Big Walk

Yeah, I drew this thing.

It’s the “poster” for Big Walk. Big Walk is the realization of my discussion with Scott Knowles…the now-professor who was part of the 24Hrs. trio that began a series of 24-hour walks in American cities (among other things).

It’s unreasonable top make a poster for this, because I’m only taking 25 people with me. And of those 25 spots available, there are actually only 20 spots left (or so) and of those, I am sure that the group helping organize it will be taking up at least 8.

Big Table is a group of people I asked to get together with me every Thursday at 1pm. Why? These mentors of mine, doers in their own right, festival organizers, volunteers, idea-people, resource-collectors, arts-minded, cultural individuals are altruistic enablers. They come together every week to help anyone within the group to realize an event, project, festival, whatever…

Big Walk (the name takes the moniker from Big Table) was put together by the members of the group, and the trail has been plotted by the members of the group. I could not have planned it without them, and now I am super-anxious to see it come to fruition.

Big Walk is scheduled for 8am on November 8, and will finish at the starting point 16 hours later, at midnight. We will be walking across the city back and forth, up and down, north of Ottawa Street primarily…but keeping within the oldest quarter of the city (closest to the Detroit River).

We plan on stopping for four sit-down meals and some short tours of certain select spots. We also plan on visiting several local businesses, some you may know, some you may not, to increase awareness of what they have to offer. Most of these stops will be culturally significant or historically significant stops. So we’re not stopping at a car dealership, or a mall.

What will everyone take from this walk, besides sore feet? I think we will have a renewed sense of our city, in the area researched, because we will be unable to ignore the subtleties we are habitually glazing over when we drive or bike. These walkers will be seeing the trash (or lack thereof) in certain neighbourhoods, the road conditions, the abrupt endings to bike lanes, and the faces of many houses we have never turned our heads to enjoy.

Personally, I look forward to seeing how much environmentally significant spots we discover, or discover ruined. The city life finds us hunting for parks and green spots more and more, and I hope that I can leave this walk with the sense that not all is lost in the natural history of Windsor. My home.

If you want in, e-mail me. phoglounge@gmail.com

I will soon release the locations of our meals, snacks, breaks, etc.

Ganatchio Extended

Riding my bike around town has been limited. Yes, I take the trip to work, but I take the same route every time, because I know it is the safest/shortest trip. In my end of town, I’m not really aware of anywhere else I can ride my bike if I’m not thundering toward work. Until…

My wife was psyched to go for a ride some time a week or so ago, and we hit the streets. We decided to head toward the Detroit River, north from our home, where there is a long-time favourite trail along the riverfront called the Ganatchio Trail. Everyone uses this thing. It isn’t however, located on the west end, but is situated toward the east end of town. It’s good for me, because I live out here now, but in the old days, I would not have even given it a second thought because it is an “east end” kind of ride.

On our trip, I was shown by my wife where the new St. Joseph’s high school was located (hidden) out near where the new (much debated) arena is located. It just so happens that they are located very close to the city limit, bordering a town called Tecumseh…a known spot for people with a little more money, and inhabitants who have often moved from Windsor, literally down the road, to a place where the taxes are less…and most importantly, is NOT near the dreaded West End or the “dangerous” downtown.

Are you sensing an opinion forming about elitist-driven projects, rooted in parts of town where people have money?

So as we are riding, Jhoan suggests we get onto this trail in the same area as the arena and new high school are…

Taking this mostly-unpublicized trail was a mind-altering event for me, because it was like riding through the closest thing we have to a nature preserve. Untouched trees, mingling alongside the Little River, with wet areas, and park areas, ponds, etc. I found myself shocked that this existed. It was a wonderful option for me to take when I am not working, but still want some aerobic exercise.

Since I went to this place, I started telling other bike riders, and other people who live in the west end, or downtown, but who love to trek wherever the bike is welcome. NONE of them knew what I was talking about.

“It’s an extension of the Ganatchio…it goes south, perpindicular to the existing trail. it’s incredible!”

“Never heard of it,” they replied.

