I figured the best way to get started is to write her and see where she’s at: what’s the rationale behind her vote and why was the cycling group that already exists in this ward sleeping during this debate? I bet I’m right in that she’s a good person who made a mistake because she was misinformed. And, if I’m wrong in thinking she actually has our interests in mind, this little seed might sprout into something very sharp and thorny.

So to get the ball rolling I’ve written a letter and invited others to check it out and suggest edits. If you have suggestions to improve this letter, please comment. And if it’s something you’d like to add your name to before I send it on it’s way to Councillor McMahon — please say so!

The letter:

Dear Councillor McMahon,

We’re writing on behalf of a group of Ward 32 constituents wishing to organize to better promote cycling in our community.

Your excellent speech to council expressing your concern about pollution directly affects your family inspired us, as did your concern for Shawnte Clow – the resident of your ward who was struck by a car while cycling to city hall to add her voice to the others asking you to reject the Mayor’s Bike Plan. The fact that you’re a cyclist yourself and passionate about making Toronto a bicycle-friendly city; yet voted for a plan which will have the opposite effect, suggests that the cycling community in Ward 32 didn’t effectively communicate our interests to you.

We wish to ensure this failure of communication doesn’t happen again.

We believe the Mayor’s Bike Plan is fundamentally flawed in a manner ensuring it will not make Toronto a safer and more welcoming city for cyclists:

First: the removal of already-existing infrastructure designed to protect cyclists and encourage cycling is not in our interests. This aspect of the Plan is, beyond debate, a step backward for cycling in Toronto.

Second: the removal of infrastructure without consulting with that ward’s elected representative is a thoughtless and irresponsible decision which points to a lack of respect for neighbourhood residents and their concerns. We speak specifically of the removal of the Jarvis St. bike lanes and the restoration of the 5th lane. This is not only a waste of money, but it flies in the face of the ongoing revitalization of Jarvis St. It endangers the vibrant mixed-use neighbourhood that Jarvis is slowly becoming, turning it into a downtown highway for North Toronto and suburban drivers against the wishes of its residents and Councillor Wong-Tam. Many Ward 32 residents use the Jarvis St. bike route, and its destruction is not in our interest.

Third: the proposed separated lanes are, as Councillor Vaughan very effectively pointed out before the vote, proposed for roads which are currently incapable of integrating separated lanes. Because the proposed lanes are contingent on study and consultation, as opposed to a fixed timeline with concrete plans for the end product, we believe it very likely they will never be fully implemented. A thoughtful and progressive plan for cycling infrastructure would include guaranteed improvements. The only guarantees in the Mayor’s Plan are losses.

Finally: even if the intended separated lanes were delivered in a form that would genuinely improve cycling in Toronto, the long-term ramifications of this plan far outweigh its benefits. The Major’s Bike Plan involves shifting development from city streets to off-road trails. None of us object to improving off-road trails for cyclists. But such investments don’t promote cycling as a valid form of urban transportation, they promote cycling as a recreational activity. There is nothing wrong with cycling for pleasure and exercise, but it’s cycling as an everyday means of transport – every day, in all weather, and in every season of the year, that has the potential to change our city for the better. This is the kind of cycling that invites mass participation, that reduces congestion and pollution, that promotes economic development and the beautification of the neighborhoods we live in. This is the kind of cycling the city should be investing in.

The shifting of investment away from city streets to off-road trails does not promote cycling as a valid and safe form of urban transportation. To the contrary, it’s a massive investment to redefine cycling as a hobby that will impact the direction of cycling development for a very long time. This is not in the interests of Ward 32′s cycling community.

The promotion of communication between yourself and those affected by your decisions is a necessary component of advocacy. The fact that you seem to care very deeply about making Toronto a more bike-friendly city and yet voted for a plan that will have the opposite effect suggests that such advocacy didn’t happen in Ward 32. So we wish to ensure, by establishing an effective and open means of communication between yourself, Ward 32′s cycling community, and the constituency at large, that cycling issues are given the prominence they deserve in a ward to which cycling is so important to our daily lives.

We understand that a cycling group called “32 Spokes”, with which you’re directly affiliated, already exists in Ward 32. We’re happy to find that this group exists in our ward, but disappointed by the fact that it has so little presence in the community. As passionate cyclists and politically-engaged constituents we find it very surprising that we’ve never heard of it. This group seems to have no online presence and no visible outreach to the cycling community.

