The road less cycled

Running with the crowd has never been my thing, quite possibly to my detriment, but at certain times, most definitely to my great delight. I wrote a few weeks ago about the oxymoronic ubiquitous phenomenon of claiming not to be mainstream, but truthfully, very few people can make that claim.

What I do know is that I haven’t developed a great deal of friendships, mainly, I think, because I’ve never been remotely interested in what my peers were doing. By Grade Six I had an extensive list of bird species that I’d seen; no one cared when I did mention wild birds.

In Grade Six I’d pull my desk over away from the rest so that nobody would bother me. My future Grade Seven teacher wonderingly said I must like it that way.

By the time my peers reached age sixteen, some were beginning to acquire driver’s licences. Me? I couldn’t have cared less.

After high school, I cycled and bused across town to get to a university, and watched in amazement as the parking lots swelled each day.

At a youth gathering at a friend’s church (ok, I had some friends), when mentioning facts about ourselves, I said, “I grow my own food.” Despite the stifled laughter, it was true. In Gr. 12 I’d put in a veggie garden, to see what my backyard could save my family.

In this picture, you can see where Downes Creek runs by the line of trees, my house in the distance, and the field where I get a lot of my stinging nettle.

On Sunday mornings, despite going to a Mennonite school, I wouldn’t go to church, even though I promised a cute girl that I’d go with her one day. Instead, I’d go on long rambles over Fishtrap Creek or Downes Bowl, figuring that was all the church I needed. In retrospect, they weren’t long enough by miles. Oh yeah, she’s married now, a fate I’d sooner put off. But that’s what they all say, isn’t it?

These days, I cook stinging nettle for dinner. It’s free, abundant, and great for you. What better combination is there in this world than that, and yet who among my peers does it?

I never have cared much for alcohol, blazing, smoking, or drugs, reckoning this world was still good enough I didn’t need those things. Besides, I ride transit. I know where overuse of them will land you. It ain’t pretty, though better than some fates I suppose. As to whether this world’s good enough, well, the jury’s hung on that one. And they’ll probably appeal the verdict anyway.

To find like-minded people, Abbotsford probably isn’t the place to be. I know that, and yet I can’t leave. Besides, I’d probably find a way to disagree with the like-minded ones too.

Probably it’s the stinging nettle. I hear the system can only handle so much before you become an ornery contrarian. Haven’t you heard? It’s called biomimicry.

Canucks mania has spread like wildfire in the Fraser Valley. Establishments frequented by hockey mad folk are thanking the heavens for the rush of euphoria that is helping to counteract the effects of the recession. People schedule tasks around Canucks games, gladly opting to take a few hours away from the grind to relax in front of the tube, knowing that remaining caught up in the status of the NHL playoffs will benefit them. You might think that that’s an odd thought; how on Earth can keeping one’s eyes fixed to a hockey screen displaying unrelated men vying to insert a black rubber disk into a net, and doing this for three hours, possibly benefit one?  Around playoff time we humans certainly exhibit some strange behaviour, but upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that it’s not as if this type of behaviour is at all impractical on a personal level. A lot of stuff I don’t like isn’t, actually.

Drivers and pedestrians celebrating the Canucks Game 2 win

Before I go any further, I just want to point out that until the last year or two, I was as big of a Canucks fan as anybody I know; hell, I made friends on the basis of talking about hockey and the Canucks together. Even today, I still get a kick out of watching the game; if I’m at home I’ll still follow the game log or watch the game despite having a grainy, wavy CBC image. We don’t have any cable TV; never have and I probably never will.

Recently however, I’m not really the kid who would want his sports section along with the morning oatmeal in Gr.5. I still want my oatmeal, but not so much the sports. But the question remains, what could possibly drive people to become so rabid over something so inconsequential?

