For those of you who are even remotely interested, I broke the 5000 km mark yesterday morning. It has come a bit later in the season than expected due to a variety of factors such as my various projects, occasionally forgetting to charge my light system’s batteries and a bit of laziness. Poor weather has not been a factor in my not riding more this year. I’ve still got two more months of relatively good weather before the end of the year so I may hit the 8000 mark but the 9000 mark is probably out of the question.

Health-wise, I am doing a lot better than last year with my butt not as badly bruised and my knees in excellent shape. Of course, this is the result of a lower tempo so it’s to be expected. It does give me hope that I can probably push hard for the next couple of months and not worry too much about injuries since the weather will then enforce downtime and subsequent recovery for the early part of next year.

I? haven’t given up hope of a one-day ride to Niagara yet and am toying with the idea of a crazy overnight ride. Of course, if I were to bring my speed up such a thing would not need to be done. This coming weekend is probably out of the question for something like that but, hopefully, October will see it happening.

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Please note that this post should have been done a week ago!

It’s good to have friends and doubly so when you’re feeling like a worthless layabout. I wasn’t in a good mood on Saturday and so I really needed a good ride on Sunday. So, I was out early on Sunday morning hoping to do a moderate range ride at the very least when I encountered a clicky-sort of feeling in my Brooks B17 saddle. Didn’t think much of it but it became more pronounced to the point where I could almost hear it. So, at the five km mark I turned around to go home to see if tensioning the saddle would make a difference. I had already checked the saddle and the rest of the bike and everything seemed rock-solid.

Back at home, I puzzled over how to tension the saddle but figured that 45 degrees either way wasn’t going to hurt and so I did it clockwise while facing the saddle. I ate breakfast and went back out on the road but the clicking was still there. Not as much as before but still present so I headed back home. I decided to wait until CycleTherapy, where I had originally purchased the saddle, opened and then ride over to see what they thought of the whole thing?

Once home, there’s a mighty temptation to just stay home and even if I did go to CycleTherapy to not do much riding after that. Luckily(?), a message from SL was waiting saying that she wanted to go riding but only later on. Good timing! We hooked up around 11 and headed on over to CycleTherapy who diagnosed other problems with my ride but didn’t know what was going on with the Brooks. Their diagnosis of loose rails and subsequent tightening proved to be incorrect. By that time, though, SL and I had already headed down to the Beaches’ area and then we swung out towards Port Credit. SL wanted to do about 100 km but she was sort of dragging her ass because of a heavy work schedule earlier in the week and a lingering illness. Good news for me because it slowed her down enough for me to keep up. That being said, we still averaged over 22 km/hr despite our numerous stops. I was a lackadaisical rider on my earlier rides before hooking up with SL so that will give you an idea of how fast we were going. SL can still really boot it despite being run down.

So, really glad that she called, sort of saved the whole weekend in terms of riding.

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Rats rats rats…about a week ago I became aware that the Toronto District School Board was running their nine-week bike repair course once again. SL had asked me to go last year since she was the sort of person who would sign up and not go if no one else went with her. I couldn’t afford it at the time but this year I was going to consider it. I had talked to her over the weekend and it seems that she can’t afford it this year. My biggest waffling came from whether or not it would make more sense to buy the tools (which you will need to do at the end of the course anyways) and just go through a good repair book and pray that I was smart enough to fix any boo-boos that I may make?

Well, I just checked the TDSB’s website today and it turns out that all the spots have been filled. Rats, ok so it would now seem that I have no? real option left but to do a lot of shopping over at the Fall Bike Show on the 13th this year.

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Our heroine’s social and professional life is progressing very nicely when it encounters yet another rather perverted crime in what one would think is a bucolic slice of the Deep South. But, oh no, something very sinister is happening and it’s not limited just to her immediate environment. Sara and her ex, Jeffrey, the local police chief race to uncover clues in order to expose and arrest the villains.

