And here’s a summary of what I, as a participant in Occupy Toronto, stand accused of:

- manipulating and marginalizing the homeless
- being elitist
- denying people use of the park
- being “gutless blowhards”
- being unproductive
- not being on par with Jesus Christ (seriously)
- devolving to “increasingly debased forms”
- being too lazy to clean the toilets.

As you can see from the list of points, it’s a pretty damn interesting read and I suggest you check it out yourself. It tops the Toronto Sun’s Sue-Ann Levy for pure vitriolic entertainment! And, making it twice as ugly, this was written by someone I used to like and even admire.

It’s mainly insults, with a sprinkling of transparent misrepresentations and descriptions of situations the writer clearly has only the vaguest knowledge of. I mean, has she used one of the toilets herself? Experienced their sparkling cleanliness and springtime-fresh odour? I don’t think so. They’re portapotties!  They have shit and piss in them!  But they put the washrooms at the Java House to shame, and the city still gives that place a orange “conditional pass” on every sanitation check. And as to “devolving to increasingly debased forms”, yes, I’ve noticed the beginnings of a tail sprouting from my backside. I was worried it might be haemorrhoids until now – thank you for setting my mind at ease.

But the central point of this article, the one about the occupation’s “elitist” nature and our relationship to the homeless, deserves an answer. No, that’s not the right way to put it: the only way to arrive at a true answer would be going to the park, engaging with the people there, and arriving at a conclusion based on the evidence of direct experience. But, as this author is unwilling to do that before launching into a skreed about us being feral elitists, words will have to do the trick.

Being accused of elitism online, and by someone who’s obviously elite enough herself to engage in philosophical and political debate, is a bit rough. At least when Rob Ford accuses people like myself of the same he sets a bar low enough for a dachshund to step over. But this accusation coming from an articulate, literate person is an invitation down the rabbit hole; a chinese finger trap; the monkey’s paw in the coconut. To engage with these arguments at the level they’re presented would be offering a guilty plea.

Fortunately, however, the argument being made is more than political and philosophical. It’s also fallacious. It’s a false dichotomy, a binary proposition. And, like all such fallacies, it’s easily debunked by simply describing reality:

There are people who have jobs involved in the occupation. There are people who are utterly disenfranchised. Black people, white people, asian people, Native people. Educated people and people who may well be functionally illiterate. These differences cause tension. At the General Assemblies we’ve articulated “the differences that exist out there don’t exist here!” and we’ve echoed en masse via the people’s mic: “I’m an ex-con”, “I’m disabled”, “I’m a rape victim”, or “I’m a suburban kid from Etobicoke”. Looking into someone’s eyes, repeating words that come for different worlds; looking for connection, an affirmation, something like a shared understanding and respect – it means something.

But it doesn’t change anything. Occupy Toronto isn’t a “utopia”, as you and many others have cynically called it. It’s not a fairy tale where talking foxes cavort with dancing hounds around a magical ‘Togetherness Tree’. There are real conflicts between the perspectives those eyes and words represent. We argue and debate all the time: at General Assemblies, when we crawl out of our tents in the morning, when we do dishes. I’ve learned more from arguing confrontation and nonviolence with the punk sleeping a couple tents over than you’ll learn in a lifetime of clever tweets.

Because this is real. We don’t block each other, we don’t turn our backs and walk away from someone who’s saying something we don’t want to hear. Instead we take care of each other – because it’s cold; because it can be wet; because some people are vulnerable and need help. Because we chose to be in this together. We’ve chosen to place ourselves in a situation where we can’t hide from “the other”, disparage it in ignorance, isolate it, stereotype it, call it “lazy” “gutless” “worthless” and the rest of the demeaning labels you’ve given us. Instead we listen to each other.

Where else can that interaction happen? Is it valuable? Worthwhile? An opportunity? For this alone, the occupation is entirely justified.

But perhaps this is too abstract? You want a concrete reason why we insist on staying in this damn park? Ok. Here are two, tailored to your Toronto-specific interests:

1) During the G20 more than a thousand people were arrested without cause. This set a new Canadian precedent for the use of force in responding to public demonstrations, attacked our Charter rights to freedom of assembly and expression. Many people, myself included, are here to push back against negative changes to our culture that event represented, and to re-established a sane relationship between citizens and our government. Many people see our society accepting the door to public political action being shut by increments, both by our government and by increasingly apathetic and intolerant public opinion. Independent of any particular goals of the movement, our continued presence in St.James part acts as a wedge in that door.

Were that the only reason for the occupation, it’s justified.

2) Our mayor was elected on a platform of “trimming the fat, without service cuts”. And, having manufactured a crisis (ala The Shock Doctrine) by eliminating sources of income, he’s now begun to hack away at programs many Torontonians see as foundational to the city we want to live in; programs that have been developed and invested in for generations. When citizens responded to this bait-and-switch by showing up en masse to depute at the Executive Council meetings, we were disparaged and ignored. Their speaking time was reduced to a fraction, and the mayor’s hand-picked committee refused to listen. The occupation keeps eyes focused on developments in our mayor’s efforts to transform Toronto into the world’s largest strip mall, and provides a vehicle for organized response to the same.

Were that the only reason for the occupation, it’s justified.

I could go on to Federal issues: the Canadian Council of Corporate Executive’s mandate that Canada increase its military spending, which Prime Minister Harper is doing his best to oblige; the financial support given to Transcanda’s Tar Sands / Keystone project and its impact in stifling sustainable energy development; our perpetual sidekick role in America’s wars.  And I could talk about our support for people internationally who recognize similar issues, and the value of communication through the various occupations. Of course we support them morally, but our presence also supports them practically: we supply awareness and our occupation pressures news media to cover the often violent response to other occupations.

But perhaps this is all, as you said, “tedious”. Frankly, people commenting on the complexion, motivations, and viability of those they’ve not bothered to meet strikes me as tedious. But we each have our own tastes, I suppose.

As I write this, I’ve just left our general assembly on Sunday, during which we divided ourselves by our colour. Not the skin colour division you mention, but colours we’ve each chosen to adopt for ourselves when the police inevitably come calling. I’m a “red”, which means I’ll be amongst those willing to be arrested defending the occupation through nonviolent resistance.

You close your critique, after the really funny bit about how we’re unlike Jesus, by saying “things are changed by people who do, not by people who talk.”  That really reaches a high point of hypocrisy. May I ask: where will you be while I’m standing arm in arm with people I’ve come to know, respect, and love? Where will you be when I’m in jail for standing behind a movement I value, understand, and chose to invest myself in?

