Interesting little post over at David Lee King’s blog about ten gadgets that are dead or dying (and will be impossible to find soon). One is the wrist-watch. Hmmm. I know that my phone will tell me the time. So will my Palm. In fact I’ve been carrying a device of some sort that will tell me the time for at least 17 years. But still, last time I spent the day without my watch, I kept noticing. So much so that that was the topic of my FB post for the day.

So we went to Park Royal mall today. Kind of a holiday weekend adventure. It’s way out of the way for us but the Family thought it might be a nice place to go. As for me, I hadn’t been there for 10 years and then that was only to the future shop and before that was probably over 20 years ago. So after some basic indoor mall experience K. says we should have lunch at the Whole Foods and I’d looked at the Mall directory and it’s waaaaay over the far end of the place so we hike about three blocks and cross a busy street and, lo and behold, it’s a whole “village” mall concept at that end of the place.

Now, that’s interesting because in my days at the Land Centre I’d spent plenty of time reading about and learning about the new shopping mall tricks such as making them into “village” high-street places and these Park Royal guys have really gone to town with the concept. And it’s pretty seductive, I have to say. Lots of people all over the sidewalks. Lots of places to sit. Lots of stores (some small, some big) with their doors on the “street”. Feels very comfortable and “human scale” to walk around. Only problem is that, it’s still a mall. There’s mostly chain stores. Many of the stores are big box stores that are, well, still big box stores even if you walk across a sidewalk to get to them. But I have to admit: I can see why people who don’t over analyze things like I do would be quite happy to park their car on the fake street and walk down the sidewalk into the front door of the fake village grocery store. Very interseting (and not wholly unenjoyable) experience, I have to admit.

I’ve been wondering why it is that the current rage for “useful” bicycles, which in itself is a marvelously Good Thing, is centred around bikes which, while being made of new materials, are shaped like very old bicycles. Hundred-year-old bicycles, in fact. When it’s been well-known (at least among cycle engineers) that the most efficient shapes for two-wheels-in-line transport are somewhat different. 

The unpopularity of recumbents is somewhat understandable, if unfair. They don’t “look right” and they can be harder to ride at first. And when people buy bikes after riding them around the bike-store’s block for ten minutes, that makes recumbents a really hard sell, I suspect. 

But small-wheeled upright bikes don’t suffer from this problem. They ride like a “normal” bike and you can tell that as soon as you start to turn the pedals. It’s also reasonbaly well-known by bike engineers that a little bit of suspension at both of those small wheels makes for the most efficient bike of them all. (I know I’m biased. I’ve got an old Moulton.) Still, I don’t really know the answer to my question: why don’t the regular (and nicely outfitted, I might add) Dahons, have suspension? I’m puzzled buy this.

And I’m also puzzled that there aren’t more companies marketing a wider range of bike shapes (small wheels, spar frames, etc.) to capture the audience of new utility cyclists?

After a Sunday afternoon lull sitting reading our books in JJ Bean’s on 14th & Main we were driving along past Main & Kingsway and I remarked to the wife: where did people hang out on Sundays in the winter when we were 20-somethings?

It occurred to us that there was almost nowhere to go: I remember once or twice going to the SoftRock Cafe and once going to the old Vienna tea house on Robson. K remembers going to Beanos. Ugh. I can’t deny I went there too. But it got me thinking.
I realize now that I spent a lot of time visiting friends. At their houses. And that reminded me of what people used to say: Vancouver was a very difficult place to break into the regular social life. There were no ubiquitous coffee shops. No hip hangouts. There were bars, a few nightclubs. And during the day there was Beanos. So almost everybody visited their friends at someone’s house and that meant that if you didn’t know anybody in town, you didn’t meet any locals. And if you didn’t like your friends, it was very hard to meet new ones.
(My perpective is limited, I know. I grew up with a very close set of friends who I still see. I realize now that we didn’t admit newcomers easily. Although I don’t think that was on purpose as much as it was a function of having known each other from such an early age. But that’s another story….)
I hate to admit it (because people are probably sick by now of hearing about the “before Expo/after Expo”story) but this *was* something that changed after Expo 86. For one thing, before Expo, very few places were open on Sunday. Certainly bars weren’t. Most stores weren’t. And I seem to recall that many many cafes were not either. That’s compounded by the fact that there weren’t many cafes in the first place.
I guess this is something we can be thankful for now that we have a grownup-like city. Traffic may be a constant hassle. Rent may be insanely expensive. But at least there’s somewhere to go and something to see on any given day. It sure wasn’t like this when I was growing up.

