Precision

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In memory of Jane Linton who died April 13, 1875 aged 74 years, 4 days

This marker is in Bethel Cemetery in Pickering.

If you walk through any cemetery that’s been in operation for more than a hundred years, you’ll soon notice two things. The first is the sheer number of children that used to die before they were old enough to crawl and how many families had two, three, or more children that didn’t live to their tenth birthdays.

The second is an unusual obsession with precision exhibited on many markers. I can understand marking a dead child’s age as three weeks or 22 days, but many of the markers for older people also include precise counts of months and days. It always seems a little odd to see a grandmother’s age tallied up in the same manner as a toddler’s.

A lot of people shy away from cemeteries, but I always find them fascinating. Taking a stroll through an old cemetery is like walking through a highly-condensed social history of a region. As you progress from older graves to newer ones, the names change, occupations shift, family relationships become clear, and tributes to achievements both major and minor abound.

Dumbing it down

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No dumbing

It looks like someone in rural northeastern Pickering has had enough of idiots treating this vacant lot like their own private dumb and has chosen to combat the problem by posting this notice at the entrance. And who can blame the poor owner? No one wants to visit their plot of land only to discover that they’ve been dumbed on again. Do you have any idea how much it costs to clean up after that kind of stupidity?

Abandoned DVP on-ramp

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Old DVP on-ramp from York Mills Road

Driving down the DVP a couple of weeks ago, I noticed an old roadway cutting through the brush just north of York Mills Road. I had a pretty good idea of what it was, but a quick look at Google Maps confirmed my suspicion: it was an abandoned on-ramp to the southbound Don Valley Parkway from westbound York Mills Road. The current DVP ramps at York Mills were reconfigured during construction to the overpass beginning in 2005. The northwestern loop of the cloverleaf was removed entirely. Or was it?

Old DVP on-ramp from York Mills Road

I went back by bike last weekend (the same ride where I blew out a tire) to investigate and was quite surprised by what I found. Not only was virtually the entire ramp still intact, but there had been no attempt to restrict access to it. I was expecting to see the traditional Toronto chain-link fence surrounding the road, but all I had to do was ride up a little hill before I was greeted by the remnants of the ramp in all its glory. I’m not saying that there should be a fence, just that I was expecting one. Toronto officialdom is so paranoid about putting fences and warning signs around everything more challenging than a sidewalk that I never imagined for a second that it wouldn’t be all locked up.

Old DVP on-ramp from York Mills RoadAlthough the subsequent landscaping at York Mills Road put the ramp’s remnants out of sight, the bulk of the road still sits behind the embankment, where it’s being slowly consumed by encroaching weeds. The posts that held up corrugated beam safety barriers around the perimeter of the ramp were cut down to the ground and a stone-lined drainage ditch has been dug across the roadway, but the ramp is otherwise intact to within a few metres of the highway.

Although you’re never farther than 100 metres from either York Mills or the DVP, the curving tree-lined ramp quickly isolates you from both. Even with the sound of traffic in the background, it’s surprisingly relaxing.

Old DVP on-ramp from York Mills RoadThe current Google Maps image of the area, probably taken in 2005 or 2006, clearly shows an excavator perched at the very bottom of the ramp, presumably preparing to rip up the 50 metres or so of the roadway that was removed.

At some point, the now-unused land here will probably be sold off for—what else?—condos, and another little piece of Toronto infrastructure will disappear completely. In the meantime, this hidden corner of the city is being rezoned by the local flora.

A version of this post originally appeared on Torontoist.

The importance of regular maintenance

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Tires are frequently a forgotten aspect of bicycle maintenance and this is what happens when you don’t check them regularly:

First you wear a little hole in your tread: The result of a tire blowout

Then your usually indestructible Mr. Tuffy tire liner wears through: Wear a hole right through Mr. Tuffy

Then your tube blows out while you’re speeding down Don Mills Road:

Bicycle tube blowout

And finally, you call your better half to come and rescue you from the 2-hour walk home.

I can’t complain, though; I knew the tire was nearing the end of its useful life but ignored the now-obvious warnings through a couple of rides. Since 2003, this set of tires had seen about 12,000 km on concrete, asphalt, sand, rocks, dirt, mud, grass, loose gravel, snow, ice, slush, and pretty much every other surface you could encounter in southern Ontario and I’d been planning since the spring to replace them anyway. As usual, I just needed that extra little push to actually get the work done.

