The law of unintended consequences

Double capp from Java Blend on North. The barrista apologised for her latte art but I told her not to worry as a) who amongst us could do better (Zane, you're forbidden from answering that one) b) it still looked cute, like a little Christmas tree escaping from a coffee-cup (or maybe a pac-man)! c) the coffee was warm and d) I was cold. You see, I headed out for a short ride in the rain and whilst my kit held up well, by the end there was that feeling of the cold dampness starting to finally soak it's way through all the seams. However, I do find that riding the rain is really quite nice, if you've got the kit for it; it's the cycling equivalent of lying in bed and listening to the rain against the windows.

I took the time to squeeze in the ride knowing it would be likely the last peace and quiet I would have on my terms for the next week or so. Beyond having to give it to the man viz a viz the NS Traffic Act, for an all too short time I didn't have to do as I was told (or tell people to do what they're told), I wasn't beholden to anyone, I could be lost in my thoughts.

My thoughts were contemplative. Partly it's the time of year for it, especially if you're not an extroverted, optimistic, social butterfly. Partly it's riding in the rain. Partly, it was the law of unintended consequences.

We are all familiar with this one. For example, in my sporting life, I have been called upon recently to uphold the new ban on compression socks and arm-warmers in triathlon. As a fashion maven I'm all for this, even if I've sinned with respect to the latter prohibition

In my defense it was a running singlet not a form-fitting triathlon crop-top, it was for racing only (I don't train like this; if it's cold enough for singlet and arm-warmers, it cold enough for a long-sleeved t-shirt) and being in Boston I thought I was far enough away from anyone I knew.

Clearly not.

Being hoist by one's own petard aside, simply saying "because I don't think it looks nice" is not a reasonable answer to an elite athlete when you strip them of their arm-warmers in the start-corral. The actual reason is the recent rule that bans clothing below the elbows and the knees. Meant (I believe) to ensure speedsuits are now illegal (along with "in a wet-suit illegal swim you should finish the run in what you swam in") it has had the unintended effect of banning these other two items. My question is, if compression socks are banned, how about ankle-high socks? They still are clearly located sous-genou.

Today the law of unintended consequences was in full effect; an unintended consequence of learning French is that the first verse of Ne me quitte pas by Jacques Brel became understandable. It sounds like a sad song, so to actually listen to it and find out he's trying to find out how to forget, well that's standard jilted-lover fare. A lifetime of The Smiths, Morrissey, The The and assorted other depressing indy British bands has inured me to such lyrics. So far so good, an intended consequence, surely.

What it hadn't prepared me for was the rest of the song. It ran away from me so I looked up the lyrics and was exposed to the full melancholic desolation of the piece as it descended through despondency, suffering and desperation to abject suffering. You know that bit in The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy when Arthur is hooked up to "imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative residulators and similie dumpers all designed to heighten the experience of the poem and make sure not a single nuance ... was lost"? It was like that, but minus the Vogons. By the time it got to "I will not leave, I will not cry, I will not speak, I will just hide here and watch you dance and smile, and listen to you sing and laugh" I was eyeing the cutlery draw for the easy way out. The English versions just don't do it justice. And this is a good thing.

I felt as though the emotional centre in me had been severly bludgeoned with a heavy, blunt object and was left reeling and concussed.

Talk about unintended!

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Dan's Story

Big props to Daniel. who had his entry in CBC Mainstreet's "Young Canada Writes" contest read out on the radio last week. Each week, the writers (all U15) are given a list of words to use in an original composition of 250 words or less. Last week they were; anticipation, earmuffs, lurching, slivery and jiggled. He got 'em all in! Here is his entry in full;

It was the post-apocalyptic scenario all people fear: giant alien earmuffs with prehensile tongues! That is not all. They have domesticated krakens and used their awesome strength to destroy all prosperous societies they find. They were completely jiggling with anticipation when they found earth. It was perfect - what with there being only one sentient species. Better yet, having technology that was crude and senseless compared to theirs. They came to earth subtly but then exactly after 79 hours they attacked.

Humans, once thinking they were all powerful against all possible waves of deaths and eradication, were now being overthrown by the lurching mass of cyborg krakens. Their tentacles showing no mercy to the humans. Suddenly ninjas rained from the sky exploding upon impact with the ground. Then, from the ground silvery armoured knights jumped into the air, only to sprout wings and turn into flaming beasts of depression and sorrow. Just when the humans best efforts were fading away, an asphalt parking lot exploded and a green scaley beast with firey breath and laser vision came from the rubble. Its laser eyes burned through the human's strongholds. The sky turned red and giant lava geysers burst from the ground. The killer earmuffs were now more engaged in a great brawl between the monsters they created. Then, giant explosions of blue flames erupted everywhere. AAARRRGGGHHH!Run for your life Jimmy!!! JIMMY! JIMMMMYYYY!!!!!"