…on Twitter?

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.

listen:
What’s All This Then?! no.30: What Do You Do For A Living?

or download (right click):
W.A.T.T.?! no.30: What Do You Do For A Living?

Subscribe to What’s All This Then?! on iTunes!

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

Kakabeka Falls - Ignace (218 kilometers)

The same railway line that ran through Lake Superior’s north shore mountains toys with the road northwest of Thunder Bay, crossing and re-crossing the highway; disappearing into woods and hills to and emerge hours later. This railway zigzag-paralels the Trans-Canada for, I think, its entire length.

my friend the railroad

After almost two weeks of solitary travel I’d begun to take comfort in seeing the trains as they slowly ambled past and vanished, sometimes passing in the distance, and sometimes quite near. Their presence reminded me that there were destinations beyond the russian doll horizons of this empty northern void. And, when a train passed nearby, often the driver would sound its whistle and we’d exchange friendly waves. Trains are beautiful; their whistles are beautiful; way they move is beautiful. Second to cycling, they’re the kindest form of motion human beings have made.

this sign lies

By midmorning a stormfront of dark clouds I’d watched inch towards me for hours finally dropped its shadow and a mist of rain across the road. I pulled to the gravel margin to find my waterproof jacket and put it on. This was useless: as I remounted my bike and set myself to going on, the real storm broke – a wall of water surged across the road, so thick that I was nearly drowned in the first instant. Continuing on was impossible; I looked about for shelter.

There was nothing: no half-abandoned shed; no thick stand of trees – and besides, my near-paranoid fear of snakes (the result of being almost-murdered by a viper as a child in Saudi Arabia) made me loathe the thought of sitting in abandoned sheds or dense woods even more than the prospect of huddling for hours in the downpour. There were a few farmsteads but their dilapidated condition and the rusted overgrown cars ornamenting their properties marked them as the habitations of rednecks. I loathe and fear rednecks almost as much as snakes.

Then, through a gap in the rain I saw a beacon:

a beacon

Like the Bat Signal succors law-abiding citizens with the knowledge that the Dark Knight exists to confront the merciless evils that stalk the back alleys of Gotham, the enormous smile painted on Gary and Alyss Rentz’s bright red barn offers wanderers on this lonely stretch of road reprieve from rain, snakes, and rednecks.

Following this beacon through the storm I made my way to that farm; past the half-open gate across the dirt driveway; past a joyous army of kitschy lawn ornaments; and to the foot of the stairs leading onto the covered veranda. There I saw an old man, resting his hands against the wooden railing as he stared off into the downpour. He hadn’t noticed me arrive, him looking away from the road towards the woods that fell away into a deep valley at the back of his property, and the deafening roar of the rain having obscured the sound of my approach.

“Um… hi. …I got caught in the rain,” I said.

He was startled for a moment – obviously not having expected any living thing to emerge from the deluge. But he quickly took in my soaked misery and the bike at my side.

“Oh – hello! You better come in, young man,” he said; as if having recognized the situation it had become perfectly normal and commonplace, “Bring your bike up here on the porch. Alyss!” he yelled into the house, “we’ve got a young feller on a bike!”

Gary and Alyss Rentz: Rural Superheroes!

I stayed with the Rentzs for the two hours the storm lasted. Alyss made some coffee and brought out a tray of cookies and muffins, and I told them how their barn had been a lifeline for me in the storm. And that led them to explain how they’d become a fixture in the world of International cross-Canada Cycling:

It had started with a European cyclist being caught in a similar situation and being drawn in by the barn. They were so welcoming that, when some friends of his were doing the same trip the next year, he gave them a letter to drop off at the Rentzs’. They were so moved by their hospitality that the cycle repeated itself and grew – more and more people stopped by, including a documentary film crew from Spain making a movie about cycling across Canada who included an interview with the them in the film. And, of course, people still see the barn through the rain and come by, as I had.

my bike resting on the Rentzs' porch

The Rentzs give everyone a meal and the chance for a hot shower, and they let them camp on their property, surrounded by the happy horde of lawn ornaments. In return, they get to trade stories with interesting people from all over the world. They love it.

I asked Mr. Rentz about the road ahead. He said there was just one campsite, only 80 kilometers or so away in Upsala; after that it was empty wilderness until you reached Ignace, 110 kilometers later. But, he said, there were abandoned logging roads along that stretch one could go down and find a clearing to camp in.

“Any bears around here?”

“Nope: the wolves have been getting into their dens during the winter and eating them. Not many bears, but lots of wolves.”

a pretty corner of the Rentzs' farm

“Seriously?”

He was serious. He told me about how, earlier in the summer, he’d been collecting wood in the forest behind his house when a pack of wolves had surrounded him, barking hungrily and glaring at him through the brush on all sides. Apparently the monsters had run out of bears to eat: they were overpopulated and hungry.

After the rain finally stopped, Gary took me on a quick tour of his property before I set out. After losing so much time in the mountains I was resolved to aim for Ignace – a total distance of almost 220 kilometers from where I’d begun the day in Kakabeka. As I was already down two hours from sitting out the storm, that’d be a hard ride. But with the alternative of camping amidst voracious bear-eating wolves, I’d damn well make it.

I passed a time zone on the way to Ignace but didn't feel any older.

Kids vs. Hippies vs. Cops vs. Me

I rolled into Ignace at dusk, barely clinging to enough conscious awareness to buy a bottle of whisky from the LCBO/convenience store/gas station on the edge town, and found the campground. It was a big, nearly-empty place. The owner, a friendly hippie, kept a trading library in the office and saw an opportunity to trade in my travel-worn copy of Wyndham’s ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ for something fresh and pulpy the next morning. But, too exhausted after the days ride to bother with that now, I instead bought a stack of firewood and pitched tent in a lonely corner of the campground, intending to get drunk by firelight.

But I’m no good at lighting a fire and my brain and body were far from working in harmony by this point; so I quickly went through the supply of newspaper I’d been given and got no action out of the logs. So I resolved to march down to the camp’s washroom and steal as much toilet paper and paper towels as I could carry to light on fire and chuck at the logs. While I was gathering up this stuff, I noticed that some naive ass had left an iPhone plugged in to charge in the bathroom power outlet.

I believe most people are good at heart; or at least I believe most people believe they’re good; or at least they want to believe that so desperately they become absolutely brilliant at rationalizing their acts of cruelty or apathy: necessity, pragmatism, and cultural norms are cheap and and easy substitutes for decency; allowing the most thoughtless assholes to tick all the necessary boxes in their vacuous mental checklist of ‘goodness’. Whoever had left his phone here was fucked.

