I just received yet another of those myriad e-mails from friends, acquaintances, and, presumably, random people who coughed while typing and somehow entered my e-mail address.
It's one of those e-mails that invites you to get involved with this campaign, or go to that event, or to otherwise bitch about somebody's inaction climate change. Heck, this week's
Charlatan even has a full-page article on how you can save the world if you stop using plastic bags.
Fancy that, eh? And you didn't even have to go out and buy that Prius!
Nobody's really asked me whether or not I
believe in climate change, but that hasn't stopped me from telling them that I don't care.
For me, environmentalism is mainly a byproduct of pragmatism. That is to say, any choice I could make for the benefit of the environment is likely to have other benefits that affect me in much more direct and concrete ways.
Consider my decision to use the bicycle as my primary mode of transportation. What are the benefits of riding a bicycle?
Well, for one, I'm not contributing to the smog problem. That means that it is slightly easier to breathe in my neighbourhood and city. That's an environmental benefit. But considering I live on a major street in downtown Ottawa, the difference is negligible.
My community benefits on a financial basis as well: a bicycle is much smaller and lighter than a motor vehicle (including a bus). Having a smaller vehicle means I contribute less to traffic congestion (a benefit you don't get with low- or zero-emission cars), and having a lighter vehicle means the roads I travel on will take longer to deteriorate. These mean it will be longer before the municipality has to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild the roads I use, and when they do, there will be less need for additional lanes.
But all that means is that property taxes in my city might be very very slightly lower in a decade or two.
A bicycle can't travel as fast as a motor vehicle, and therefore my trips either must take more time, be less frequent, or go less far. Some might see this as a drawback, but it also acts as a benefit, as it requires me to plan my trips better, and consider what I choose as destinations. As proof to that, I rarely go more than 2 kilometres from my home. When you consider that the average person travels four times as far in a day today than they did sixty years ago, and there are many more people, a heckuva lot of roads need to be built to accommodate that traffic. That's extremely expensive for taxpayers.
So by making this choice to cycle, I may have reduced everyone's tax bill by a couple pennies over a decade, not counting inflation. Don't bother giving me an
award just for that.
But let's get to the person who really matters in today's society:
me.By cycling, I am getting cardiovascular exercise, thereby improving my health and increasing my life expectancy. If my trips were longer than my average 15-minutes-in-traffic rides, my body would release more serotonin and I'd feel happier, too.
A cynic would say, "If you care so much about your health, why do you eat so much unhealthy food? And why don't you get a doctor to check out that twitch in your eye?" Okay, the twitch thing I should get checked out, but our cynic is correct on the other point. Being healthy and active simply is not a high priority for me, nor is it for the average North American.
While some people put time out of their day to go to the gym or to jog, I cycle precisely to avoid this. Since I need to get to work anyway, why don't I get my exercise while going to work? That's all there is. It saves me time, and saves me having to worry whether I should dedicate a specific time to exercise to improve my health.
Cycling saves me money, too. If I could
own and use a car for as little as it costs to go by bike, I would certainly consider it. But even the bus is more expensive: in 2006, my total transportation costs for all modes totaled $706--less than twelve monthly adult bus passes.
While society tends to push money as the most important goal, for me it's time. I don't believe in an afterlife, and I might die in sixty years or in sixty hours--so I'd better make good use of the time I know I have--right now.
There's a wonderful quote by Ivan Illich reprinted in the book "Divorce Your Car!" by Katie Alvord (and probably on my blog once or twice):
The typical American male devotes more than 1,600 hours a year to his car. He sits in it while it goes and while it is idling. He parks it and searches for it. He earns the money to put down on it and to meet the monthly installments. He works to pay for fuel, tolls, insurance, taxes, and traffic tickets. He spends four out of his 16 waking hours on the road or gathering his resources for it. And this figure does not take into account the time consumed by other activities dictated by transport: time spent in hospitals, traffic courts, and garages; time spent watching automobile commercials or attending consumer education meetings to improve the quality of the next buy. The model American puts in 1,600 hours to get 7.500 miles; less than five miles per hour. (Ivan Illich, Energy and Equity, 30-31.)
That bolded part is the most important to me (as much as I get a kick out of the five-miles-per-hour bit): There are some people who actually spend hours each day commuting to and from their boring jobs. To me, this is insane. Commuting is most often a means, not an end.
A means? To what?