And, as shown by the fact that this group didn’t effectively influence your vote on this very important issue, we have concerns about 32 Spokes’ effectiveness as an advocate for cyclists’ interests. As you’ve offered yourself as the contact for 32 Spokes we consider it appropriate to direct these concerns to you, as well as our concerns regarding your vote on the Mayor’s Bike Plan, in hope that you can advise us on how to best move forward.

Our sincere best wishes,

Me! and Us! and… maybe You?!

Our Councillor: Mary-Margaret MacMahon

If you live in Ward 32 please get involved by offering criticism, grammatical corrections, support, and hopefully your name to add at the bottom of this letter. Use the comment buttons.

Or, if you want to get in touch privately, feel free to email me:

Or say hello on Twitter.

Yah! What’s All This Then?! is back. Today, all about Toronto’s current cycling issues: the Rob Ford bike plan, the potential removal of the Jarvis Bike Lanes, Critical Mass, etc, etc…

listen:
What’s All This Then?! no.29: Cycling!

or download (right click):
W.A.T.T.?! no.29: Cycling!

If you want to get involved, check out the Toronto Cyclists’ Union’s work to save the Jarvis St. lanes! ===> BikeUnion.to/Save-Jarvis

Thunder Bay – As Artist/As Tramp:

Arriving at Thunder Bay on this, the tenth day of my cycling odyssey from Toronto to Saskatoon, represented the second time I’d been there. The first was for a concert Kristin and I were doing: she’d won a “very prestigious competition” and the prize included a national tour, a good bit of money, and the great nuisance of having to deal with the most obnoxious artistic director imaginable. During that stop-over we’d stayed with a Lakehead University music theory professor and his wife who, as well as being very nice and a lot of fun, are also the collective owners of what has to be the most-bizarre-ever portrait of Jesus in existence. They keep it in a special room in the basement, covered by blankets. I wish I’d thought to take a picture of the thing — it’s just not an image one can recreate in words.

A charming review of that concert in the Lake Superior News:

“The programme included song cycles by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). In this music Mädchenblummen (Girl-Flowers) Strauss compares some of the women he knows with various types of flowers, the doleful “Ivy”, the mysterious Wasserrose (Water Lily) etc. The music was carefully prepared, and at this point I begin to appreciate the piano playing of Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip. Kristin’s collaboration with her husband is near flawless. There is none of the usual measured entries intended to get the tempo correct, the piano part in music of this type is equal to the soprano. When the piano is a 9 foot concert grand, it takes a very good soprano to hold her ground. Kristin has a huge voice…”

Yeah, I suppose my piano playing is definitely of the “slash-and-burn” school. But that’s what happens when you regularly play with bands so loud that if there’s no blood on the keys at the end of the night, you know nobody in the audience has heard a note you’ve played.

“As an added bonus, Kristin sang a piece entitled “My Hat” as her encore. This was a great piece and it featured a vintage chapeau, hat box, and mirror as props. This colourful addition provided a visual presence to the nature and humour of the ladies hat. Props are good.”

…words to live by!

BONUS! …a concert excerpt of Kristin and I playing on that tour:

Thunder Bay – As Jane Jacobs:

Which way to the world? Sign outside an international backpacker's hostel in Thunderbay

During my one former visit, I’d not had an opportunity to see much of Thunder Bay: just the professor’s home outside the city, the University where we performed, and a strange-but-awesome Finnish restaurant where we had dinner (apparently there are lots of people of Finnish background in Thunder Bay). But now I got to ride through the entire city: passed the famous Sleeping Giant, along the lakeshore, downtown, and out the other side. It is, in parts, unexpectedly attractive. A little river runs through it, crossed by some aesthetically-pleasing bridges; and there are some beautiful parks. These things show that, at some point, someone of authority in the municipal government gave a fuck about making it a beautiful and humane place to live. But the rest of Thunder Bay – a portrait of car culture proudly pissing on the corpses of beauty and livability – makes it clear that that municipal ethos existed a very long time ago.

But I’ll put aside my rant about awful municipal planning and cultural degradation for a few more posts; until I reach the place that stands head-and-shoulders above all others on my list of “The Shittiest Places I Passed Through”. Can you guess which it is?

Thunder Bay – As Pilgrim:

While I was in Thunder Bay I had a mission to fulfill: Ray – the wise Native wanderer I’d met at the beginning of my trip; and whose advice had inspired me as I’d wrestled the north shore mountains for the past several days – had told me that when I reach Thunder Bay I should stop by Petrie’s Cycle Shop and thank Mr.Petrie on his behalf. Somewhere near the Manitoba border, one of Ray’s wheels had developed a crack; and by the time he arrived at Thunder Bay it was falling apart. So he limped it into Petrie’s Cycle and Mr.Petrie had built him a new wheel for unbelievably cheap.