This time the plot is not as tightly-wound as Slaughter’s first novel, Blindsighted, nor is it as stomach-churning. It does push the boundaries of disgust just a bit, though, when the crimes are committed against our more helpless members of society. If you enjoyed the first novel I? think that you would certainly enjoy this go-around. BTW, I should thank a friend who recommended this series to me although their interests are a bit more prurient than mine. Sick sick sick puppy! hehehe

I am going to take a bit of a break from this series for a couple of weeks, don’t want to finish it all off too quickly.

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War Made New covers an almost five-hundred year span of military technological innovations and the effects that those developments had on the march of history through one side or the other’s ability to develop and, more importantly, harness them. Boot has identified four distinct instances in the past five hundred years where there was a significant technological break from the past; the first being the Gunpowder Revolution, the second is the Industrial Revolution where mass production and transportation first appeared, the third is what he calls the Second Industrial Revolution where the modern age of oil combustion, flight and communications began and the one that we’re currently experiencing which is the Information Revolution where electronics can give a commander almost instantaneous communications (and, hence, control) throughout what is now called the “battlespace”.

Boot works through each phase using examples of how one power or another was not only able to adopt or develop a particular innovation but to harness that innovation in such a way as to defeat an opponent. And it’s not only the ability to copy the innovation but whether or not a society has the capability to use that innovation. For example, Boot looks at the Maratha Confederacy in India which was richer than the British East India Company and was able to copy some of the military organization and equipment of the Company but were still defeated. Why? Because they were unable to unify themselves to the extent necessary to defeat Wellesley who had overall command of the East India Company’s forces on the battlefield.

Throughout the book, you do pick up on Boot’s idea that it’s not what a combatant has in terms of equipment but whether or not they have the willpower, foresight and creativity to use that equipment. I personally think that out of the three it’s willpower that’s the key to success. Oh, it’s not whether or not an individual soldier is willing to endure hardship but whether or not the society who is fielding that soldier is willing to put up the effort and to sustain that effort through the long haul that’s important. It’s when a leader or society loses focus and loses heart that it’s defeated.

I look at today’s Western society and I wonder at times whether it really does have that sort of focus if it is to defeat enemies such as Islamic fundamentalists? Or is our society so self-centered that it fritters its energies away in hedonistic pursuits?

In any case, War Made New is a grand epic of a book…it’s not as dense as something such as A Savage War of Peace but it’s not thoroughly dumbed down either in order to make it accessible to everyone.

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A Camera on the Banks is a an overview of several voyages that Frederick William Wallace took with the fishermen of Nova Scotia out of Digby early in the 20th-century right before the Great War. Wallace collected an impressive repertoire of experiences, photos and drawings from those voyages which captured the end of an era in sail-powered fishing on the banks and waters of the Maritimes. His voyages centered around the crews and boats operating out of the Digby and Bay of Fundy area and the book brings me back to that area.

I’ve been to the Maritimes a few times on bike tours and it’s really a different area. There’s a different feel to it from the big cities…a bit more slow-paced, rugged, not outdoor fresh but still rugged all the same. Almost timeless in a sense. You look at the pictures of Digby and it just seems to not have changed much over the past century. I remember being out on a speedboat in the Gut (a body of water just outside of Digby Harbour) and coming across a fishing vessel doing much the same thing that its predecessors have done for over two centuries. I even have pictures of the fishing boats coming in to the dock and unloading.

The book is a great way for those who want to get a feel for what it was like to out on the water risking life and limb in all sorts of appalling conditions to bring back food for the table. It’s sort of like Deadliest Catch, that Discovery Channel TV show about Alaskan crabfishing, but here there’s no fancy helicopter or any sort of Coast Guard as backup. Be aware, though, that the book can be a bit of hard read for those who have no nautical knowledge.

And, before I forget, for those of you who would like to visit Nova Scotia and are interested in all things historical and nautical, I strongly suggest visiting the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic and the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic. The former is located in Halifax on the waterfront and the latter is located in Lunenburg which is just a half hour drive southeast of Halifax and you can stop by Peggy’s Cove along the way too.

