. "I was surprised..." "we surprised him with..." "it was a surprise to learn..." "it was a nice surprise..." "I don't like surprises..." "it may surprise you...."

My surprise today happened on my morning P2 Loop.

No, it's nothing even remotely bad or disturbing. Besides, I do my best to be extremely focused and on the lookout for cars and people coming and going.

What surprised me this morning was a first for all of my 286 P2 Loops to date: another cyclist came down the ramp from P1. Hard to tell, but I suspect he was as surprised to see me, as I was surprised to see him.

I am posting this because it's an opportunity to explore what a surprise is. I think that it's something sufficiently out of the ordinary that it lights up our neurons as soon as it happens. Not always enough to provoke a significant physical reaction like a jerk, or a gasp, or a shout, but certainly enough to feel a psychic jolt of a kind. It's definitely a physical experience that stems from our perception of our environment.

We become familiar with our environment. We develop complex sets of expectations. It's our way of navigating our world, of predicting the imminent future. The surprise is unexpected. This encounter certainly fit that bill.

He was a serious cyclist, perhaps a commuter returning home. Our paths crossed in an instant. We were traveling in opposite directions, me northbound approaching the ramp, he exiting the ramp to head southbound. I assume he was headed to P3 because after that brief moment I didn't see him again.

We were alike in many ways as far as I recall. Both men, both dressed in shades of dark grey, both wearing gloves and black helmets, both alert, and very focused on riding, both moving at a decent pace. Both silent in our movement.

We were also quite different. His was a road bike, mine a Brompton. Mine had lights fore and aft, his had none.

Now I wonder how he would describe our flash encounter.

Was he surprised?

Happy Spring!

What's a million?

I'm glad I asked.

Clearly it depends on what you count.

Stars? A million is nothing, less than a drop in the universe.

Grains of sand? Nada. Maybe a sand castle on a beach?

Humans? Humans are never nothing. We are just the most amazing and bewildering things in the universe... as near as we can tell, we think. It's likely that many of the cities boasting of a million or more people, are places you have never even heard of.

Money? Ha... not what it once was, that's for sure.

So what's this particular million?

It's actually the millionth. 

The millionth Brompton bicycle rolled off the Brompton assembly at the sacred plant in London that all Bromptons come from, including mine. I 'liked' (loved? hearted?) the video of course and just had to comment.

I recommend that you watch the video too. It's obviously historic. It will be even more so if King Charles heeds my advice and knights Andrew Ritchie, Brompton's brilliant creator.

Feel free to chime in and poke King Charles in favour of Sir Andrew Ritchie.

"Good morning"

"Good morning" are two words that I give, and receive, multiple times during my morning P2 Loop.

They bring happiness, and start my day on the right note.

This morning an enthusiastic dog turned, looked me in the eye as I was passing and woofed a few woofs while nodding and wagging its tail. I took that as "Good morning" so I said "Woof, woof" with a smile, which I took to be pooch also for "Good morning".

Pedal strikes

Pedal strikes occur when you are pedalling through a turn.

You need to be going at a pretty good clip, you need to be pedalling or to have the pedal at its lowest reach, and the turn needs to be sharp enough so that the bike leans to the point where your pedal strikes the ground on its rotation.

That happened TWICE on the P2 loop this morning.

What is a pedal strike like?

Well, each time it instantly lit up my neurons in a way that I can only describe as both unwelcome and scary.

Fortunately that's all that happened.

My fear is that the pedal could lift the bike when it hits the ground (in this case concrete) throwing it off balance and causing a crash.

That has never happened to me, thank heavens, so I can only imagine what that crash would be like. But it would be in a turn, at a pretty brisk speed. It makes me cringe thinking about it.

Of course the prudent things to do would be a) to slow down, b) make sure that the pedal inside the turn is fully raised, in this case, it's a right-hand curve, so it's the right-hand pedal, and c) watch those tight corners.

I suspect that the actual risk of a crash is less than I fear. I have seen Vespa motor scooters being ridden at ridiculous speeds along tight and winding roads with showers of sparks when the center stand or side-stand scrapes the pavement. Vespas seem unperturbed and un-inclined to crash.

Speaking of Vespas, I have had my side-stand scrape the ground on a tight left turn. It feels just as awful as a pedal strike.

February 2023

😀 Well-past 2,100 Brompton kilometres since November 30, 2021

😍 Valentine's Day (today)!

👍 Washed my Mini with a mop! Surprisingly successful. Drove with the top down for a bit on Sunday.

😐 Still working full-time, pushing 71!

😳 Forecast calling for 14C/57F tomorrow. WTF?!?! IT'S FEBRUARY! Growing up, my Mom started warning of frigid February in December.

Happy Valentines Day to all!

Time to get back to work.

Bicycle Man

 This week I logged the kilometres that took my total distance recorded to over 2,000 kilometres.

I started tracking of my daily routines exactly 500 days ago today. That count of days is a coincidence, truly. I was pleasantly surprised when the count in my spreadsheet yielded that nice, precise, round number this morning. Tracking my activities began about a year after I read James Clear's Atomic Habits. That's an average of four kilometres a day. I find that a little difficult to grasp to be honest. I don't typically ride on weekends, but for the past year I do ride every week day, except when other priorities intrude, like vacations.

