Random Musings and Nicknacks

There is a Chihuahua a few houses down from us that I affectionately refer to as the “rat dog.” If you see him you know why. This one is as yappy as most chihuahuas, and every time I walk by with Punky, he runs to the end of his yard, standing on the curb, and barks at Punky to tell him who’s boss. Lately he has even started crossing the street toward Punky.

In return, Punky does something that is incredibly unlike him — nothing. He doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of the rat dog – he doesn’t appear to notice the barking, doesn’t look at the dog, it’s like there is nothing there.

So Saturday, as I had Punky out for his walk, rat dog came out and did his thing. I decided to see what happened if we introduced them to each other, and turned to face him – as soon as rat dog saw Punky looking at him, he literally turned tail and ran inside his house.

We walked over to chat with the owner who was tending the lawn – there Punky was, standing on rat dog’s lawn, quietly sniffing the grass (paying no attention whatsoever to rat dog or his owner), and rat dog was standing inside, peering out around the door, dead quiet.

After the chat, we turned and started to walk off – and rat dog ran out onto the lawn and started barking like mad. We turned around, rat dog ran right back inside.

I guess Punky had already known everything he needed to know about rat dog. I sure wish as people we had the same instincts.

“You owe me 500 dollars, I’ll call the Police if you don’t pay me!’

Generally those are not words you want to hear, sometimes they are downright surreal. Today was the surreal part.
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I know I’m in danger of turning this into a bike rant blog again, but this really got me today.

Yesterday four cyclists were hit by a car on the Trans-Canada highway in Manitoba, two were killed and the other two in the hospital. The cyclists were riding across the country to raise funds for diabetes research, and I remember seeing them on the news when they left Vancouver.

Reading the article published by the Canadian Press, just left my blood boiling though…

…Under the Highway Traffic Act, cyclists are required to ride single file, on the right-hand side of the road, Karpish said. Technically, cyclists can use the entire right lane and motorists should move into the passing lane.

“Sometimes that doesn’t happen. People don’t quite clear the lane when they made a lane change,” said [RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Line] Karpish, adding: “Common sense should prevail.” …

Although they don’t come out and say it, the tone is very clearly leaning to blaming the cyclists for being there. So let me get this straight … a car, driving a straight road, in daylight, somehow manages not to see four cyclists until he has hit all of them, and the authorities are already trying to shift the blame to the cyclists because while “technically they were obeying the law… [they should understand that nobody believes that law and if a driver mows them down its their own damn fault for riding a bicycle]“?

I expect that attitude out of the general public but find it incredibly disturbing that a police officer, who is charged with enforcing the law, is displaying it.

I’ve mentioned several times in the past that I’m seeing a significantly increased number of bikes on the road over the last few years. Two weeks ago when gas prices permanently broke $1.45/litre we definitely hit a watershed and the number of people on bikes skyrocketed.

Unfortunately there seems to be a cost to this — I’m seeing a lot of people not very comfortable on a bike, not sure where to be, not wearing any safety gear, and not well balanced. This is obviously their first time on a bike in a long time. Although I hope the trend continues and these people ride more and get more used to it, it seems to have led to another trend that I wish would stop immediately — it seems there are a lot more bike accidents on the roads now.

Just this week the news reported three accidents involving bikes on Tuesday, and Thursday morning a cyclist was killed in an intersection that I go through every day. Its a tricky one, where the cars going to the airport have to turn right and go across the bike lane to get to their spot, often not noticing a bike coming. My assumption when I heard about he accident is that is what happened — the dump truck turned right without noticing there was a cyclist beside him.

I long ago decided to deal with that intersection by leaving the bike lane before entering it and riding right down the middle of the (car) lane, so any car is forced to stay behind me and can’t cut across, and haven’t had a problem in two years — but a lot of new riders wouldn’t think about that yet.

I want to reinforce, though, it is not more dangerous out there, but it may seem so with people on bikes learning how to ride in traffic, and unfortunately doing unpredictable things themselves. Once you’ve been on a bike for long enough you get very good at identifying the sketchy situations and learning how to deal with them, but it takes experience.

Of course that’s also why its important that I do a lot of riding with Ling and Tim so I can start to teach them what I have learned over the years.

So be careful, and if you’re in a car be extra vigilant!

I have now set a personal record, in that I have ridden my bike to work every (working) day since the beginning of May — that works out to about 1,800 km in 35 days, and the interesting thing is, after having been in a plateau for the last year, I’m stronger and faster than I was at the start of May!

I have been noticing in the last two weeks that my split times were getting better, and that my average speeds were getting better, but wasn’t sure if I was just getting favourable winds.

Today I got the proof.
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There is a very interesting difference between your average cyclist and your average driver that I have noticed over the years. Its a difference that I think more people in cars would do well to think about, especially given the current energy prices. I’m talking about conserving energy.

In a car you are removed from this enough that most people don’t think about it. On a bike, when the energy is being provided by your legs, you tend to think about every wasted joule.
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Walking home from school

When I woke up this morning, I heard the news of the earthquake in Sichuan and how a school full of kids collapsed.

Although it was a completely different area and nobody I met would have been involved, my thoughts immediately leapt to those school kids in Anhui, and how little difference there must have been between them and the ones in the disaster area.

My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

I’ve been wanting to write something about this for a while.

I remember when I was like 10 and I wanted to see a lot of Dragon Ball Z or Inuyasha TV shows online on the internet. I could never figure out how all of my friends would just go on this website where they could watch all the episodes 24/7. I was searching for it for a whole weekend before I met up with my friends again. Which they told me all about the website.

Youtube is very interesting. I mean, there’s hundred’s of thousands of people probably online at a time. They always seem to be on the go, watching this, watching that. And I love the competition that’s going on all the time. Everybody is always competing to be on the top. Currently at the top, its these two boys who seem to be making everything happen: Smosh.

I don’t know who they are. But I can probably relate to them. I wonder what it’s like being on the top? A lot of pressure? A lot of role modeling? But it’s really interesting wondering what it’s like. I mean, being famous? It’s a big thing, and with power comes responsibility.

Youtube has a lot of other things going on at a time too. Contests, video races, bets. It’s all there. It’s very fun to watch as the submissions into film contests turn out to be 2nd or 1st or even 1243rd. And it’s really fun voting and protesting on who should win. I mean, it’s fun writing “lol” isn’t it?

In one of the scarier pieces of news I have seen in a while (scary both from the content and the lack of attention mainstream media seems to be paying), the State of Ohio has seized electronic voting machines and launched a criminal investigation into vote tampering in the most recent Presidential primaries. (more…)

The butterflies flop,
And the birds return.
The bears wake up,
And the flowers reawaken.
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