Canoe Trip revisited

This summer we travelled with two friends, who drive a Versa. Well, this vehicle did well under Ron's direction (and Sandi's nonplussed gaze), until he and the Versa encountered the road, in the state that you see it here. Ron fought the road, and the road won. He parked it on that patch of grass in the left of the photo. Then we drove on with winged Mercury carrying the canoes (you'll meet winged Mercury at the end of this entry), to the put-in point. The journey begins.

The first night on the lake (after a 7 k paddle, a 1 k portage, and a 2 k paddle) was magic. The moon nearly full, the warm fire, the mosquito-free air.

We travelled on then, the next day, heading south and then East. The wind blowing steady, if not a bit too stiffly, in our faces. After 12 ks we landed on the site on which we would spend two nights. Again the nightsky was a spectacle. Only pictures can do a reasonable job of conveying it. Here they are:

The red sky at night brought to us paddling delights as we, on day three, travelled over to the pictograph site on this lake. Ron and Sandi had never seen pictographs. This is a mystical experience. Again, the pictures will say more than I can.

 

Following this we headed over to a beach for a swim and some rock-skipping.

We found some tobacco offerings at the pictographs, so we took some along to the evening campfire.

On day four we headed back West and then North to prepare ourselves for the way out. Well the weather proved interesting. Beautiful and hot first (the cliffs were great too!), then rainy, then rainbowy. Mmmmm. 

We left (day five) before a second ridiculous day of rain would drench the lake (we drove home through rain and wind). We even managed some sailing, to accompany our carrying (Gandalf helped out a lot!).

Then, finally, winged Mercury bore us and our trusty crafts home through the storm. 

Could a Canadian summer end better than this?

Canoe Trip 1

Returned late this evening from a 5-day canoe trip. Here's one pic to get things started. More to come. Right now, I need to sleep.

Conversations and packings

If you've read the anonymous comment regarding my post yesterday, you'll likely want to start in on a conversation with somebody. I wanted to have a conversation with the person who commented (Thank you anonymous one, for your insights, reminders, and kindnesses!). I still do. And this is the shortcoming and, in some way, the strength, of this medium. The shortcoming is the relative anonymity of much of the interaction. Even if the person identifies themselves by name, and even if I know that person, there is distance between us, and because he or she can't see my face, or hear the tone of my voice, the conversation is odd. I/we don't really know where we're at with one another. I can't be sure about how much irony, or sincerity, is behind the words. The strength of this medium though, is evident in the thought (I'm assuming sincerity at this point) and care the writer took in responding. He or she gently pushed back, and then made some great points that should be made. Because he or she can sit and consider the words and ideas carefully, the quality of the response is high, and the potential for future discussion is high too, IF we decide we have the energy to continue the conversation. I'm not sure how necessary it is to continue this conversation, since we're not really likely, between the two of us, to solve the problem by keeping at it, but we have reminded each other of one thing or another and that's valuable. Really valuable. But at some point, it would be best to sit across the table from the person. At some point this medium will become too slow and tedious to have the kind of energizing discussion we might have over drinks, some place nice.

We're packing, well we're pretty much done packing, to head out tomorrow on a 5-day canoe trip. We did not argue (much, not much at all) as we packed, and this, this is a wonderful thing. The route we're taking will be East of Kenora, and south of the 17. We'll be nowhere near an internet connection. I'm going to leave this thing at home. So there will be a lull in these web-based proceedings.

I did ride today, on the new wheel I got to replace the broken Mavic. My brother and sister-in-law and their son and I drove across the border to an intersection just North of Leroy. Then we rode to Leroy, to Walhalla, back to Leroy, and back to the car. It was just less than 50 ks, and the roads and scenery were excellent.

High School: The movie

So, if you could design the best high school ever, what would it look like, what would you learn there, and how would you learn it?