On my way to the bathroom I’d noticed there were only two other occupied campsites in the place: one a quiet RV; the other a pack of rural delinquent kids, the ball cap-and-penis bearing members yelling and throwing beer at each other across a roaring fire while the tit-bearing set sat beneath their hair in mute bovine stupidity. I hoped the phone belonged to the kids. But, alas – not so.

About an hour later, well after I’d gotten my fire going with the help of a wad of toilet paper the size of a beach ball, and well after I’d settled down with my bottle of whisky, the campsite-owning hippie came by with another hippie in tow – the fellow from the RV. Of course I knew what had happened, but I waited for them talk.

“Um…” said the nice Campsite Hippie, “well… this guy’s phone was in the bathroom and now it’s, like, gone.”

“Yah, I saw it there an hour ago.” I didn’t say anything about it being far past stupid to have left it there; that’d be rubbing salt in an open wound. “Did you come by to ask me if I stole it?”

“No,” said Campsite Hippie. “Nah, not really,” agreed RV Hippy.

“Damn Right!” I said, “‘cuz you fucking well know those kids stole it.”

“Yeah,” said RV hippie. Campsite Hippie nodded solemnly, and continued: “but we’ve already been there and they say they didn’t even see it.”

“Well,” I said, getting to the point, “what are you going to do?”

“I dunno,” said RV Hippie. “I think we otta call the police,” said Campsite Hippie.

“Yah, you should do that,” I agreed, and they went off to do it.

About twenty minutes later the OPP showed up. They talked to the two hippies; they drove down to where the kids were camped and talked to them; they drove to my campsite to talk with me. There were two cops, a young cop with a brush cut and an old cop with a moustache: a cop moustache.

“I guess you haven’t found the phone yet?”

a cop moustache

“Nope,” said Moustache Cop. “Did you steal it?”

“Nah — the kids stole it.”

“How do you know they stole it?”

“Because I didn’t steal it and I’m the only other person here.” That’s called a process of deduction. “So,” again getting right to the point, “what are you going to do?”

“Well, there’s not much we can do,” said Moustache Cop.

“Guy was fucking stupid to leave it there,” chimed in Brushcut Cop. Moustache Cop gave him a dirty look.

“Yah, I kinda thought so too. Why don’t you search all our stuff – go ahead, I won’t sue ya.”

“Nah, we can’t really do that,” whined Moustache Cop.

“Well, what would you normally do when, like, something gets stolen?” They looked at me blankly, as though such a contingency had never arisen before. “I mean… either I stole it or the kids stole it. It’s around here somewhere, so why don’t you dig around and find it?” You know: do your fucking job?

Brushcut looked keen, but Moustache wasn’t happy with this doing-actual-policework line of thinking. “Well, we can’t really do that,” he said.

“Ok. How about this: why don’t you go over to those kids and make a big show. Say: ‘Ok: someone’s stolen the phone and nobody’s leaving this campground until we’ve found it. So we’re going to go to the office for half-an-hour and, if that phone’s not in the bathroom where you found it when we get back, you’re all staying here tomorrow morning when we bring in the dogs and search the entire place.” That’s what Poirot would’ve done.

Brushcut Cop looked hopefully at Moustache Cop, but the latter shook his head again: “We can’t do that.”

It was pointless. I sat and sipped my whisky and, a couple minutes later the cops pissed off.

As I said: people are good at heart; or at least good enough to let their laziness transform goodness into a meaningless formula. Moustache Cop had ticked all his boxes and poor naive RV Hippie was fucked.

EDIT: My drummer, Dave MacDougall, just read this and asked: “why didn’t the cops just call the guy’s phone?” Duh. It didn’t occur to me either, but I’d had a lot of whisky at the time.

as dusk fell on the road to Ignace packs of imaginary dire wolves emerged from the forest to devour my mind and reduce me to panic. Yet I stopped to take this picture, because it was pretty.

This is one of an ongoing series of posts transcribing my journal from this cycling trip. If you want to check out the rest of them they’re here.

I’d forgotten all about this ancient stuff and it was odd to listen to it again. I think most of it is music I wrote before I went to study composition at Queen’s University. My grades were so poor that they wouldn’t even consider me as a student – so I packed up all the music I’d written and brought it to John Burge (the head of the music department there) and asked him to look at it and let me study at the University.

He was really generous and gave me an exemption from the academic requirements for admission. Naturally, I was still one of the most awful students in the place and was lucky they didn’t throw me out again after a year.

Listening to this old music is, as I said, bizarre. Most of it is complete trash; but I suppose everyone starts somewhere. And there are some elements in it that are connected to how I write now – so it does sound like a very naive version of myself composed it.

Old Music:

A piano/violin duet:

…as you can surely guess, I played a lot of Schubert when I was young. I think this one’s one of my earliest scribbles because it’s so texturally simple-minded. But a nice melody though. And notice the elisions and primitively-clever chord substitutions? Classy!

A sonatina for piano, 2nd movement:

…that’s the second movement of a piano sonatina I wrote in my first year at University. I actually still like this one quite a bit.

Same composition, 1st movement:

…the first movement of that sonatina. Too repetitive I think; and the third movement is so awful I’m not going to even post it.

Variations for trumpet and piano:

…a composer I met at Queen’s, Matt Kryzanowski, played the trumpet. We did a few shows together, each of us writing music for the other to play. This is one of the bits I wrote for him. Cheezy ending, but there’s some good in this one too.

String Trio, 2nd movement:

…another very early piece: and definitely a Beethoven op.18 knock-off! It’s a very out-of-tune performance, but I wouldn’t want to argue it deserved better. Unfortunately it looks like only this movement was ever recorded.

So: that’s my oldest music. It’s not much to brag about, but fun to rediscover and hear after so many years… and not so awful that I’m too embarrassed to post it.

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 checked it out and: score one for Steve! It’s actually a beautiful show. I think the problem I had with it was that I couldn’t get the sounds I wanted out of the piano – everything I played was a little off from what I’d intended, so I wrote the gig off. But actually sometimes an endless series of mistakes adds up to something nice.

And it’s much easier for that to happen when you’re playing with these excellent musicians:

Steve Ward, trombone
Jon Meyer, bass
David MacDougall, drums

As usual for my improv shows, the music is about the life, ideas, and personality my basset hound Gus. The original Don’t Forget the Gus recording is here.

