Take The Lane

Bill Parker: bicycle vagabond

If you're in Mississauga today, you might see a heavily laden Trek bicycle ridden by a guy who looks too small for the load: that would be Bill Parker, Canada's bicycle vagabond.

I first wrote about Parker back in 2008 when he was passing through Waterloo Region. A divorce had set him off on a quest for something different, and he thought he'd spent the good riding weather that year travelling from his home in Edmonton to Newfoundland.

Five years later and he's still on the road, and every couple of weeks, I get a note from someone who has played host to the affable cycle tourist, offering him a clean washroom and a warm place to sleep.

Today, thanks to the cellphone of his host in Norval, in the Halton Hills, I had a chance to catch up to Parker and see how he's doing. Given the chance to digest his stream-of-consciousness storytelling, I understand that he's doing quite well, thanks.

He did make it to Newfoundland -- "I liked it in Gander, and some of those places where they do the foot-stomping and clapping to the music" -- and has ambled through Quebec -- "Did you know they can grow bananas in greenhouses in the winter?" -- but his limited understanding of French makes Quebec "tough".

Mostly, he rides around Ontario, from north to south and east to west. "I stayed with some people south of Ottawa. They bought an old school for a toonie and run a knitting school."

Since 2008, he's stayed with engineers, pavers, counsellors, pastors, a woman who lets her goat into the house at night, a chap with 100 tarantulas in cages in his living room, and a flight instructor outside Niagara Falls who took Parker on a light plane aerial tour of the Falls and area. "Last night (Monday), I stayed with a psychic. I've never stayed with a psychic before."

He usually bunks in out buildings, garages, trailers or barns: "Some of the places people let you stay in -- you can't find a clean spot anywhere," and has even slept in a child's playhouse.

Some people offer him a meal or put his rain-soaked clothes into the dryer. Some share "a brown bottle" and stories. Usually, he only stays overnight and is off again.

In the age of caution, it does sound unlikely that 300 nights a year, there are people willing to take in a complete stranger with an overloaded bicycle and often, rain or mud-splattered garb, but here it is, Year Five, and Parker is still finding places to park.

Having said that, it's not all roses: he's had the occasional white-knuckle moment on the road -- "My big worry is about motorists" -- and the light-fingered have lifted equipment -- "Someone took my mitts and my maps."

Parker says he finds work here and there to keep some coin in his pocket, and heads back to Alberta in the worst of the winter for steady work: "It's bad for an Edmonton boy to say this," but he prefers to work in Calgary: "it's cleaner."

With five years of riding the back roads under his belt, is it time to move on to something else? He says, somewhat unconvincingly, "Oh, I might be done in a year or so..."

And will these travels be the meat for a book? He pauses and says, "Well, I'd have to sit in a room..."

So, we ended our chat with his plans to ride into Mississauga, clocking his usual 40 miles (64 kilometres) a day. There may be rain later: he'll be looking for somewhere to dry his clothes again.

Bill Parker, King of the Road.

More about the evolution of Bike and Hike for Heart, to just Hike for Heart

Peter Sweeney, the president of the St. Mary's Hospital Foundation, got back to me about this year's change of the Bike and Hike for Heart to just Hike for Heart.

As mentioned in the previous post, Manulife Financial did a lot of the heavy lifting for the Bike and Hike for Heart over the years, and it wasn't just about the teams and the volunteers who staffed the tents and refuelling stations. Sweeney said that Manulife made it possible for 100 per cent of the money pledged to go to the hospital's regional cardiac care centre.

When Manulife pulled out of the Bike and Hike to throw its volunteer muscle behind the LPGA Classic (the St. Mary's Foundation benefited from the LPGA last year with a hefty $250,000 cheque from the Manulife golf event), the hospital foundation was unable to attract a signature partner to take up the slack. Basically, said Sweeney, 100 per cent of the money pledged would not be able to go to the cardiac care centre, if the organizing group had to cover the costs of the bike/hike event.

But, Sweeney said, the committee understood the commitment of the red-shirted Hearts in Motion team -- those 130 to 160 people who were clients of the cardiac care centre. Almost all of them have been walkers for previous Bike and Hike for Heart events. And they alone have been able to raise between $40,000 and $60,000.

So, the down-sized Hike for Heart stays; the biking part goes.