Huh?! What?! " I muttered. Oh - yes - it was just a dream. And now it is time to get ready for school.

Daniel Dacanay 10years old

Grade 5 (Ms Ryan) Southdale North Woodside Elementary

Kudos Dan.

Psychiatric assessments may be posted below or emailed to the usual address!

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Snow and candles

Not a birthday 'spro, but a birthday capp. All the better to keep the cold at bay.

You see, after confidently telling a colleague in BC yesterday that "no, we have no snow, nor does there seem to any sign of same", it snowed. I had my mind set on a little ride, and I wasn't going to let 5 cm of snow get in the way, but neither did I have any wish to accidentally slide under a bus on fixed. Plan B it was; I chucked Old Bess on the back of Smarty and headed out to Shubie instead.

Ever noticed how your mountain-bike shoes leave monstrous tracks in the snow, and by monstrous I mean "like a large, clawed, hungry and undoubtedly carnivorous monster" monstrous. Talk about cryptozoology! Speaking of cryptozoology, I watched the beginning of a creation-science (now there's an oxymoron if there ever was one) video on Youtube recently about the co-existance of dinosaurs and humans. Crikey. Anyway, enough said about that the better.

So, ignoring the evidence before my eyes that I was being closely stalked by a bipedal, clawed creature, I set off into the woods down the Lake Charles trail.

I felt a bit unsteady for the first five or ten minutes because that tabernack of a front brake still isn't working quite right, but what the hell, brakes only slow you down anyway. The trail isn't technical anyway, so no dramas, I just sat back enjoyed the peace and quiet and the crunch of the tyres in the snow. Very Zen, very relaxing. Apart from nearly T-boning a dog that is!

As usual, Old Bess held up her end of the bargain and seemed pretty bombproof, front brake notwithstanding, after I settled down.

I noticed how the snow packed onto the rear wheel, giving my venerable MA2 a bit of a Deep-V vibe....

....and when the brakes on the car were applied, it had a bit of a pink Deep-V vibe to it!

Check out the snow-marks left by the helmet! Makes a change from getting tiger-stripe tan-lines across the top of my head!

After I finished I headed off the TIBS for the aforementioned capp and a bagel (the ride wasn't hard enough to justify a croissant)

However, I got one anyway, courtesy of Zane, complete with a candle

Thanks man, made my day

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Bicycles, trainers, beans-on-toast, earworms and Scarlett Johanssen

If it gets any worse than this, then I'll have to get the trainer out early. Given that bike-riding is a pleasure and not a chore - something only to be endured between T1 and T2, I generally eschew the trainer for as long as possible. Nothing about it can possibly be any fun. I will admit that there's always a masochistic pleasure to be found in intervals, but a ride on the trainer lasting hours? Sure, you can sling on a DVD, several in fact, perhaps work through the season on Lost you missed this summer as you were always out training, but it can't, won't, recapture the sheer joy that is getting out on the roads.

Spotted in Cyclesmith last year; an over-the-handlebar remote control holder. Actually, I wonder if it's supposed to be a modern take on the handlebar mounted bottle-holder of yore?

Anyway, it works for remotes. This is when you know you've gone too far! But surely makes a handy seasonal gift for that special someone who spends all Saturday afternoon pedalling to nowhere like a demented hamster.

Music sometimes does the job better than film, so, what songs go through your head when you're slaving over a hot fly-wheel? Training rides are often referred to as chain gangs, so it has to be Back On the Chain Gang of course!

I guess the London skyline looks pretty much the same today. Nothing's missing as such; the Gherkin has been added, but really it's the South Bank that's undergone the Renaissance. Speaking of London, and the Pretenders, there are a whole bunch of Pretenders songs I associate with my short time riding with the Crest CC. I don't know why, but Don't Get Me Wrong gives me a memory flash of the Log Cabin cafe in Abridge where the Crest used to start some of their Sunday club runs; the others used to start at the Hobbs Cross Farm, but the Log Cabin had better beans-on-toast (and was fractionally closer to home!).

Speaking of beans-on-toast, cafes, milky tea and the Pretenders there is, of course, Brass In Pocket

Which was covered by Scarlett Johanssen in the Karaoke scene in Lost In Translation....

There is a catchy little number in Lost In Translation from Phoenix. I've been exposed to beaucoup de musique francais recently, but not Phoenix, who even though are French sing (thank goodness) in English. Anyway, Too Young is the Phoenix number in the background of Lost..... The video, inexplicably, takes place in a fish-packing plant!

....so today's mental jukebox finishes off with Phoenix's Lisztomania cut to a montage of John Hughes films

ahhhh....