Most of the great high school movies - my list includes The Breakfast Club, Election, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Heathers, Pump Up the Volume, Fame, Grease, Mean Girls, Carrie, Napoleon Dynamite, Elephant, Back to the Future, American Graffiti, Dazed and Confused, Clueless, Boyz 'n the Hood Fast Times At Ridgemont High - have nothing to say about what teachers do in classrooms, and lots to say about the horror that results from places where students and adults are completely alien to one another. If I have to watch a movie about high school, I prefer these movies because they focus on the point of view of those being "educated". They are more raw. They are distorted. They shake me up. They remind me that too often the school "does stuff" to kids, who feel institutionally dis-empowered to act independently, in a legitimate way. So they turn to subversion, and inversion. They subvert power by keeping those who carry it out of their lives, and thus irrelevant to them. In these movies, teachers and principals are caricatures and  stereotypes, drawn from the view of the powerless. And in these movies, the power structures are inverted because we root for the kids, the underdogs. We want them to win, because we all have a "bad teacher" or a "bad school" experience. Hold that memory.

A smaller, subset of the high school movie is that in which the teacher becomes a hero, taking the kids on some kind of epic learning journey: Bang Bang You're Dead, Dead Poet's Society, Donnie Darko, The History Boys, Precious, Stand and Deliver. These films usually do more harm than good to the cause of sustainable education, because the students end up depending on heroic teachers (we're supposed to believe these teachers are "inspirational" when really they're more self-inflational) who convince one or a few brave, gutsy students to respond in some rebellious way to flout the institution and the power of "the man". The kicker in these movies is that the teacher usually is the biggest "kid" in the movie. It's inspiring in a sense, but it's an infantile fantasy really (for the adult who wants to be cool with the kids all over again). Anyone who's worked in a school knows that these stories of inspirational talks, or wacky activities, followed by full student compliance and soaring heights of academic, or creative, crescendo just don't happen. At least not for any sustained amount of time. And if it happens to you once in a while, you recognize immediately that you've set your own bar too high, that you won't be able to match that euphoria, and that you don't want to have that conversation with the principal to explain why you've done what you've done, much less be confronted by a parent about it. (To be fair, each of the movies I've listed in above do include the teacher in the throes of those painful moments, and what happens next is that the teacher loses his or her job! This is not sustainable for most of us. We need to work. We need to pay mortgages.)

The truth is that somewhere between these two there is a kind of real, ho hum, school experience. A third school movie type, that includes only one film in its category, as far as I can tell, is The Class (it's a French film). I watched this movie in late August last year. It was so painfully real that I had to stop it half way through, breathe, and decide whether I wanted to watch until the end. It wasn't what my bad dreams are made of, but it was made of the good days and the bad days, the staff meetings and the parent conferences, the triumphs and the injustices. The movie shows schools doing what they actually do: failing and succeeding, but failing more than succeeding.

Now's the time to bring back that memory you were holding. I'd rather it weren't so, but it seems to me that we've, as a society, decided to accept that the institution we call school (especially high schools) will fail to work well for the majority of those who attend. We've accepted that old adage, in an inverted form: It didn't work for me, so it doesn't have to work for you which is a variation on the "I went through it, so you should too" song and dance. This, my friends, like most widely accepted lies, has some truth in it, just enough to make it dangerous.

At the inservice on school innovation I attended today the presenter said that the phrase "school reform" has been in steady use since the 1920s. And the truth is that the basic "industrial model" format of educating has not changed significantly since that time. Though young people develop physically, mentally, and emotionally at markedly different rates, at school we insist that they all enter at the same time, learn the same things, and do the same sorts of assignments and tests. Worse, we insist on measuring them for it, and then labeling them. (Does your child who plays third line centre need any more of an indication of his ability to play hockey than that? Does he need to come home with a report card that gives him a C in "wrist shots" and "playmaking," and a C+ for "hustle"? And if he did get those reports on paper, would that encourage his love of the game, and make him want to play it just for fun? (I know, I know, playing hockey is voluntary. Exactly!  At least you can quit at PeeWee and save your dignity and sense of self.)) For 90 years we've known that schools do not work for the majority of the students in them, or worse, that many young people don't, in our wealthy, privileged society, want to go to school at all!

Where am I going with this? Well, the next time you hear about a school, or a school system, trying to make a change, encourage them in it. Don't assume that it "ain't broke." Just because we're used to it, doesn't mean it's good. Ask any successful company about the need for change. Ask any farmer about the necessity of innovation. Ask him if he wants to return to using "back-in-the-day" techniques and machinery. Ask him if he thinks those would work for him today. You know the answer you'll get.

