mini-bike jousting..
I missed Beer Trek... y'all gotta let me know how it went... ;).
It was a bright, sunny day here in Vancouver, yet with a crisp-cold ocean breeze from the west off the ocean. I took the newer bike into the wind through downtown and around Stanley Park. Much of the seawall on the far northeastern side of the park is still inaccessible (by bike, at least) because of all of the fallen trees from that severe windstorm back in mid-November. At some points, the wind got up to hurricane speeds - a reminder that global warming (or 'climate change') doesn't just mean that the weather gets hotter, more accurately, it means that the stable weather patterns that we've grown used to as a species for the past couple thousand years or so are being messed with and thus changing, which means more extremes in regions which formerly experienced more temperate weather (for example, the Pacific northwest coastline). I may be an artsy major, but I understand that much about physical geography. ;)
Dropped by the Saturday afternoon bike polo game rolling around on the Grandview Park tennis courts. Just got back from a little houseparty where people were mini-bike jousting and playing frisbee in the street outside the house. It's on a street in a light industrial zone looking out over abandoned railway fields towards west Vancouver, so there's not much traffic and the stereo in the kitchen was loud. There weren't many more people there that wasn't at the bike polo this afternoon, but there were some funny jousting dismounts and collisions with the frisbee guys chasing after discs in the street... heh.
It's an interesting way to get to know Vancouver, to be sure. I was reminded of why I was thinking it would be fun and interesting to do my thesis project on 'bike culture', but then I shied away from that idea because it felt too stupid and easy to just talk to all the people I already knew, instead of broadening the scope and making it more interesting to me. If anyone is serious about making a 'revolution' in North America, they now have to target making change in the setup of our cities, the physical infrastructure. We need to reorder them around more human needs - more livable means more respectful of the organic paces of natural life, not insisting on speed for speed's sake.
Me and the housemates were talking in the kitchen before, then went our separate ways to the party... it reminded me that this is a whole circle of people, a little community in a big(g-ish) city, that makes it more personal...