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John Lennon

I wonder if John Lennon is my generation's JFK. Too young or too non-existant to remember where we were when the President was shot, perhaps we all remember where we were when John Lennon was.

I was at home, in Ilford. What I do remember is that we were doing the Christmas play the following evening at school and I would miss the BBC screening a Beatles' film in memorium. I forget which one, not Yellow Submarine (which I never really liked, even being a cartoon), so I'm thinking Hard Days Night or Help. Funny. Hey, I was only ten. It's only with time that I realised that what had been lost was more than an opportunity to see a movie on TV!

It probably affected my Dad more. Growing up our music was the Beatles, Elvis (I remember his death too), Simon and Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel in their solo incarnations, and The Association. I'm going to guess he was more a Lennon fan than a McCartney fan; he would always say he was "born in 1941, the year after John Lennon" and tellingly not "the year before Paul McCartney".

Later, when I "inherited" my father's record collection (he's still with us) I found copies from all of these artists, including some old mono albums made of thick, thick, vinyl, from Elvis and the Beach Boys. It pains me I have lost track of those during the intervening years. One of the albums I found was 1975's Shaved Fish, a compilation of Lennon's solo work. I listened to this a lot as a teenager. I preferred Side#2, Imagine, Mind Games, Whatever Gets Your Through The Night, #9 Dream to Side#1; Give Peace A Chance, Cold Turkey, Instant Karma. What does that say about me? Or my dad? Or both of us?

I remember driving somewhere with my Dad when I was an undergrad; four-hours on the road, and listening to Abbey Road on 8-track! Yeah, he still had one in his car in 1990! The cassettes were Beatles, Association and the like! Man, what a trip!

As we have grown older, it is my brother who has had generated his own Beatles stories, contributing directly to the Beatles story as a graphic designer on the aughties re-releases'. Which is pretty damn cool.

Actually, I've been watching Across The Universe recently too, a musical set to Beatles songs. I know it sounds corny, but maybe listening to the Beatles on-and-0ff for my whole life makes it somewhat less so.

Gotta go now, need to get down to some serious listening...

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Simons, snow and running...

Life was back with a vengeance today. I hit the Sunday morning run at HRC for the first time in several months. It's always this way; run with the club on Sundays from December to May and then spend nearly every Sunday between May and December at the races. Not necessarily doing the races, it could be hanging out in a fluorescent vest but there none-the-less. I might get a couple of Sunday runs with the club in during the summer, but these are more likely to be races themselves.

Sundays are a different kettle of fish to the weekday evening runs I've been making fairly regularly. In the winter everyone, bar none, turns up as there is nowhere else to be. This morning was no exception.

There may have been upwards to 50 people down today, but I ended up in a fairly rarified group; Rami Bardessy, Greg Wiercorzek, Shawn Deleu, Shawn Beaton and Nick McBride. Not everyone was a marathoner however; the latter two race over shorter distances, albeit shorter distances quickly. Nevertheless, I was comfortably the slowest guy there (pick your distance). Oh well, what you going to do? It's only training with faster people that gets you faster.

The first 7kms were around Point Pleasant Park as Nick took us on a magical mystery tour of all the tracks and trails in the park he knew from cross-country. It was entertaining and even fun, but it seemed wicked fast. We left the park and did another 30 minutes through the south end and down to the Rotary. It seemed pedestrian, but after playing with Nick on his turf we were now playing with Rami and Greg on theirs. The pace was around 4 minute/k. No wonder it was so quiet. Nick peeled off just before the Rotary, Rami and Greg climbed St Margarets Bay Road, because the run hadn't been hard enough to that point, whilst the Shawns and myself nursed our way home feeling collectively sorry for ourselves.

At least it was warm. Seven degrees centigrade and sun in December; I'll take that. I was warmed than it was in Quebec City, and way less snow (as in we don't have any yet). The damage was a shade over 21 kms in 1:30. Not a bad morning's work. My longest run since MDI, and one of the fastest too.

Seeing as I'm pretty much wiped this afternoon, I might as well upload some of those pictures from QC....

Smarty at the Petrocan in Riviere du Loup. There's something about Riviere du Loup; something is always falling from the sky when I drive through there!

The 20 just after the PetroCan, heading south. It was way snowier than this between Edmunston and Riviere du Loup, the proverbial white-knuckle ride.

"Go to Simons" is always a good piece of advice when going to Quebec City or Montreal. Perhaps the road was trying to tell us something. However, I'm not sure a double semi-trailer with Simons on the side in metre-high letters qualifies as subliminal advertising!