Sweeney says there will be an indoor bike event for the cycling crowd in February 2014, a prime time for heart-related fundraising since every February is Heart Month.

And to qualify my earlier comment indoor cycling and boredom, my sister-in-law instructs at a Calgary spin company, and her classes are anything but boring. And a number of my Facebook friends tout the team-building of Inside Ride events.

I stand corrected.

Related articles

Biking dropped from Bike and Hike for Heart

Biking dropped from Bike and Hike for Heart

Bit of a surprise to read this morning that the St. Mary's Hospital Foundation is dropping the cycling portion of its spring fundraiser for the regional cardiac care centre.

Once known as the Manulife Bike for Heart, then the Manulife Bike and Hike for Heart, the event lost Manulife last year when the insurance company decided to focus on the June LPGA event as a fundraiser (which last year still benefited St. Mary's Hospital).

This year, the organizers have dropped the cycling portion and renamed the event, Hike for Heart (2013). It has shifted from early in June to Sunday, June 23, and will be held again at Waterloo Park.

I wondered whither this event after Manulife withdrew its major sponsorship. Manulife volunteers had staffed the tents and lined the routes, and Manulife teams had predominated among the corporate challenge teams. Their diminished profile was evident last year.

I can see how a walking event would be easier to handle: shorter routes, fewer police requirements, likely on sidewalks and walking trails rather than roads, etc.

But I'm really disappointed to see this event -- that used to be the first big cycling fundraiser of the season in Waterloo Region -- disappear from the calendar. Those people who want to cycle will likely switch their loyalties to the Cambridge Tour de Grand, although the charitable fundraising aspect is basically lost.

If you have been putting pressure on your co-workers or bosses to sponsor you for a ride in the Bike and Hike for Heart (because they put the touch on you for some other charity fundraiser), you'll have to find another venue.

Or you could leave the bike at home and join the St. Mary's walking event. Nothing wrong with walking.

St. Mary's promises that there will be a cycling event in 2014, in February. Frankly, if it's a spinning event, I can't see it being a big draw. Look up "boring" in the dictionary and I'm pretty sure "bicycling inside" is on the list of definitions. If it's an outside icicle bicycle event, that would be another story...

E-bikes without pedals aren't e-bikes

If you're going to ride your e-bike after hoisting a few drinks, be sure that you didn't take your pedals off.

That's one takeaway from a recent police scanner conversation related to me (the other takeaway is: don't cycle while impaired).

Apparently, the local police had detained a woman who was clearly impaired while riding her e-bike. After about 30 minutes of backing-and-forthing on the radio with someone else higher up the food chain about whether the woman could be charged with impaired driving, the detaining officer was told what I could have told him instantly: under the Canadian Criminal Code, impaired driving applies to the operation of "motor vehicles."

Under Ontario's Highway Traffic Act, an e-bike is a bicycle, despite having an electric motor. But that e-bike designation applies only as long as the bike meets the criteria for e-bikes. The most common modification for e-bike owners who plan only to use the electric assist motor, is to remove the pedals (which they say get in the way of their comfortable use of the e-bike).

Take off the pedals, and you don't have an e-bike: you essentially have a "motor vehicle" (because it is entirely dependent on the motor to move).

If the detained woman had removed her pedals, she'd be looking at a Criminal Code offence. Since the pedals were still on the bike, she's not chargeable for that offence.

There are likely other things the police could do: drunk and disorderly, if she was. No lights if travelling at night. Etc. But drunk driving? Uh-uh. 

Take your meds first, then watch the movie

I don't recommend this Bicycle Film Festival movie, Line of Sight, because I advocate running red lights, riding against traffic, cutting off pedestrians or generally riding into the face of danger.

I do recommend it because it is interesting to see the bike messenger community in action, in a series of races at such major cities as New York and Tokyo. As you might expect, the kind of people who finish first at these events are high-octane Type A personalities (and don't be a check-point volunteer who isn't entirely prepared to answer any question they ask).

And it is educational to hear the filmmaker, Lucas Brunelle, explain how bike messengers use the pieces of the road between vehicles -- what motorists might regard as their buffer zones -- to manouevre in and out of places not even a motorcycle can go.

All the clinical analysis aside, it is also an adrenaline rush, with a pulse-pounding soundtrack. Take your meds first, then settle back to enjoy.

Shall we stop for a drink?