I have to admit: even though the Mother of all Funk Chords has been all over the web (posted in places as disparate as Slashdot and Virtual Dave…Real Blog), I still think it’s the coolest thing I ‘ve seen in ages.

It’s all done by this guy.

So I became one of those guys who rode in the snow today. Not on purpose. In fact, I headed west on a training ride and it was all blue skies in front of me. Unfortunately, it was all grey skies when I turned back east and the snow started some where around Kent & Cambie. Then it got cold & blowy, let me show ya.

Here’s something to listen to!

 

It’s what the Digital Cobbler was all about 7 years ago! The CBC has finally caught up to us 🙂

 

[thanks to Paul Woods for the tip].

So I guess I shouldn’t be so quick to complain about the attention paid to our bike routes. Ridgeway greenway (37th ave. bike route) was certainly salted when I rode this morning. And today was a Sunday so I don’t know when this was done.

Rock salt on the bike way.

Here’s one of these vexing, ongoing daily-cyclist’s conundrums. Regular pants that are fine for sitting in front of the computer all day in an office are, essentially, a big-time fail for riding on the bike in Vancouver in the Winter.

It’s not just the rain so rainpants aren’t just the answer. And, anyway, part of the problem is trying not to have to change or carry too much paraphernalia. I’ve got gore-tex rainpants and, when it’s really raining, I give in and pull them on.

There’s already been plenty of talk on Vancouver blogs about looking and/or not looking like a cyclist. That’s not really the problem. I’m not pretending that I don’t care what I look like, that would be a bit disengenuous. It’s more that I want to be comfortable while, at the same time, not having to worry about what I look like or have to screw around with changing clothes.

One of the unspoken problems is that, around here in winter, three default weather conditions: Raining (about which see above); if it isn’t raining it’s either 4-degrees and clammy and about to rain; or it’s beautiful, clear, and 1-degree (and icy, but that’s a whole ‘nother post, trust me).

I admit, in the comfort/function department: I’m spoiled. But they fail the practical hang-around-all-day-in-them test.

Regular casual sit-around pants, on the other hand, aren’t warm enough. I just find that the wind cuts right through them and my knees are cold for half the ride (the downhill half). I’m starting to think I’ll have to try a pair of knickers. They’re making a bit of a comeback. Maybe they won’t look as goofy as they sound. Hmmmm. What else is out there, I wonder?

Saw something interesting the other day: A handful of folks gathered under the portico of Vancouver’s central library around an electrical outlet charging their electric bikes. That got me to thinking: nomads need electricity.

Now, of course, in this day and age we already know this. But I suspect most of us who are thinking of on-the-go electrical needs are thinking of electricity for devices (you know: laptops, phones, and so on). That’s certainly an important question. But E-bikes are becoming an important part of the transportation spectrum and they can’t bring them into coffee shops and libraries to get them charged. And, in addition, coffee shops aren’t exactly free electricity anyway. You have to buy something to sit there.

So, that brings me to the puzzle of finding free or near-free, outside public electricity access for E-bikes. Is there some kind of wiki/blog/list where somebody is keeping track of outdoor plugs? Is it in this Yahoo Group? It would seem to be a good idea to maintain a list somewhere. I’m not tapped into the e-bike community at all so I don’t know.

As an example: people are tracking power in airports and there’s plenty of public wifi lists (here’s one) so I suspect the e-bike community trades this info somehow.

Of Course, if the idea catches a public-buzz, then somebody will definitely try to commercialize it so I suppose one should be careful what one wishes for.