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Blindsighted is a mystery situated in the Deep South that introduces Sara Linton as a local pediatrician and coroner who is trying to solve a series of grisly rapes and murders while wrestling with her own inner demons and her feelings towards her ex-husband who just happens to be the chief of police. Throughout this book, I kept thinking how in the world can a relative new writer keep up the pace and suspense that this book exhibits throughout? This is an excellent mystery that just keeps drawing you back into it and it moves along at a very quick pace. Some mysteries have you literally riding along as the hero kicks his mule but not this one. Be aware, though, that the violence in this novel is graphic to a middling extreme.

I have to give thanks to one of my closest friends for introducing me to this new author. Stay tuned as we slash our way through the rest of the series.

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I was cycling along the waterfront this morning (the fish from yesterday was still floating in the water but it was a different gull and I now suspect that it’s actually a common carp and not a salmon) and decided to take the turn to the Leslie St. Spit which is a 5 km finger of land that sticks out into Lake Ontario and is built out of construction fill. It’s been about a decade since I last visited and the changes are astounding.

I remember it as a narrow finger of land with low-lying trees and shrubs covered with a vast flock of seagulls screaming everywhere. Now, it’s more thickly wooded and dotted with “embayments”, which are artificial bays, all along its length. The gulls are gone (for now?) to be supplemented by a large variety of new species that are finding the spit to be quite welcoming. People also seem to have discovered it because there was a constant stream of bicyclists and hikers along its length. It’s unfortunate that it’s only open during weekends and holidays but it’s nice enough that I will try to visit more than once a decade from now on.

For more info, you can check out the Friends of the Spit’s website.

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This is a somewhat amusing book that’s more “fish out of water” than it is about any sort of management guide although that is what it attempts to be. Our hero (an apropo title given that he refers to himself near the end as forever tilting at windmills) has decided to go behind the scenes at a variety of fast restaurants of various large and local chains. What he finds is familiar to any of us who have ever worked at fast food and at a certain parcel-delivery company where everyone wears brown; some of which is that the work comes fast and furious and rules are meant to be broken when it comes to serving the customer.

Through most of the book, I am amazed that someone who teaches human resource managements at SUNY in Buffalo seems to have so little actual real-world experience, this is ivory tower writ large and, at times, I suspect that tenure is a bad thing because it insulates you from the realities of the working world. For example, when applying to a position you don’t reveal a prior salary that’s substantially higher than anyone whom you are likely to work with.

In any case, I think that this is an excellent book for those managerial types who may never have started at the “bottom of the trailer” (in UPS’ parlance) or for those who did but have forgotten their roots. There are still a few good lessons to be learned here but one important one is that people should never be considered replaceable cogs in a machine. You can never totally govern their behaviour and there is always something that can be learned from the lowest rung on the ladder.

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…is the fact that you can almost always find something different and/or exciting on a longish ride. I mean, not every ride will be a red-letter sort of day but if you’re alert enough and have an open enough mind there will be something. For example, this morning’s ride, I was down near Cherry St. on the lakefront on the way to check out the new T & T Supermarket that had just opened up where the Knob Hill supermarket used to be until the owner sold out.

As I was passing over a small bridge (oh yeah, there was also a traffic accident where some sports car hit a pickup truck and ran off onto the rail tracks next to the bike path but this other item is more interesting), I noticed a young seagull moving about a bit strangely on the water near the Essroc pier. Curiousity piqued, I slowed down to have a look and noticed that it was eating at something large in the water. Looking a bit more closely, it was eating at a dead fish that was at least twice its size!

I knew that Lake Ontario had salmon and it seemed that this seagull had lucked on to quite a prize. It must have been at least two feet long, brownish looking and not bloated. I tried to get closer but Essroc had the whole place fenced off and I could only watch from a distance as the seagull worked its beak on the head and, I am guessing here, trying to get to the entrails. Another, more adult, seagull also looked on with interest and later tried to take the fish away but the younger gull literally sat on top of its prize.

I also saw a couple of fish jumping out of the water in the same area so there must be quite a population in that spot.

Beginning to wonder what I will be seeing tomorrow morning??

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