Petrie's Cycle, in Thunder Bay

So I found the shop, bought a few spare tubes, and asked the clerk if Mr. Petrie was around. He was, and he came out from the back of the shop to say hello.

“Do you remember a guy named Ray?” I asked him, “he stopped here a while back… you made him a new wheel?”

“Oh yeah, I remember him… did you meet him on the road?”

“Yup. I ran into him at the ferry station in Tobermory. He told me to tell you that he’d made it, and that he’s really thankful for what you did for him.”

I could see he was touched by that. “Well… I’m always glad to help you cross-country guys out; and Ray was…” he stuttered, trying to find the right words, “…well, Ray was just such a beautiful man.”

He was little embarrassed to find himself speaking a bit emotionally, but it’s hard to talk about someone like Ray any other way. His kindness, generosity, and unpretentious charm isn’t something one encounters often; and I was glad to find I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about him. So: if you’re ever passing through Thunder Bay, stop in at Petrie’s Cycle – they’re good people!

Thunder Bay – As Missionary-for-Hoboism:

It was early afternoon when I left Thunder Bay along the Trans-Canada Highway, and just west of town I stopped for a quick rest in a shady spot behind a roadside Husky gas station/restauraunt. It turned out that this was where the restaurant staff congregated to smoke and share resentments about their lousier customers. One young guy from the kitchen took an interest in my bike and asked lots of questions about the trip:

“Where are you going?” Saskatoon.
“Why?” My sister-in-law’s getting married there.
“Why don’t you drive?” That would mean being in a car with my mother-in-law for three days.
“Is it dangerous?” Well… I did almost crash into a bear. But other than that, no.
“How far do you go every day?” About 140k, give or take.
“Isn’t the bike heavy with all that gear on it?” Try picking it up!
“Fuck! It’s really heavy!”

I asked him about where I could find a place to camp nearby, and he gave me directions to Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park; about 30k west along the highway. As we talked it became fairly obvious that he’d never been very far from the environs of Thunder Bay. But I hope his curiosity and enthusiasm for what I was doing might encourage him to give it a go himself sometime.

Kakabeka Falls – Rangers & Critters vs. Me:

Kakabeka Falls... it sounds Australian, but it's not.

This being by far the most beautiful campsite I stayed at during the whole trip, I’m just going to let this picture gallery speak for itself. The only things of interest that happened were: a) my being gently reprimanded by one of the damn Park Rangers for burning a bit of wood that was laying about (he said that the thing might be the habitat of little critters, which seemed a reasonable view: so this led to a new policy of going about a campsite soon after my arrival to gather up the official Ranger-approved firewood others had bought but not used up before leaving), and b) someone stole my cycling gloves the next morning (I suspect it was that same Ranger, taking revenge on me on behalf of the little critters). But I didn’t care, because by this time the callouses on my hands could stop bullets.

Pictures of Kakabeka Falls:

I'm sure glad this wasn't a canoe trip...

The rumble of the falls as I slept was comforting... just like hearing the gentle ebb and flow of traffic outside our house in Toronto.

The true hero of this story posing in front of the falls!

Like any good falls, Kakabeka had sunk the river into a deep gorge over millennia. Desperate trees cling to its sides; as fragile as humanity clings to the Earth, and as heedless of their trivial existence and inevitable doom. Otherwise, this is just kind-of a shitty picture of a rock. I really have no idea why I took it at all.

I’ve just read your ‘open letter to cyclists’ and, as a year-round cyclist and ex-courier, have a few thoughts on the points you’ve made:

First (…and some of my friends will be shocked to hear this): you’re dead right. The sort of behaviour you’ve written about is a problem here in Toronto. Another big problem is that many cycling advocates seem to have a binary view on cycling issues: you’re either for cyclists or your against them. In fact I’m willing to bet you’ve received some nastiness from people who are otherwise the very soul of decency and kindness. This isn’t a rational or productive approach: it makes both honest criticism and debate difficult; and it makes it too easy for assholes to apply their absurd ‘road warrior’ stereotype to cyclists as a whole.

Second, I suggest that in your premise – that the behaviours you object to are ubiquitous – you might’ve restrained yourself from engaging in some of these same generalizations.

As in all things, ugliness stands out. Take, for example, the reputation of the British for having the most malformed teeth on earth. One sees Prince Charles’ choppers and is stunned and curious. That, in turn, provokes a subconscious drive to keep an eye out for more hideous British dental disasters; and you soon find yourself able to pick them out in a crowd from a hundred meters’ distance. But the truth is that the majority of British people have perfectly acceptable teeth.

