Vancouver Snow

All our neighbours who have lived in Vancouver all their lives say they've never seen this much snow in Vancouver. Even the famous snowstorm of 1996 was like a 36-hour phenomena. Wednesday, December 17 was the start of the snow and it hasn't let up yet. And of course, Vancouver doesn't know how to deal with snow. Here are some pictures.

Funny Comment on the U.S. Elections

This is pretty funny: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2008/09/28/real-time-with-bill-maher-new-rules-look-beyond-the-candidates-skin-color/. Stick with it when it starts to look like it's going to say bad things about single mothers. The real point is about the privileged jerks that have delayed my retirement by several years due to their game playing with mortgages.

If you're watching the video, the political stuff starts at about 2:30.

Camping in Manning Park

We went camping at Lightning Lakes Campground in Manning Provincial Park. The campground is five km off Highway 3 where the Manning Park Resort is. The campground is probably 1,300 m above sea level, so in late August it's getting really cold at night. I would guess that Saturday morning at 5:00 AM when I got up (thanks to the cat throwing up in the tent), it was probably only a few degrees above zero.

Marc did the learn to fish course. He was great at casting. The province runs learn to fish programs now because they're selling fewer fishing and hunting licenses every year. The argument (at least to people like me) is that someone who uses the outdoors will care for the outdoors. (I think there's lots of people in BC who use the outdoors -- they just don't do the same sports as the people who are currently BC Liberal MLAs.)

On the way home we walked through the Othello Tunnels, a sequence of tunnels in the Coquihalla Canyon. This stretch of railway cost three times as much per kilometre as the typical piece of track at the time. Of course it turned out to be too expensive to maintain the section what with rain storms and avalanches.

We had great weather, probably because we were east of the summit of the Coast Mountains range. As soon as we got down to Hope, the heavens opened. Angela commented that we always seem to drive through a deluge on our way back to Vancouver from the interior.

Science World with Benjamin

Marc and his friend Benjamin went to Science World today. Here are the pictures:

Camping at Nairn Falls

Marc's been wanting to go camping all winter. We finally negotiated the first weekend in June. We went to Nairn Falls Provincial Park. We went last year for one night. The falls are spectacular, but we didn't go see them this year. We just played around the campground and looked at the river.

On the way up we saw three bears (no Goldilocks, though). Two were just a few metres off the edge of the highway, between Squamish and Whistler. The first was just outside Lions Bay, a suburb of Vancouver, up on the hill in a construction zone (the whole highway is being rebuilt for the 2010 Winter Olympics).

On the way back we stopped in at the BC Mining Museum. It was time well spent. Marc loved the old machines, and he wasn't the only one. We got to ride a train inside the mine: A child's heaven, whether the child is 6 or 49.

Marc took a number of pictures of the old machines. I like his composition.

Great Podcast for Math Whiz Wannabes

I just heard a great podcast of Arthur Benjamin doing his mental math tricks. The second half of the podcast is him explaining how he does it, which I think is much more interesting than the tricks themselves to those of who are math-inclined.

Something I found really interesting is that he does math by hearing or words, rather than visually. I'm visual, which is why I can do math in my head about as fast in Spanish (which I learned as an adult) as I can in English (my first language). Benjamin's room full of geeks appears to have been overwhelmingly visual as well, but he says that most rapid mental math calculators (humans) are auditory.

Guts

Alberto Contador, last year's Tour de France winner, riding with a broken arm, finished second in today's individual time trial at the Giro d'Italia, a 39.4 km ride in 56 m 49 s.

Children's Festival

Marc went to the Children's Festival in Vanier Park with his Mom and Kindergarten. Here are the photos:

Playland

We live a few blocks from the Pacific National Exhibition grounds, which are home to Playland. Playland is an amusement park that's open from Easter until Hallowe'en. I guess I should consider us lucky that Marc made it to six years old before he figured out that he should be able to ask for a trip to Playland whenever he wants. We negotiated once a month as a compromise. The season's pass for a kid Marc's age isn't that expensive, but there's no season's pass for the guardian. That's where it's going to get expensive.

Bicycle Maintenance

Courtesy of Ed at Mighty Riders, here's the ten-minute course on important bicycle maintenance:

1. Buy a bike with cartridge bearings. These are basically the same type of bearings as you find in a car. You don't have to oil or pack them. They've been common in the bottom bracket for years. It's worth the money you spend to get them in the wheels and headset as well. You should check your wheel bearings from time to time for play and tighten them with cone wrenches if they're loose. At twenty months of abusive Vancouver commuting, I need to adjust mine a bit.
2. If you have pulleys in the derailleur that don't have bearings in them, take them apart and pack them with grease. Note which one is the top and which is the bottom. There is a difference. Better yet, buy ones that don't need maintenance for about $20. Make sure you get the right pulleys for the number of speeds you have.
   
3. Keep your drivetrain clean. When the chain is squeaking, and not before, grab a piece of rag, spray on your favourite cleaner, and run the chain through the rag until you get all the gunk off the outside of the chain. Then lubricate the chain on the inside (drop oil on the top of the lower run of chain, never on the sprockets). Wipe off the excess oil. The italics mean it's very important to wipe off the excess.
   
4. Don't use a two or three part lubricant. They just gunk things up.
5. If you have rim brakes, run a cloth or sponge over the rims frequently to clean off the road dirt. Use acetone to clean off the rubber from the brake pads that can stick to the rim.
   
6. From time to time, clean the part of the brake and derailleur cables that run inside the housing. There's a trick to this that I'll post in pictures.
7. If you have an old bike, you probably have sprockets, chainrings and a chain that aren't all the same age. You also probably don't have the same wear on each sprocket or each chain ring, since you probably ride a lot in certain gears. (I have a one-tooth difference across most of my sprockets. That and the hills in Vancouver mean I actually wear out most of my gears at about the same time, but your experience will likely be different.) The next time you have to change any part of your drive train, change it all. If one part is worn too much, the other parts will wear out fast, even if they're brand new.
   
