“We can go out to the airport,” the mom said as they were leaving.

“Oh, that’s a long drive!”

Yes. Yes it is. With the opening of the Canada Line now moved up to August 17th, less than two weeks away, it will actually be quite a bit faster–for me, at least. The closest station is a 2km walk, bus, or bike ride away, but I expect door-to-door travel time to be much, much shorter than calling a cab.

It remains to be seen how well the existing bus service will integrate with the new stations, and if more frequent east-west buses will be needed to funnel Vancouver residents into the Cambie Street corridor. In any event, by opening early, Translink and InTransit BC will hopefully have some extra time to work out many of the bugs before the old bus routes out of Richmond get discontinued.

I probably won’t use the Canada Line much myself, still being closer to the Main Street bus myself. Since I tend not to go to Richmond or Oakridge Centre much, I don’t see a lot of opportunity to use it, but it would definitely make getting to Yaletown or Davie Street from my neighbourhood much more convenient.

Plus, as has been pointed out to me by friends and drinking buddies alike, now that I’ll be attending Langara College, the 49th Avenue station makes it extremely convenient to blast down to Gastown for a drink immediately after class. (Guys, you get that school isn’t 9–5, right?)

Still, this really does hammer home the point that for a pedestrian and transit user, the shape of our city really is defined by which buses go where. (Hint: they go downtown.) Personally, when I’m a passenger in a friend’s car, I never think about taking 12th Avenue to cut across town because there aren’t buses that go there.

These fascinating travel-time maps of Great Britain effectively illustrate what even a densely-populated country like the United Kingdom must contend with when moving people and goods around.

Also interesting is the implication of what “central” means to different people. This week, there’s been some discussion over at the Vancouver League of Drupalers, of having some coworking meetups to chat about Drupal projects we’ve been working on, get some coding down, and so forth. But where to actually meet? The Grind at Main and King Edward? Sweet, I’m there. Waves in New West? Yeah, not as convenient. However, if I lived right beside any Expo Line SkyTrain station in Vancouver proper save for Stadium or Main Street, it would be faster to go all the way out to New Westminster, hands down.

Fortunately, having my spiffy new bike has opened up a lot of options too, particularly with the ability to switch to transit when I need it, now that all the buses have bike racks.

So far today, I’ve ridden just under 8 kilometres to three out of four scheduled errands. The last one will double that. I’ll spend most of it on the cross-town 10th Avenue bike route. In the end, I will have spent about the same amount of time on the road as I would have, had I driven, if you factor in parking. It’s pretty liberating, I have to say.

But hey, even if it isn’t something that’s totally useful for me, a link to Richmond and the airport was necessary. I wish different choices had been made in construction and planning, but it’s definitely something we’ll be getting some use out of as a city. Plus, hey, Vancouver’s the first Canadian city with a subway link to the airport. Go us.

Speaking personally, Pride is generally not generally my thing: it’s loud, it’s hot, and the parade, at least, is not really participatory. I don’t like watching things, I like doing things. One of the things I like doing is the Vancouver Dyke March.

Rather than a spectator, I find myself taking the role of a participant, walking up Commercial Drive with friends, amongst a fairly laid-back crowd, where one is more likely to see women with strollers than thongs. Honestly, I like the fact that it’s a smaller event, as well: for me, there’s a much greater feeling of community than I feel at Pride.

But back to Midnight Mass. (“That’s a Catholic thing, right?”) Sometimes! In this post, however, Midnight Mass is Vancouver’s answer to LA’s Midnight Ridazz group: a regular late-night ride through LA — with a number of regulars numbering in the thousands.

When I look at the Midnight Ridazz site, the first thing that stands out to me is a shout-out to an LAPD officer that escorted them on a recent ride:

The Midnight Ridazz would like to extend a sincere thanks to the LAPD and especially to the officer (whose name we did not get) who recently helped to escort our ride through the streets of Los Angeles. We are all part of the neighborhoods we ride and we support the LAPD!

Hearing this message from a loose group with a strong DIY, anti-commercial perspective is likely surprising for anyone expecting this to be Critical Mass at night, but the Midnight Ridazz’ site describes the ride as both anti-confrontational and apolitical as well.

Respect for space, drivers and the sleeping residents of the neighbourhoods through which they ride is also a core value of Vancouver’s Midnight Mass community: In this post to Vancouver’s Midnight Mass LiveJournal community from 2007, one participant shares his concerns about the ride becoming too rowdy.

We don’t need to ride 6 people abreast and block 3 lanes of traffic. There are only like 20 odd people; this isn’t Critical Mass. We really should keep over to the side and just take one lane. It is all we need.