Don’t Forget the Gus 2: Don’t Forget the Gus Again

1 Does Bubblebees Bite?

2 Schnappi das kleine Krokodil

3 Clicker Training

4 Dreaming of a Darker Couch

5 Get Out of My Recycling You Fucking Hobo

6 I’m Not Retarded, I’m Very Mild

You can download mp3s of those songs here (.zip archive)

the Gus

i. a congealment of hitchhikers:

Regardless of how tight the fist of contemporary respectability, insecurity, and normalcy squeezes the human spirit, some tiny portion of wanderlust will always squeak through. That being so, I’m happy to report to you that hitchhiking culture is alive and well in Canada.

Throughout my cycling journey from Toronto to Saskatoon I found roadside rest stop washrooms graced as much by their marker-drawn slogans as by their misaimed urine: bold words like “pickup hitchers motherfuckerz!” and “the food at the Voyageur Restaurant is shit” mark the passage of generations of these brave souls. And along the entire breadth of the Trans-Canada Highway through Ontario, they’ve erected inukshuks to mark the spot where a man stood, thumb outstreched, fearlessly mocking the whims of fate and horny truckers alike.

a possibly-hitchhikerer-made Inukshuk!

Near the end of this day’s ride, climbing a newly-paved road up a great hill leading into Nipigon, I encountered a great congealment of hitchhikers. I’ve thought about what one might call a group of hitchhikers: a flock? a mob? A senate? But I’ve settled on congealment; because that’s what grease does when it settles down en-masse: it congeals.

packed and ready to go!

This was the hottest day I’d yet spent on the road, and the sun reflected off the shiny new blacktop in visible waves. I was sunburnt and exhausted, the helmet-strap tan that would take half a year to fade already beginning to mark me as a veteran of this long road. And the hitchhikers, having come this far only to find that they couldn’t carry from this point without a lift, had congregated here, and were now engaged in an intricate and unforgiving game of high-strategy:

The more scuzzy and intimidating amongst them jostled for position at the top and bottom of the hill, each struggling to be the first seen by a hitcher-friendly car coming their way. They played out this vicious game with complete nonchalance: as a hitcher eased slowly past whoever was in pole position, he did so with the pretense of ‘just stretching his legs a bit’; and when passed in turn he’d make no complaint but merely bide his time for a suitable interval before upping the stakes with another five-meter stroll.

The milder hitchhikers, occupying the middle of the hill, adopted a different strategy: these formed partnerships-of-convenience in hopes of speeding their way by sharing a car that, while unwilling to stop for a single thuggish hitcher at either end of the hill, might yet be willing to stop for two friendlier looking hitchers despite their inferior strategic positioning.

ii. Dominic “Hollywood” Filane… where is he now?

Have you ever considered what becomes of our sporting heroes when they find their brief spark of youthful glory isn’t equal to the three score and ten years we’re allotted on this Earth?

a younger Dominic Filane meeting the Queen!

Well, if that sporting hero is Dominic “Hollywood” Filane, Olympic boxer and Canadian Lightweight Champeen from 1990-1999, he moves to a small northern Ontario town (in this case Schreiber) and puts the Filane name on everything associated with the place. On the way into Schreiber is a gargantuan wooden cut out featuring a picture of the boxer and a proud scroll: “Schreiber: Home of Dominic “Hollywood” Filane!”

And he’s obviously invested his boxing earnings, as well as his weighty name-recognition capital into a multi-pronged but strangely localized business venture: Filane™ bottled water; Filane™ clothes; and, when I saw the Filane Hotel this morning my curiosity demanded I stop in there for a coffee.

The Filane Hotel, in Schrieber

The ex-Lightweight Champion himself soon pulled up in a SUV bedecked with the logo of the Filane™ clothing line, and I said hello. He seemed a very nice guy. But I wonder if there isn’t some sadness beneath the surface of this scene: pride and physical prowess translate awkwardly to a rural corporate logo. Regardeless, and as I’m sure isn’t the case for the majority of athletes, he seems to have found a way to step from his career in sports to something he finds worthwhile, even if it’s a little cheezy and a hell of a lot less flashy.

iii. blueberry cult!

Sometime after Schreiber, nearing the end of the mountains, I stopped for a rest in a beautiful valley which is the home of a Native band… I think called ‘Pays Plat’? Anyway, if you ever happen to be passing that way I highly recommend you keep an eye out for this place, because the owner of the little gas station/convenience store there is awesome!

the top of the last big hill... almost there...

“Don’t give up man!” he yelled when I opened the door, “there’s just two more big hills to go!”

“Hallelujah!” I replied.

...going down that other side!

“Yup,” he continued in the slow, inflectionless I’m-Native-and-I’m-gonna-make-a-joke-now voice I’d gotten to love by this point, “when you get to the top of the second hill, look west: on a clear day you can see Calgary from there.”

“Heh, heh.”

“Yup, it’s a big hill, but I bet you won’t have to pedal for an hour on the way down.” That was pretty-much true.

I bought three chocolate bars, two cans of pop, and two packs of cigarettes. “If you’re gonna eat shit like that, you oughta buy some of my blueberries,” he said, his eyes expressing deep sorrow at the blueberryless state of my diet. Then he pulled up a big tub of blueberries from a cooler behind the counter and, with more pride than you’d think it possible for a blueberry-monger to express, he rhapsodized on the freshness, taste, and healing power of his blueberries.

My heart was moved by his love of that humble fruit and I bought a pint of the things. Nodding in solemn satisfaction, like a preacher who knows he’s converted a wandering soul to the path of Righteousness, he said “hold on – you’re gonna want more of those later.” And he drew me a map to the location in Thunder Bay where his brother also sold blueberries.

iv. it’s good to laugh loud.

As I sat at a picnic table outside the store eating my magical blueberries, a husband and wife team of rednecks pulled up in an ancient pickup laden with furniture. The fellow was curious about my bike and we chatted for a bit while his partner went inside to replenish their supply of jerky.

Nipigon!!

They were on their way to “near Ingersoll” after having driven to Alberta to pick up the furniture his wife had recently inherited. He gave me his impressions of the road ahead (confirming the 2-hill hypothesis) and I told him about what I’d been up since leaving Toronto. As we talked I noticed that he’d laugh at every little joke as though it were the funniest thing he’d heard in his life. At first I was confused by this: this man obviously wasn’t a stupid yokel – to the contrary he was very smart and funny. But I soon realized that he was doing this because he felt precisely the same way speaking to me as I felt speaking to him: we looked; and talked; and were so entirely different from each other that laughing loud was the best possible way of expressing friendliness and understanding. It was a generous thing, and I liked him. When his wife got back from the store with jerky, cigarettes, and the inevitable pint of blueberries, we wished each other good luck for the rest of our respective journeys and went our separate ways.

v. Stillwater C.G.; southwest of Nipigon

The day’s ride ended at Stillwater Campground, about 10k southwest past Nipigon. This is another spot I can heartily recommend: unlike most campgrounds, which charge the same rate for a single peaceful cyclist as for a minivan full of screming, campsite-destroying, injury waver-necessitating children, at Stillwater C.G. if you get there by bike you can stay for $6.

