Getting to the point...

Almost at my 60th birthday. Who'd a thunk it!!!

I have resolutely ignored this blog for quite some time. It seems that the changes in my life have drawn me away from introspection here, as they've drawn me to introspection elsewhere.

It has been more than a year since I last worked regularly and I have been trying to balance the future such that I can retire on my birthday. Not necessarily quit looking for work, but perhaps learn to live on my two small pensions so that I don't have to work.

It would be nice to take seasonal work at a place like labour ready so that I could show up those weeks when I wanted to, and not those times when I don't. Perhaps that sounds a little Utopian.

So, just as a for instance, I will need about six hundred dollars over the next four months for the equipment that will get me on the road to Halifax this summer. That would be about a hundred hours of work, given that a portion of what I earn must be paid into my bankruptcy. In the same vein, our church is suffering some significant financial hardships, and if I put in ten hours a month specifically to help out there, I think I would feel pretty good about the work regardless of what it was.

Mind, all of this is just a bit of where my thoughts have been going these past few months. I suppose, more on that in subsequent postings.

Fall

A week ago my old Norco Sasquatch helped me make up my mind to buy a new bike by delivering to me flats, both front and rear, three miles from home. In the rain. Bugger!!! and the decision was made.

I went into Local Ride in Maple Ridge and bought a new Giant Seek 2 hybrid bike. About $730 all in. When out of work, it is never the right time to have that chunky an expense. Oh well, whats done is done.

All of the reviews on this bike are good, excepting one flaw. The tires are shit! No money to pick up good ones, so...

My riding from Monday thru Thursday was wonderful. Narrow 700 series tires that roll so easily. Gears that shift properly and a chain that doesn't regularly slip off the sprockets, worth every penny.

And then came Thursday evening and I was riding to church. Back flat! Oh well, I thought, I'll just walk it this short mile to the gas station and patch and inflate and still be on time. Except...the tires have skinny valve stems and no adaptors to use a gas station pump. I chained it to a post and bussed to church. Thankfully the bike was still there when Vera took me to pick it up with her van. Friday I started to fix the tube and found that it had nine holes in it. Most not a result of glass, but a consequence of them being arguably the cheapest bike tubes ever. Very grumpy!!!

So, today I'm off to the library by bus and tomorrow to church same way and on Monday I'll shell out one hundred and thirty dollars for a pair of Continental Gator Skins, which hopefully keep me flat free.

I did think of putting the cash into a cheap car, but felt that someone poor like me shouldn't be taking on two fifty a month in insurance and gas/maintenance costs.

Off to the library.

Letting go

I bused downtown yesterday and spent most of the trip reflecting on how ubiquitous the use of electronic devices has become. Of the fifteen other riders on the bus, all but two were listening to music or texting or talking on their phones. The two not so engaged were South Asian women in their late sixties.

I cancelled my cell phone about two months ago and have not missed it at all. Mind you, I have had much grief from my daughter, Alley, who carries on at great length about the dangers that being cell less opens me up to. What if you are hit by a car, dad, and they don't stop? What if someone robs you? What if you get lost? Good Grief!!! hmm, I'm only fifty-nine and not yet senile, darling. Sometimes I wonder how are children really do see us.

I have an i-pod with several thousand songs on it and half a dozen university level courses and a couple of books and the bible. In the summer when I lie on the deck at my townhouse and soak up the sun I enjoy listening to bits and pieces of the materiel on it. Otherwise, I don't use it much. Playing voyeur on a bus is much more entertaining than listening to stuff that I have already heard on my i-pod.

When I bike I enjoy the, sort of, silence of the wheels running over the road. And of course, the road is a dangerous place for cyclists, and music devices don't make that less so.

I do wonder, at times, if I am cutting my self off from life. Or, perhaps, just letting go...

Fall is coming

It is a cold and rainy day in Pitt Meadows. I know that we will probably have another six weeks or so of fine fall weather, but walking up to the bus stop this morning and getting about town in this drizzle left me feeling as though winter was in the offing.

Yesterday was Jessie's 22nd birthday. Where, oh where, does the time go?

Yesterday was also a full eight months since I had my last cigarette. I still have cravings, especially in graphic dreams about having a smoke and early in the morning. I am very much looking forward to the 30th of December, which will mark one year without.

Biking continues. I am averaging about 25 miles a day. Feel pretty good, though I suspect the rainy season will put a real damper on my enthusiasm.

Well, enough for now.

Almost halfway through August...where does the time go?

It has been six weeks now that I have been off work and I am enjoying the slow pace of my days. The anti-depressants seem to be working, though there are residual symptoms of my depression that have persisted beyond the pills kicking in. Mostly manageable, though I am wondering, when the time comes to return to working, how well I will manage...

I have managed to keep to my schedule of biking twenty-five to thirty miles every day. The ache in my thighs has diminished and my breathing is good, but I am not certain that I will be able to get up to the average of one hundred and twenty miles a day, three times a week, that I figure will let me know that I can seriously plan to bike down to Nova Scotia next year to visit Jessie.

It is interesting to me that when I think of this 7000 plus kilometer trip, I think of it as a pilgrimage of sorts. Getting away from the daily noise of my life, entering into the solitude of the road and journeying, all hint of a promise of more than a physical effort. I do wonder if I am strong enough, mentally and spiritually, for such an effort.

Well, enough for now...

Taking up bike riding

It is now eleven days since I have become a bike person. In the Pitt Meadows/Maple Ridge area the appellation, "bike person," is quite negative. Not surprisingly a good number of our poor residents ride bikes and they have gotten hung with a bum rap in terms of being seen as undesirables. It is fairly easy to differentiate between urban riders and poor folks: most of the former are wearing spandex riding gear and helmets and most of the latter aren't. My observations are that while there is a certain amount of drug dealing and such going on from the backs of bikes, most of the folks who are riding them in our community are doing so out of necessity and as a byproduct of that are displaying a desirable element of the diversity within our society.

I have managed to keep to the twenty or twenty-five kilometers a day goal that I set for myself when I started riding. My butt is no longer suffering, but my thighs are pretty sore. Over all I am feeling pretty good. Next week I will try to go 30 K every second day.

Almost the end of July and much has happened since my last post. I am halfway through eight weeks off on medical EI. Thank God for Canada's Employment Insurance program! The first three weeks were pretty much waiting for my increased medication to kick in. Finally happened and i slept well for the first time this year. Mind you, that sleeping well involved eight hours each night and then a roll-over and another three or four hours. Well, after a week of that I settled into about seven hours a night.

I had been using Dick's van until the 19th, when he decided that his nephew from Alberta needed it more than I did. Talk about having to bite the bullet as far as being poor goes. NO CAR!!!! Wow, first time without one since I was nineteen.

So, I dragged out the ten year old, never ridden more than a total of twenty kilometers by me, 5 years used when I got it, mountain bike. And I have ridden. I think that I am averaging about twenty-five kilometers a day and apart from a sore butt and the amount of sweat I'm pouring out there are no ill effects.

I hate to admit it, but I am now starting to have Bicycle Fantasies. Yes, Virginia, there are such things. Mostly they revolve around the thought of biking down to visit Jessie next summer. Eight thousand kilometers must surely equal fantasy. On the other hand, I have gotten a couple of books out of the library that were written by folks who have done the trip, and I've cruised the MEC catalogue looking at stuff....hmm.

Well enough of this for now. Must ride off to the library.