bicycle – Beeshive

The day the media cried……

For the most part the media in Canada is finished.

Very lax CRTC rules, very biased free trade agreements, and extremely toothless foreign ownerships rules means that our media for the most part is American owned and always has a pro-corporate, pro-capitalism, anti-worker bias, and anti-socialist policies at play.

It doesn’t matter if the newsroom or the head office has a Canadian street address. If the board of directors and the majority of shareholders are Americans, then the product that they produce is American propaganda.

We don’t have to worry about the Americans launching an invasion to take over Canada, the invasion has been going on since the Mulroney years in the ’80s, some might even say that the invasion started with Dief – the – Thief’s policy of overt American appeasement.

This morning when I logged into the cesspool formerly known as Twitter I caught this tweet from Lynda Steele.

This would be depressing, except Lynda is one of those in the news media that practically ensured the death of local media.

When Lynda was with 980 CKNW her pro-automobile industry / anti-alternative transportation biases were on full display. But I guess that she was just playing to her audience. The only place I’ve ever seen people listen to AM radio is in the car. But Lynda should have realized that the days of AM radio are coming to an end. Even FM radio isn’t far behind.

I stopped listening to radio back in the early ’00s when Rock 101 was blitzing the airwaves with that Spence Shriek commercial.

MP3 players made portable music that much easier to obtain and they totally negated my need for a radio. More importantly I never had to listen to that insistent Spence Shriek or annoying crap like it again.

People in general don’t like biases in their news, and people are fairly decent at detecting biases.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, the previous park board and city council agreed to install a bicycle lane in Stanley Park that would separate the bicycle riders from the pedestrians on the seawall thus allowing the pedestrians on the seawall to distance themselves by spreading across the walking path and the bicycle path and allowing the bicycle riders to continue using the park.

Now, I don’t think we’ll ever know the truth about what happened at CKNW, but to hear Lynda describe it lycra clad MAMILs were dragging the disabled out of their vehicles and euthanizing them at the main entrance to the park. The elderly were no longer able to drive to the park. Traffic in the park was now forced to drive at the posted speed limit. Car drivers were now forced to sit behind the horse drawn carriage tours and left to contemplate the meaningless existence of being a horse pulling tourists around and around in a loop.

In reality, there were only three groups of people upset at the bicycle lanes.

Car drivers using the park to avoid north bound traffic jams on the Stanley Park causeway. Car drivers using the park to avoid the downtown core by rat racing through the park to get to Beach Ave thus avoiding West Georgia, Burrard, and Howe.

And the most important group of all, the tour bus operators. There is a metric shit ton of money made in fares and tips from tourists that come to town on the cruise ships and want to go see “World Famous Stanley Park”. And no doubt there is some form of benefit to the tour bus operators when they deliver fresh cattle to the two “major” tourist attractions in the park.

The bicycle lanes made it impossible for tour busses to fit back in to the park. Because park drive was meant to meander through the park it has some tight bends. With the concrete barriers running through the park it would have been impossible for a full size tour bus to navigate.

Under an outrage that was practically stoked by the media Vancouver got a populist mayor elected with support from just over 18% of eligible voters.

The first thing Qatari Ken did when elected was to jump on an airplane to go watch a soccer game in Qatar. Hence why I call him Qatari Ken.

Ken’s plan was to rip out all of the bicycle lanes in the park to allow the “disabled and elderly” park users to get back into the park. Ken got as far as tearing out the lanes expect for the eastern Beach Avenue exit. The problem that Lynda and Qatari Ken didn’t account for was the public uproar that resulted from the removal of the bicycle lanes in the park.

It never was about the “elderly and disabled”. If it were then Qatari Ken and Lynda would have been pressing for a “community shuttle bus” that would stop at all of the hospitals, senior homes, assisted living homes, and other care facilities in order to give ALL disabled persons and elderly persons the ability to visit the park, especially those without families or those without the means to travel.

No, what it was all about was Qatari Ken riding a wave of populism in to the Mayor’s office to ensure that the interests of a select few business owners were looked after.