Gus' Restaurant, Nipigon. I took this photo solely because I have a basset hound named Gus..

If you’ve just discovered this journal and are interested in reading the rest of the entries, they’re here.

Zeno’s Paradox of Infinite Disitance:

Before arriving, one must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. This requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.

Along the north shore of Lake Superior, the Trans-Canada Highway becomes a 300km long slow-motion roller coaster. The slopes seem to grow as you grind slowly up, unfurling an endless length of road behind while maintaining a constant distance between yourself and the summit. Then there’s an endless drop down the other side; a short trip across a forest valley; and another, bigger, hill.

hills, hills, hills

As I was struggling up one of these endless climbs, the strange apparition of a tandem bike flying the Quebec flag and ridden by two beautiful girls in shorts and bikini tops appeared at the crest of the hill. In a moment they’d shot past me and around the curve, their tinkling bike bells fading away; and I wondered whether it had been a hallucination brought on by the heat and exhaustion. Ray had been right a week ago when he’d told me “the north shore is rough, but it’s worth it because it’s beautiful”, and right in more ways than he knew.

By mid-afternoon, I had to once again decide between settling for a shorter-than-planned mileage for the day and stop at a provincial campground or pushing on and trying to reach Terrace Bay. As usual I decided to go for the longer ride: a policy of keeping ahead of schedule that would eventually pay off when, in a couple weeks, I’d collapse at a campsite in Gladstone, Manitoba and sleep for a day and a half.

hills, hills, hills

So today’s ride took me as far as Terrace Bay. The campsite there was a strange and vaguely disreputable place: a ragged putt-putt golf course, an office/store exclusively devoted to huntin’ and fishin’ supplies (and the display of stuffed corpses of various critters who’d been hunted and fished), a rotund and surly hostess. But she gave me the good news that “another bike guy is staying here”, which was great because I hadn’t yet had a chance to hang out with another cyclist.

The camping business at this campground happened in an isolated clearing well away from the sad putt-putt. Aside from a little tent with a beautiful bike next to it, the place was completely deserted.

The little tent belonged to Henri:

Henri!

Henri is from Montreal. He’d started in Vancouver (I don’t remember how long it’d taken him to come this far). We hung out and chatted about strategy, various methods of tackling hills, and the good and awful places we’d stopped in. As an adventurer, Henri was a true professional: in the true spirit of camaraderie he pointed out that the gears on my bike were useless for hills like these, a fact I’d clued-into just the day before.

He even had a cute little butane stove with which he cooked a nice pasta dinner for himself as I foraged for bits of wood to make a fire and boil my horrible Mr.Noodles; and sat sipping wine while I mixed whisky and coke by taking sips from both bottles in quick succession. True to form, I couldn’t get the damn fire started and had to borrow Henri’s stove. I felt like Rob Ford at an astrophysics convention.

hills, hills, river, hills

I finally got my fire going just after Henri had gone to bed and bitterly regretted that he wasn’t awake witness my success. But I soon had other company in the form of a German who’d pulled into the campsite on a motorcycle a little earlier. He was doing a circle-tour of Lake Superior, and gave a heroic account of his übermanly touring philosophy: a man; a bike; a bag of pepperettes; a block of cheese.

And he took up the justly-common theme of blasting the Provincial Park campgrounds, making the distinctively German sound of contemptuous dismissal: a sort of raspberry-spit-pop (if you’ve been to Germany, you know what I mean), while complaining about how regressive a country that doesn’t allow campgrounds to sell beer must be.

Too right!

***

If you’ve just joined this story, here’s a link to the rest of the posts in the Cycling Blog: Toronto-Saskatoon series.

By now I’d travelled more than 900 kilometers, more or less straight north. And I’d discovered that, that far north, and particularly along the shore of Lake Superior, it gets unbelievably cold at night. Even in August.

As beautiful as it was when I made camp, I woke in a shivering cold hours later. I’d brought only a light bedroll with me; not fully realizing that, while 10% of Canada defies human habitation eight months of the year, the rest is uninhabitable year-round. I’d have to buy a proper sleeping bag when I got a chance, until then I’d go with the time-honoured strategy of simultaneously wearing all the clothes I’d brought with me, extra underwear on my head.

This is my morning brew:

Nothing gets you going after an awful night wearing three pairs of underwear on your head like a cup of coffee fortified with little twigs and ash from the fire. As I sipped this mess I got out my map and schemed a bit:

Thunder bay was the end of the mountains, and it was 500 kilometers away. I knew that in this terrain I couldn’t keep to the 160 kilometer daily quota I’d set myself, so I figured I could give myself four days to get that far and still be a little ahead of schedule.

Riding against a strong headwind, which I had to do again for this entire day, is rough. Not just because you have to work harder, but because it throws a spanner into the foundational mechanics of long-distance cycling. It disrupts rhythm and momentum. Ordinarily, one reads the terrain ahead and sets a pace, recognizing ahead of time when you’ll have to push and when you’ll be able to let an easy bit of road carry you along with minimal effort.

The wind throws that off: instead of pedaling accumulating momentum every stroke is microscopic gesture of defiance against entropy. Fighting the Second Law of Thermodynamics is no fun.

On the other hand, Northern Ontario is really gorgeous. Just look at this:

a beautiful lake, near Wawa I think

Around 3:30 this afternoon I stopped at the ‘Halfway Lodge’ (halfway between Wawa and White River?). It’s a little motel, gas station, and mini grocery store.

The Halfway Lodge: Highly Recommended

When I brought my new stock of water, instant coffee, and noodles to the counter the lady was on the phone with the electric co., having a bad time because they’d sent her some documents in an email and – being from northern Ontario – was really confused by the interwebs. She told me “hold on a second, honey. I’ve really got to sort this out.” I pointed to the pot of coffee on the counter; she nodded; so I poured a cup (with no ash) and went outside to smoke closer to the gas pumps.

When I finished the coffee I went back in. She was still on the phone, getting more flustered. She shrugged apologetically and went on “…I don’t think you sent it. I’m looking at your email and I don’t see it.” I diagnosed the problem instantly and asked her if I could help. She said into the phone: “Hold on, there’s a young man here who says he can help.”