It’s the same thing with crappy cyclists: you see a prime example of cycling assholishness; it rightly disturbs and offends you; you begin to zero in on that sort of thing and take particular note of it. It’s called confirmation bias: i.e. the cyclist passing you to run a red light has 100% of your attention, while you don’t tend to notice several cyclists stopped behind you at the same red light. Pointing this out isn’t meant to diminish your argument, just to challenge your statement that the majority of cyclists have little regard for safety or the law.

Third, you’ve written this at the beginning of what’s been a very late spring this year. Consider what this means: as I said, I’m a year-round cyclist, and I get pissed off for about a month every single year at this time… because this is when the folks who have absolutely no experience or competence cycling take their bikes out, make a nuisance of themselves, and generally make the majority of responsible cyclists grind their teeth.

Then, after their cluelessness has put them in a few dangerous spots, or when they get their second flat tire and the friend they asked to come by and fix it the first time happens to be out of town, they’ll shove their bikes back in their garage until next Spring. As you’re obviously an experienced cyclist in this city, you’ve surely noticed this cycle. I believe that, given the nature of your letter, there’s some value in pointing it out.

Finally, and this is my only really practical point: a consistent and logical application of the law is a basis for etiquette. There’s a huge disparity in the ability of those of us who get about by cycling, and this disparity necessitates variations of behaviour amongst cyclists that don’t exist for drivers or pedestrians. In my experience the only cyclists who can actually use the road as they’re legally entitled to, while simultaneously avoiding breaking the law in the interest of their personal safety, are the most experienced and athletic amongst us.

Take, for example, the catch-22 situation of making a left-hand turn southbound on River St. to go east on Dundas:

To cope with this perfectly ordinary intersection you must either:

1) abandon the bike lane and take the left-hand turning lane.

or

2) if the light’s green you ride across the Dundas and set up in the bike lane on at the west side of the intersection

or

3) if the light’s red you cross via the crosswalk to the east side and wait to cross to the south side of Dundas when you have a green.

Options 2 and 3 are technically illegal as you have to ride through a crosswalk. And, if you avoid that illegality by stopping at a green light to get off your bike and walk it through the crosswalk you’re putting yourself in danger by… well, by stopping at a green light with vehicles coming behind you, not sure what the hell you’re doing by stopping there.

The only legal solution is to take the turning lane. But to do that you have to be an excellent and athletic cyclist: to not put yourself in danger by obstructing traffic you have to take the turn as fast as a car would. And, yes, there are streetcar tracks through that intersection.

So people make concessions. And some of those concessions become socially acceptable, like options 2 and 3 I pointed out above: very seldom will you get in trouble by riding across a crosswalk to change directions. But it’s still illegal, and just one example amongst innumerable other scenarios which demand cyclists behave illegally for their own safety.

I suggest it’s easier to cultivate thoughtful behaviour without the dissonance between regard for the law and regard for one’s own safety that cyclists necessarily experience and adapt to. But, as things are, the combination of poor infrastructure and impractical laws create an environment where both cyclists and drivers are unsure of how to respond to extremely basic situations. So the more selfish react by behaving as selfish and stupid people do. Like cyclists running red lights and drivers throwing tantrums at cyclists making perfectly legal left turns.

None of this excuses the behaviour you’re talking about, nor qualifies my appreciation for your having the honesty to point out your observations regardless of fact that you were surely aware they’d be poorly received by many. I’m sure we’d both, and lots of others besides, much rather celebrate cycling culture than bitch about it. I think what you’ve written opens up a discussion that needs to happen to change the shitty behaviour of some cyclists and to better advocate for fixing an environment that encourages it.

Best wishes,

Ben Mueller-Heaslip

So I sent a letter to my city councillor, Ward 32 councillor Mary-Margaret McMahon (councillor_mcmahon@toronto.ca)

my city councillor

Dear Councillor McMahon,

As a Ward 32 constituent, I would like to know your position regarding our new mayor’s idea of scrapping the Transit City program. This looks to be both a very foolish waste of the public money already invested in the program, and a decision grounded in furthering the polarization between driving suburbanites and transit-using/cycling downtowners.

Dealing rationally with transportation issues in this city can only happen by recognizing that cyclists, drivers, pedestrians, and transit-users have the common goal of making our roads both safer and more efficient. This can surely be achieved, but not by cynical and divisive politics of this sort.

Also: do you have a website, twitter account, etc. I could use to be aware of your views and decisions?

Congratulations on your election and best wishes,

Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip

If you live in Toronto you should think about looking up your city councillor and let them know what you think about this.