8. If you're starting with a completely new drivetrain (chain rings, sprockets and chain), change the chain as soon as it shows signs of wear. The tools that measure chain wear (aka stretch) often don't accurately measure wear. I'll post pictures of how to determine your wear.
9. You don't need to oil any of the other little moving bits on the derailleurs themselves. As long as you shift, they'll keep themselves clean.
   

I'll get some pictures and expand on some of the above in the near future.

Fair Trade Coffee has Arrived

On my once-every-six-weeks trip to the Great Canadian Superstore (Loblaw's, for you easterners), I found a fair-trade certified President's Choice coffee. That's a long way from riding my bike through an Ottawa winter to the one church in town that sold Bridgehead Nicaraguan coffee, like I had to do 20 years ago.

Bomb Blast in Starbucks

Here are some pictures of the aftermath of the explosion in the Starbucks and Taco del Mar on W Broadway in Vancouver. It's about a block from my office. The Starbucks was the semi-official coffee shop of Vancouver Coastal Health's senior management, who work right across the street. The first few pictures are from when I went by in the morning on my way to work. The others are after lunch.

February Sun

I couldn't stand winters in Vancouver if it weren't for the days in February like yesterday. They make me stop in my back alley and stare at the mountains for minutes, even after almost eleven years in Vancouver. Too bad such a lovely place is wasted on such lousy weather the rest of the time.

Mighty Riders

Mighty Riders is a great bike shop. They've gone far beyond my expectations for making me happy with the Surly I bought from them. 20 months after I bought the bike they worked on the problem of the squealing cantilever brakes because they want me to be happy with the bike. That's not something you get many places anymore. If you're ready to buy a bike that fits your way of riding, rather than buying off the rack, then go to Mighty Riders.

Winter Bike Maintenance

I'm pretty happy with my Surly Cross-Check that I bought from Mighty Riders. It's an off-the-shelf cyclo-cross frame that Ed at Mighty Riders fitted out to my specs. I notice the difference riding a bike that was bought after I was measured and the frame was chosen to fit me, not the other way around.

The other nice thing is that my primary spec was to be a low-maintenance, year-round sporty commuting bike. We've achieved that. All the bearings are cartridge bearings, even through that meant that the wheels are more expensive than most bikes I've bought in my life.

Now that all I have to do is clean and adjust the chain and derailleurs, I do it. It's a lot more fun to ride a bike that's always working nicely, even in Vancouver's winters. I'm finding that at this time of year, if I clean the derailleurs and chain every two weeks they work fine. The last two weeks that wasn't enough, as the weather was so bad that shifting was getting a bit slow by Thursday.

A good tip I got from Mountain Equipment Co-op is to buy a chain wear measuring tool and change the chain when it gets slightly worn. I was able to keep using the same rear cassette after one change of chain. Unfortunately, the second time I changed the chain I had a little bit of slip on the cassette and had to change it, but I'm still using the original front chain-rings. I'll have to look into buying individual cogs for the cassette, because the reality with commuting riding is that I'm mostly using the same cogs every day.

The only thing I don't like about the Surly is the brakes. They're cantilever brakes, and the rear brake always squeals. Also, I eat pads like crazy in the lousy Vancouver winters, and the cantilevers with their five degrees of freedom are a pain to adjust or set up to new pads.

To their credit, Mighty Riders is going to work with me to make the brakes work. I just have to pick a week when I don't want to ride. But I always want to ride!

I can't say enough good things about Mighty Riders. For me, they've gone beyond what you usually get for "free adjustments" after you buy a bike. They're happy to help you if you want to do the maintenance yourself. What other bike shop these days puts the mechanics out front in full view of the customers? I've heard of people being turned off because of the "attitude" of some of the staff, but I've never felt intimidated by them. If you're going to buy a bike called "Surly", what do you expect?

Anyway, the attitude comes partly from knowing their stuff. I finally bought a floor pump because they insisted it made a difference, and they were absolutely right. I used to ride 700X25c tires. Now I can commute on 700X23c tires with Kevlar belts and I get fewer flats than I did with the 25s. The pressure keeps me from getting impact flats, and the Kevlar keeps me from getting punctures (not all of the time, of course, but better than before).

The Joys of January

I rode my bike to work every day last week. It's been six weeks or more since I've been able to say that, what with holidays around Christmas, and the Vancouver black ice. I think I'm a little more chicken after my crash last February so I might have missed a few days that I would have ridden last year.

The problem with winter cycling in Vancouver is that we have so many days that are right on the edge of freezing. For example, last week we had two days with snow on the ground overnight at my house, but down the hill on Commercial Drive (maybe 25m lower) there was only rain.

This translates into conditions that are hard to guess. The day I crashed last year I had ridden about 10 kms already, over a range of elevations, and had pretty good traction. Then suddenly in one roundabout I'm sliding along the pavement on my hip and shoulder.

We get days where the fog off the ocean touches the pavement and freezes. Now that I'm getting too old to crash I'm trying to talk myself out of riding when there might be ice. But it's frustrating because the freezing nights are usually because the sky is clear, so those are the days where the afternoon might nice.

The last couple of weeks have been less icy, but only because we're going through the typical Vancouver rainfest. So one rides every day, with water streaming off one's face...

The Tooth Fairy

The Tooth Fairy dropped by on Friday, January 4. Marc lost his first tooth at daycare, just a few minutes before I came by to pick him up.

In his mind, Marc understands that the Tooth Fairy and el Ratoncito Peréz are the same person, but like superheros, it's a person with two identities.