On my nephew's first Halloween photo

Shamelessly stolen from his mom's Facebook page, this picture is described as "Every pirate needs a parrot!" Too cute for words. The costume isn't bad either.

On fools on touring bikes

My parents lent me a DVD of "Asiemut", a documentary by a couple of Quebecers about biking from Mongolia to Calcutta. My reaction is that I am not terribly impressed with the pair. They strike me as dangerously unprepared and naive with regards to their trip. In particular, I suspect that they pulled a hell of a stunt with regards to China on their journey. This stunt could have cost them very dearly.

To begin with, their route took them through Tibet. It is not clear exactly when they went, but it obviously within the last five years or so. What with the Western media's adulation of the Dalai Lama of late, China has been very sensitive about foreigners wandering about Tibet. From the perspective on China I have gained from Margo and Chris' experience, I suspect that their initial efforts at planning their trip were probably either naive or possibly half-baked. I see this in the fact that they arrive at the Mongolian-Chinese border and are dismayed (and in the case of the woman, devastated) to find out that the authorities won't allow them in. I am suspicious that either they stated they wanted to travel through Tibet or that they were so vague about their plans that it aroused official suspicions. Alternatively, it is possible that they failed to sort out their visa before they set out. Their reactions suggest that the possibility that they couldn't cross the border had simply not been sufficiently taken into account and they weren't properly prepared with practical and emotional backup plans.

They eventually managed to get into China by paying what they describe as a lot of money to a tour guide. What do they then do? They bypass checkpoints and villages to stay under the radar as they travel into Tibet despite the fact that they aren't supposed to be there! They had the luck to only run into one set of officials who cheerfully posed for pictures with them. Had they run into less pleasant individuals, they could have been chucked into prisons as spies.

Their comments on Tibet are fundamentally trite and lack a serious background knowledge. They repeat what amounts to a cliché that during the Cultural Revolution "tens of thousands" of Tibetan temples were destroyed. This being an assault of Tibet culture. My contrarian impulses scream to point out that in the same period, the same thing was happening to temples everywhere in China.

The pair made it to Nepal without incident. However, I can't help but feel that their cavalier approach, especially with having made a biased movie about their trip, has only made China (especially Tibet) a harsher place for cycle-tourists. As such, I am not very impressed with them.

On Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

It has taken me a while to figure out exactly what my impressions of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. I guess part of the problem was that I already knew too much about it. Especially the story about why it got its name. I got rather bored hearing and reading about it. (What I would like to know is how the Crowsnest Pass got its name.)

One of the things that the site did teach me was that not only did the First Nations drive the bison over the cliffs, but that they also lured them over. If I may explain, to my mind driving them means scaring them away from where they are or might go. In contrast, luring means attracting them in a given direction. The technique in question involves one (or possibly more) people dressing up in a bison calf skin and making what he hopes are reasonably accurate distressed bleating noises in the hopes of appealing the maternal instincts of the bison. At the same time, people in wolf skins approach on the opposite side of the herd causing them to head towards the "distressed calf". The guy in the calf skin then runs in the direction of the jump leading the herd into a funnel of other people. Ideally, the herd will be panicked down the funnel and over the cliff, where some other people will cheerfully smash their brains out with a stone headed club. In truth, this technique involves both driving and luring the bison, but it is the luring bit that fascinates me.

Another aspect of the museum that intrigued me was the uneasiness I saw in the interpretation of the realities of the bison hunt and the uses the First Nations put the products of the hunt to. There is something of a cliché that the First Nations used every bit of the bison, leaving nothing to waste. This makes them sound like environmental poster boys, but unfortunately, the evidence isn't there, at least to my cynical mind. Unless the groups of First Nations people were much larger than I envision, if they were to drive a herd of bison over a cliff, they would have more dead bison than they would be able to process. Bison ain't small. While the First Nations had uses for every bit of bison, they don't need to use every bit of every bison if there are a couple of dozen dead bison lying around. As well, if you have killed a few dozen bison in one go, try as you might, some of them are going to start rotting before you have time to butcher them. Even if you do butcher them all, you aren't necessarily going to use every last bit. The testament to came be seen in the immense (10 m deep) pile of assorted bison bones that tells the tale of the place: if they were using every last bit, why all the "garbage"? (Yes, I am arguing semantics.) While the site didn't belabor this point, it did quietly admit it. However, there was a certain unease about this admission as making it has the effect weakening the eco-political position of the First Nations the site seeks to honour.