When I get a response I’ll post it. If I get no response you can be damn sure I’ll post about it!

My father likes to complain about things a bit. The new wind farm on Wolfe Island, near where my parents live is a current pet peeve:

windmills at work destroying Wolfe Island: "they're ugly, noisy, and slaughter birds by the thousands"

The funny thing about a windmill farm is that one doesn’t tend to recognize it as an industrial instillation; I think most people see it as a transformative alteration of the environment and subconsciously interpret it on a scale very different from the one they’d apply to industrial projects. A month ago, I found it quite remarkable that my father brought up the impact of windmills on Wolfe Island at the time when the BP oil leak was doing unbelievable damage to the Gulf of Mexico, and not making the connection that these are directly competing industries with exponentially different impacts. One is better than the other.

Speaking of the environmental impact of shitty industry, early this morning I reached Espanola:

a sunny day in Espanola, Ontario

Even at 8AM Espanola is shrouded in a cloud of noxious gas. Streams of diverted pulp waste run into pools of stinking death along the road and in the woods north of town I heard the cries of dwarves fighting orcs. A wounded elf approached me and said “The Dark Lord gathers strength as we speak! Go swiftly to Mount Doom – the Ring must be destroyed or all is lost!”.

north of Mordor

I was soon out of this awful town (Espanola was #3 on my list of “Crappiest Places I Visited”) and followed Highway 6 to where it reaches the Trans-Canada Highway. I’d been warned by quite a few people that the Trans-Canada isn’t fun to cycle along because of the traffic: especially the heavy truck traffic. I soon realized that this was complete nonsense. There’s very little traffic along this road. Sure there are trucks but riding from here to the middle of Manitoba (where I finally left this road to turn north) I was perfectly safe. The truckers along this stretch were really considerate and, whenever there was room, they’d shift right over to the opposite lane when passing me. I have no idea what these people were talking about in saying this route is dangerous. I regularly encounter more driving stupidity biking the 12k from my house to Bathurst and St.Clair than I did in traveling ten days along the Trans-Canada.

Throughout the day the terrain around me changed a lot. I began in pine forest, but by the afternoon found myself in more open hill country, and later still in the beautiful area of the North Channel Islands. This region is full of wetlands and rivers, the road occasionally running across narrow strips of land with water immediately on both sides. Along this stretch I found a second bear, but this one was a sad sight: it was a young bear that must’ve been struck by a truck during the night and was lying face-up in the ditch. Suddenly finding myself beside it was a shock: it must’ve not been hit straight-on because it wasn’t mangled at all; lying there it looked like it was sleeping, belly-up and limbs sprawled. But it was dead and had a grimace that made me think it wasn’t killed instantly.

Throughout this trip I was sad to see dead creatures by the road. I’m sure I saw representatives of the majority of Canada’s mammal, bird, and reptile species – turtles, hawks, a coyote, some owls, innumerable frogs and birds; a couple days later, as I stopped to replace a broken spoke just south of Lake Superior National Park, I came across a sun-bleached skeletal leg half-buried in shale and dirt which might’ve been either bear or human. I’ve written enough about my contempt for cars elsewhere that I don’t need to go into it much here. But I will reiterate: driving is not a decent way to travel. It inevitably cultivates an acceptance of violence and disrespect toward the places and people you interact with.

By mid-afternoon I began what would turn out to be a war of attrition against a powerful opponent: namely God, in the form of a perpetually strong wind coming from the west. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time, but this wind would be against me for a good part of the rest of the trip and would gradually coalesce into a personified entity in my mind over the coming days. This was the beginning of a form of madness in which myself, my bike, and the wind would become a self-contained trinity through which my being and personality was diffused. Fortunately a friend of mine warned me about the potential for this sort of madness before I left (thanks, Dave Ogborn!) so by the time the three-way screaming matches started I was aware of my mental state enough to enjoy it and use it as a psychological foil against frustration and exhaustion. I’ll talk more about this later on in this journal.

Around this time I had an interesting encounter that would begin to correct some of my assumptions about Canada’s rural population.

Clarence's Smoked Fish Groceries and Booze

As most of you know, Ontario has an archaically puritanical attitude toward liquor. You can only buy booze at government-controlled LCBO (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) stores. In rural places where there isn’t a population to support a liquor store, the LCBO franchises its operation to little grocery stores. So in the middle of nowhere I saw ‘Clarence’s Smoked Fish Grocery and LCBO’. You can’t tell from this picture but this store and the little house next to it are really very beautiful: bright and freshly painted, meticulously clean, and ornamented by tasteful wooden wind-wheels. It was an interesting-looking spot so I decided to stop there and buy some food and a beer.