You are what you are?

A couple of days ago we (three of us who shall remain nameless, save for me) had a conversation about the influence of one's physiology (height, weight, body-type, and other genetic endowments) on one's personality and sense of self. We got onto to this because one of us (S) was planning to club-hop in the city, as a way of celebrating a friend's 18th birthday. Another one of us (M) wondered what the attraction was in this sort of behaviour, as she had never been interested in it. S conceded that most of these clubs were meat markets and that some of them actually have women pole-dancing. So somehow the conversation came around to how these kinds of places sell a certain kind of ideal. Although not everyone who goes will meet (or even approach) this ideal, the striving for, and belief in, the ideal (the Royal Flush, the four Aces, whatever) is in play. Unlike most poker games however, everyone's playing "heads up" (that is, everyone's cards are face up - we all know who's got what). So the game really is rigged, from the get-go. Of course, depending on one's ability to overlook one's own deficiencies, or the deficiencies of another, there is some wiggle-room (No pun intended? I dare you to start a night club chain called the "Wiggle Room". Maybe you could open up a chain of them next door to those "Curves" exercise places).

It is my opinion that your sense of self (ego, self-esteem, confidence) is intertwined with your physiology. That is, if I was six inches taller I would be a different person than I am now. I got some flak for this from M, who felt that one's personality can be quite independent of one's physical characteristics. I then suggested that it takes a mature, and usually older, person to accept one's natural state, and "live above it" as it were. That is, it's only after I reach a kind of resignation about my physical limits and "shortcomings" (if they are shortcomings at all, except that some elements of our society say that my shortness is a deficiency of some kind) that I can ignore the so-called ideal, and play the hand that I've been dealt.

Many anthropologists also contend that human societies are shaped by their environments. Well yesterday and today, with the wind a-blowing steady, I had a hard time getting done the things I'd hoped to get done. I just couldn't focus, and felt like it wasn't worth it to battle through it. I did ride bike to town (into the SW wind) to pick up the car from West Park, but that was enough. That, today, was kind of an accomplishment. If I lived in a place where the wind was that strong and constant, I think that would change me. It might make me more persistent, or my eardrums would callous over from the constant whooshing sounds, or my head would get more sleek and aerodynamic. Maybe I'd live in a house that wasn't 35 feet high. Maybe we'd come to love the wind and as a society we'd develop 50 different ways to describe the wind: gentle, biting, breezy, warm, cool, cold, moist, dry, high, low, swirling, sighing, north, south, westerly, easterly, and so on. (It's a bit ominous that I can come-up with 16 ways, just like that - maybe we are people of the wind.)

All this is to say that much of who we are and what we do is influenced by things that are out of our control. We can move ahead despite these things, but we can't ignore them. They are obstacles that must be overcome, or accepted and integrated into our being.

Make mine watermelon, with rye

I am, as they say, "sandwiched" between caring and providing for my own kids, and having to care and provide for some of the needs of my parents. My Dad's 90 and Margaret, my step-mom, is 92. I'm an executor of the estate, and I have power-of-attorney for their financial affairs. So even though they're well-cared-for in their semi-independent care home apartment, there are often small tasks to do. For instance, right now I have to find the original document giving me power-of-attorney, so that I can show one of Dad's financial advisors, so that I can sign some Mutual Fund transfer papers (so the advisor doesn't have to travel into Winnipeg to do it himself). This is not a big deal. I'll probably just have to drive to Winkler to the lawyer's office to get a notarized copy.

But you know, it adds up when Margruite's Dad is hospitalized with an infection and an irregular heartbeat, so you drive out a couple of times in a week to be there too. And then your own kids, who deserve the help just as much (more? what do you think?), need time to talk, or help with moving into the city, or money, etc. You add these things together with your own life needs and ambitions (yes I still have one or two), yadda yadda yadda, and you start to feel like there might not be enough time, energy, and money for you to do what you would like to, what you need to, do.