The first big benefit is pretty simple. Hunkering down in front of “the game” relaxes people! Taking a few hours out of a busy day to do nothing productive and focus on cheering on a favorite team, be it mentally or physically, is a powerful urge because it gives us an excuse to take a long break. It would be one thing if that break was taken in isolation, but what’s even better is that in this case there are huge social benefits! Since everybody’s talking hockey these days, if you can join in or even direct the chatter by knowing what’s going on, you’ve immediately got a social leg-up. For basically doing nothing.

At the same time, though I’ve done absolutely no research on this and have no intention of doing so, I believe it’s been shown that having a championship team locally gives a region a big boost. There’s a general sense of euphoria as people have their innate desires of seeing “their” team win fulfilled. This tends to raise feelings of goodwill. Also, having a local play-off team gives people a reason to get together and celebrate, and what do people do when they celebrate? They buy stuff and consume it, so it boosts the economy. Whether it provides a long term boost is questionable, but there’s a high likelihood that all the simultaneous celebrations result in increased sales, which in turn makes local retailers happy and also boosts the euphoria level. As with the social benefits, this is all well and good until you think about the fact that all this is accomplished through manic support for a group of millionaires, most of whom have nothing to do with the local community and are only playing here because a General Manager, who also likely hails from somewhere else, had the aptitude to bring them in. By cheering these people on, we’re basically saying that being here by default makes you a better player or manager than all the other players or managers in the league. It’s senseless, but hey, it boosts the economy and makes us feel better so we’re going to go party, alright?

After Game 2, a 3-0 Canucks win in which Sundin scored the first goal, a buddy and I walked out to South Fraser Way to check out the celebrations. The dominant thought that I had as people beetled down Abbotsford’s main artery honking and waving and basically letting go of some steam, was, “Gosh, when does Abbotsford ever get excited about anything? Now look at this!” I’ve heard estimates of around 1000 people out celebrating, and that doesn’t include the many thousands more who stayed home. It’s basically a herd mentality; what we’re basically saying is that, “Even though few of the Canucks actually hail from Vancouver, when they win we feel happy and drink beer and consume other stuff and watch lots of ads, so let’s all join in!!” How’s that for logic eh?

Somewhat miraculously, I apparently am in near complete agreement with my brother on what I’m going to say next. This pretty much never happens. We respect each other, but live very different lifestyles and hold some pretty different viewpoints, so I’m pretty flabbergasted whenever we agree on something.

What I heard him saying yesterday is basically an exact replica of what I was arguing with my buddy a couple nights ago; that it’s great to see Abbotsford citizens out in numbers to support something, but how in hell have we come to a point where the only time they will ever come out in numbers for anything is when something of absolutely no consequence except how they ‘feel’ goes in their favour? How assinine have we become, and how has this happened? How is it that about issues such as land use or transportation or tax rates or pollution we raise nary a peep, by comparison, but when a bunch of millionares defeat some other millionaires by playing with marginally more skill, and subsequently causes the supporters of the other millionaires to be dejected and generate a collective pall over their goings on, that we rejoice!?

When our very food and drink is at stake because of development on agricultural land, and our ability to feed our family is threatened by economic rumblings, we clamor but do nothing, but when ‘our’ team wins we celebrate and drink beer and give ourselves a collective pat on the back.

Is that we’re completely happy with the way things are organized by our governments and leading personalities? Is it that we’re all too confused to adamantly advocate anything? Are we too apathetic to stick out our necks for anything when there is the slightest element of risk, which there is none of when celebrating a Canucks win? Have the forces of media forced us into enough of a philosophical straightjacket that we trust that our duly elected leaders will do the right thing?

So, you down for some drinks when the next series starts? Sure, I’ll buy.

I mean, you did read this far didn’t you?

Don’t read my blog tonight. I have lots to say but no time to say it, so just head on over to Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler:

www.jameshowardkunstler.typepad.com.

He`s very thought provoking, and says some things I would agree with. Not all, mind you, but some.

I mean, have I ever completely agreed with anyone?

