What I have learned this past week…

July 26th, 2010, posted in Riding

So I’ve been a motorcycle owner for a week now (10 days if you want to split hairs) and I’ve been thinking a lot about riding. I’ve learned so many new things in the past three weeks between the riding course and riding my own bike (and granted, much of what follows comes from riding a scooter in Vancouver for the better part of a year). I am quite aggressive in traffic on the scooter, completely the opposite on the motorbike. Level of confidence in my ability to control what’s underneath me. There are huge differences between the scooter and the motorcycle, some obvious, some not so obvious.

I’ve had to learn to take a moment to mentally tell myself which bike I am on and go over the controls for a moment or two before I leave…what is the rear brake on the scooter is the clutch on the motorcycle, not a mistake you want to make at road speeds. My sportbike doesn’t have a centre stand…my scooter doesn’t have a side stand…pay close attention to what you are on before you get off the bike or it might end up on the ground! On the motorcycle, I hang on with my knees and do important things with my feet….on the scooter…nothing going on in the lower half of the body. I wasn’t sure if I should ride the scooter while getting used to the motorcycle. After not riding the scooter for a week, I now realize I need to ride both consistently because, believe it or not, the scooter is more difficult to manage after riding the motorcycle. The weight is all wrong on a scooter after being on the motorcycle and it’s easy to forget that the centre of balance is completely different. The motorcycle may be bigger, heavier and more powerful, but it is actually somewhat more logical to balance because of the riding position…at speed…the scooter is definitely easier at low speed, but only because it is so much lighter and doesn’t want to leap out from underneath you at a minute pressure on the throttle.

Things I have learned:

  • There are significant differences in attitudes towards scooters and motorcycles:
    • You can park a scooter anywhere and people think it’s cute, park a motorcycle in the same spot and people think you’re a jerk
    • Stop at a crosswalk on a scooter and people look at you and smile. Stop at a crosswalk on a motorcycle and people look at you and frown. Stop at a crosswalk in a car and people don’t look at you (unless you are blocking the crosswalk, then they stare at you with hatred)
  • The passenger seat of a scooter is not as comfortable as the passenger seat of a motorcycle. The passenger seat of a motorcycle is not particularly comfortable.
  • Contrary to popular opinion, scooters are not any safer than motorcycles
  • Motorcycles aren’t dangerous, bad drivers are dangerous
  • The most dangerous thing on the road is the vehicle with the left hand turn signal blinking, if that is you, know that you probably aren’t judging speed and distance as accurately as you think you are
  • Drivers seem to automatically feel compelled to try and go faster than you to prove something (I’d say penis envy, but I don’t have one so I can’t really speak to that)
  • The exception to the above – at a stoplight it appears to be less common for the car behind you to jump the green light or honk if you take more than a millisecond to accelerate, particularly if you are on a scooter…it does happen, just not as commonly
  • Cars really hate you when you park a bike in a parking spot, but I’d rather be glared at than split a parking spot and have a cage knock my bike over because the driver has no concept of where the four corners are in relation to the world around him/her
  • Cars like to come to a stop three inches from the back wheel of a scooter/motorcycle – really, we don’t even know each other yet….
  • Ride a scooter and complete strangers want to strike up a conversation with you. Ride a motorbike and complete strangers want to strike up a conversation with you. Drive a car and no one wants to strike up a conversation with you (unless it’s a very special/unusual/vintage car)
  • Ride a scooter in the winter and almost every motorcycle on the road waves at you, ride a scooter in the summer and almost no motorcycles wave at you
  • Cruiser riders don’t like to wave at sportbike riders, however, they are more likely to wave back when a woman rider on a sportbike waves (ha ha, made you wave at a sportbike ;-) )
  • Always expect the unexpected, assume every driver/rider/cyclist/pedestrian is your enemy
  • Every driver should get on a scooter (at least) and spend a week in city traffic…. maybe then drivers would have more respect for the vulnerability of riders and drive smarter
  • Drivers can’t park properly near bikes
  • Motorcycles apparently have mysterious cloaking devices
  • Wearing shorts and a tank top on a motorcycle doesn’t make you look cool, it makes you look like a brainless idiot
  • Buses and crosswinds…. interesting combination …particularly at 90kph
  • Motorcycles stop fast, cars don’t – remember that when you get into your cage and don’t follow so closely!
  • Riding makes you focus, driving involves too many distractions (like coffee, the radio, the cell phone, children fighting in the backseat….)
  • Driving isolates you from the environment, riding immerses you in it
  • If you want to avoid running into something, whatever you do…. DON’T LOOK AT IT! The Law of Attraction (properly known as target fixation) will draw you towards what you look at, so look at where you want to go, not where you don’t want to go
  • Shifting from first to second, or from second to first…sometimes puts you in neutral. The bike doesn’t speed up or slow down in neutral.
  • Starting on a hill is not as hard as it seems – but you will still stall on occasion
  • Don’t believe your idiot lights… sometimes the neutral light isn’t on, but you are in neutral. They call them idiot light for a reason…only an idiot believes them all the time
  • When you crack the visor open on a full-face helmet, every speck of dust, floating seed and nearby bug will be siphoned straight into your eyes
  • Drivers assume that all sportbike riders are speed demons, some of us actually obey posted speed limits!
  • If you rev your engine next to me at a red light, I will let you think I will race you, then I will NOT go first and I WILL let you shoot into the intersection to find the red light runner in my stead. Thank you for being my stupid canary!
  • Motorcycles are hard to back up
  • “Spacious underseat storage” can be loosely translated to “You might be able to stuff a cell phone in there”
  • Few motorcycles have a gas gauge – know how far you can go on a tank of fuel!
  • You can’t think and ride – bad things happen
  • Relax…… when you are tense you are at war with the bike, which means that you are at war with yourself since the bike will only do what you tell it to do
  • Know your limit, ride within it, if you feel out of sorts, don’t get on the bike, find an alternative mode of transportation