I did have a great tomato sandwich (open-faced, to spite the metaphor) today for supper: multi-grain rye bread, basil (from the garden) & garlic pesto spread, mayo, tomato (from the garden) slice(s), salt & pepper, cheddar cheese slice. Mmmm! With and Extra Old Stock (Oh Yeah). After two of these (the sandwiches!), I had several slices of watermelon, because just I can't get enough watermelon in the summer. In fact if there's a new religion for the summertime, make mine watermelon. Hey Joe! When can I eat some of yours? (Second religion? Cantaloupe! ... Joe's cantaloupe!)      

Multicultural mowing

Today Abdalhadi, who also plays on the high school soccer team (he's quite good), mowed our lawn. It was, I think, his first time on a riding mower, and he learned quickly and did a good job. It looked like he enjoyed it.

After he finished mowing, I paid him and phoned Gary to come back and pick him up. While we waited I asked him about how he came to be here. We sat down at this computer and I went to Google maps and we stumbled across the language barrier, went to an arabic translating website, and figured out where, approximately, in Gaza, he lived. Then we Abdalhadi explained (as far as I can tell) how he and his family have come to Canada from the Gaza Strip, via Syria. His father (also, as far as I can understand) spent some time in Iraq and United Arab Emirates and Jordan as well, in order to somehow help with their immigration process.

I'm a privileged, white, North American. He's from a middle eastern refugee camp, that he lived in with his six brothers and sisters. It's kind of a weird situation altogether to be talking to Abdalhadi, much less having him mow the lawn. It's strange, but wonderful too. The differences between us are significant, and also unimportant. I had offered him something to eat and drink, but he declined (he didn't even want to come into the house), explaining that this was a time of fasting for him and his family (they are muslim). They will go into Winnipeg to a mosque for worship. I asked if he thought they might choose to move to the city to be near a mosque (he said no).

So I wonder how long it might be before there's a mosque built in rural southern Manitoba. The German immigrants have come and built numerous churches, and there have been a few sidelong glances at them (perhaps more because they weren't satisfied enough with the many churches we already have on offer). Surely it's only a matter of time until a group of muslim immigrants build a mosque around here. It only makes sense really, doesn't it? I think so. I think I look forward to it.

ABESing

Another late night ride home after a night of ABESing. Hope certain folks in authority don't read this. They might start watching the 30 and 421 for a late night rider. These rides are great though. It's cool. There's no traffic. Even if there is a headwind, it just feels like part of the atmosphere. And when I pull into the drive at home I have a sense of gratefulness and well-being. Not only did I make it home safe again, I've been out later than one or all of my kids, again! (At least the kids that are at home; GeeVs may well still be out, although I'm guessing that since tomorrow's a workday, she'll be in bed.) What does this mean? Grow up? Fair enough.

Sara and I played and sang at a fundraiser for the local seniors home tonight. They're raising funds to rebuild a courtyard, and add a stonework water fountain. Local audiences can appear to be generous, but it's hard to tell what they mean by their praise. Suffice it to say that I'm skeptical of effusive praise. In the short run it's easier to say: Wow, that was great! than to pay close enough attention to the performance to comment in a meaningful way. There's a whole lot of "Paula Abdulling" going on out there, all over the land. And what good is that? I guess it's better than a poke in the eye with sharp stick! At least for the time being.

Beautiful and broken

Today, while relieving myself, I was distracted by this yellow finch.

Why, I must ask myself, am I always peeing when I see these wonderful things? Anyway, this time I managed to get my camera and return and take these pictures. These birds are, next to Orioles, my favourites on the yard. It was cool to get these shots.

Somehow, after the long ride last Saturday, a spoke-holder on the rear hub of my bike broke. I don't know how, but I think it happened in the car on the way home. We'd packed the bikes in the back of a friend's Jetta wagon in a not-too-tight manner, but perhaps the back wheel was up against the back door when it was closed, I don't know because my friend packed the car. Anyway, as we were driving back there was a loud metallic ping, which we all noticed, but since the car didn't fall apart, we thought nothing of it. When I got home and tried to put my bike back together, and saw this:



I realized then what that sound might have been. I believe that this break is non-repairable. Can you weld an alloy like this? I've found out that since the wheel is more than a year old, there is no warranty on it, but it looks like the company has a "crash-breakage" policy that replaces parts broken as a result of some riding trauma for about half the retail cost. I'm still going to take this wheel apart and see if I can find someone to repair the break. Then I'll re-lace the wheel and use it on a spare frame I've got. It seems ridiculous to just toss something like this away, because it's not cost-effective to repair it.

