Populaire

Sunday was the 100 km populaire ride in Victoria.
I left at 7am, to get to Mill Bay to meet Dave, who gave me a ride to Victoria. The ride to Mill Bay was quite cold - the sun had only just risen when I left but the sky was perfectly clear. I was quite surprised by the amount of traffic on the roads at 7 am on a Sunday. There were several cars going the opposite way to me with squishy bikes on them. I think there was a downhill race in Cumberland or somewhere. I got to the Tim Horton's in Mill Bay at about 7:55, and had some milk and an apple fritter.
The ride started in Beacon Hill Park. I've only ridden down to Victoria twice, and it was almost raining both times, and I spent most of my time lost. I hadn't noticed that Victoria is so much nicer than Duncan. I have, however, noticed that there isn't really a park in Duncan - yes there are little bits of grass with gravel paths through them and stuff - but I really like big green parks in the middle of towns. Mum often used to take us to the Arboritum in Nottingham (pics 1, 2, 3). There were bird cages (pic), and duck ponds and the whole place was surrounded by thick brick walls with iron railings on top (pic), which made me think of the Secret Garden. It was quite a big park (or maybe it wasn't - I was small) with loads of trees, so there could have been a lot of people there and you wouldn't really notice. When I went to London I remember thinking Hyde Park was great - loads of trees in the middle of the city. There were loads of parks we used to go to: Wollaton Park with the deer (and crocodiles, according to Paula - why else would they fense of the water?), Evaston Castle (my favourite), Rutland Waters, Holme Pierpont, Sherwood Forest, Hickling Basin (does that count?). I look at Google Maps of the Cowichan Valley and there are loads of little trees (representing parks), and I go and find them and they turn out to be 10m square patches of grass with a totem pole in the middle. I only saw a bit of Becon Hill Park, so I'm going to have to go down again soon.

We set off at 10 am, and followed the water to the East through Oak Bay and up towards Sidney. The park seemed to continue along the shoreline with beaches and grassy bits. The trees were in blossom and the weather ride was great; sunny and warm enough not to get cold, but cool enough not to get hot. It was the perfect day for riding. I should have kept count of how many non-populaire cyclists were out - we passed so many riding in the other direction.
About 80 riders showed up for the populaire overall, 17 of which were doing an alternate 50 km route.
It's weird how quickly that many riders get spread apart and form groups. People pass and get passed until people find themselves with a group travelling at their pace (or cling to a group in fear of getting lost - and no, I wasn't the only one, lots of people said that!).
I found myself riding with in a group of five: husband and wife in matching yelow rain jackets, a fit-looking guy on a Lynsky, and another guy on a Surly Cross Check. We were keeping a decent pace of about 27 km/hr. I rode with them for the first 30 or so kilometers, and the I dropped my chain at the beginning of a hill and they were gone.
Then Ken Bonner (who I'd been introduced to by Dave - apparently the king of randonneuring) came up behind me and I rode with him for a bit. We had a conversation about how technically mided people tend to be drawn to cycling - I hadn't really noticed, but have begun generating informal statistics in my head - so far inconclusive. He wasn't actually doing the route, but was just out for a Sunday ride, so went a different direction. I rode by myself for a while, then came up behind a couple - one on a Madone, the other a Marinoni. I rode with them to the first control which was in Sidney, where I stayed fr about 20 mins, which seemed much longer than most. Some people just got their card stamped and rode off again.
I rode off from the first control with a gentleman on a Surly LHT called Scott (the man, not the Surly). The route headed back down the west side of the peninsula along the coast. He was used to a slower pace than me, so after about 20 kms I went on ahead. I soon met up with two guys: Phil on a vintage Marinoni with downtube shifters, and Tom on a Tricross. I rode with them for the rest of the ride.
The whole second half of the ride went slower than I usually ride, and I stayed quite a while at the first control, and I finished in 5:31. My legs felt fine, and I wasn't really tired either, so I'm thinking about doing the 200km "Tour de Cowichan" in two weeks.
Dave gave me a ride back to Mill Bay once he got back from his station at the secret control, and I rode home from Mill Bay, and still got back before dark.

I didn't take my camera, but there are some photos here.


Populaire distance: 105.2 km
Time: 5:31

Home to Mill Bay: 20 km
Total distance: 20+105+20 = 145km

a decent weekend

It rained all week, but was dry on the weekend.
I went for a short mountain bike ride with Hilary on Saturday, and on Sunday I rode to Duke Point in Nanaimo. I stopped at Transfer Beach on the way. It was dull all day, but not cold. It was only windy on the Duke Point peninsular. Almost all the photos I took that day were panoramas, so I'm still stitching...
The photos I took at the Saturday market are here.

Distance: 112 km

Not there...