I’m sure I’ll learn much more as I go…

Leave a comment

Six Degrees or Less

June 23rd, 2010, posted in Random Musings, That's Life

From Wikipedia:

Six degrees of separation (also referred to as the “Human Web”) refers to the idea that everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, “a friend of a friend” statements can be made to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. It was originally set out by Frigyes Karinthy and popularized by a play written by John Guare.

Long ago I stopped assuming that I wouldn’t know so-and-so from such-and-such.

Once, when I was a kid, we went to Hawaii. Sitting in the hot tub we got talking to a fellow in the pool. The usual conversation about where are you from…turned out he was best friends with one of my second cousins in a little town outside of Prince George.

Another time I was working in a hair salon and a kid several years younger than me came in. He asked where I was from, when I told him he said I might know his friend. I replied that PG had more than 50,000 people living there so the odds were slim. He gave me a name. I sheepishly replied that he had lived right behind me and I’d had a many-years long crush on his older brother. Man, does that make it look like a hick town!

I spent a month on a teensy little island off Oahu during Grad school. On our last day a girl, who had just arrived, and sat down with the three of us and said “I heard there were other Canadian here”. Turned out that she had lived down the street from one of my labmates and they knew a lot of the same people…in Toronto.

But yesterday was pretty amazing. I was at a BBQ for our volunteer group and one of the former students in the class started chatting with me. His wife had previously told me that he was from Salmon Arm, but we never got any farther than that. Last night he said to me “I think a relative of yours taught me in Grade 1″. Yup, my Granny was his grade 1 teacher, in Canoe. The man grew up in Canoe, a teensy little place outside of Salmon Arm that most people have never heard of. He also knew my Uncle and went to the church that my Granny played the organ for.

Small world indeed!

Leave a comment

Oil Addiction

June 9th, 2010, posted in The Environment

The history of our addiction to oil is nicely (or horribly) depicted in this music video.

1 comment

We All Share Some of the Blame for the BP Oil Spill

June 4th, 2010, posted in The Environment

The oil spill in the US is absolutely horrific, of that there can be no argument. But is it all BP’s fault? Don’t we all share some of the blame because of our over-consumeristic lifestyles? It’s easy to point the finger and yell and scream and call for boycotts and lawsuits. But will that fix anything?

No.

The North American governments don’t help. They hardly promote green energy or green living. Yes, they do lip service to it, but there are no tax breaks for green resources such as wind, solar and tidal energy. They offer no incentives to these forms of renewable resources and continue to provide massive tax breaks to the large corporation who donate heavily.

But what about you and I? Are we really doing anything? Not really. Why not? Because humans are inherently greedy and prone to self absorption. Sure, we all want what’s best for the ecosystem, “just don’t inconvenience me”. “Don’t make me pay more for anything”. “Don’t make me give up anything”.

We still drive big gas guzzlers and whine about high gas prices. I honestly think that gasoline is still too cheap here in North America. Cross the ocean and expect to pay $2 or more per litre. That’s the real price of fuel and I think we should be paying it here too. Then perhaps people will look for more fuel efficient and smaller vehicles, and automobile companies will be forced to capitulate and build more efficient cars and trucks. So stop whining for lower prices on gas and ask for higher ones! And don’t tell me I don’t understand, I live in a city with some of the highest fuel prices in North America, and I still don’t think they are high enough. Granted, the bulk of that price hike country by country is based on taxes, and if the prices are raised, then those taxes should be going towards environmental issues. Realistically, they probably aren’t. At least not enough of them.

So drive less, don’t run out “for just one thing” – be efficient in your vehicle time. If you just need “one thing”, see if you can manage without it, be a bit more flexible. Drive a more efficient vehicle, share rides, take the bus, walk, ride a bike, get a scooter…whatever.