Anyway, I've been going through a bit of ride withdrawel, so today I rode 28 ks on my fixie (42 front - 16 back), which is quite a different ride than a road bike. I rode this in 49 minutes. Boy do I need a different saddle!

Be not proud

Last Tuesday morning at around 2:30 am Abe had a stroke; his brain stopped working in the way that it was supposed to work. (For the record, I think we need help with English usage here, as I don't know what it means to "have" a stroke, or a heart attack. Don't these things happen to you. Even this is semantically difficult, because your own body is doing this; your body is malfunctioning. So in that sense, yes, Abe's body malfunctioned, in a way that we call "stroke". (And what then is a "stroke" of genius?)) On Thursday at 4:15 pm Abe's body ceased to work altogether.

Today at 2:00 pm we will meet for his funeral. Abe lived for 78 years. In fact, the day before the stroke, he rode his bike for 28 kms around town. The day before that he served as an usher in church. He was very much alive, and he was, by all accounts, happy and satisfied. But that didn't seem to matter to death. It came around anyway. Not many of us have expressed our complaint with death's timing much better than John Donne in Holy Sonnet 10:

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.


I'll admit that I like Donne's attitude, his "smash-mouth," "in your face" threatenings and fist-waving at "death", but I'm not sure how seriously we can take his pronouncement in the last two lines. I understand his need to imagine that the finality of death can be overcome in some way, but it seems to me that cycles -- karma, or beginnings and endings, or causes and effects, or yins and yangs -- are not only the source of the greatest pains, but also of the greatest pleasures. I'm sure that Donne was aware of this paradox, that there is no happiness for us, without the spectre of sorrow and loss. If Death dies, I would contend, then so does Life. If we do away with pain, we do away with pleasure. How does this help me with the pain of Abe's passing? Not much, except that it's important to understand the necessity and inevitability of it.

I choose to read Donne's sentimental complaint as irony. I know that death cannot die; it's ridiculous, and impossible to imagine the death of death. If, however, we come see our understanding of "death" as our nostalgia for our consciousness (which is the only thing that really "dies"), then can we imagine overcoming, or ending (killing), our worship of the self, of selfishness, and self-consciousness? Can we imagine then that we are all one, we are all, all, and we are always, in one way or another living all together. That I am simply borrowing the molecules that have currently formalized themselves as PK, and someone else will arise and use them, reuse them, when the organization that is PK has run its course. Everyone of us is a borrower and, ultimately, a lender of life. To live and never die, or never experience the angst of death, we must immolate this individualist, selfish sense of the ownership of life-force, of God. God can be experienced. God can be enjoyed. God can be endured. God can be worshipped. But God cannot be controlled.

Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you will answer me.


- Job 38:2,3

The ride to Moose Lake

Yesterday I rode away from our place at 4:30 AM to meet nine other riders in town, at Back Alley. First I met Bruce at the intersection of the 30 and 421; we rode into town together. At the shop Bruce made coffee, which we then drank, while we waited for everyone to show up. By around 5:30 AM we were on the rode again, with a mild SW wind (less than 10 kph) somewhat at our back. By the time Mike, Albert, and I got to Letellier the "field" of ten had split into two groups. We waited at the 75 for Curt and Charles to catch-up (Curt had just had his first of three flats). After about 10 minutes we rode on, at a moderate pace (around 30 kph), expecting they would catch us, and then we would pick up the pace. But unbeknownst to us Curt had more flats. By the time the three of us reached Dominion City, we picked up the pace; we would wait for the rest at the breakfast stop in Vita. We were able to hold the pace at 36 to 38 kph, with some stretches in the 40s. The wind had picked up, but it was inconsistent and occasionally swirling.