Clarence, it turned out, was a really eccentric character: a plump, neatly-dress little guy in his fifties, nervously friendly and very obviously gay. I bought some snacks, a cold beer (to drink immediately after leaving the store), and a little bottle of whisky (to drink when I got to a campground that night), and chatted with Clarence for a bit. As we were talking I thought “man, this guy must be sad up here surrounded by hicks”. Not so! Just as I was leaving a pickup truck pulled up in front of the store a classic redneck got out. I was packing my LCBO treasures into my saddle bags and took my time to listen to this interaction between such distinctly opposite men (Clarence had come out of the store to talk with this guy).

They had a little argument, the sort of friendly spat you can only have with someone you genuinely like – full of jabs and innuendo. The redneck guy had a sideline doing handyman work and Clarence was ticking him off about the aesthetic deficiencies of some windows this man had recently added to his house (by way of trying to knock some $$ off new windows he wanted put in along the side of the house) while the redneck gently made fun of Clarence’s fastidiousness and the absurdity of his anachronistic dream home in the wilderness. There was no playing to the other’s personality at all: one was unalterably effete and the other rough, but they clearly got on well enough to make me understand that Clarence was appreciated and had a community of some sort where he’d chosen to make his life. Proves two axioms: 1) it’s easier to dislike ‘the other’ you don’t actually know; and 2) basic economics trumps complex social differences.

Eventually I was defeated by the endless wind blowing off Lake Superior and turned along a sideroad near Thessalon, following a sign announcing “Brownlee Lake Campground”. This was one of my favourite camps of the trip. Run by a German couple, it reminded me of the campingplatzes Kristin and I had stayed at while biking around Germany. Contrasting the ruggedness of typical Canadian campgrounds, this is a more social form of camping – a bar/restaurant forms the nucleus of the place. Here I met some fun RV campers and hung out with them around a campfire long into the night, drinking and trading stories (they had a great one about some campers from Kansas who’d gotten so plastered that one of them couldn’t get back to his tent and they found him the next morning passed out in a ditch).

Also, a couple of them owned these champion Chow dogs!

some champion chow dogs!

and the other couple had this fantastic parrot:

a funny bird

This bird swore like a sailor but its best line was his attempt to say “Have a Merry Christmas!”. It couldn’t quite manage “Christmas” so it’d started improvising with its existing vocabulary came up with its best equivalent “Have a Merry Coconut!”. Its owners loved that variation so much that they started encouraging it and the bird yells it all the time now.

Improvised clothesline: near Thessalon after the 4 days on the road

I was on the road again by 8:00 this morning and made the 60k trip to Owen Sound in just a couple hours. Breakfast at the Old Bus Stop Diner, enjoying the company of a mildly retarded but friendly man with a singularly unattractive skin condition. We talked about the recent demise of Wiarton Willy (the famous psychic groundhog) and he gave me some vague advice about the road to Tobermorey (“it’s flat but there’s damn big hill in Wiarton!”).

The Old Bus Stop Diner, Owen Sound

In yesterday’s journal I mentioned how I later realized that Highway 89 was the Yuppie Cyclist Line because there are no YCs north of that latitude. Owen Sound was also a dividing line: it’s the Asshole Line. The last asshole I met on this trip was a fat woman in an SUV on my way out of Owen Sound. I’m sure there are plenty of assholes northwest of Owen Sound, but evidence suggests they keep more to themselves than they do in southern Canada. I suspect the higher rate of gun ownership in the north may have something to do with this.

The Asshole Line

I took a slight scenic detour leaving town (nothing like yesterday’s disasters), following the shore of the lake on RR1 rather than taking the more direct RR17. Again it was a weird town name that made up my mind: I got to pass through the villages of Hogg and Zion. Of course both of them were nothing but signposts between farms. But this was beautiful country split between small farms and forest and I didn’t lose any time by this route.

Had my first minor bike problems: 1) a splinter of glass to into my rear tire and I didn’t find it when I changed the tube – so I had to change it again ten minutes later, this time going over the tube millimeter by millimeter until I found the bit of glass and yanked it out with pliers; 2) I managed to smash my bike computer while changing the tire the second time. The computer calculates speed and distance and was a helpful thing to have. But, weeks later, when I finally had a chance to replace it I found that I didn’t miss it and in fact thought of it as a distraction. So I didn’t bother buying another.

Wiarton Willy's.... dead.