Think about other things besides gas. Oil is used in a phenomenal number of items we take for granted. Should we be taking these things for granted, or should we be finding alternatives? Petroleum products are so ubiquitous I bet there are more than a dozen items within reach that are made from them. Some really have become vital everyday objects and last a long time, somewhat justifying their presence. Bandaids, rubbing alcohol, paraffin candles are all made with petroleum products. So are many soaps, detergents, hand lotions, skin creams, cosmetics, mouthwash, bubble bath, hair spray. Carpet, electrical cords, wall paper, shower curtains, patio furniture, polyurethane stains, garden hoses, plexiglas, floor wax, solvents. propane, antifreeze, motor oil, tires, brake fluid, windshield wipers, CDs and DVDs, bubble gum, balloons, nylon leashes, ammonia, insect repellent, polyester, rayon, crayons, shoe polish, watch bands, plastic clothes hangers, masking tape, fishing line, life jackets, nail polish, hair dyes, glue, aspirin, anaesthetics, ink, toothpaste, vitamin capsules, water pipes, yarn, telephones, shampoo, toothbrushes, computers and computer chips…the list is endless.

Obviously I’m not saying we have to give everything up, but I am saying that because we are so addicted to these products, that we share much of the blame for the horror in the Gulf. And there are so many things that we can (and should) do without.

Plastic bags and product packaging – don’t take bags at stores, use your own. And try to buy products with less packaging. Take a chance, try something different.

Pesticides and herbicides – Hopefully you’ve given up using these and I am 100% behind any legislation that would ban them from public use. If a dandelion is that offensive to you, go pull it up by it’s roots. Kids play on grass…do you really want them rolling around in toxins?

Teflon – This stuff really makes me nervous. Heat it too high and it gives off toxins that are deadly to birds. The day I discovered that (around the same time that we got a bird – about 18 years ago) – all teflon went out the door. Stainless steel is very non-stick if you use it properly. Heat it, add oil and let it heat, then add your food. Cleans up like a dream too.

Plastic lunch containers – It’s been well known for over 20 years that the chemicals in plastic (BPA, synthetic estrogens, endocrine disruptors) leach when heated, as in a microwave. I first learned about this at University in around 1993 – nothing has gone into a microwave in plastic since that day. That it was only made known to the masses in the last few years is mind-boggling. Use glass or steel.

If you have to buy plastics, and who doesn’t – they are unavoidable, look for ones that are made of recycled materials, or from non petroleum sources such as corn or soy.

Small steps are still steps, every little bit does help. Maybe we all need to be a little bit more inconvenienced once in a while. Maybe we all need to think a bit more in our day to day life about the little things we don’t usually think about.

It makes me sick to se what has happened because of our need for oil. The only way it won’t happen again in the future is if we all make an attempt to reduce our dependence on the stuff, even just a little bit. And because of human nature, the only way I can see that happening is if things shift radically, and we are forced to pay more for unhealthy, non-sustainable products, and less for healthy and renewable ones.

I can dream.

Leave a comment

Richard Dawkins on militant atheism

May 27th, 2010, posted in Critical Thinking, Random Musings

Long, but a great and highly entertaining lecture.

Richard Dawkins urges all atheists to openly state their position — and to fight the incursion of the church into politics and science. A fiery, funny, powerful talk.

If you don’t know of Dawkins -

As an evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins has broadened our understanding of the genetic origin of our species; as a popular author, he has helped lay readers understand complex scientific concepts. He’s best-known for the ideas laid out in his landmark book The Selfish Gene and fleshed out in The Extended Phenotype: the rather radical notion that Darwinian selection happens not at the level of the individual, but at the level of our DNA. The implication: We evolved for only one purpose — to serve our genes.

Of perhaps equal importance is Dawkins’ concept of the meme, which he defines as a self-replicating unit of culture — an idea, a chain letter, a catchy tune, an urban legend — which is passed person-to-person, its longevity based on its ability to lodge in the brain and inspire transmission to others. Introduced in The Selfish Gene in 1976, the concept of memes has itself proven highly contagious, inspiring countless accounts and explanations of idea propagation in the information age.

In recent years, Dawkins has become outspoken in his atheism, coining the word “bright” (as an alternate to atheist), and encouraging fellow non-believers to stand up and be identified. His controversial, confrontational 2002 TED talk was a seminal moment for the New Atheism, as was the publication of his 2006 book, The God Delusion, a bestselling critique of religion that championed atheism and promoted scientific principles over creationism and intelligent design.

“Dawkins … is a master of scientific exposition and synthesis. When it comes to his own specialty, evolutionary biology, there is none better.” Jim Holt, The New York Times

Leave a comment

« Older Entries