So, I took some video while riding it for the first time, and I thought I’d share it with you.

My bike broke

This is simply a tragedy. Well, maybe more of an inconvenience.

My bike’s derailleur apparently fell off while I was riding home the other night, about 2 kilometers from home, so I simply sat on the bike, and kicked off of the curb with one leg the rest of the way (like skateboarding). It is being fixed by Canadian Tire, but to be honest, I am getting sick and Canadian Tired of my bikes needing fixing shortly after I get them.

Two things. First, I wanted to share this link I found of bike usage in Copenhagen. Crazy!

I wanted to take this opportunity to post some images of my ride home, at 3am or thereabouts. They are mostly shots of trash that I am overrun by on the streets. For some reason, I have to dodge endless trails of plastic water bottles, Tim Horton’s cups, and aluminum cans. What this tells me is that the main thing people like to throw out of their cars is drinking containers. Any thoughts on this? The only good use for plastic bottles is this idea I stumbled upon during my daily blog-reading routine.

Here are the photos: enjoy!

I think it’s funny that I was able to make the changes from strapping my huge doctor’s satchel to my bike rack with a 1/4″ cable used for electric instruments. How indie/rock can bike riding get?  Also, the image of me above, riding with headphones, was discouraged recently by someone looking out for my safety, but you must understand that I LIVE  music. I do nothing BUT listen to music at work, so when I ride, I listen to talk-radio podcasts, so the five cars that pass me on my 10km-ride are heard from a mile away.

An update. Leadership.

I have not been sick for almost 18 months. All winter, I watched the hacking coughs and congested faces of people cycle through the bar, while I washed my hands the usual 50 times per night.

This week, I played basketball with a clan of little children at the school my brother teaches at, and they got me. Their grubby little playground hands, the melange of germs, mingled together on the basketball, making it a flying orb of death.

Needless to say, I have been unable to post anything here, because my joints were puffed up like Joseph Merrick.

On top of that, while riding my bike last night, 2 kilometers from home, my derailer jumped off of my bike, unprovoked, and had me skateboard-style cruising home. Yes, I sat on the seat and pumped my leg on the cub to go mildly faster than a slow jog.

Enough excuses.

I wanted to share this item the day I got it, but I was not yet blogging when this came to me in the mail.

My mom likes to send me things the old fashioned way, by Canada Post. Mailman, or mailwoman, or mail carrier please. Almost always, it is something reflective, of contemplative, or complimentary. It is always a treat to get a Windsor Salt-blue envelope in the mailbox, as I know it is from her.

This was sent to me weeks ago. A note which had the following, titled “17th Verse of the Tao”:

With the greatest leader above them,

people barely know one exists.

Next comes one whom they love and praise.

Next comes one whom they fear.

Next comes one whom they despite and defy.

When a leader trusts no one, no one trusts him.

The great leader speaks little. He never speaks carelessly.

He works without self-interest,

And leaves no trace.

When all is finished, the people say, “We did it ourselves.”

Well I’ll be!

Where to begin…

This piece of wisdom struck a chord with me. Firstly, it reminded me that I talk too much. If I want to be a leader, which is a nice concept, I feel that I need to shut my yap more often. It’s hard to do when I think I have something to add to a conversation…although when I actually give it some thought, I realize that it would better serve the conversation to simply push the talk along with some prodding, rather than always producing an anecdote that I care more about than anyone else in the world.

But the first two lines of the verse are perfect. People barely know that a great leader exists if he/she is doing their job correctly. I was particularly interested in the line, “He works without self-interest and leaves no trace,” because I think about MOST of the perceived great leaders of our time, and how all of them have huge monuments and statues dedicated to them. Even some of the best leaders, arguably, ever, are on Mount Rushmore, or are having monuments attributed to them (Martin Luther King Jr., Dalai Lama, Jesus Christ, and the list goes on). And I feel that these are things done posthumously by people who feel that the leader deserves the praise. Whereas the leaders themselves would likely protest the idea of an idol made in their image.