My mum's gone back to England for 10 days.
I thought I'd search Flickr for some pics of Nottingham.
I don't remember this in the Old Market Square...
Click if you dare.

more light

I was really excited about the daylight savings time coming into effect last Sunday. I was looking forward to some light after work, for going riding and taking pictures and stuff.
We got more light, but we also got more snow.
But that's gone now, so I went riding after work on Wednesday. I rode along the highway and turned off towards Cobble Hill. I turned my front light on just before I got to Cobble Hill, and it died less than five minutes later. I turned around and started back, a bit disappointed. It ended up being a pretty short ride.
On the way back, there was a cop car parked on a corner with a speed gun. As I got closer, he stuck his head out the window. I thought he was going to stop me for riding in the dark without lights, but he shouted "34", and pulled his head back inside.

The Mocha Conundrum

So I hate Starbucks. They were starting to grow on me after several enjoyable knitting sessions, but that was all undone when I took a break from work today.
I was cold at work, which is unusual as the tech room it a tiny, dust filled triangle lopped off the corner of the store, with a closed door and no ventilation, and 3-10 computers running constantly. It's always hot. In the summer it was the hottest place in the store.
But today I was cold. As I walked past the receiving bay to clock out, I saw the receiving dock was wide open, even though there was no truck at the door.
"It's you causing this cold Ben!"
"It's not me! There's a man here who was apparently sent to remove dead animals from under the dock."
Anyway, I wanted a warm drink (and I don't drink coffee), and the only food places within a minute walk from work are Starbucks, Superstore, a hotdog stand outside Superstore, Safeway, and the Starbucks inside Safeway. So it really had to be Starbucks.
"Can I have a medium hot chocolate, please?"
"Pre-made, or our Signature Series?"
"What's the difference?"
(There was some talking about syrups and brewing processes and organic milk or something)
"Pre-made"
"What size?"
"Medium"
"Tall?"
(reluctantly) "Sure"
She punched "Tall Signature Series" into the till, and charged me $4.25
What I got was a cup of something that didn't taste much like hot chocolate at all and had a load of white foamy stuff on top that ended up on my nose, and no lid (which makes me nervous about putting it down on the bench at work).

At Tim Horton's, if I ask for a medium hot chocolate, the lady says, "That'll be $1.12 please", and hands me a cup of hot chocolate that tastes exactly like hot chocolate tastes, it doesn't end up on my nose, and has a lid, and cost one quarter as much.

Tim Horton's was directly opposite us when I worked at Sneakers. When I'd got to get the guys coffee, Jeff would have a mocha. You know how I feel about all this coffee lingo. I'd watch the lady fill the cup half with coffee and half with hot chocolate. Why don't they just call it what it is rather than coming up with a fancy name?

But then I came to the Mocha Conundrum.
Mocha is an unnecessary word - common words can be used to say the same thing.
"Mocha" is one word; "half coffee and half hot chocolate" is lots.
It's easier to say "mocha", but it's easier to understand "half hot chocolate and half coffee".
I like simple names for things, but I don't like long names, so which should it be?
I think the beverage should be eradicated all together. Who'd ruin hot chocolate by putting coffee in it anyway?

Common Misconceptions

I was told by someone once again today that "It is a common misconception that...".
What is a common misconception?
When most people think one thing, and the person stating the "common misconception" (and possibly a handful of others) thinks the opposite, and despite the fact that the majority thinks the opposite, they think they are right, and that everyone else has been mislead.
Everyone that I have heard stating "common misconceptions" knows no better than everyone else. The wise people don't give advise in the form "They're all wrong, and I'm right".
I recently read on a web page "It's a common misconception that carrots are good for you, but...". By no means am I any kind of nutritionist, but that seems a bit weird to me. (You know what also seems a bit weird? The spelling of "weird" - it should be "wierd", shouldn't it?)
I'm not saying that I think that the majority is always right. We used to think that the sun orbited Earth, and that the earth was flat, (but then again, maybe we're all wrong - we thought Pluto was a planet until recently - ha). If I thought everyone around me was wrong and I was right, and I cared about what the others thought, I'd work on proving my theory, not telling them their beliefs were wrong.
While writing this, I ended up on Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions. A few stood out:
It is a common misconception that the human body can not survive the vaccuum of space.
It is a common misconception that a disproportionate amount of heat is lost through the head.
It is a common misconception that there are successful non-surgical techniques for penis enlargement.
It is a common misconception that security lighting deters crime.
It is a common misconception that lemmings engage in suicidal dives off cliffs.
It is a common misconception that Henry Ford invented the car.
It is a common misconception that french fries originated in France.
It is a common misconception that mirrors reverse left and right.
It is a common misconception that Wikipedia is a reliable source of information (okay, I added that one)

I'm not saying that I think these misconceptions are...ummm...misconceptions. I just picked them because I think they're... interesting. I doubt there is a successful non-surgical method for penis enlargement. I doubt that lemmings are suicidal.