My retarded friend was right: there’s a damn big hill at the north end of Wiarton. I took a good run at it but had to push the bike up most of the way. Luckily there was a wide shoulder on this road because it was the August 1st long weekend and traffic was bad.

the big hill at Wisrton

Suffered from lack of water on the Bruce Peninsula. It was a hot day and that road offers no shade and few places to stop, and I finished the last of my water well past the last place I could’ve got more. There was a sign placed by Satanic Park Rangers at a rest stop in the Bruce Peninsula Provincial Park saying “Well Pump ==>”. But after walking a path through the woods for a long way I realized there was no well. Just another lowlife Ranger using his government job to abuse travelers (in a couple weeks I’ll tell you how another Ranger stole my biking gloves).

Eventually I came across the first of the many Native Chip Trucks that would brighten my trip. This one, like the majority of these places, consisted of two trailers: one selling chips; the other selling cigarettes. Oddly enough the trailer selling chips didn’t sell drinks – for drinks you had to go to the trailer selling cigarettes. That was ok: bought a couple packs of cigarettes, a can of pop, and some bottles of water.

Tobermorey

By the end of my trip I’d compiled several lists: one list is “5 Crappiest Towns I’ve Visited”. Tobermorey is second on that list.

If you’re curious about how over-priveleged twits enjoy “wild nature” or how the more tasteless members of our society understand the concept of “the North Country” – visit Tobermorey on the August 1st long weekend. The pity and rage I felt at seeing a waiter on the patio of one of Tobermorey’s “Northern Wilderness”-themed restaurants, dressed up as a pirate and serving a family of four sentient Blackberries spaghetti will always be with me.

As well as utterly destroying what must have once been a very beautiful place, the herd of capitalist swine ruined my plan to camp that night: they’d booked up all the campsites and hotels in the whole region.

After scrambling from place to place looking for somewhere to sleep, I was told that the guy who runs the tourist desk at the Commerce Office might be able to find a vacancy for me. So I walked there (passing the sad pirate for a second time – this time he looked up at me and I tried express sympathy – I swear he was holding back tears), went up to a chunky guy at the desk and said: “I’m fucked”.

“Looking for somewhere to stay?”

“Yup.”

“It’s bad. But since you’re riding a bike I’ll phone around and see.”

…phones….”nope. full.” …phones…. “nope. full” …phones… “nope….”

But he was amazingly thorough, going through his whole list until finally clicked with a hotel that had a cancellation. He just beaming because he’d done me a good turn, and I was so glad that he cared enough to put in such an effort that I thanked him profusely and shook his hand. But when I asked him how much the place cost and he said “well – under $150″ I spontaneously slammed my palm down on the desk and said “fuck it – I know you tried but fuck it – I’m sleeping in the fucking woods.”

He approved of this decision and wished me luck. So I biked back south out that miserable town to try my luck in the bush, stopping only to buy small bottle of whisky.

GUERILLA CAMPING

some dangers of guerilla camping

I passed through the outskirts of Tobermorey, analyzing sites for their potential obscurity, comfort, and defensibility: Overgrown lot? Too exposed. Derelict gravel pit? Too rocky. Behind the abandoned gospel church? No – the town’s deviant youth probably go there to have sex. I ignored the “No Camping” sign and tried the northmost road into the Provincial Park, but the woods were unbelievably dense and I was spied by a Ranger who gave me a look that said “I know what you’re up to and I’m going to make trouble for you” so I gave that up.

But I hit upon what must’ve been an old logging road going into the woods a little further south and decided to give it a try. It went a fair way from the road before it branched: one path going further into the woods and the other running parallel to the main road. The latter had a rusty old chain strung across it so I picked that one to look for a clearing along: the chain would keep vehicles and most people out so I figured that way would give me the best chance of finding a place where I could camp undiscovered.

A short way down that road I saw an ideal clearing through the woods and made it my camp, cleverly dragging the branches of a dead and collapsed pine tree into the gap between the clearing and the path. I scrambled back out and looked at my camp: almost completely invisible. Perfect.

So I settled in, put on the Mosquito Hazmat Suit Greg Oh had kindly lent me for the trip, and read a bit of John Wyndham’s The Midwitch Cuckoos. Then: !!BLAM!! – gunshot! !!BLAM!! !!BLAM!! — somebody was shooting a gun. Really close by.

I jumped up and stared into the woods. Couldn’t see anything. But the shots kept coming periodically, still sounding close enough that I worried where the bullets would end up when he missed whatever he was shooting at. Then it occurred to me that my moving about might draw a shot from whatever camouflaged, toothless hillbilly was out there thinking that I’m a deer. So I decided the best thing to do was stand tall outside my tent, smoking my Native cigarettes and drinking whisky from the bottle.