If you've ever been chased or harassed by a dog, while riding your bike, you may understand our schadenfreude at the following amazing incident. Just this side of Vita, as we approached a farm yard on the North side of the road (our left) two dogs saw us and came howling and barking off of the yard to meet us. At that moment, a Chrysler mini-van approached us (from the East) as well. The lead dog, a largish, black, shaggy mutt, met and that mini-van met one another at full tilt! If the driver made any decision at all (between us and the dog?), we couldn't tell, because he neither slowed, swerved, nor braked. He just thudded right through and over that dog (the guys who were behind us confirm the casualty); the sound was sickening. But I've been hassled by dogs often enough that I couldn't help but be a little gleeful too. I know I know. This was glee over an unnecessary death, but understand that the fault for this rested entirely on the dog. It lived on a highway along which vehicles travel back and forth at high speeds. It's had time to learn the ropes. It didn't pay close enough attention because it was about to pick on a group of slower, more vulnerable vehicles (us). And you just have to accept the risk and cost of that kind of action. Which I'm sure it did. There could be no other way, unless the dog had learned not to do what it did. I'm sure it was somebody's best friend. That's sad. I guess. But that dog wanted to harass me and my friends. So. It. Goes.

We reached Vita at 7:45 AM and waited more than 30 minutes for the other group. We ate breakfast there with them, and then all left together at around 9:30 AM. Albert decided that he needed to return to Altona, because of prior commitments, so he set off on his own. The rest of us were refreshed so we rode at a good pace again, but it was a bit too quick for some. Mike and I continued on at 36+ kph, depending on the wind. At about 100 ks Mike felt that some of his leg pain was due to the new WTB saddle he was testing. Since I was testing one too, I offered to switch, to see if that improved things. It did improve things for Mike, not so much for me, but it was bearable. We reached Sprague (my 160 k mark) at about 11:45 AM. We stopped there to pick up some energy food and drinks, and then we headed off again at just after 1 PM. After 5 hours and 25 minutes (from Altona, 5 hours and 50 mins total for me) we pulled into the Driedger's cabin at Moose Lake. We'd averaged between 33.5 and 34 kph (Mike's computer says more, mine says less) for 197 kms. Not bad!

We changed and swam to clean up, waited for the rest of the guys to arrive, had steak and potatoes (of course) thanks to the great generosity of Bruce and Elexis, compared aches and pains, slept, and headed home today.

It was a great ride and a great time! Here's the map of the ride.

Flooring the Herdsman's House

We've started re-installing the tongue-in-groove fir floorboards. We're re-using whatever we can salvage of the wood from the second, most recent layer of flooring, which we think was probably installed some time in 20s or thirties.

The original floor was 1x6 tng fir (You can see some of them in the picture above, beneath the 1x4s, as well as a pile of three of them off to the right (you can see some of the rot on these). We're not going to re-use these boards, but we'll keep them on display somewhere ... ). It was, for the most part rotten, as it was basically in complete contact with the dirt beneath the floor, except for the "joists" that appear to have been 2x4s placed on something like 32 inch centres. They must have expected that they had built the house high enough that the dirt inside its walls would remain dry. Much of the second layer was rotted as well, but we've salvaged enough that we think we'll be able to cover close to a third of the floor in the original wood. These boards are 1x4s, with a 3.25 inch face.

We've also salvaged floorboards from a housebarn that had been in Sommerfeld, which we'll use when we run out of the material that was originally from the building. These boards from Sommerfeld are 1x4 fir, with a 3.125 inch face! Why the eighth of an inch difference? When we install these two sizes side-be-side, we don't think it'll be noticeable, unless you're really looking for it. A final curiosity regarding board size is that, in case we need more boards to complete the job, I've sourced out new 1x4 fir flooring from Brown & Rutherford, and the face on these boards will be 2.875 inches! So, when all's said and done, the floor will likely feature three iterations of the 1x4 tng fir floor!

Once the boards are installed, we will sand them - since the salvaged boards had been painted in various patterns - so that we have an even surface, and then Margruite will repaint them in the original style (in the main room) of the house, and also use two other patterns (in each of the two bedrooms).

Tomorrow I will ride with some guys from the area, from Altona to Moose Lake, about 200 ks. We pray for favourable winds!

Speaking of bearings

My brother, Tim, is having his dream bike built around these two centre pieces of stable and innovative technology: the Surly Cross-Check chromoly frame

and the Rohloff speedhub.