And where was the first place we went in Quebec City? Technically it was the Chateau Frontenac where we checked in, but we left pretty quickly. I thought we were going fo a coffee to keep me fortified during the PGB meeting before the opening reception, but no. We went to Simons.

There is a big Simons on the way into QC in Ste Foy, it's the size of a small city block (I swear) but this store is the mother-ship. No trip to QC is complete without worshiping at the holy-of-holies, the original Simons in Vieux Quebec.

As you can see, the city was very snowy, lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree. Despite being there on TriCan's dime, it did feel like we were able to get a little mini-City break

Here's a funny story from the meetings themselves. Well, apart from TriCan Prez Stephen Holmes organismal/orgasmic slip-of-the-tongue that is. I was meeting most people for the first time, both my provincial counterparts and the TriCan top-brass. Naturally, my policy in the national meetings was one of head down, eyes open, mouth shut, but I was able to express myself more eloquently in the provincial meetings. Without even knowing too much about me, TriNB's John Russell and Scott MacKenzie immediately pegged me as a cyclist. How? Only cyclists wear cycling socks as "dress" socks.

It's true, I do. It's my way of subtly expressing who I am. It's better to dress within societal norms, but you do tend to feel like a shop-window mannequin; there are only so many ways to wear black or (God help you) grey, and very few ways with panache or elan. Loud ties are passe, as are cartoon socks, but if I can squeeze a pair of non-loud cycling socks in under my suit (or whatever) then I feel my individuality has been preserved, even within the small-c conservative confines of the business or business casual fashion paradigm.

My offering for the TriCan meeting? A pair of provincially-appropriate La Cordee branded black DeFeets

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Rollers. Coasters.

My apologies for being off-line for a while. I spent the weekend at the Triathlon Canada AGM in Quebec City and my travails there can be seen on the Triathlon Nova Scotia blog. It was an interesting weekend; I got to meet many of the players in triathlon provincially and nationally. Whereas in the national meetings I felt a little intimidated and had a policy of head down, ears open, mouth shut, I felt very comfortable in the Provincial meetings. Thanks for making me feel welcome guys.

Plus, we got to stay in the Chateau Frontenac; it felt pretty plush. You don't get this Hogwarts view from your window at the Holiday Inn Express, that's for sure. Does the Holiday inn even have turrets?

As you can see, it was snowy and cold, The old City was bedecked with fir-trees, fairy-lights and baubles.

The streets were narrow, twisty and steep.

The shop-windows were full of goodies;

It felt, in short, very much like Christmas in an Alpine village.

Meanwhile, back in Nova Scotia, life carries apace. It doesn't feel like Christmas, that's for sure! Just more of the same. Still getting out running, not so much riding. Since 'cross season just finished I think I finally experienced a little bit of burn-out. I unexpectedly found myself looking at the bike(s) and thinking "Why?". It's nice enough to ride, certainly it's not snowing as in QC, but perhaps a rest is a good thing.

I did find myself on a bike today, under very different circumstances. I popped into TIBS for a capp and a croissant between teaching gigs. Zane gave me a wicked little grin and said "Rollers? They're upstairs".

Let me finish my coffee and pastry I said, and then we'll see.

So I finished up and headed up the stairs with not a little trepidation. You see, there's pretty much nothing I haven't done on a bike in my time, well OK, a road bike, but I've never, ever, ridden rollers.

I mounted up; Zane's bike is a little bigger than mine and it felt somewhat awkward. Also, he rides brakeless, so there were no hoods to grab hold of, just the bare cow-horns.

Zane held me up in the old-timey time-trail start position and I pedalled off. Strange feeling, I was wobbling from side to side like a total newbie, like I hadn't even ridden a bike before. All the stories I'd ever heard of people on rollers slide-slipping off the damn things and riding off across the living room until stopped by the sofa, the TV, the door flashed across my mind.

In this instance, the rollers were set up overlooking the cafe, with only a slim, decorative fence between the bike and the short drop to the cafe. I"d heard about dropping in for a coffee but this was possibly ridiculous.

Given I was at TIBs between classroom gigs, I was atypically dressed for cycling; a fitted dress-shirt from Simons in Montreal, complete with vintage bicycle cuff-links.

Yup, for two seconds I felt like one of the Rapha Condor pros from the video....

...but for the other fifty-eight I felt like a muppet. Possibly Animal on the drums; all enthusiam but no coordination.

Not that I had to be dragged kicking and screaming off the rollers. Still, they felt like something I might want to use in the winter. Stationary trainers are OK for power stuff; big-gear intervals and the like but I can see how rollers would help to smooth out your pedal stroke. Ankling isn't just a dirty word from Victorian drawing-rooms you know. Just as soon as I've padded the front room. Maybe I can get the padding from the CG Speedskating Oval on the Commons when they're done with them!

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