Both Lynda and Qatari Ken had been buoyed in their anti-bicycle / anti-alternate transportation biases because of the dynamics of the echo chamber. Lynda’s audience was only car drivers basically. So when Jim-Bob-Joe called in from Abbotsford to say that he’s never coming back to Stanley Park because the City of Vancouver has gone woke with bicycles, that’s what she heard.

The truth is there’s far more daily traffic from bicycle riders and roller bladers in the park than there is from actual park using car drivers.

But, I digress.

My beef with the media comes from the fact that not one single local news media outlet has dare look into historical child sexual abuse on bases that used to be located within city limits.

Does Lynda believe that no children were ever sexually abused on Canadian Forces Base Jericho in Vancouver during the days when both the 3-year-time-bar and the Summary Investigation flaw were in effect?

After report after report of the failure of the military justice system looking into sexual abuse of adults, isn’t Lynda and the rest of her cohorts curious in the slightest about the sexual abuse of children living on the same bases?

Isn’t Lynda, as a reporter, curious about the fact that children who lived on Canadian Forces Bases prior to 1998 don’t have the same rights that their civilian counterparts had?

When West End MP Hedy Fry said that she was not going to look into the matter of child sexual abuse on the Canadian Armed Forces bases in Canada because there were no bases in the West End even though I had lived in the West End since 1992, isn’t this “local news”? Isn’t it news worthy when a sitting MP says that a person can only get justice for military child sexual abuse if they live in a riding with a military base?

Is Canadian Forces Base Jericho not “local”?

Yes, fine, I get it. Lynda had no control over what stories she was allowed to cover and report on when she was at CKNW. CKNW survives on automobile advertising and its listenership is comprised of people stuck in cars. Therefore bicycles are a commie plot to steal your freedomobile away from you and force you to ride a bicycle.

Reporting on a story that would cause the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces a severe amount of negative publicity is something that corporate would have frowned upon as many of the owners are well connected and don’t want to be seen as pissing on the troops.

In the end, with the exception of just a few persons in the media, if the average “journalist” wants a paycheque they have to conduct the reporting that corporate dictates. But these “journalists” shouldn’t be surprised in the end when being a corporate puppet just means that the profession that they were a part of becomes a relic of the past.

And so far the “alternative media” is no better than the corporate media.

Riding my bicycle

This is me riding my bicycle.

I finally tried mounting my RAM mounts and my GoPro on the front basket of the bike. This seems to give a decent angle of view.

I have a RAM X-Mount for my iPhone. It’s the same mount that I use on my motorcycle.

I use the iPhone for music, and for maps. I don’t text or take phone calls when I’m riding, but having an easy view of the phone makes it easy for me to pull over and answer the important calls and ignore the calls that I can ignore.

Lucky for me I live just off the new bicycle path on Beach Ave. This isn’t a half bad path, but it does get very congested in the summertime. And the nice thing about reducing car traffic to two lanes, one in each direction, is that the racers and speeders have had to find a different place to go.

Vancouver is the bicycle theft capital of Canada. And such my bicycle lives either in my apartment or in my office at work.

Yes, this is what I wear when I ride my bicycle. I don’t own a single piece of “lycra” or “spandex”. I ride to and from work. I ride to and from the supermarket of coffee shop. I go out for dinner on my bicycle. I don’t like the idea of having to change from my “riding clothes” to my “destination clothes”.

Dresses, skirts, and kilts are what I wear. I don’t think I’ve worn a pair of pants on a bicycle since the mid 2000’s.

I ride for comfort. I’m not setting any speed records, nor am I setting any endurance records.

My earphones block much less outside noise than you average car. Most cars these days are extremely soundproofed. With my earphones on, I can still hear cars coming up beside me, I can hear emergency vehicles blocks away. I can hear car horns and voices. These are all things that I wouldn’t be able to hear in the typical everyday Econo-box car.

I’ve done some minor upgrades on the bike, mainly being that I replaced the cable operated disc brakes with hydraulic brakes. I’ve replaced the stock seat post with a shock absorbing post. I have the front and rear baskets. The next upgrade I’ll probably do is upsizing the disc brake rotors from 180 mm to 206 mm.