There is an entire school of thought which revolves around self-directed learning: learning that is ongoing, in that one never stops doing it and actively seeks it out; inexpensive, in that one does not pay ~$150.00 per credit to do it; relationship building, in that one sometimes chooses to do it in collaboration with a close friend or group of friends who are interested in the same thing. Some people choose this option as an alternative to post-secondary education, figuring that they would rather live in and learn from the real world and use whatever leftover time they have to bolster their knowledge and awareness.

Self-directed learning is something that I’ve been trying to remind myself to do more often. It’s something that takes discipline, or just the absence of pesky friends who want to go and drink over some board games or something like that in the evenings. Giving in to that temptation too often is more likely than not to land one among what’s called the “deadbeat masses.” Giving in on occasion is, I think, a necessity for sanity. Giving in never at all might just saddle you with a frown and a scowl far more often is necessary. Anyway, self-directed learning is a way to create some discussion or banter about topics that schools and universities just don’t really cover, and that is probably a necessity.

So from time to time I’ll make this blog a little on the academic side, when and where I deem appropriate, by sharing what’s emerging from my episodes of self-directed learning, most of which I do while waiting for buses.

About a week ago, I  picked up “The Upside of Down” by Thomas Homer Dixon, and unlike most of my schoolbooks, despite me being enrolled in a degree which interests me, have been glued to its pages. In order to function, anybody needs to formulate something of a worldview; a way of thinking about the order or disorder in their lives that answers some of the big questions and explains how things work. My worldview, particularly in the last few months, really has no rhyme nor reason to it. Not much makes sense on a broader scale. I don’t really have much in the way of religion, having survived private high school without acquiring that. Economically, sustainablility is the very last of all the traits we’ve managed to acquire. Politically, a lot of the people in leadership positions are the wrong people to be there. Socially, so many seem stuck in the status quo. I think, thankfully, that I’ve managed to get one leg out.

Many people live their day to day lives smack-dab in the middle of a gigantic economic construct that is explained to them by newspapers, television programs, news hours, their paycheque, and the books they read. In large part, in North American society, this involves  a capitalistic economic structure framed around free enterprise, a consumer good oriented society in which many everyday consumables are made overseas and imported into North America, a large middle class that works in various sectors of the economy, many in service sectors, but some also in production or manufacturing, and a large automobile industry that employs much of the work force, from automobile maintenance, to repairs, to sales of new vehicles, to production of domestics, to automobile associations which lobby for space for cars. For pretty much all of this, high resource consumption is integral to the process, and also largely ignored and taken for granted. Now that capitalism appears to be failing, some people are starting to ask the odd question (odd behaviour, I know) and some bigger topics open up.

What Dixon has to say about all this is, I think, crucial. Dixon seems to like our banking system, stating that the Federal Reserve system brings added flexibility. With that out of the way, there’s lots of things that seem to be nagging Dixon. He calls these things Tectonic Stresses. They are:

• population stresses
• peak oil (less energy for more people, eventually maybe no conventional energy)
• environmental stress
• climate change
• economic stress (widening gaps between rich and poor)

If any one of these, or worse, several at once, rear their ugly heads, things would go downhill fast, Dixon says.

He writes, “Most of us in cities are now so specialized in our skills and so utterly dependent on complex technologies that we’re completely dependent on complex technologies that we’re quickly in desperate straits when things go wrong.“

Perhaps more importantly, he writes that, “Most of the five stresses spring from our troubled relationship with nature. Indeed, one of my most important points is that we can’t ignore nature any longer, because it affects every aspect of our well-being and even determines our survival……they (policians, corporate leaders, social scientists) tend to dismiss people who concern themselves with nature as, at best, softheaded do-gooders or, at worst, eco-freak fanatics.”

He goes on to say that, “….opinion leaders conveniently overlook the fact that every great civilization believes itself to be exceptional, right up to the time that it collapses.”

The route to success is either through long-term employment and saving for retirement through investing, or in the ownership of a potential business. A high tax load ensures the punctual payments of interest on the national debts, and as they did in ancient Rome, people complain incessantly that only two things are guaranteed: death and taxes. For some, perhaps only one of those, though some are worried they’ll soon be taxing ghosts too.