During the winter I ride indoors down in our condo garage on what I like to call the P2 Loop. I posted a video of what that looks like when we first got our Brompton bicycles. You can see that here if you skip to the 12 minute mark.

When you do something like that regularly, at roughly the same time each day, you get to know a tiny bit about other folks as they come and go when you are down there looping away. 

There is a mother with two young daughters I often see. To say that the daughters are adorably cute is an understatement. As I ride by them I smile and do a little wave. Yesterday they giggled and I heard their mother as she glanced in my direction say "yes it's bicycle man!" 

It's those little things that add happiness to my routine, and help to set the tone for my day. 

Raising kids

 My parents relied on Dr. Spock. No… not Mr. Spock, Dr. Spock.

My mother had a dog-eared, tea-stained, well beaten-up, paperback bible from the good doctor aptly titled Baby and Child Care. I see in the Wikipedia entry that Benjamin McLane Spock was not merely a pediatrician but also a left-wing activist. Can that account for my progressive political inclinations? Unlikely, because I’m pretty sure that most of the parents of my conservative-inclined peers were also slaves to that seminal book on post-war child-rearing.

I spent the best years of my childhood in the early 1960’s in a brand-spanking-new Montreal suburb with a ton of other kids. For grades three and four I walked one-and-a-quarter miles back and forth to school, often solo, four times daily. The path was along the shoulder of a country highway. The destination was a quaint, modest, very retro, 19th century, two-story, four-room, red-brick schoolhouse. It had a bell in a gable on the roof with a cord that dangled in the ground floor hallway. Lucky kids got to ring it. That was before the new, closer to home, mid-century modern elementary school was built.

My friends and I spent our summers ranging all over the former rural landscape on our bikes, hunting frogs, digging in sand pits, climbing trees, building forts, slogging along creeks in our billy-boots often mired in deep mud and getting “soakers”. We often collected empty soft-drink soda bottles from residential construction sites. We trucked hundred of bottles home in our wagons, rinsed off the mud in our driveways, then took them to the grocery store a couple of miles away to collect the deposits. As soon as we pocketed the cash, we headed down the mall to Woolworth’s to buy plastic model cars and WWII fighter planes, glue and paint. 

We did all that as 9 to 12 year olds, all on our own. No cell-phones. No parents. Most often miles from home. We’d set out for hours at a time. Our mothers had absolutely no idea where we were, or what we were doing. I never recall any motherly-angst, from any of our mothers. 

In the evenings we’d gather in front of a TV and watch some shows, on a rainy day maybe Bugs Bunny, Wile E. Coyote, Marvin the Martian and that crazy gang.

It was wonderful.

Leap forward 20-30 years, and we were raising our own kids. TV played a much bigger role. Our two or three year-old daughter memorized Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast. Team sports like soccer and hockey were also a big deal. Bikes, much less. Foraging in fields and forests, not at all. Our kids didn’t roam like I did. Never. There was no Dr. Spock. We bought diapers in boxes, and baby bottles were plastic. As a parent I don’t recall being stressed out. Sure there was an occasional trip to the ER, some head-scratching moments at parent-teacher nights. But overall, I wouldn’t say any of it was a challenge we felt we couldn’t comfortably handle.

Fast-forward another 20-30 years. We have grandkids. They request an iPhone from mom or dad and at three and four years old, they swipe through photos and videos on the phone with what I can only call great skill and confidence, easily finding their favorites from among hundreds and hundreds of tiny thumbnails, with an ease that sparks a certain envy on my part.

And that’s where the looming challenge lies for our kids as parents. It’s as scary as a leopard stalking unseen in tall grass. When do their kids get their own phones? Obviously not now, but almost certainly that day will come all too soon. And with that phone, come games, messages, email, and SOCIAL MEDIA.

There is no doubt whatsoever that social media is poisoning public discourse and infecting society. That’s the least of it. Much too often it is proving to be lethal among children and teenagers. Truly deadly. Often suicide, lately spawning swarming by kids who commit assaults, and here in Toronto, a recent random murder.

How do you raise children to become confident, resourceful, socially mature, responsible, and capable adults when there is a truly threatening, ubiquitous, and poisonous environment, constantly present that’s impossible to see or apprehend and neutralize?

Ban cell phones, computers and tablets? No that’s not really an option. The schools are increasingly requiring those devices as part of the curriculum.

That means that  the worst aspects of social media are inevitable in the near future for our grandchildren. Likes and dislikes,  misinformation, inappropriate selfies, virtual cliques and gangs, bullying, extortion, blackmail… 

I wish this was an unreasonable overreaction on my part, an irrational delusion, my unreasonable fear, or my paranoid delusion. 

Unfortunately I truly believe, very regrettably, that it is a not-too distant reality.

I find myself asking what I would do as a parent? Where would I turn for reliable guidance? Where is the Dr. Spock for today’s parents? 

Is the answer to be found in just a few clicks on the internet? It’s a sea of information, and there is no Dr. Spock dominating the digital horizon, offering wise advice to spare. There is no shortage of advice, but where is the good, effective, reliable advice?

I don’t know.

Do you have any insights or guidance you can share?