Leadership, as I’ve been discovering, is something many step into for reasons unbecoming of a leader, in the truest sense. The power, the prestige, the money, and the self aggrandizement are hard to resist, as we are told day in and day out that this is the best we can be. The spotlight is not only the most effervescent light, but it is the ONLY light to be considered lucky to be under. “Power corrupts” is a concept that never made sense to me until I started having closer contact with leaders. Community leaders, business leaders, band leaders, and those of the like, are the kind of leaders I know personally. Even on this microcosm scale, it is evident that there is an insatiable, prehistoric need to be on top, and to cast your net of dominion among those who originally drew a sense of respect from and whom were inspired by a different version of the now-ego-drunk leader.

These are the examples that I wish resonated more within me, as I find that my ego needs to be deflated more often to allow me to see how to properly lead.

My mother has always been a sage-advice giver. She is always living the path that she covets and professes. I have the best example I need in my brilliant maternal link. Need I look further? I think not.

The shock of it all

When I began writing this blog, I knew I could find a place for my randomness. I knew that the ideas and thoughts that don’t get expressed at Spark, or on the podcast, or in the articles for the paper, or on the business blog would fit nicely even though they’d have bulging, obvious seams.

What I wasn’t ready for, was the weird experience of having people who I link to…acknowledging my linking to them. For instance, Nora Young of CBC’s Spark commented very shortly after I linked to the show. A shock. And Todd Tyrtle, this genius of a guy who created one of the best formats for a podcast I have ever heard of (Talking Stick Podcast), comments on one of my first posts. I was flabbergasted and honoured. I really thought I would just have the few family and close personal friends looking this up once a month.

Cal Evans from the 60 Second Tech Podcast thanked me for the link! What!? I don’t know this guy, and I certainly didn’t expect him to know that I had listed his show as one that I enjoy, and the next thing I know he’s thanking me for the link. This is so damn cool!

One of the best yet was a wonderful rant (filling in all the points I SHOULD have made) by a guy named John living in New Zealand. How this reached anyone had blown my mind.

My brother left a heartfelt and wonderful message to tell me, in a way, he likes the cut of my jib.

And finally, the most impact I’d had from a response was from none other than the folks who made the video of the bike-ride on the L.A. freeway! What?! I didn’t expect REAL PEOPLE to be accessible at the end of that rainbow of pavement-bravery. Boogaloo Shrimp (Flunky Carter) didn’t only respond, but says, “Look us up if you’re in LA, we’ll show you the sights VIA the freeway!”

Does it get any more awesome than this!? I mean, when I posted that vid, I thought that I would maybe interest a few people to look at it, but I never thought about it from the other end…the folks who posted it.

It has changed the way I see the medium of blogging. Good blogging…and the good that can come of it.

In saying that, I am going to visit my brother Todd and his wife Martha, and the family in South River, Ontario. It’s immediately west of Algonquin Park. My family up there has the most sustainable business I know of to date (Northern Edge Algonquin), and it is where I spent the hearty part of my youth (summers from 16 to 20), growing and shaping my opinions of the world to what they pretty well are today. The place is pure heaven, a hotbed of nature-immersion, and a feathery bed for the mind to tumble into gracefully. My brother Todd is presenting his freshly accredited version of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” slide show. It’s going to be wicked! Todd just went to Al Gore’s training session in Montreal recently, and this will be his first public showing.

My next blog will be peaceful and bliss-laden, and I hope a sustainable mind-set for future posts.

See the photo at the top of this post to see just a snippet of what I will be experiencing. This is the dock they put in a few years ago. I will most certainly lay on it at some point, rain, shine, or snow, and remember the constellations.

P.S. Riding the bike kicks ass. I HAD TO drive the van today, and it felt like crap.

Bikes are cool

There’s a great video I found reading NPR’s The Bryant Park Project (BPP) which shows a group of bike riders deciding to make a point to car-drivers by taking to the freeway (405). The cars, often at a stand-still, are left in the dust by these bike riders, which is unlikely in Windsor but not too far from the truth.