Silly cycling restrictions: How slow can you go?

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How slow can you go?

If you look closely at the advisory signs when you enter Mount Pleasant Cemetery, you may notice something peculiar: a reasonable speed limit of 30 km/h for cars and just 10 km/h for bicycles. Not only that, but while drivers are helpfully advised to lock their unattended cars, cyclists are warned—twice!—that their speed limit is “strictly enforced,” and that it is to “ensure the safety and respect of those visiting the cemetery.” Apparently, a bike at 15 km/h is more disturbing and dangerous than a car travelling twice that speed.

What makes this a silly restriction is not so much the different speed limits or the extra warnings for cyclists, but the ludicrously slow speed cyclists are supposed to maintain. I did try riding at 10km/h through the cemetery one day; it’s a very difficult speed to maintain. I was passed by several non-Roger-Bannister-like joggers who were bouncing along at, by rough estimate, about 12 km/h. My more typical leisurely pace through these paths is around 20 km/h.

As for being strictly enforced, none of the cemetery employees I encounter (including security) on my daily commutes ever do more than wave and smile as I fly recklessly past them at twice the limit. Either no one knows how slow 10 km/h really is or they think it’s as silly as I do.

Still, cyclists have it better than inline skaters; they’re not allowed in the cemetery at all.

I see faces #8

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Houses literally looking out over the Gardiner

These houses quite literally look over the Gardiner Expressway from near The Queensway and Windermere. Just try to get a picture of them without being in a moving vehicle.

I rode my bike into this development a few weeks ago to get a picture and was surprised to find that only the houses that back onto the Gardiner have this particular arrangement of windows and rooflines; other similar houses that back into the interior of the development or onto The Queensway lack both the proper eye placement and distinctive eyebrows. These faces are mostly hidden from the view of passersby on Lake Shore Boulevard or the Martin Goodman Trail; you have to be on the Gardiner or a GO or VIA train to get the proper effect. When I first noticed these houses a couple of years ago, I was uncertain about whether the eye pattern was intentional or not, but now I’m fairly sure that it was a deliberate design choice.

I took this picture during last weekend’s Ride for Heart. One completely false rumour has it that I signed up for the 75 km course solely because the route took me to just the right spot on the Gardiner to pull over and snap off a couple of quick shots.

The leading edge of bad slogans

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Etobicoke’s municipal slogan

Ah, Etobicoke. The Leading Edge of Metro. Or the ass end of Mississauga, depending how you look at it. This may have been the lamest slogan of the former Metro municipalities, with the probable exception of my own East York’s proud and perplexing, “Canada’s Only Borough.” “Yay! We’re Canada’s only, uh, what? What’s a borough? I suppose it doesn’t really matter, as long as we’re the only one. That means we’re the best! Yay!”

For some reason, this sign still stands along the bike path near Albion Road, ten years after Etobicoke was folded into the Megacity. I recently saw a picture of this same sign (about halfway down this page) taken last year. A fairly fresh tag shown on last year’s picture is a mostly-erased blue smudge on this year’s. Not only does this sign yet exist, but someone seems to be maintaining it. How efficient.
Who comes up with these slogans anway? And what are the worst municipal slogans currently in use in the GTA and environs? Vaughan’s “The City Above Toronto”? Richmond Hill’s “A Little North, a Little Nicer” eclipses that, and Markham’s peculiar “The Mark of Excellence” is worse yet. They’re all losers in their own way, but surely the prize for worst of all must go to Burlington’s oddly passive “Stand By.”