The frame is dependable and well made. It's no frills, but its beauty is in its elegance. The welds are smooth and the fork details are fine. The cost is reasonable too. It's not the lightest frame around, but if you know my brother, you know that keeping the weight of the bike down is kind of unnecessary. 

The Rohloff Speedhub is a 14-speed internal gear system that, while again not being the lightest bike part around, is one of the most well-machined and durable pieces of bicycle gear technology. The cost on this item is quite another matter. For the Canadian shops that carry them, the MSRP is around $2000. The little bike shop in Altona, Back Alley Cycle, managed to find one, and bring it in, for well under that. Kudos to Bruce and Curt for this! The reviews say that the Rohloff is durable beyond 100,000 kms and that, in fact, it only starts to run and shift smoothly after 10,000 kms!  

Here's the weirdness of this endeavour. Tim recently moved to a place near Coderington (which is near Belleville) in southern Ontario, a few hours East of Toronto. There he tried to get the bike shop near his place to order the above items in, and help him build his dream bombproof all-season machine. Uh, no. For various reasons the guy was not prepared to or interested in this project. So from the heart of the progressive, always better than everybody else in Canada land of southern Ontario, Tim had to turn to southern Manitoba for help. He found it in Altona (where he could have had both the Rohloff and the Surly ordered in (the Rohloff was ordered and arrived in the shop within one week)) and in Winnipeg (Olympia (Portage) brought in the Surly, and Natural Cycle will do the build for him). So help me out here. How can it be that at the centre of the universe (at least the Canadian universe) you can't get good bicycle service, while in the hinterland, it's readily available from a variety of sources? Yes I'm sure he could have found a shop or two in Toronto to do it, but my point is ... I don't know ... what is my point? Go with them what brung 'ya?

Anyway, it's going to be a great bike, and if I get a picture of the finished product, I'll post it here for you.

Bearings

Was it Wednesday? Today? Junior descends from his upstairs room, pen in hand. Had he forgotten supper? Every clock told a different story. Which one to believe? Would he have to start the day over again? He steps out onto the street. Traffic hum. Walks to a nearby shop.

Hello, he says. I need to get my bearings. What time is it?

Bearings? Time? the clerk says. What you need is a compass, and we don't carry those here. We do serve coffee though, if you're interested.

Will it help me understand what time it is?

No, and it won't give you your bearings either.

Well, thanks for your help, says Junior, and he steps back out the door and onto the street. Rife with traffic. Sick with it. Nothing to be done, he thinks and turns back toward his room. Once upstairs again he looks down at his pen. Picks it up. Starts to move it across the page. The ball moves, smooth, the ink flows. So it goes.

Later he rides his bike for 32 kilometres and thinks nothing of it.

"9" and "Shutter Island"

Take about a thousand B-movie tropes and effects and have them played by good actors, directed by a good director, and you get an enjoyable, though sometimes baffling (for the wrong reasons: that is, Is Martin Scorsese really going to take the plots of "A Beautiful Mind" and "Fight Club" and turn them into a thriller, without the biography and the grit? Yes. Yes, he is.). Still I could deal with Shutter Island. Even enjoy it.

9? Well, like Avatar, the writer and director believes that you don't need a new story (see The Matrix, Toy Story, Children of Men, V for Vendetta, etc.), you don't even need new visuals (see Return of the Jedi, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, etc.), all you need is competent execution of the visuals, using CGI, and you'll make a movie. And you know what, he's right. It is a movie. But the best thing about it, besides the visuals, is that it's only 70 minutes long.

You know, the details are important (regarding fiction)

It's important for you to know the background. The context. What makes you? What makes me? Why do I tell you this story? Did I need to tell you about my father? My mother's death? Why explain about me and her? Well the plot of this, my telling of it, ends up as an arrangement of the story. The notes. The score. I know. I'm trying to let you in on it. And I know too much - somehow - and you don't have enough information. I've got all the cards and you're left guessing and betting at the hand, my words, trying to sift and sort. How does it all happen? What's likely? What's compromised? Does it matter? Don't sweat it too much though. I expect you'll get close enough. And that's kind of a gift isn't it?