Xurbia.ca – they’ve got solutions to this kind of stuff

Dixon describes several scenarios of concern, one of them being the the failure of the power generation system, as happened on the East Coast in 2003 for an extended amount of time. He writes that, “…we can make much greater use of decentralized, local energy generation, and alternative energy sources (like small and medium scale solar, wind, and geothermal power) so that individual users are more independent of the grid.” This is what Dixon terms a resilience enhancing strategy, and it’s my view that not to make use of the technologies that now exist at relatively affordable prices, probably the most affordable they have ever been, is irresponsible from both a personal and societal standpoint. This is one example of both how a breakdown can be minimized in its intensity, and dealt with when and if it does happen.

Suffice it to say that in today’s day and age, we count on the institutions that we’re familiar with to continue functioning as we expect them to. We expect resource extraction and subsequent production to continue to employ people, even as evidence mounts that same pace extraction would be hazardous to ourselves and the planet. We expect universities and corporations and retail outlets to continue to pay our salaries; we expect people in developing nations to continue making the products we ‘need,’ because if they didn’t and we made them ourselves, we couldn’t afford them. We expect food and consumables to continue to be shipped around the world, and then to appear on the shelves of the stores we frequent. It’s in those paradigms that we happily function, remaining completely unprepared for things to change, and unaware of whether our planet could cope with large-scale changes if they were to occur.

Systemic change simply isn’t on our radar screens. I mean, the last time things got really tough was over 60 years ago.

A lot has changed since then. Only time will tell if the next 60 will be as nice as the last 60. And perhaps, it’s only fools who would count on it.

 In recent years, the City of Abbotsford has been giving the creation of bicycle lanes a little more consideration, making progress by creating a Bicycle Master Plan, participating in Bike to Work Week, and most importantly creating bike lanes on a few of the major east-west running streets.

One of those east-west running streets is Downes Road, a major thoroughfare that lies outside Abbotsford’s urban core and is marked by a long succession of hills, one after the other. I happen to live on Downes Road, so have seen firsthand the efforts to make it bicycle friendly.

At this point, the City has finished most of the job of widening the road, painting the lines, and installing signs alerting drivers to the presence of the bike lane. They have yet to paint bicycle symbols on the lane though. The bicycle lane is well positioned to connect to the bike lane on Clayburn Road, though between the two lies a  hill that is intimidating to drive up, let alone bicycle. The new lane also connects to the bicycle lane on Mt. Lehman Road, but that bike lane is plagued by the presence of a lot of gravel, while also being intermittent and limited in scope.

So when the bicycle lane on Downes is finished and connects to these other two bike lanes, what Abbotsford will have is something of horseshoe shape of bike lanes on its northern perimeter. These lanes also happen to be  located on some of Abbotsford’s hilliest roads with the exception of the urban growth on Sumas Mountain.

So make no mistake about it. These new bike lanes will never accomplish the task of making Abbotsford a bike friendly city. At best they will make it more pleasant for people who already cycle to do so. They are little more than glorified shoulders in their current state, and the cynical will argue that the construction of bike lanes is a nice way to add money to the road-building budget, and use it to upgrade poor shoulders.

Though the new bike lanes on Downes are by no means unwelcome, they aren’t particularly helpful either. What is needed is bike lanes on the major roads of Abbotsford that come close to the urban core – on South Fraser Way, Sumas Way, Hillcrest, George Ferguson, Clearbrook – and other such roads, to send a message loud and clear that Abbotsford intends to become a bike friendly city as soon as possible.

Though these new bicycle lanes will do very little to boost the popularity of cycling, I can understand the thought process used by planners. Since Abbotsford had virtually no bike lanes prior to the construction of the ones on Bevan and Peardonville, they probably felt that bike lanes on Downes and Clayburn would be a good way to introduce Abbotsford’s drivers to the concept, bridging the way to make Abbotsford’s core bike friendly. If this is the thought behind these bike lanes, I can understand it – on the assumption that making the rest of the city bike friendly happens sooner rather than later.