I’ve always loved bicycling over cars and even motorcycles.

I think there are two reasons for this.

First, as a kid living on military bases, a bicycle was an easy way to escape and for me to get away from Richard or my grandmother.

Second, my father’s temper behind the wheel turned most car trips into anxiety inducing adventures in road rage.

When I had my bicycles I could go for rides and not worry about coming home or needing rides from Richard.

No Rain

Just me. Talking about my bicycle and thinking of something to say.

Well, today is stopped raining.

The rain is nice to have after the long hot summer that we had. Vancouver is a city that really can’t handle temperatures of 40C

It’s nice to have the rain, but the rain keeps me from cycling.

When I was much younger I used to ride in the rain without a care.

When I first moved to Vancouver in 1992 I used to ride from my apartment in the West End of Vancouver over to Brunswick Lions Gate Lanes in West Vancouver. And this was back in the days before the bridge was up graded with proper width sidewalks that can accommodate one lane of bicycles and one lane of pedestrians.

There’s nothing like descending the south side of the bridge going into Vancouver with nothing more than cantilever rim brakes in the rain.

I’ve pretty well owned bicycles for the entire time that I’ve lived out here. There’s only been a couple of years when I didn’t ride.

But now with my e-bike I find that I am logging quite a few more kilometres per day / per week / per month than I ever had before. Legs, knees, and hips don’t get sore anymore. And it’s an upright step-through. Being upright doesn’t bother C4-C5-C6 in my neck. And being a step-through means that my dresses aren’t a problem.

I bought this bike back in January and I put 5,000 km on it back in August. Already had to put a new tire on the back. Due to the geometry of this bike the rear is carrying about 50% more weight than the front.

Well, I’m also officially fifty years old now. If I actually still ate at Denny’s I’d be five years away from the Seniors Discount. I don’t let my head hair grow in very often, but when I forget to shave for a couple of day I can see that my head hair is Snow White now.

I’ll have some observations to come up on other things, but for now it’s time to go out for a bicycle ride.

Riding Bicycles

I’ve ridden bicycles since I was young. I can’t remember exactly when I learnt to ride, but it was on Canadian Forces Base Shearwater.

The nice thing about growing up as a child on military bases is that the living quarters were governed by the Government Property Traffic Regulations. These regulations capped the speed limit in the living quarters to 20km/h. Automobiles also had to yield the right of way to any pedestrian on the streets. So riding bicycles on base was a very safe thing to do.

We also had yearly bicycle rodeos put on by the military police. Every kid that rode a bicycle on base was expected to take part.

And almost every kid on base rode their bicycles to school. Hampton Grey on Shearwater had a large rack. Guthrie School on CFB Namao had a large rack. And Major General Griesbach School had a large rack. CFB Downsview was the only base that I lived on that didn’t have schools on the base for the military children. We had to go to school in the local public schools. This meant crossing some very major streets like Keele St., Sheppard Ave., Wilson Ave.. No parent and no school board in their right mind would allow a child to ride to school in those conditions.

The first time I ever rode a bicycle in the civilian world was when my father was stationed at Canadian Forces Base Summerside in PEI. We didn’t live on the base, we lived in the city in housing that was on long term lease to the Department of National Defence. Military rules applied to the housing, but not to the streets. So things were a lot more dangerous but the City of Summerside was very small. There were still a lot of quiet streets and farm roads to ride on. There was also the cemetery that I could ride around in.

I was hospitalized in my first ever bicycle accident. But that wasn’t due to cars. Someone stuck a stick in my front wheel as I rode by.

When we moved to Canadian Forces Base Namao, it was safe to ride on the streets again as we lived on the base. Even when we moved to Canadian Forces Base Griesbach, we lived on base so it was safe to ride around on base. CFB Griesbach was located within the city of Edmonton, and Edmonton is very much a city in love with the automobile. Being a pedestrian or a bicycle rider in that city is very much having a death wish. It was very seldom that I rode a bicycle in the city of Edmonton.