I have been keeping pace with cars for several city blocks, and I’m still a chump. My legs are still tired when I get off the bike. But being new to this whole “driving across the entire city almost every day” thing is extremely enticing, and even after today’s sunburn, I am very happy to be riding a bike instead of driving a car. People who pay for gas? Suckers! All of you. Heh-heh-heh…

Actually, I am suprised at just how many bike riders there actually ARE in this city of difficult-bike-conditions. Bicycles are everywhere it seems.

Today I rode to a massage appointment, and then to my brother’s school, where we shot baskets for an hour, and then downtown to drop the bike off. I’ll only be riding it home tomorrow night. I have my niece Alex’s First Communion to attend, and if I ride the bike, it’ll be disgusting. But redemption was playing another hour of pick-up basketball with my Friday night group which was close to my home (short drive). Just glad I got a bit more cardio.

The map above is only the first leg of the trip, which was 6.71 miles (10.8km). The next section was 4.29 miles (6.9km). The last section was 1.56 miles (2.5km). The entire trip was 12.56 miles, or 20.2 kilometers. It kicked the crap out of me, as I am totally not used to this kind of exercise just to get from Point A to Point B. All of the other bike riders in Windsor will laugh at me if they ever read this.

I still highly recommend it though!

Starting to ride

What has happened is simply this: The oil companies have found my limit.

I cannot rightly spend $75 to $80 to travel to work. I cannot simply get into the car to go somewhere anymore. There’s a funny thing about the reason for riding a bike. The best reason is “because cars are dirty and bad for the planet”. But the thing that made me change my mind is the cost of gas. In case you were sleeping, or you don’t drive a car, the price of gas being raised almost as if there were a monopoly on the industry…oh!…wait…I forgot…there is!

So in short, these bastards are selling gas to us at wildly increasing levels, and from what I read in the New York Times on Sunday, the thirst is growing. The best part, is that the infrastructure has been put in place to DEPEND on gasoline. The mindset of people traveling (to work, to the corner store, to Montreal to visit relatives, anywhere) has a major paradigm…it involves cars. The way our cities arteries are made, we cater to, build for, adjust for, and bow down to the almighty car. I die a little when I read a quote like this in the New York Times,

“The pursuit of oil will be just part of the energy challenge. The world’s total energy demand — including oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear power, as well as renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro power — is set to rise by 65 percent over the next two decades, according to the I.E.A.

But petroleum, the dominant fuel of the 20th century, will remain the top energy source. It accounts for more than a third of the world’s total energy needs, ahead of coal and natural gas. Refined into gasoline, kerosene or diesel fuel, oil has no viable substitute as a transportation fuel, and that is not likely to change much in the next 30 years.

The problem is that no one can say for sure where all this oil is going to come from.

That might not sound like such a bad thing for those concerned about carbon emissions and climate change. High prices might end up forcing people to conserve and encourage the development of alternatives. But the energy crunch might also result in a global scramble for resources, energy wars, and much higher energy prices.”

It’s something worth frowning at, but also something that makes me wonder how we’re going to think around it. Will humans be proactive? According to this article, we’re basically fucked. Which is the thing I’ve had burning me for a good long while now…where are these new technologies? The worry I have is that I have given too much credit to human beings and their ability to bring ideas to fruition in any realistic time-frame. I have been waiting for solar energy to be available for eons, it seems. And bubkiss. Nothing. I cannot even hope to have my municipality subsidize the cost of solar panels, even though Peterborough has figured out a way to do it…and it was years ago! They have a program called Green Up Peterborough, and they were able to offer solar panels for a short time, at a much smaller cost.

I want to tell you about a conversation I had at Phog recently.

There was a mish-mash of topics being tossed around, but most of all it was about gas. I had divulged that I was willing to traverse one of the most bike-unfriendly cities in Canada, (Windsor, Ontario) almost from one end to the other because of the cost of gas. I was hoping that I could be of some inspiration and example to others who have pondered the possibility.