To work, which itself is often just a means to get money (which is an end goal only for the most pathological of people). There have been many attempts to make commuting less stressful and more productive (for example, the car radio), but at the end of the day, if you're not deriving pleasure from traveling from one place to another, and if you do a lot of that, then you should think about how your life is structured.
If you live your life in such a way that you don't have to spend so much of it getting from one place to another, you'll have more time, more money (or less need to spend time earning money), and you may have helped keep the mean global temperature from increasing by one degree over the next fifty years.
Gotcha!
Remember, this blog post is about Global Warming; cycling is just an illustration. Compared to my arguments based on pure hedonism, greed, and utility, the altruistic "prevent climate change" argument is pretty weak.
And that's just for the argument to get one person to ride a bicycle. Individuals making changes in their own lives will never solve more than a fraction of the world's problems. There are also many institutional, industrial, and international problems that require change. The changes necessary to address these problems might also affect climate change, but somehow I doubt that a person in a war-torn Middle-Eastern country would really care to sign your petition to prevent Global Warming by reducing bombing in their country to
5% below 1990 levels.Whenever I hear someone citing "Climate Change", or "Greenhouse Gases", or "Kyoto Protocol", I get the same feeling in my gut as when I hear "Mandatory minimum sentences", "War on Drugs", or "Tough on Crime". It shows that they haven't got their priorities straight.
Like any other buzzword, these terms are used by people to draw attention to themselves, to their groups, or to the events they are organizing. Were these people to actually look at the goals of these events, how to achieve them, and how to sell them, they might actually elicit some real change.
- RG>
A simple Shraeder valve cap will stick on top of your AirZounds air horn. It doesn't actually screw on, but when you push the button back down, it can't activate the horn, and the cap doesn't fall out. 
I'd spent the previous few weeks keeping an eye out in trash piles for just the right type of particle board to use. I didn't want it to be too thick, but I wanted it to be strong enough to sit on. You see, the benches at Bridgehead are a couple too inches to comfortably use for typing or writing, and I'd wanted to build myself a laptop box to serve this alternate purpose. Knowing I'd be buying a new laptop soon, with different dimensions, I had to wait until I'd bought (and received) the new one. The old laptop was already busted, so why bother trying to protect it with a box?
I didn't take any photos of the initial construction, but it was almost entirely used materials, including these antique hinges from a cabinet door somebody was throwing out. The side pieces were cut from IKEA Lade bed boards (featured in the 90-minute glove rack) sliced down the middle. While attractive, functional, and perfectly sized, the hinges were a bit loose, especially since they were going in the end of the particle board. I glued the screws in to keep them tight:
The finish on the board I'd chosen had some water damage in some places and was peeling, but there was enough undamaged wood to use for the box. 
This was a feature, not a bug, as I was able to use it to veneer the ends of the side boards.
The box was quite oversized for my panniers, threatening to rip them open, but inspiring further creativity in its repair (my 15" screen was a size or two too big with the box wrapped around it). 
In addition to a laptop protective box and a booster seat, the box serves many other purposes. It provides a hard flat surface to rest your drink when lounging on a couch, a writing surface, and, shown here, a laptop lifter to bring the screen to a more comfortable viewing height when, say, watching videos of the masturbating Santa Claus:
A few months later, I calculated that a well-placed 1/2" hole...
...lets me plug in the laptop to charge it while still in its box.
It's the laptop box! 
We've been coming here since it opened in 2004, every Sunday, plus Mondays on long weekends, making it over 300 dinners there.
It's located at Humphrey Plaza (the name of which I only discovered last December), at Somerset and Arthur, in the lower level. For reference, that's the same block as the Yangtze.
One of the things we liked about it was it was spacious. We had previously alternated between Istanbouli shawarma place (on Richmond Road near Island Park Drive, which has since moved to Holland Avenue) and Pho Thu Do on Somerset, which was far too small, didn't have vegetarian options, and aside from that had very little variety. (Some say they preferred the pho there, though.)
Another thing I enjoy about the weekly HPVOoO dinners is that they're very anarchistic. Whoever shows up, shows up. Some people show up late, some early. Some weeks there are lots of people, some weeks there are only a handful. I've been there nearly every week, though I don't take photos every week. On this night in early June 2006, there were about two dozen people, including some leaving and others taking their spot. We could build various permutations of tables to suit the attendance.