On milk crates

There was an article in Montreal Gazette today on the whys, the wherefores and the style (or possibly lack thereof) of people who attach milk crates to the back of their bikes.  As my regular readers will know, I am a proponent of this arrangement.  Indeed, as the practice has become more widespread in Montreal since I moved here in 1998, I sometimes wonder how many people I inspired.  Note that I don't claim to have invented the practice, merely that I may have inspired others to do so.

However, I think the article makes too much of the style issue of crates as in my opinion, style is something that needs to be kept as far away from bikes as possible.  A bike is transportation, not a flaming fashion accessory.  Once you start down the path of form over functionality, you get into all kinds of nonsense which ultimately take away from the transport function and bikes become toys.  Once that happens, they then become optional.  One of the reasons bikes fell out of the North American transportation cocktail in the mid 20th century was exactly that.

Also, the article makes it sound like milk crates are there for the taking, when they aren't.  As touched on in the article, they are the property of the milk companies.  The milk companies charge a deposit to stores.  The last time I acquired a crate it was $8.00.  Not a huge expense, but one that means that small businesses aren't about to start giving away milk crates.  To make a long story short: if you want a milk crate, ask politely at your local grocery or dépanneur, emphasizing that you are willing to pay the deposit.

On the confusion of domicile, origin and destination at least in Canada

One of the questions a touring cyclist often gets asked is "Where are you from?" While one's own country, this often has double meaning as there is often an implicit, "Where did you start?" implied in the query. I didn't notice this on my trip to Newfoundland as the two questions had the same answer, at least to a degree.

However, on my last trip, the answers were very different and were also antipodal: I am "from" Montreal but I had come from Victoria. I quickly learned that in order to avoid confusion, I had to respond to the initial question with "I am from Montreal, but I started in Victoria." This led to a further bit of potential confusion as some assumed I was going all the way home by bike. I had to add I was "only" going as far as Calgary.

It doesn't help that despite the fact that Canada has a lot of North to South distance, mentally it is thought of as being something of an East-West line, or in the case of my trip, West-East line. Thus if you mention two or more points on that "line", then the assumption is that you will travel between all the points. This is different from our neighbour to the South where not only is a Nouth-South jaunt more of a mental probability, there are many other possibilities. A biker (not a cyclist) I met on the ferry to Newfoundland was talking about how he had ridden the coastline of the continental states, something that you can't do with Canada. Heck, if you wanted to do that with a province, you would be pretty much limited to the Maritime Provinces!

On the freedom of the Prairies

In hindsight, it should have been obvious, but then hindsight is 20/20. Unlike biking in places like B.C. or Newfoundland, you can do without careful accommodation planning in Alberta and by extension, the rest of the Prairies. As there are decent sized settlements every 10 miles or so, (Alberta, at least, was settled during the age of Imperial measurements) where you can find a bed is relatively predictable as well as flexible. Because of the mountains, you could go significant distances in British Columbia without encountering a town, (the stretch between Kelowna and Pringle sticks in my mind) let alone one with a motel or the like. Consequently, I had to plan my trans-montane trip fairly carefully in light of the relative shortage of accommodations and my dislike of camping. Indeed, the failure to find a bed for the night me to have to ride much further than I would have wished on at least two days.

However, once I hit Alberta, the rules by which I had been operating went out the window. For one thing, I hadn't fully appreciated how much of a boost tailwinds are in flat country. Had I not booked a bed in High River, I might have gone significantly further on my last full day of biking. (The corollary of this is that headwinds become much more troublesome. Some locals I talked to said that I was smart to be riding West to East as going the other way you might as well walk!)

In light of this, the next time I am biking on the Prairies, I am not going to have as rigid a schedule and will instead let the day, my energy level and the wind decide how far I will go in a before I need to sleep. I will still be me and have a list of possible places to stay on hand, but I must refuse to plan too rigidly my distances. I must embrace the freedom of movement that the Prairies offer me.

On the passing of Douglas Campbell, part 2

Douglas as Falstaff in Henry IV, part 2

Another article from the Gazette here and photos here. I actually saw the productions of the Gin Game featured and Macbeth featured in the galeries. As well, there is this, this, and this from the Globe and Mail. "Canada's National newspaper" is the source of the above photo and claims it is from the 2002 production. However, I am not sure if that is truly the case, as the look doesn't quite match my memories of the play.