So somewhere along the line there'll be this story, of the town that is nothing if not religious. You could say that it's traditional, even ritualistic. That there is a kind of catholicism to its protestant sense. You may not, need not, go to church on Sunday yourself, but you most certainly will see to it that your kids go. Perhaps one of you will stay with them for church too. And of course on Easter and Christmas the whole family gathers in one church or another for the remonstrance of the passion, or the celebratory flair of the Christmas pageant. This all is part-and-parcel (as they say) of the coming-of-age of a small protestant sect that begins to look back at its roots and wonder how its forebears had the energy for all that devotion, rigour, and self-abnegation. How could one reach the conclusion that martyrdom was the only, the most favourable option? How could one suffer those slings and arrows?

And then I'll have to tell you another story too, about a love that you watch in full bloom and a death that arrives in full corruption. A love that stretches and breaks, like many others, only more slow and more concealed. Of a death that edges in, methodical, ineffable, inevitable. And how will we manage that? When it comes in a flurry, we ask how. We imagine ways we could have avoided it. We see the mistakes. The errors. The holes. The insufficiencies. We can, and this is key, blame ourselves. But when it arrives slow, steady, rising like a Red River flood, where do we aim the arrows then?


Rode to the village of Blumenort and back: 40 ks; 31.07 kph average; Wind SW 15 ks.

Aging matters

We celebrated my Dad's birthday today. He turns 90 on August 9th. The celebration entailed a come-and-go sort of thing between 2 and 5 PM at Donwood Manor. It was a well-attended affair: brothers, sisters, friends,  aunts, uncles, grandchildren, etc. All of us were busy with visiting and catching up.

Most notable to me was how, over time, one's memory of someone's face, even a person you knew well and, at one time, saw quite often, fades. Confronted by the person twenty (even ten) years later, you wouldn't believe it's the same person, except that someone reliable tells you so. Now this isn't always the case; there are some people who seem not to change one iota, over time.

A few of the people I recognized didn't seem to recognize me at all, and vice versa. When we introduced ourselves to one another there was this incredulity that is, quite frankly, funny. Marj Stoesz (now Wiebe) for instance. I worked with her at Dad's bookstore for a few years. I really like working with her there. She was always cheerful and, kinda cool. I was talking to her father, John Stoesz (the minister who baptized me in the Winkler MB Church), when she came up and, in a polite way, asked my name. I told her mine, she told me hers, and I think her nonplussed look must have been mirrored by mine. I looked and looked and just couldn't find her in my memory. Even now, it's fleeting. I think I have her face in my mind, you know, from "back-in-the-day," but it slips away when I try to place that image beside the face of this person (who I thought, and still think, is attractive) called Marj (Stoesz) Wiebe today (or my memory of her image from a few hours ago). Weird. Ephemeral.

I saw many familiar faces today. People who, twenty years ago, were a lot more present and pivotal in my life than they are today. In most cases I'd riffle through my brain's rollodex hoping to find a hit. It's an interesting, if not occasionally embarrassing, exercise that confronts you with your mind's limitations.

Although I hate name-tags at conferences and meetings where you actually don't know anyone, and you really don't want to know any of them either, but I think they would actually be helpful at gathering like this one. You know what I mean?    

Bugsies galore

While stepping back from my writing to pee,
I picked an apple from our own apple tree,
and walked out to the back among the flora and filigree
to eat, and to see what there was to espy.
A bee? An orangish looking flea!
Ah what more would there be!?

Completing my peeing I ran into the house,
picked up my camera to find that colourful louse,
and began to snap and to shoot and to see more and more
than just that one bug out there, there were bugs galore.

I saw this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one, 

and this one,

and this one,

and this one,

and this one,

and this one.

And no matter how high, no, no matter how low,
I could not that orangish bug find for you here to show.
I kept snapping and shooting,
and scratching and rooting,
until I had to pee once again.
Which I did, right here.

Then I ran back inside,
to write this aside.
For the things on my blog

are more than a log,
they're a wondrous distraction
from this life of a dog.


Aaaaand for your viewing and listening pleasure (a humorous song/video I've finally found), What about that apocalypse candle we bought together? (actually it's Trevor, by George Westerholm)

Rode 53 ks today (the Letellier - St. Joe loop) at a 32.52 kph average.