Deers don’t smoke or drink whisky, but hillbillies do. So if I tricked him into believing I was one of his kind I might escape unharmed.

He kept shooting well into the night. It was dark by the time I heard a pickup truck heading out of the woods by the road I’d turned off of. By this time I’d retired to the tent, and I finally nodded off. But I wasn’t done for the night – I woke up to a terrifying sound: coyotes killing something. Sudden short fierce barking; a beat of silence; then savage barking and the cry of some pitiful creature; then nothing. It couldn’t have taken more than ten seconds.

I thought “well, at least they’re not hungry” and went to sleep holding the heaviest wrench I’d brought in my bike repair kit.

night 2: bush camping

First day on the road!

catchin' the Go

I decided cheat past the Iron Curtain of big box stores, bitterness, and depression that forms the outskirts of Toronto by catching a Go bus to Georgetown. Was planning on hooking up with Friendly Rich for coffee there before setting out. But missed the early bus while buying cigarettes and got to Georgetown too late to hang out: Rich was getting ready for his CD-release show that night and I wanted to be off anyway.

Friendly Rich

The early part of this day’s ride set me straight on the question of whether it’d be better to stick to fairly major (but sometimes too busy) roads or go for tiny country roads that are seldom travelled: those roads are seldom travelled for a good reason. They’re terrible.

My first move was to get hopelessly lost, picking through a ziz-zag sequence of country roads – each one more lonely, narrow, and decrepit than the last – until the road became a dirt track winding up a densely wooded hillside. The road sloped up and up and I couldn’t get any traction in the deep dry dirt. So I had to get off and push my bike for a long ways. My heavy panniers pushed back. But the rise finally leveled off a bit and I found myself in a lovely spot with many thin waterfalls running off the escarpment to my left and a beautiful forest sloping down to my right. When I began running into groups of Quebecois tourists I suspected I’d blundered into a provincial park.

I reached a paved road (with a sign marking the place I’d been as a nature preserve) and found I’d wasted a great deal of time and only reached the town of Erin. It began to dawn on me that although the way I’d come was quite beautiful I had 2800 kilometers ahead of me and beauty of this sort was a deadly enemy to be avoided at all costs.

But I wasn’t wholly decided on taking major roads yet, so after a quick lunch in Erin I set out to repeat the morning’s stupidity once again. Soon I was on RR25 going north towards the 89 highway, along the edge of the Luther Marsh Provincial Park. I spontaneously decided that by taking RR15 west I’d have the same distance to travel (on smaller roads), could stay on the edge of the park, and have the additional benefit of passing through the village of Monck. It was Monck that compelled me to try that way.

taking a break north of Luther Marsh

It was another stupid move. This sideroad was to go about 12k before rejoining a major road. But only the first 3k were paved. Then – when I’d already committed myself to that route – it abruptly turned to loose gravel. I gave it my best, but again had to walk through a fair bit of it where riding was impossible. It soon became worse when I found that the only people who use this wretched road are the drivers of dumptrucks full of debris from a quarry near Monck: they know nobody else would be stupid enough to come this way so they fly down the road at breakneck speed, surrounded by comet-like trails of dust and spewing bits of rubble at every bump.

That made up my mind: the beautiful places can come to me if they want, but I’m not going to go looking for them.

So I reached highway 89 and turned west. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, 89 was a landmark point on the journey: it’s the Yuppie Cyclist Line. Several days later the realization came to me that I hadn’t seen a Yuppie Cyclist (i.e. a 35-50 year old riding a spotless $3000 bike and full Tour De France cycling kit) north of Highway 89. It must be like the bridge at Sleepy Hollow for YCs.

By early evening the fact that I’d left Toronto’s sophisticated and ironic sensibilities behind was made clear when I reached the town of Mount Forest and saw this amazing sign:

Haydays Hootenanny - Happy! Healthy! High!

I also suffered a rough blow to my ego when, on the long hill leading up to the plateau Mount Forest is located on, I was so tired that I was passed by an Amish girl on a bike. So I decided to stop at a pub there for a restorative.

Mount Forest pub

My first day ended with a 40k ride to Durham, where I stopped at the Provincial Park northeast of the town. This provincial park, some nice party-campers from Brampton told me, had been destroyed by a tornado last year and a child was killed when the washroom collapsed on him. You could see the path the tornado had taken by a swath of downed trees leading straight toward the newly-rebuilt washroom. Where’s your ‘God’ now, Durham?

camping at Durham P.P. - first night on the road!