On a random bit of stuff

I have been living in my current abode for about nine and a half years. This is the longest period I have remained at the same address without interruption in my life. While I technically resided in my parent's house longer, that occupation was disrupted by a couple of sabbaticals that lasted six to nine months. 

It therefore struck me as nonsensical that I still had shelving boards and supports in one of my cupboards that I had never used in my current flat.  Few weeks ago, I stopped in a nearby store connected to Habitat for humanity that recycles building materials and the like to ask if it could use my unneeded shelving material. I had come prepared with a picture of the bits on my iPhone.  The person in charge said "Yes, thank you. There is always a need for shelving material." Therefore, a little later in the day, I brought the bits around and dropped them off.

Some of the shelf supports were a vivid orange that I rather associate with the late sixties or early seventies.  I had snaffled these from my parent's. Curious as to their precise origin, I gave my Father a phone call. He wasn't sure, but he believed that they had either been bought in London, Ontario (i.e. before I was born) or Toronto ( i.e. shortly after)!  Vintage, I tell you, vintage.

On a new quasi-nephew

I just got off the phone with James who gave the news that his son was born on March 16th and all are doing well. The lad is named Griffin. I associate the name with Joey's youngest son, a red-head. But that is neither here nor there. It's a good name. His big sister Isla told me that she had helped give him a bath.

The subtitle of this blog will be changed momentarily.

On the states I have visited

I was feeling bored during my afternoon break, so I decided to see how many U.S. States I had visited. I was a little surprised to see that they numbered only 15 with an additional 3 where I changed planes going to and from Bolivia in 1992. This is very close to the number of countries I have been to. This is 11 or 12 depending on whether Jersey is considered part of the United Kingdom or not. In addition, on two occasions, I have been in an airplane that landed and refueled without me exiting in countries that I have not otherwise visited.

 The states I have been to are: Wyoming, Washington, Vermont, Utah, Oregon, North Dakota, New York, New Hampshire, Nevada, Montana, Massachusetts, Maine, Idaho, California and Arizona. The "airport states" were South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Florida. In order of first visit, the countries are: Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Bolivia, Ireland, New Zealand, Jersey, Spain, Portugal and Australia. The "airport countries" were Panama and the Bahamas.

Interestingly, I have only ridden a bicycle in 2 U.S. states (Washington and Massachusetts) whereas I have ridden a bicycle in 7 of the countries I have visited (Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Spain, Portugal and Australia) as well as in Jersey.

 Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been to and biked in, all the Canadian Provinces but none of the Territories.

On the Olympics, thoughts, etc.

This post has been running around in the back of my mind for months, but I was never in the right mood to write it. Consequently, except for the last part of it, it is a little out of date.

On my earliest Olympic memory

When Raymond was here in Montreal, we chatted about the Olympics as it was the topic du jour. I recounted to him about how the lighting of the Olympic flame for the Montreal Olympics was the first world event where I remember where I was for it. I elaborated by saying I had been at the house of some friends in North Hatley, and I remember alternately playing on their steep front lawn and going in to see the progress of the torch relay on their colour TV, as neither my grandparents' summer house or the one my parents had rented had a TV.

Raymond noticed that I had specified the TV was distinct for me as it was in colour. He inferred that by implication my family had a black & white TV. The concept of people owning a black & white TV was somewhat odd to him, as he was only 21. That realisation made me feel somewhat old. Although colour TVs were quite common in when I was young, there were still many black & white sets out there. My parents had a black &white TV up until a fire in 1978, after which they bought a colour TV.

On Olympic biking sports

For better or for worse, I am pretty much the go-to guy at work for bike related questions. While I am not the only cyclist there, I am the most visibly devout cyclist. Consequently, I wasn't surprised when one of my co-workers asked me about some aspects of Olympic, indoor biking events. I can't quite recall the exact question, but the short answer was "drafting", i.e. there is a whole body of sports tactics in the various indoor biking events that have to do about how it is easier to ride just behind someone else. Once I mentioned drafting, she immediately got the picture as she follows car racing, and has regularly attended the Montreal Grand Prix among other events.

However, I still had to explain some of the arcana behind the keirin events. I was rather hampered by the fact that I knew only the basics. Also, what little I know makes me feel it is a needlessly complicated event.

On a useful comment by an Olympic cyclist

I was favourably impressed that Bradley Wiggins, who won the gold medal for the road time trial at the London Olympics came out in favour of a law requiring bike helmets. There are some absolute rubbish ideas about bicycle safety floating around out there. I am glad that Wiggins is prepared to refute them.

On less useful comments by an ex-Olympic cyclist and a library's reaction to it

On the other extreme, Lance Armstrong's recent "admission" that he used performance enhancing drugs, struck me as far too little, far too late. High-level, competitive cycling has been awash in various drugs for a very long time and everybody knew it, as least unofficially. I give the sport a vague benefit of the doubt in that it has made some noises about cleaning up its act in the last few years, but back in Armstrong's heyday, he was the greatest hypocrite of them all.

Now it seems he is trying to redeem himself with his "mea culpa". However, I don't put much faith in him. I keep on being reminded of  a "reformed" cardsharp in 19th century America who went on a lecture tour where he claimed all decks of cards were marked. He "proved" it with any deck the congregation brought to him. However, what he was actually doing was using the cardsharp technique of the "shiner" (a small mirrored surface) to see what the cards were without turning them over. In other words, he was still tricking people.

I therefore thought it was appropriate that a library in Australia put up a sign saying they were moving Lance Armstrong's books to the Fiction section! Of course, they were only joking.