Consider this a sort of antidote to the rain that's falling and the ice-rain that's soon to be calling.

A picnic bike.

I first saw this on the U.K.-based BuzzHunt , but you know how the internet is: nobody gives attribution!

It appears, thanks to Wine Predator, that this image originally came from the Boulder, Col.-based Fat Kitty Cycles, where you can order this bike to be assembled.

To call it a "picnic bike," might be to narrowly define a picnic as a well-lubricated, but food-reduced, stoppage on a leisure ride.

And not to be overly critical, but I can imagine that some knees and sides of legs might be tapped or scraped while riding with this inner-frame attachment. All in favour of creative ways to stay hydrated -- just not sure this is the best way.

 

The bucks in bikes

I know the inherent dangers in doing rough estimates, especially when dollars are involved, but this blog post from Greenfrostings really does make you wonder if the mayor of Toronto is shooting from the lip or has costed out his latest tirade against cycling.

Anyone want to double check the numbers? Would a pay-access bicycle cage really make more money than the parking revenue generated from the motor vehicle spots it would displace?

We all are traffic

This video, Brussels Express: Bike Messengers, is really about more than bicycle messengers. It's about urban roadways, who uses them and how they can be used.

I like the notion of taking all the people who use Grand River Transit, all the people who walk or jog or push their baby strollers, and putting them, one person per car, into cars. Push those additional cars out into King Street or the Conestoga Parkway, and then ask yourself: what's the answer to urban gridlock? (If you think the answer is bigger roads, than just tear down every building lining King Street on either side, from Stirling Avenue to University Avenue, and you'll have all the pavement you'll need in our lifetimes. There will be nothing to do but drive up and down the street, but by George, you'll have your bigger road!)

I also like the video's notion that because a roadway is a shared facility, we all -- cyclists, motorists, peds, scooters, skateboards, inline skaters, delivery people -- we all are traffic.

 

 

These Chrome Truks could be a gift to yourself

When I opened the box of Chrome Truks, a sample of cycling shoes sent to me last fall, my first reaction was, "Crap, they sent the wrong shoes."

Because they didn't look like cycling shoes. No cleats. No place to attach cleats. I checked the box to make certain I wasn't missing something.

Here's what I got.

A pair of black canvas shoes, with a flattish gum bottom, laced with black and including an extra set of brown laces. They look like, well, shoes.

My bikes have pedals for cleats. Riding with these would just be slip-sliding away. I almost returned them -- what a mistake that would have been, now that I've used them.

At the time, I had been thinking about outfitting the winter bike with a platform/cleat combo so I could wear my winter boots on some days. So suddenly I had a good excuse to buy new pedals (Shimano PD-M324 SPD dual platforms).

I rode the first day with all the imbedded prejudices of a longtime cleated-cycling-shoe rider. And all I could say at the end of the ride was, "Wow. These work."

Nice stiff feel. So little slippage that I stood on the pedals for the Ottawa Street hill. I changed into my office shoes and put thoughts of the Truks away.

So I used these shoes for a couple of weeks, riding in dry and wet conditions and always changing into work shoes at the office. And then one day, circumstances kept me in the Truks for a couple of hours, and soon my shift was done and I had been in the Truks for nine hours -- and they still felt good.

I should have written about these shoes sooner: they would have made a good Christmas gift. Having said that, the delay did give me time to ride them in snow -- as good regarding slippage as any of my sneakers or boots -- and a couple of freakingly cold days (OK, that's when you need a bootie cover).

And here it is spring again, and I am wearing the Truks again, both on the bike and all day at the office, and thinking, Wow, these work. Maybe it's time for a welcome-to-spring cycling gift to yourself.

If you want to see the Truks in action, the Chrome people put this video up on YouTube earlier this year. Nice music.

 

 

 

 

Cyclist dies after being hit by passenger train

My thoughts are with the family of the 76-year-old cyclist who was killed today when he was clipped by a Via Rail train in Kitchener.

According to this report in The Record, the man had waited for a freight train to back out of a siding at a point where there are double tracks. When the freight train had cleared the crossing, he slipped around the gates, which were still down, and started to cross, not realizing that there was a Via Train oncoming.

The man's name has not been released by police yet. I would guess, based on the photo of the urban-style bike equipped with fenders, a light, cable lock and panniers, that he was a regular city rider, the kind you see every day.