When we moved to CFB Downsview in Metro Toronto, bicycles were my freedom. I could bicycle downtown whenever I wanted. Yes, Toronto had a good bus service, but bugging Richard for bus fare to go anywhere was like trying to wring blood from a stone. In all of the years that I was eligible for a student bus pass, Richard never got me one. And it was just better not to ask for money as you’d get a lecture of oh just how much money you were costing him and why didn’t I call my mother for money.

I would say that most of my bicycles came from scrap. Posting season on base, which typically lasted from late June to early September meant that old bicycles were often left curb side for trash, or were dumped at the large dumpster usually by the arena or the Canex. On Downsview the dumpster was over by the base auto club. Most of the bikes were in decent condition and required very little in the way of parts or repairs to fix.

I can’t really offer any explanation as to why bicycles were thrown away so frequently on military bases other than parents would promise to buy a new bicycle for their children at the new base as a means of getting the children to be more tolerant of the posting. A bribe if you will.

And no, none of these bicycles were really of any valve. Mainly Supercycle 10 speeds or Sears brand name bikes with only a coaster brake on the rear.

Riding in Toronto traffic really wasn’t bad back in the ’80s. Either that, or I was just plain lucky. There was no such thing as putting you bicycle on the bus, or even taking your bicycle on the subway. Riding to downtown from the living quarters on base which were close to Keele St. and Wilson Ave was about a one hour ride each way.

Every now and again when I had cash, it was a treat to go to Centre Island and ride around from one end of the island to the other.

One of the first lessons that I had to learn when riding downtown was how to cross over the street car tracks. Whatever you do, you don’t want to try to cross the tracks going parallel with them. You need to cross the tracks at a slight angle so that your wheels don’t get sucked into the groove on the rail. Pissed off a couple of street car drivers before I learnt my lesson.

Also, riding a bicycle on a skating rink is doable. I rode my various bikes on the ice at Nathan Philips Square a few times.

After CFB Namao, I was a very lonely child. I didn’t have any friends to speak of. But I had bicycles. And a bicycle could take me away from home and away from Richard and his dysfunctional household.

I briefly stopped riding when I was 16. That’s the year I moved out of the house and on my own. Working full time to pay rent and buy groceries left little time to ride. Bruce and Ed both helped me get my driver’s licence. Ed took me to a notary public so that I could swear that I was living on my own and thus get my learner’s permit without needing Richard’s permission. Bruce and Ed both took turns at teaching me how to drive.

I never liked driving. I never really liked cars. Cars to me always equated with anger and drunk driving. Richard was a menace behind the wheel. Angry. Pissed off. Short temper. Would dump the clutch just to own the slow poke blocking his lane. Brake checking was a hobby of his. And this was when he wasn’t drunk. There was one immature thing that he’d always do if a slow driver “blocked” him. He’d pull around in front of the driver, slow down slightly, and drive slowly to the next intersection with the intention of making the driver behind him get a red light. As soon as the light would turn amber, Richard would then gun it through the intersection.

All told Richard totalled one car in a DUI collision, caused significant damage to another one of his cars in another DUI collision, and drove yet another car into a ditch when he was drunk. The first collision sent me to the base infirmary for stitches. The second collision caused me to get a fat lip the I told the other driver that Richard had just come from the base mess. I was in the car once in Toronto when he rear ended a Jaguar luxury car at a red light. He blamed the collision on me as I had asked him for a ride to work and he was missing an episode of Dr. Who and was in a hurry to drop me off and get back home. In June of 1990, when he took Bill Parker and I to the bar at the Sheraton Inn, he rear ended a civilian police car on Keele street as we were driving towards home on the base.

All told, I’ve only owned cars for 6 years of my 33 year driving life. I had a Plymouth Horizon from the summer of 1990 until the fall of 1992. I had one Volkswagen Rabbit for a few months in 1995. I then bought a better condition Rabbit in late 1995 and owned this until I moved back downtown Vancouver in the summer of 1999.