I explained the mystical concept of attachments, and how they reveal their secret contents with a click. It was a revelation. She called out her husband to meet the city slicker genius whose tech savvy had saved their business. They were really nice and I stayed to talk with them for a while.

The husband gave me some advice about the road ahead: he was pretty sure that the Tourist Office at White River lets cyclists camp out on their lawn. He wasn’t totally sure, but he told me that the office closes at 6:00 and if I got there before then I could confirm this valuable information. I thought: 40k in two hours – no problem. But he was wrong; that office closes at 5:00.

So a little before 6:00 I found myself in White River. The tourist office was closed, but there was a lawn behind it that looked nice for camping. I was a dubious of my “free camping” tip; I was thrown into turmoil by the unfathomable absence of paranoid bureaucratism: this was land, well-manicured public land. Ergo stopping here must be a crime.

I decided to play it cool: next door to the Tourist Office was a little road stop, half A&W, half store selling Winnie the Pooh crap. Oh… I forgot to mention: White River (or at least somewhere nearby) is the supposed birthplace of the actual bear that got trapped as a cub and shipped off to a zoo where some little tyke thought it was cute and some other fellow wrote a story about the bear’s potentially-happier life in which it doesn’t live in a miserable little cage. Sorry for that if you love Winnie the Pooh. I don’t care for the Pooh myself; I’m more of a Velveteen Rabbit sort of guy.

Anyway, I went to the A&W and bought two enormous root beers to mix with the bottle of whisky I’d bought earlier that day; went back to the little park behind the Tourist Office, dumped enough root beer from one the A&W cups to make room for a suitable dose of whisky, got out my travel worn copy of John Wyndham’s ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’, and settled down at one of the picnic tables. Keeping an eye on the scene while trying to project a ‘I’m just taking a break, might move on at any moment’ vibe.

Picnickers came and left. The sun began to set. I was waiting for another camper to show up – in a situation of psychological dissonance, two makes a quorum. Nobody came. I analyzed the topography of the little park strategically: which of the little clumps of bush and trees might obscure the tent from most angles? No: it was an indefensible position. Sun Tzu would not be proud. If I camped here everyone in White River (according to Wikipedia, 841 people) would know.

But I was rescued by an Albertan-Nova Scotian on the run: A big RV pulled into the Tourist Office parking lot; a fellow got out; stretched; walked over toward my picnic table. He looked off to the horizon, examined the placard on the Tourist Office wall advertising the virtues of Winnie the Pooh. He comes back to the table, looks off to the horizon again. He obviously wants to talk. “Hello,” I say, “are you staying here tonight too? I heard it’s free.”

Mr. Kevin Kennedy, holding one of the infamous cups.

His name was Kevin Kennedy. His wife in Alberta had told him to take his motorcycles, his trailer, and his cat, and fuck off. So he was on the way back to Nova Scotia, where he’s originally from, and where his family has a piece of empty land where he can park his trailer and start over.

He knew welding, had a great big Manx Cat and a sense of humour. Which, I suppose, is all anyone really needs in this life. We shared the last of my whisky and chatted about some of the adventures we’d both had on the road.

***

If you’ve just joined this story, here’s a link to the rest of the posts in the Cycling Blog: Toronto-Saskatoon series.

Intimidating.

But during this cycling odyssey I confronted a greater nemesis than theirs: Lake Superior. Moriarty matched Holmes’ intellect; but if asked to blow into his adversary’s face for five straight days, he’d have to fetch his inhaler. And, although Voldemort can summon monsters derivative of much better-written fantasy books to hassle Harry and co., I don’t think he conjured mountains to impede the hero’s progress.

Nemeses (l-r): Moriarty, Voldemort, Lake Superior

I’d been warned by Ray that the north shore of Lake Superior was the most brutal part of the route he’d encountered – “tougher than the Rockies”. But he was traveling east with the wind at his back; while I was traveling west with the wind in my face. And now, as I started north along the east shore of Superior, it was screaming.

I’ll never forget my first views of the lake as I biked north toward Montreal River: pine trees clinging to the edge of barren rocky cliffs, twisted to bend inland away from the wind and waves. And an endless distance of grey water to the horizon. A merciful thing about traveling through forest and hills is that your view is finite: an interesting point just ahead defines an immediate objective, you pass it, there’s another. It’s fair and reasonable.

the east shore of Lake Superior: Windy.

But skirting the lake, seeing it disappear over the horizon, and understanding that this too-distant horizon represented but the slightest fraction of the distance between myself and my destination was an awe-inspiring moment. So I stopped and bought a couple tall cans of Budweiser from a weird indian truck stop.

And in wind-wracked cove I performed a sacred rite: For half an hour I sat cross-legged on a stone, my feet resting in the frigid water, sipping a beer and staring at the lake while it spat wind and spray in my face. I contemplated; I suffered; my spirit waxed and waned with the waves. Then I stood up on the rock and yelled at the top of my lungs:

Location of Sacred Lake Taunting Ritual

“Fuck you, you big bitch! You’ve been blowing at me for days, but you didn’t stop me: so here I am! I tried bargaining with you to cut it out; I pleaded with you to stop, but you didn’t. Well listen to me: you’re nothing but God, you fucking lake. And I’m man. Man is bigger than God, and I’m going to kick the shit out of you.”

And I opened the other tall can of Budweiser and poured it into the lake before turning my back on it in contempt.

****

Montreal River! (is very far away from Montreal)

At Montreal River there’s a nasty slope to climb, the sort that plays games with your soul by pretending that, just around the next bend, it levels off; and doing that several times in succession. By noon I’d made it to the summit, losing a water bottle where I stopped to check out the skeleton of a bear half-buried in the sand below the shoulder of the road.

Then, long after I’d given up anticipating each new bend in the rise being the last, I came around a sharp turn to find that I’d arrived at the top of the rise: I was hundreds of feet above the lake now, looking down at pine forest. Ahead of me was more than 100 kilometers of Lake Superior Provincial Park.

The rest of the day was a test of endurance. That park has a campsite at its southern and northern ends, and I decided to push for the farthest campsite: I knew I’d lose a lot of time in the mountainous terrain on the north shore of the lake so I felt I had to push myself here. I reached Rabbit Blanket Campground at dusk, completely exhausted. But: more than 200k today in rough terrain – for the first time I was absolutely sure I’d make it.

My bike, defying God and Lake Superior.