Improving the Ride for Heart

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My trusty GPS guides me right down the white line.Now that I’ve finally ridden the Ride for Heart, I have a few suggestions for improving the experience, getting more people involved, and making it safer:

  • Separate it into two events: one race and one pleasure ride. It’s obvious that a lot of speed demons enjoy the opportunity to race along the DVP, but they really shouldn’t be mingling with riders who are just out for a leisurely Sunday pedal. With the racers leading the charge out of the starting chute at 6:45 a.m., it wouldn’t be a problem except that the 75 km course loops back on itself at the top, which puts the speedy peloton in conflict with much slower riders for at least a quarter of their ride. At the very least, the racers should start an hour earlier than other riders so that the two groups don’t conflict. Another option is to run the event over a whole weekend: multiple races on Saturday, pleasure ride on Sunday. I’m sure that racers would appreciate this just as much as the rest of us.
  • Push back the start time. I mean, really, who wants to wake up at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning to go for a bike ride? More importantly, how many more familes would participate if the latest start time got pushed back from 9 o’clock in the morning to 1 or 2 o’clock in the afternoon? I know, inconvenience to drivers, blah, blah, blah. Spare me. This could tie into my previous suggestion: have races in the morning, leisure in the afternoon.
  • Let people start from somewhere other than Exhibition Place. What’s the point of forcing someone who lives in North York to drive down to the waterfront, ride up to North York and back to the waterfront, and then drive back up to North York? Wouldn’t it be better if they could just ride over to the York Mills exit and get on the DVP from there? I saw riders getting on and off at virtually every ramp along the highway, so people are already doing this anyway. And they’re probably not registering to participate, either. It’s not a problem for me to ride down to the Ex, but it would be a lot easier (and fun!) for me to use either the Don Mills or Bayview on-ramps.
  • Ditch the set course and just let people ride wherever they want. As far as I could tell, the course isn’t really enforced anyway. A fast rider could probably have done the York Mills–Bayview loop several times before time ran out, and someone who signed up for the 25 km ride could have done the full 75 km without being stopped. Indeed, for all the checking I saw, anyone could have started any route at any time. For maximum effectiveness, tie this in with the previous item: let riders get on the highway wherever they want, ride wherever they want, and get off wherever they want. Riders should pay a set access fee at whatever ramp they use to access the Parkway and that should allow them to go anywhere.
  • Do it more often. Why just one early morning in the spring? How about every Sunday through the summer? With different charities running it each weekend? Five bucks gets you on the DVP and Gardiner between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. (with on and off privileges at any exit) every Sunday for three months. I know, inconvenience to drivers, blah, blah, blah. Suck it up.

All of these suggestions would get more people on the road and probably raise more money. If these changes were made, I’d anticipate a minimum of 150,000 cyclists taking part. Just set up tables at each entrance, sell wristbands for $5–$10 and let people cruise at will.

Ride for Heart

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Ride for Heart, 2008

After years of stubbornly refusing to wake up at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I finally made it out to the Ride for Heart today. I thought it went fairly smoothly. I got to Exhibition Place just before 6:30 a.m. and settled into the starting chute for the 75 km ride at 6:32, about 15 minutes before the scheduled start. Quite a number of late arrivals rode along the adjacent sidewalk or lawn to get to the front instead of taking up their spots at the end of the line. Nice.

Although well within my range once I’m in cycling shape for the year, today’s total ride length of 98 km (including 23 km round-trip from home to the starting/finish line) over four and a half hours was two hours and 40 km longer than I’d gone since October. You betcha I’m sore. But it’s a good sore. And next weekend, I’ll ride farther.

Right at the front of the starting chute was a large group of riders who raced the entire 75 km. I don’t know who won, but I do know that the peloton (and its police escort) lapped me around the 40 km mark.

I was surprised by the number of people who got flat tires or were injured along the ride. I stopped to ask at least a dozen people with flats if they needed assistance (one of the moral duties of those who carry tool kits), but they all waved me on. Injuries along the route included a guy who was screaming in pain as he was hoisted onto an ambulance stretcher, a woman with a nasty gash on her head, several other people receiving roadside attention from paramedics, and at least two other ambulance sightings. All but one of the injuries I saw were on straight sections of the track, and the course wasn’t really that crowded after the start. Another guy was walking with his bike tilted up on the rear wheel, the badly twisted front wheel hanging uselessly in the air.

While I was pondering the causes of all the accidents, a woman passed me on the right, looked back at me as her rear wheel slowly drew even with my front, said, “Passing on the left,” and then cut right into my wheel. I would almost certainly have joined the injured if I hadn’t braked in time or if someone had been behind me. Just goes to show you that idiots drive all kinds of vehicles.

It was good to finally get out to this event, although it felt a bit like Friday’s Big Critical Mass Adventure took the wind out of some of the novelty.