What came up was in-depth ideas about how humans will just think of other ways around this problem. But having heard this discussion, and read The Times, I see that there is little hope of us adopting anything new. This was my argument at the time. We are such moronic creatures when it comes to proactive thought. We are going to suck the blackest teets of Mother Nature until we get all we can from her because of nothing more than money. Let’s dig somewhere else, somewhere that the environment won’t be harmed. Hey good news! We found a HUGE SEAM of new oil in (fill in the blank)! This is not good news. This is paradigm thinking. This is being stuck in old thought. Let’s do it without oil. Is that SO crazy a thing to think?

We don’t sit idly by because we like it the smell of gas when it spills on our shoes, and we won’t do it because we love shitty air quality, and we won’t do it because we love it when those stupid water fowl get caked in crude after an oil spill…no…but WE do it, us, WE DO IT because we are too lazy. We are too complacent to take our lives into our own hands and make a stand for something. We are scared to say,

“This oil thing is bull. You stuffed shirts, who are grandsons of the brilliant entrepreneurs who fooled everyone back when energy options were being weighed and people were trying to amass fortunes, yeah, you inheritors who have been lolling about on your huge chemical-laden lawns and palatial abodes doing NOTHING in the way of thinking outside of the box (or your wallets) have had enough. You’ve had enough of my lung tissue, and of my hard-earned money. You don’t get to tell me how to travel anymore. You don’t get to effect the way I survive. Now go away with your money. Go! Shoo! Go to an island where people who might be able to forgive you and your ancestors live too. Rub each other’s backs and chortle about all the life you sucked out of humanity and the planet. I mean, it’s a whole goddamn planet! It’s the only one we know, and with your helping hand, we are killing it. Nice. Ride off into the sunset on your shit-horse and never come back.”

A friend (acquaintance) of mine named Michael Louis Johnson, lives in Toronto, and LOVES bikes. He is not afraid. He is outspoken, and wonderful. The fearlessness of his beliefs manifests itself in his music (the band The New Kings), his lifestyle, and his actions. He is true. What I know of him is true. He lives his life truly based on his morals and ideas of how things should be. He’s not like me, spouting off on a blog. He spouts off by living the way he knows we all can if we want to. He was a part of this uber-cool attempt to get attention on the importance of bikes, and re-planning cities for bikes. *Funny note: In writing “replanning” I was informed by Spellcheck that it is not a recognized word. Which just goes to show you that our language needs to reflect our possibilities. Otherwise the possibility just doesn’t exist.* Check Michael’s event out HERE!

Unlike Michael, people just want to sit back and have a chance to buy cheap milk and bread, and everything else is hunky dory if we can keep reading about talentless fools who bob up and down on our TV sets and sing through our awful Top-40-station-supplied-radios. The soma is so evident to me the more that days carry on, and there are few others who are hip to the zombification of our poor world through entertainment fake-news shows like E-Talk Daily and Entertainment Tonight and Extra etc. We worry about brand-names, and mostly ourselves. We are number one. I am number one. I count. What you think of me counts, so I want the best stuff so you think I am great, greater, the greatest…

When I heard that woman at the TED Talks discuss her left-brain being shut down, I didn’t realize that it was more than just connecting to the oneness of the universe. Her description of the walls falling on her labeling, judging, measuring, worrying, thinking brain made me think of her experience to be more like reaching Nirvana than having a stroke. And during my discussion at Phog with my contemporaries, I realized that the way to prevent the oncoming world food shortages, furthering starvation and hunger, the oncoming water shortages we have to look forward to because of ignorant government policy in Canada and the U.S. (exampled in the story in this link), the energy crisis linked directly to the climate change epidemic (ecodemic), is to have that compassion that Jill Bolte Taylor had when she had that stroke.

Maybe if we feel that connection to other will we realize there is something worth saving. Maybe we will realize that people are magnificent, not because of who they are, what they buy, where they live, where they work, but because they are. That’s it. They are. If we gave a shit about this whatsoever, we might be on the right track toward making the proper decisions to save our skies, oceans, starving, sick, and our own souls.

To begin with, I’m riding my bike to work.