Do you know how to replace a broken spoke on a bike? Only the most unbelievable idiot would attempt biking thousands of kilometers through the bear-infested wilderness of northern Canada without this basic skill. Needless to say, I had absolutely no idea how to replace a broken spoke until the day before I set out on this trip.

That day I’d stopped by my ‘friend’ Greg Oh’s house to borrow his tent. Being an experienced long-distance cyclist, Greg asked me about the equipment I was bringing:

“Do you have a compact inflatable mattress?” “No. I’m just going to sleep on the ground. I’m not soft and weak like you, Greg. Don’t need no mattress.” “You can borrow my mattress if you want.” “Ok, thank you.”

“Do you have a mosquitoproof hazmat jacket with mesh hood?” “No. I don’t care about mosquitos. I’m not soft and weak like you, Greg.” “You can borrow my mosquitopoof hazmat jacket if you want.” “Ok, thank you.”

Greg Oh: not a manly man.

“Do you have a headband with a light on it you can wear at night to read.” I pitied this soft, weak, helpful, generous man. “No, I don’t want your damn light, Greg. I will make fire with sticks and read by that light… like a real man.”

Me armwrestling vs. a German giant: manly, man.

“Do you have lots of spare spokes?” Shit! This I didn’t have. I’d been meaning to learn how to fix broken spokes but, with all the things I’d had to do, I’d forgotten about it. “Yeah, I’ve got spokes… lots of spokes. Of course I have spokes: do you think I’m fucking stupid?” I snorted at him and rode off to panic.

At home I devised a plan. I had some old bike wheels hanging from a hook in the back room. I’d do a crash course: take a wheel apart and then put it back together again. This took a long time. It’s not just a matter of unscrewing the spokes from the wheel and putting them back on. The tension of each spoke has to be in equilibrium with all the other spokes or the wheel will wobble and the poorly tuned spokes will be all the more likely to break.

But eventually I got that old wheel spinning with just a slight lilt. I knew how to replace spokes! And, better yet, I could save myself a trip to the bike shop to buy backup spokes: I could just take these old spokes off this wheel. Sure, they’re rusty, but they’ll do.

And that, my friends, is how to avoid one profound stupidity by replacing it with an equal but different stupidity: those rusty old spokes were the wrong size for my bike.

* * * *

On the open road, no one can hear you scream.

So, early in the morning of August 4 2010, after having coffee with my friends at Brownlee Camp (and their parrot) I found myself stranded on the side of the Trans-Canada. My first broken spoke of the trip happened while I was exchanging waves and bike bell tally-hos with some cyclists heading west. I found a shady place on the shoulder, took off the tire (front tire… oddly enough I never broke a spoke on the back) and had a go at replacing the busted spoke with one of the old ones I’d brought along.

About fifteen minutes in the nature of this problem struck me: I couldn’t tighten the new spoke not because its threading was worn out (as I’d come to suspect) but because the spoke was too damn short for the thread to meet the groove at all.

You’d think I was screwed, wouldn’t you? Well, if so, you’re sorely underestimating the resourcefulness of someone stranded in the wilderness with little prospect for non-humiliating assistance.

After much pondering, I figured out that if I varied the criss-cross pattern the spokes were arranged in, two short spokes in parallel would cover the distance to the wheel rim. So I removed an extra spoke:

And added two short spokes:

…and, amazingly, it worked.

By the end of this day I’d passed through Sault Ste. Marie, stopping to pick up some spokes of the proper length at a nice bike shop called ‘Velorevolution’, and camped at a campground called ‘Blueberry Hill’.

heading toward some intimidating tall hills...

I’ve been a fan of Tank Riot for a long time and I’m really proud that something I made contributed in a small way to one of their shows.

They use a track from The Torture Memos as the outro to the show, and say some nice things about Kristin’s voice. It’s part of Episode 103, which is mostly about their all-time favorite novels.

If you don’t know Tank Riot you’re missing out. It’s the champion of all podcasts. Check it out!

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!

It’s entirely likely that, as Facebook claims, their blocking of this link is an automated part of their system (and no – it has nothing to do with it being a link to Pirate Bay. You can link to anything else on that site). Even taking that at face value, the fact that responsibility for censorship is delegated to automation doesn’t make it ok. Particularly when exactly the same thing happened when Wikileaks released their “Collateral Murder” video.

Were my experience with Facebook otherwise positive I’d likely not have jettisoned it on this account. But it’s not been positive. In fact it’s generally been a rather cynical experience.

A few other things I hate about Facebook:

1) The system is set up to encourage a silly sort of morality. When you become “friends” with someone, they see everything you post. When they see things they don’t like, they can choose to not have your posts appear in their feed. You continue to see their posts until they say something offensive enough to you to make the block mutual. So congeniality and mildness directly translates to a broader diffusion of information. It’s built into the system.

2) The friends-web structure of Facebook translates to insularity. While some of the people I associated with were very independent-minded and published lots of strange and interesting ideas and links, the vast majority constantly bounce variations on pre-ordained political and social values. I don’t enjoy echo chambers.

3) As a musician and promoter of music I find the event invitation system awful. The overload of rubbish information everyone receives necessitates shifting the way you engage people with your work: from content-based information to cute aphorisms and social manipulation. That might work well for some, but not for me.

one last manipulative push from Facebook

Having dropped Facebook, I’ve started using my long-neglected Twitter account. Of course Twitter has some of the same nonsense about it, as any social media will. But with only 140 characters per post it’s impossible to grasp the personality of the people you’re interacting with; and yes, I do consider that a very good thing. Coming to terms with the repulsiveness of humanity isn’t something to trivialize. People are strange and disgusting creatures, which is a large part of what makes us worthwhile.

Also I’ll be updating this blog a lot more frequently. So come back and visit sometime soon. I’m lonely… I just lost 400 friends.

Last Thursday I performed at the 416 Creative Music Festival. It’s a festival of improvised music that happens every year at the Tranzac. Even though I’m not really part of that community (i.e. I haven’t done a purely improvised concert for many years) David Dacks, who was curating that night’s show, asked me to put a band together for it.

So I ended up playing with three really great musicians: Nicole Rampersaud (trumpet), Steve Ward (trombone), and David MacDougall (drums). It was a good show and a lot of fun. I think I’m going to look to do more shows of this sort.

There wasn’t any concept or narrative to the music we made; but on listening back to it I find the tonal language to be pretty consistent throughout. It’s the collective personalities and musical references of all four of us, and I like how it sounds.

I’ve made a page for Crazy Angry and Bored here. The recording from that show’s there now.