I can appreciate this because it’s not justifying, nor criticizing Critical Mass. The point is that this isn’t Critical Mass. Rather, the author is just pointing out the differences between conduct expected among the small crowd present at Midnight Mass and what was observed.

“So Catherine, if you’re skeptical of both Pride and Critical Mass and a fan of both their smaller, less-flashy counterparts, does that make you someone who just hates things because they’re popular?”

You hush. The Dyke March has its roots in somewhat more confrontational politics than the Pride parade, originating as a protest both in favour of lesbian (and later, bisexual and transgender) rights, as well as against misogyny within the gay rights movement of the 80s and 90s.

(Also, yes, yes it does.)

So, if you’re interested, the Vancouver Dyke March begins walking towards Grandview Park from McSpadden Park at 12 noon this Saturday, August 1st. I hope to see you there!

Midnight Mass Vancouver occurs every second and fourth Thursday of the month, starting from Grandview Park at 12 midnight. I am usually in bed by this time.

Organizers of both events recommend showing up early to meet fellow participants.

In his post, Buzz asks if the imagery we’ll see in Vancouver’s Pride Parade this Sunday is really the best way to demonstrate that gays are just like everyone else. This reminded me of another familiar argument, about Critical Mass: are 3000 people on bicycles blocking commuter traffic really helping the image of cyclists?

Honestly, Buzz does raise a good point, though it’s hardly a new argument, going back to the exclusion of activists we would today consider to be transgendered in the immediate post-Stonewall era.

Still, as I wrote in Buzz’s comments, it’s a debate I feel is pretty well moot at this point. As of last week, it’s been four years since we formally enacted gay marriage nationwide here in Canada, an anniversary that totally passed me by due to no mention whatsoever in the media. People don’t care.

At the same time, though, it’s important to remember that Canadians are very cautious not to offend. At all. Ever. (We’re very passive-aggressive, though.) The problem I have with this is that it’s fundamentally dishonest. Frankly, as much as I like not having bottles hurled at my head should I choose to hold my girlfriend’s hand in downtown Vancouver, it would be nice if people advertised their hate and intolerance.

“Catherine, stop blogging while drunk,” you might say.

No, I’m serious. I want to know who to avoid. I want to know who’s trustworthy and who’s biased against me. It may not be popularly accepted that we’re all prejudiced, but I’m sorry, we are. Frankly, humans are a bunch of xenophobic jerks. Our ability to pigeonhole “the other” is why, as I mentioned to @_lisas on Twitter this morning–in the course of explaining why I’m freaked out by birds of all things–there’s a single species of human surviving today.

Everyone’s a little bit racist. Sure, we’re taught that it’s wrong, but I think this leads less to discussion and education, and more to bigots becoming closeted themselves.

So… obviously my friends are cool with it. Very few of the people I know are homophobic in the least. But I don’t date a lot. I haven’t had a girlfriend in… well, let’s just put it at “a while”. Very few people I know have seen me totally making out with girls. Doing so wouldn’t necessarily provoke a homophobic reaction, more “Cat does PDAs? Since when?”

Would my landlady be on board with my being gay? Probably not, but it’s never come up. She’s content to assume that my extreme height is what has prevented me meeting a succession of horrible, chainsmoking boyfriends to bring home to the hottest 300 square foot apartment ever known to mankind. But at the same time, it’s not like I would bring boys there if I was into that sort of thing either.

Last year, I remember her expressing skepticism about Obama and his ability to handle the financial crisis, which I presumed to be of the usual Canadian variety: “Can you believe he doesn’t support single-tier healthcare!?” It turned out that, no, she liked McCain better. I had definitely never heard this view expressed by anyone in Vancouver. I realize I’m stereotyping, but there is a bit of a correlation there.

The majority of Canadians are in favour of gay marriage, with an overwhelming majority at least being on board with some sort of “separate but equal” equivalent. The most conservative government of my lifetime has stated the matter is settled. That may be debatable, but it’s just not something we’re spending time on.

At the same time as this was going on at Buzz’s blog, there was a conversation occurring on my Twitter feed about the VPD advisory regarding the estimated 3000 cyclists participating in this month’s Critical Mass. (Mind you, I’m highly skeptical about the likelihood that so many people will brave 30° Celsius weather just to irritate commuters and climb up on top of the Lion’s Gate Bridge.) Still, the eternal “yay, Critical Mass”/“stop being assholes” debate rages on.

You know what? I support the Burrard Bridge bicycle lane project — which seems to be working out just fine at this point. (I do agree with Vancouver City Council member Andrea Reimer, however: “Enough about the Burrard Bridge.”) I support the construction of increased cycling and transit infrastructure. We need billions of dollars more for transit and millions more to improve bike lanes.