On being 4 and 0

Well, I am now 4 and 0 with wishing my assorted nieces and nephew their very first ever happy new year.

Sort of.

I spent the New Year with Alice, Mark, Anna and Maria in Mississauga. Unfortunately, my visit coincided with that family being hit by colds to varying extents and to varying effects. Being adults, Alice and Mark took their illness in relative stride, whereas poor Anna and Maria being unable to understand what was going on were much more upset and very hard to comfort, to the relative concern of the adults around them, your humble correspondent included. Of particular concern was Maria who exhibited a "silent cry" which very distressing to us. I think she is recovering, but I am a total layman with regards to infant illness and will readily admit my ignorance to actual parents and/or medical professionals to which categories Alice and Mark both belong.

Partly in light of illness and partly in light of young age, Alice ordained that the family New Year be a "Newfoundland New Year", i.e. at 10:30 PM, Eastern Standard Time. At the appointed hour, I wished Maria a happy New Year. A little later, as she was still very restive, Alice and I, took out for a walk in a snugly and went to the town square of Mississauga where festivities of various sorts were happening as MC'd by "the star of DeGrassi High : the Next Generation". The bits we witnessed were some DJ wearing a boom-box on his head and "Lights", a performer of whom I had never heard of previously.

This was the second of three excursions for Maria that evening in the hopes of soothing her. I think she is better now.

Edward meets Maria for the first time

Stephen and Maria

My visit also included a trip to Margaret's folks in Kitchener and a gathering of cousins in Guelph, chez my cousin Elin. I had spent two years in Guelph working on a "useless" Master's degree in Scottish history and had got to know Elin moderately well. I am not sure if I had seen her since, but anyway, my sister and I organized a bunch of cousins on my Dad's side into showing up at her house on New Year's Day. It was a good, relatively quiet party. The main issue of concern was Elin's friendly chocolate Labrador retriever which had to be carefully introduced to Anna as well as Rachel's Charlotte. It is not that Gemma (the Lab) is an unpleasant dog. Far from it, as she is a distinctly friendly dog, but given the small size of Anna and Charlotte, it was important that the meetings be controlled as Jemma could easily knock either child over in her eagerness to greet them.

Anna and Gemma

Quintin, Ethan and Morgan

 In groups of attachment and in no particular order, present were your humble correspondent, Alice, Anna and Maria ; Stephen, Margaret and Edward ; Elin (daughter of my uncle Julian), her husband Rob, her daughter Madeline, her son Perrin and his significant other whose name eludes me for the moment ; Quintin (son of my aunt Isabel), his daughter Morgan and son Ethan ; Rachel (daughter of my aunt Rosemary), her husband Bill, and her daughters Abigail and Charlotte ; as well as Saskia, daughter of Anya (daughter of my uncle Julian).

Rob, Quintin, Elin and Rachel

(I have a large extended family and this represents only about a tenth of my cousins!)

Anna and Madeline

Anyway, Maria has learnt to smile since I last saw her. Anna has increased her desire to be read to, especially out of Richard Scarry's Busy, Busy World, a "classic" of juvenile litterature that I remember from my youth. Interestingly enough, Alice doesn't remember it from her youth, suggesting that it was one of many books we lost in a house fire in 1978. Mark, in his slightly peculiar way, has the habit of substituting the word "caribou" for "reindeer" when reading "Happy Lappy from Finland" (page 74) from the book when reading it to her. I am not sure if she noticed the difference.

Mark has quite the collection of nature documentaries featuring David Attenborough, of which we watched a fair number of episodes. This led to a discussion of what is appropriate viewing for toddlers given the numbers of animal deaths and displays of whale willies. ;-)

On Christmas presents given

The list of suggested presents for my eldest niece from my brother Philip contained the injunction "No princesses", something I was rather suspicious was a parental injunction rather than Désirée's wishes. As the list didn't contain particularly inviting presents in my opinion, and the present I really wished to give had princess content, though tempered by rebelliousness, viz, Pixar's Brave, I went against instructions and gave it Désirée on DVD along with Disney's Cinderella. (After all, she isn't a princess for most of the film!) :-)  Désirée was quite happy with it, Philip and Dominique less so. In the aftermath, it came out that Désirée's actual wishes had been for "fairy, mermaid and/or princess".

Conversely, the list of presents Edward's parents presented included the wish for tracks for his toy cars which ideally should not require batteries. I found exactly what was wished for in a Hot Wheels set of assorted tracks, curves, jump, loop-de-loop and spring launcher. Edward had been hopping up and down with anticipation of his presents until he opened that one. After that, it was pretty much all people could do to pull him away long enough to open his other presents.

I think I can tick that one off as well received.

Even more fun was that Désirée also got a kick out of playing with the track. Actually, Stephen, Margaret, Philip and myself have all had some fun with it!

Finally, two days ago, I was adding some reflective tape to my Arc'teryx soft shell jacket using my Mother's sewing machine when Dominique came in the room. She commented that she needed some of the tape. As providence would have it, I had bought twice as much reflective tape as I needed and thus was able to put the other portion in her stocking! She was amused and happy.

Giving presents that are obviously enjoyed is lots of fun!

On my geekiest Christmas present

 I had suggested that I would like this to my siblings. Alice and Stephen bickered over who would get it for me. Alice won. For those of you who aren't up to speed, it is a Star Trek, the original series, bike jersey in the engineering/security department colour. The one downside of it, is that in the original series, people in red shirts were very often killed, to the point that in science fiction the term "red shirt" is often used as shorthand for "expendable crew member".

Merry Christmas!