(I think I'm about to wander off into a nearly unrelated thread...)
This kind of reminds me of the "Philosophy - Critical Thinking" class I had to take in my first year of university. The students were made up of the usual Arts/Philosophy/Theology types you'd expect, along with a handful of Engineers that you wouldn't. The prof put a mathematical "proof" up on the overhead projector one day. It was the classic "1=2" proof. The artsy ones found great joy in this, as it clearly "proved" that all that math stuff they didn't understand, and had caused their marks to drop in high school, was infact (one word or two?) flawed. Meanwhile, all the math dorks saw that dividing by a+b when a=b is dividing by zero, which falsifies the "proof".
What is the purpose of this "proof"? To show how gullible people can be? To show how easily people can be led to believe things?
People can be very naive. I'm always surprised by how easily some people's beliefs will completely change after reading an article or watching a TV documentary, or even a mini documentaries on YouTube. They're presented with one side of the story, and take every fact they're given to be accurate. It would be interesting to observe one of these people's opinions after watching a documentary presenting one side of the story, and immediately afterwards show him or her a documentary from the opposing view.

It's very difficult not to believe something everyone else believes, and is presented over and over as the truth (see comment above about the world being flat).
Which leads me to something I believe to be a common misconception (add contradiction to the list of reasons why this is a poorly written blog post, along with lack of cohesion).
I don't think recycling "helps the planet". I think it uses way too much energy to recycle stuff; transport it to a recycling plant, sort it, clean it, melt it down, and reform it. I think too much emphasis is put on recycling, when the emphasis should be on reducing and reusing.
But I don't really care about any of this to be brutally honest (which I usually am), because I think we're fucked. We over consume. And it's getting worse. The planet is over populated and can't support our (growing) population at current (growing) consumption levels. We're told to consume, and we use our time working so we can get more money so we can get more stuff. This has been this way since the invention of agriculture, and isn't going to change. I don't thing recycling is going to help, nor using re-usable shopping bags, or using electric cars or traveling by bicycle, because we over consume.
People think I'm green, and that I care about the environment, because I ride a bike rather than driving, I don't use plastic bags for my shopping, I re-use bags computers come packaging in as garbage bags, and generally have a low "carbon footprint" compared to others. But honestly - I'm not green, I'm just cheap. As it turns out, being cheap is quite green, and one can easily be mistaken for the other. I don't think nuclear power is a good idea, not because it's giving us all cancer (which it probably is), but because it's bloody expensive. Yes, once the plant is up and running, it's cheap. But how long does a plant last before it has to be "decommissioned", (or an uneducated night worker is left in charge and the whole thing explodes). Then you're left with a pile of reactive material that has to be disassembled by robots, and is ridiculously expensive to dispose of and contain.
I don't care about "the planet", not only because we're screwed anyway, but because I think we're going to kill our selves or something is going to kill us long before we "kill the planet". Biological war (or accident), nuclear war (or accident), a "big bang" or whatever killed the dinosaurs; I don't know - but I bet it'll happen.
We are very conceited (see comment about the sun revolving about Earth - we are the center of the universe). We think we have complete control. We build "earthquake proof" buildings and think we can control forest fires. We can't, which is fine - we just get proved wrong once in a while. Thinking we're smarter than nature is one thing, but we keep messing with it. Ever seen "Jurassic Park"? Or "The Core"?

I've definately gotten a bit off track.
Thinking too much does my head in. Best not to too often.

New Sticker!

I went mountain biking on Sunday. It was wet and rainy for most of the day, with sixty second patches of sun thrown in here and there. I rode to the top of the mountain up single track and fire roads, and then wound my way back down again.
Just as I rode out the bottom of the trails, Ted and his mum were walking Jasper The Dog back towards their house. Ted and I went for a short ride and did some nice floopy (that's flowy and swoopy) trails. Fluid was a bit slidey in (all) places which slowed us down a bit. It's funny how a trail can seem like a completely different one in different conditions.
Apparently, Ted had won tickets to a mountain biking movie show thingy. He gave me a sticker he'd picked up.I like stickers. I got home and looked at my bike, and wondered where to put it.
While considering the sticker, I grew to really like it. In a previous post I think I wrote about how I sometimes read a sentance that says in a few words what would take me the same number of paragraphs, well this sticker does this. No words, monochrome, two shapes, and it says more than my other stickers, and can also say many different things, depending on how you interpret it.
So it went on the headtube.

(though that could have just been me being lazy - there was the least mud to wipe off there).

I was going to put up a map, but it looks like my GPS turned itself off before I even mafe it to the trailhead. I think it keeps doing that because I shove it i a pocket and if I lean on it or something else squishes against it, it presses on the power button.

(Pics of the stunts for Aaron:)