I’ve owned motorcycles for more years of my life than I’ve owned cars, but not by much, maybe 8 years total.

And all through the years starting when I first moved to Vancouver in February of 1992, I’ve owned bicycles. There’s just something about a bicycle that makes me feel safe. And happy. And content. Maybe because it’s the only vehicle that I don’t associate with Richard.

I can go where I want, when I want. Bicycles are very simple to repair and maintain. They need no gasoline, no oil, no expensive spare parts. It’s not that I’m poor. It’s just that I’d rather eat and travel than blow my money on keeping the oil barons and auto barons swimming in pools of money.

Bicycles don’t get stuck in traffic.

I’m a bicycle rider. I’m not a cyclist. I don’t partake in vehicular cycling.

I try very hard to stay away from the word “cyclist”. The corporate media and the automobile industry have used the word “cyclist” in a very negative sense to portray all bicycle riders of every gender, age, and ability as being “cycling elites” racing around on $10k carbon fibre bicycles. The corporate media and the automobile industry love to rile up car drivers in order to thwart bicycle lanes and bicycle infrastructure in general that would benefit bicycle riders of every age, gender, and ability as there is no way for the corporate media and the automobile industry to profit from something that doesn’t benefit them.

Vehicular cycling is a phrase that I detest with all my being. Vehicular cycling calls for a bicycle rider to pretend that they’re a car and to drive like a car would. Absolute rubbish. In many states in America they have different rules of the road for bicycles. Some states allow bicycles to treat red lights as stop signs if there is no cross traffic. Other states allow bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs. Some states even have very strict passing laws for bicycles requiring car drivers to either cross the dotted line to pass or at the least pass with 2 to 3 metres of clearance. It’s going to take a lot of effort to change provincial laws here in Canada, but they need to be changed if there’s any hope of increasing the number of bicycle riders in our heavily populated urban centres.

My ride at the moment is an electric upright step through bicycle.

Electric because at my age my knees and hips are starting to show their age. And with electric I can go for longer distances. I can also dress up nicely for special occasions and show up not drenched in sweat.

Upright because much like my knees and hips, my neck is shot. C4-C5-C6 have advanced osteoarthritis, so no more road bikes with drop handlebars for me.

Step through because this works best with my dresses. Riding a standard “Men’s bike” while wearing a dress is awkward. Riding a “woman’s bike” wearing a dress is not much better. A step through allows my dresses or skirts to hang properly.

Shopping isn’t a problem on the bike. It has both front and rear baskets. And with what I don’t pay on insurance, gas, parking, etc. I can pay to have “heavy things” delivered.

And even though it’s electric, I do most of the pedalling. I usually tootle around in power assist 2 or 3. Power assist 5 is something I usually on use on the steep hills. The more you use the power assist, the quicker you kill the battery.

I do have a motorcycle at the moment. It’s a 650cc Suzuki Burgman. It’s a step through motorcycle. Yes, it looks like a scooter, however the engine displacement and the weight of the motorcycle means that ICBC classifies it as a motorcycle. And let’s be honest, scooters don’t do zero to sixty kilometres per hour in under 5 seconds. This motorcycle has no problem keeping up with traffic on the BC highways with the 120 km/h posted speed limits.

As much fun as it is, I still only ride it on occasion. Parking is a hassle. Motorcycles are an easy target for theft. Car drivers just keep getting worse and worse as the years go by. Collisions keep increasing each and every year. It’s just not safe being on a motorcycle on the public street. All it takes is for someone to pull a left hand turn, or a right hand turn into your path and it’s game over. Or some very serious life altering injuries to say the least. Because at 50 to 60 km/h, you might not be at fault, and you might be 100% in the right, but physics and Newton’s laws don’t give a rats ass.

On a bicycle, everything takes time. You can’t race around agitated on a bicycle like a car encourages you to do.

Everything is far more peaceful and serene on a bicycle.

You can smell everything.

You can easily observe everything.

If you see something of interest, you can just pull right on over and check it out.

Cars don’t encourage that, and neither do motorcycles.

So, I’ll more than likely be riding bicycles until the day I die.