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

Woke up in my bushcamp outside Tobermorey feeling surprising well rested. I was back in Tobermorey by 7:30, intending to catch the Chi-cheemaun Ferry to Manitoulin Island but discovered that the early ferry had left at 7:00 and the next trip across wouldn’t be leaving until after 10:00. So I had breakfast and decided to spend a bit of time cleaning my bike (pushing it through the bush to and from my guerilla camp hadn’t been good for it) and patching the tubes that were punctured yesterday, in case I needed them later on.

doing some bike maintenance while waiting for the Chi-Cheemaun

While I was working I looked up and noticed a native guy with sun-bronzed skin wearing a cycling outfit had stopped and was watching me. He saw me looking at him and broke into a big friendly grin. “You biking?” he asked the obvious in a slow monotone.

“Yup, I’m biking,” I said. “Are you biking?”

“Yup. Where are you going?”

“Toronto to Saskatoon,” I said.

He thought for a moment. “Take you four days so far?”

“Just my third day today.”

“You’re pretty quick. Good stuff!”

“How long have you been on the road?”

“Hmm… I left Vancouver on the 13th of May.”

“No shit! You’ve been on the road for three months?!”

“Yup. I’m slow.”

my comrade-in-wheels: Ray

I hung out with Ray for more than an hour. A really great, if enigmatic, person. When I asked him why he wanted to do this trip he answered “Just thought I’d take care of some of my bucket list”. Not many people can say something like that in a way that’s neither ironic nor insipid, but he could. He talked always in a slow monotone without any inflection to differentiate between seriousness and jokes. I found it very striking: most people do everything possible to make sure know when you’re supposed to laugh and when to nod gravely. Ray was full of humour but he didn’t give a fuck whether or not I noticed. I liked him a lot.

He’d come to Tobermorey to meet his brother who lived a ways south of town, but it wasn’t at all clear whether he was staying here or not. When I asked him about that he said something along the lines of “well, I’m not selling the bike.” Before he left he gave me a set of brochures and business cards from the campground he’d found and liked; told me which towns had decent bike shops (also told me that, if I got a chance I should stop at Petrie’s Cycle in Thunder Bay and thank Mr. Petrie for doing the good turn of fixing Ray’s rear wheel for cheap – he says it’d “cracked up somewhere in Manitoba”. I did manage to pass on his thanks).

His advice about the road ahead: “when you get north of Lake Superior there are some mountains. It’s not that bad. There are a couple big slopes coming up just south of Espanola too. You’ll get there tomorrow, and if you can do that Superior will be ok.”

the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry disgorging some motorcycles

The Chi-Cheemaun Ferry is huge. Apparently it can carry 150 cars in one trip. The lower part of the hull is a huge hollow tube, like an airplane hanger, and most of the cars go on both the bottom level while some sit above them on a level of magically-suspended scaffolding. Unfortunately my camera soon ran out of batteries so I couldn’t take any photos of the trip across to Manitoulin. I explored the ship, finding my way around all the decks until it started to rain. Then I found there was a bar and hung out there drinking and playing euchre with a bunch of motorcycle-riding folks I’d met while waiting for the ferry after Ray’d left.

my bike leaning against the wall of the Tourist Office at the north end of Manitoulin Island (notice the pouring rain)

The sun had come back out by the time we reached Manitoulin and stayed with me for the first twenty kilometers of the seventy kilometers to the other side of the island. But then it got ugly. I got well soaked and ended up taking shelter in a Tourism Office near the north end of Manitoulin for a couple hours (…some of you got my pathetic Facebook update from there…). But the rain didn’t look like quitting and I wanted to get as near to Espanola as possible, so around 5:00PM I decided to put my rain jacket on and push on.

Between the north end of Manitoulin and the mainland there’s a series of smaller islands connected by bridges. The bridge to Great Cloche Island is a very strange bridge, designed by either an idiot with no budget or a sadist with unlimited resources, that rotates 180 degrees to allow ships to pass through. It has only one narrow lane so traffic from either direction has to line up and take turns. Not a fun experience on a bike in the pouring rain. But that bridge is the border to the real North. On the other side one immediately notices the change in the air – the sharp dark smell of coniferous forest.

About a kilometer further, riding along a long strip of road running through swampy bush, I saw a little group of people huddling in the rain on the edge of the road. As I reached them I saw it was three native kids, maybe eighteen or twenty-year olds, two guys and a girl. As I was going by, one of the boys called out “Hey! Do you have any cigarettes?”

I realized that I did have exactly four cigarettes left and they were getting soaked in the rain, so the four of us who’ve been suffering in the rain might as well have them now. I skidded to a stop and gave them each a smoke. We hung out for a while by the road, chatting about my trip and the pow wow they’d been to on Manitoulin the day before and drank from a water bottle full of melon-flavoured vodka. They were trying to hitch a ride north to Birch Island and they must’ve got one soon after I left them because a minivan went screaming by with the guy who originally asked me for cigarettes hanging half out of the window and yelling “Have a great trip!!”

The rain finally stopped when I made it past the little chain of islands (including Birch Island) onto the mainland north of Lake Huron. The road here got pretty rough, with lots of steep ascents and drops. But it was beautiful and, as Ray had said, taking these hills made me feel better about the prospect of going through the mountains north of Superior.

It was here that I met a bear:

this isn't the bear I met, it's just a random picture of a bear.

And I met this bear at a very bad moment: I was coming down one the steep hills when, just about 30 meters ahead of me, it suddenly came out of the thick bush on the side of the road – right in front of me and I was going too fast to stop. In a very short moment I did a mental analysis of the situation and decided that the best course of action was to yell my head off while accelerating as fast as I can and trying to swerve past the bear. I figured yelling at it was better than startling it as I went by and that accelerating towards it would make it think I was attacking it and not something it wanted to chase. Also I had some sort of (in hindsight) absurd idea that, should the bear lunge at me, I’d do better to crash into it at full speed.

When I yelled the bear got up on its back legs and turned toward me. It had a strange glazed-over look in its eyes that gave me hope: it was exactly the same look my dog Gus gets when he’s startled by a plastic bag blowing across the sidewalk and doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to fight or run.

So I went by the bear. It was almost in the middle of the road and I stayed as far away as I could, but if I stretched out my arm and it stretched out its paw, we could’ve shaken hands. But it didn’t try to get me. It just pivoted its head to follow me with its stupid, glazed-over eyes. Then I was passed it and I just flew for fifteen minutes, going over two more big hills like Alberto Contador before I dared to look back.

Night 3: Camping near Espanola

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!