There was also ample bike parking, both inside and outside..JPG)
More recently (and I have no idea if that is months or years), they'd turn the tables down the middle for us every Sunday, and we'd extend it as long as necessary. We regularly get 8-12 people. The guy with the blue collared shirt is one of the servers.
Grant and Mike Watson also come out. Mike built the bike I ride, and often brings new creations of his to showcase. Grant is... let's say he's taught me a few things about how to successfully annoy people (randomly telling someone "you don't know that!" in a conversation, for example). Our weekly dinners, and by extension the VNH, is also a prime distribution hub for Momentum magazine in Ottawa.
Tonight, this was the Last Supper. While they gave us free spring rolls and shakes, it was still a very sad and depressing end to an otherwise very fun weekend.
Goodbye, Vietnam Noodle House. We'll miss you!
The hunt is on for a new affordable, family-friendly, vegetarian-optional, spacious, central, bike-friendly weekly hangout.
It totally made my day!
I used to have this clipboard on my handlebars. The board was from the bottom part of a standard clipboard, and the low-profile clip was salvaged from some age-old binder that had otherwise fallen apart. I had cut two horizontal slots and threaded a metal hose clamp through them and around my handlebars, but as you can see, that wasn't sturdy enough.
This little wooden thing was in a box of miscellaneous bits someone was throwing out a couple years ago. It contained some odd things; tracks for a keyboard tray (which recently found a new home with a friend in need thereof), feet for a coat stand, and this...thing. Maybe it was for holding eggs?
The plan was to cut off the outermost holes and make little clamps out of them. To do so, I had to drill holes large enough for the only bolts I had in my workshop that were long enough. This took a few passes with successively larger bits, as it was dense hardwood. To ensure proper alignment of the bolts, I drilled the holes before slicing apart the 'clamps'. I also had to mitre a couple centimetres off the end of one side so they'd have the same depth.
The back part of the wooden thing helped align the saw for the inside cuts, and the remaining four inside holes could still theoretically be used again, should I ever find another use for them.
Here are the bits for one 'clamp' after cutting, before sanding the edges. The rounded edge is actually a bit offset, which later helped in matching the pieces for each clamp pair.
Here's a dry test on the handlebars. It seemed there was a bit of a gap between the pieces from where the saw cut, but the diameter was definitely a match. I discovered that I hadn't cut the bolt holes exactly parallel, which meant the bottom piece needed a bit of finagling to attach. 
Thinking that the wood would slip on the handlebar, I figured the universal rubber spacer--used inner tube--would be suitable. This just made the gap between the two halves even wider, and I didn't have thick enough washers to fill the gap with, so I abandoned the innertube spacer idea.
I discovered that I had cut the hole in the smaller side a bit too close to the opening. This caused the washer to rub against the handlebar and keep the clamp from clamping. Using the file pictured above at right, I shaved off an edge from the washer. 
Turns out I'd only need per clamp set to get the spacing right, and the wood on its own ended up being plenty tight on its own without a rubber gasket. Having proved the concept, I then made the second clamp.
The next step was to cut holes in the clipboard to mount it onto the clamps. Notice that I put the thicker side on top, so that the clipboard would clear the stem bolt. Since the bolts placement was entirely freehand, I needed a way to transfer their pattern to the bottom of the board. I suppose I could have traced over it with a piece of paper and then flipped the paper over onto the board.
I started by drilling small holes where I guessed that the green markings told me to drill, then put some small screws through these holes. I put this up against the heads of the mounting bolts to confirm the alignment. This method would allow me to adjust if necessary when widening the holes to their full size. 
And here we are with the clipboard mounted. I had to turn my light mount upside down, which in turn conflicted with the cables coming out of my brake/shifter levers, so I had to adjust those too.
Oh, and the gaping hole and big fat bolt heads are a bit of a problem too, but I'm sure I can overcome that, maybe by using a cardboard backboard with holes for the bolt heads, resulting in a relatively flat surface. In the meantime, I've got some cardboard facial tissue box covers as note pages, which are thick enough to provide their own flatness. An elastic band keeps them from flapping in the wind.
...and wrote a letter to the NCC:
After a few more steps, I stopped, looked back to offer him a glare (he was busy grumbling at another cyclist), turned back away, took this photo of his car, and decided to continue my departure at a much more casual rate.
It was much later when I thought of "Don't tase me, bro!" as an alternate retort.
When you right-click and select "Property Report", it should bring up a PDF with information on that property, including square footage, frontage, depth, ward number, councillor, and even garbage collection date.
