There is only one issue in the upcoming municipal election that is on my mind – bikes! The candidate's attitudes towards cyclists and the infrastructure to support them is incredibly indicative of their broader sensibilities about governing the city of Toronto.
I dropped our car off for brake work this morning which afforded me the opportunity to ride in to work along Danforth. It goes without saying that Danforth has both the room and the need for bike lanes. The part I forgot about though was the recent improvements made to the Bloor viaduct lanes. They are wider and have double white lines to separate them from traffic. There was room to pass other cyclists without leaving the bike lane – what a treat! I then connected up with Jarvis to head down the new lanes there towards the office (btw, when did the top end of Jarvis get renamed as Ted Rogers Way or Lane or whatever it was?).
When I got to work I was feeling all good about these improvements to our city but then after passing along some more info pointing out the ever growing mountain of mayoral inadequacies that Rob Ford continues to demonstrate my main man @amsterdamized (who's endless stream of photos showing Amsterdam cyclists is inspiring) sent me a link to recent column by Christopher Hume that brought me back to reality.
Hume's right, not having connections off of Bloor to the Jarvis lanes is a massive shortcoming and although the lanes across the viaduct are fantastic, lanes all the way across Bloor/Danforth with proper connections to all north/south lanes would be remarkable. In fact having any sort of end to end network of bike lanes would seem a reasonable and attainable goal yet this is still along way off.
Where's all this tie into the mayoral race? Well the two front runners, Smitherman and Ford, as well as Rossi, have all identified in varying degrees of political speak, that they would freeze expansion of the cycling network in the city. I wouldn't be surprised if Ford and Rossi would even go so far as to try having the Jarvis lanes removed. Ford has made his views on cyclists quite clear in the past essentially saying if you ride your bike on the street it's your own fault if you get killed.
As Hume points out, cyclists are going away and in fact are growing in numbers. Every winter I see more people take to the streets on two wheels as they realize that some minor variations in dress is all that it takes to cycle almost year round. Along with other factors like environmental change, rising oil prices and a need to fight the bulge, people are taking to bikes like never before.
When the polls open in a couple months, get off your butts, walk or bike to your polling station and drop a vote for Pantalone. He may not be the charismatic or innovative leader we'd like him to be, but he's the only candidate that understands that a city is a living organism that needs to be fed a healthy diet or improvement and change, that needs to support the desire of it's inhabitants to nourish it back. The other candidates see a city as nothing more than a series of widgets that either consume or produce money and their only goal is to make sure that the money producing widgets outnumber those that consume it. They don't see how subtle changes have a major impact on the lifeblood of a city, how hidden connections between the pieces fuel economic growth in subtle yet powerful ways. Bike lanes are but one example of these important connectors that will help make Toronto a world-class city.
It's often said that people hate change and prefer the normalcy of daily routines and following the status quo. I'm pretty sure this has never been me. Daily routines are good for being productive and efficient, helping to ensure things get done and aren't forgotten. But I'm always analyzing those routines looking at how I can tweak them to make things easier or faster.
The larger thought I think I'm working on here – and I am thinking this out in real-time as I type – is that I'm getting hungry for a new work challenge. I'm coming up on 6 years at NOW. It's been mostly great and I've achieved an amazing amount of output here. Every so often when I stop and look at what I've built over this time and how it's helped change and shape the company I end up with a warm fuzzy feeling inside.
Lately though I'm finding myself bogged down in mundane work and not able to pursue work on larger picture stuff, the problem solving, leading edge type challenges that I thrive on. To top that off I'm constantly getting a taste of other things I love from my work with FITC, teaching at Centennial or most recently curating NXNE Interactive. Along the way I've also discovered between NOW and my various blogs that I love writing – and think I'm not great, but ok at it.
The question then is what's next? I love everything that I do, but I need either a new challenge, the freedom to explore and develop more complex solutions, time to write, time to teach, something. Or maybe I need a bigger move? I've been trying to figure out how I could make things work as a combination of event work plus freelance work, or something similar for awhile. I'm definitely addicted to the regular pay-cheques and stability that provides. But maybe now that I'm a little more in control of my finances not having this might not be such a problem.
Mostly I'm just rambling out some thoughts right now. NXNE Interactive really left me on a high and wanting more. Guess I'll take the summer to feel all this out and probe some options.
Once again this year I headed out to Port Perry for the first Saturday of June to participate in the annual Canoe the Nonquon fundraiser/race. The course runs 18km down the winding Nonquon River and finishes with another 6km across the open waters of Lake Scugog, finishing at the Port Perry waterfront.
When we stopped to think about it this year, I realized I've been doing this for well over 10 years now. I started either at the end of high school or some time in my first year or two of university. There's something magical about paddling down that river that keeps me coming back.
For most of the time I've been doing this paddle, my canoe partner has been my sister, but this year we changed things up a bit. Monica and her boyfriend took my canoe and I rented a sea kayak and took to the water solo. Also for the past few years Dora has been acting as our roadcrew – driving the car around and pit-stopping at the various bridges that cross the river so she can cheer us on. This year she took my video camera with her and shot an incredible amount of footage considering how little time we actually see her during the course. Over the weekend I was too sore to do much else so I edited all the video into this 10 minute tale of the Canoe the Nonquon 2010.
Apparently the city is discussing the possibility of installing bike lanes on University. This would be a great north-south route through the city, and particularly helpful for getting right into the downtown core which can be a bit of a challenge still.
680 News has a brief story about this proposal. I haven't seen much else yet other than blog commentary.
This would be awesome, but particularly if they were dedicated, separate bike lanes like the lovely lanes found all over Europe.