But is Critical Mass the way to convince other people to get on board with this plan, necessarily? Yeah, probably not. I actually do understand the “now drivers know how we feel!” argument. But, dude? No they don’t. Now they hate cyclists even more. And the drivers who didn’t ever consider cyclists much? Yeah, they remember that it took them two hours to make their 20-minute commute home after a long week.

And ultimately, this acts against my interests as a cyclist.

At the same time, Critical Mass looks like a lot of fun. It’s just fun at the expense of other people’s day. And I’m a staunch believer in the idea that we’re all entitled to do whatever we want until such time as what we want interferes with others’ ability to do what they want. Also, separation of church and state.

So how do I pair my this with my moral outrage towards post-Stonewall activists fighting for “straight-acting” gay and lesbian rights 30 years ago, or my position that it was was wrong and ultimately self-defeating to deliberately exclude the rest of the LGBT community?

I don’t know. I’m judging history from the perspective of someone who didn’t live through it, who just inherited the world activists worked towards a generation ago. And frankly, that’s dangerous. Today, it may seem obvious that including bisexuals, effeminate men, butches and transgendered people has always been the right thing to do, but I have to consider the possibility that I can even assert that position today because of the fact that they were effectively booted out of the movement decades earlier. Which is actually really depressing.

So, would a 21st-Century-style Pride parade and LGBT movement have flown in the early 1970s? The spectators and participants definitely wouldn’t have been the same, but the fact of the matter is, if you think The Queers are doing things to the soil, nobody’s going to convince you otherwise with a float covered in incredibly ripped guys wearing thongs.

So maybe that’s not what Pride’s for anymore. Maybe it’s just a party. As Buzz’s commenter EternalCanadian points out, honestly, what’s the difference between Pride and Mardi Gras or Caribana?

Edit: Also see Critical Pride Part 2: Midnight Mass and the Dyke March.

I really can’t say that I was expecting a massive thunderstorm instead.

In retrospect, I wish I’d taken the bus, letting me get in another post about how the #8 bus is crazy and how it was much better when my MLA drove me to work every day. Sadly, it was not to be.

I have to say, I’ve never seen a thunderstorm like this in Vancouver. From the streams coming up on Twitter, it doesn’t appear to be stopping the fireworks in English Bay though, so if they can press on, so can we!

It’s a Kuwahara-built Apollo road bike, with a 62cm frame with double-butted Tange 900 chromoly steel tubes. From 1984, if the serial number is accurate at all. I bought the frame separately, though it came with the original seat, stem and a pair of terrible, out-of-true wheels that were still good enough to walk it home from Richmond.^[1]

It had originally been intended to be converted into a fixie, which is why a lot of the other original parts were absent. As it turned out, the rider for which it had originally been intended was way too short for it. (Read: under 6 feet tall.)

Because of this, the woman I bought it from was extremely careful to be clear just what I was buying when I talked to her on the phone.

“You know this is just the frame, right?“
“Yeah, it’s cool.“
“And you get how big it is, right?”

Just right, as it turns out!

I assembled it myself with help from the folks at Our Community Bikes on Main Street a few weeks ago. It’s a 62cm frame with double-butted Tange 900 chromoly steel tubes.^[2] From 1984, if the serial number is accurate at all.

I opted for a somewhat lamer braking/gears arrangement than is traditional in Mount Pleasant. In short: I actually have them. And it’s a good thing too; I may be stronger now than I’ve ever been, but there’s no way I’m making it up Vancouver’s hills on a fixed-gear bike. ^[3]

It’s got a Shimano 105 crank, with functional but boring brakes and Suntour shifters and derailleurs. So it’s kind of a beast, but the original parts it still has are in great shape.

Sadly, jogging seems to be just too hard on my knees, but cycling 8-10km a day is working out just fine. I mean, I made it here, right?

[1] On the way home with my new bike, I managed to find the sole American tourist couple taking the 98 B-line and tell them horror stories about the Downtown Eastside and Lower Mainland’s little drug war. Maybe I should be sending my resume to Tourism BC.

[2] And I know what that means now!

[3] Still, I like it, even if I’m not allowed to go to Gene anymore.

Which is good, because he very graciously tolerated my inadvertent inviting-myself-along-to-dinner last night, and answered my questions about categories and post visibility and things.

And even more importantly, he brought his incredibly fancy bicycle panniers that I want now that he’s showed them off to me.

The Axiom Lesalle panniers come with all kinds of crazy features: as this review notes, you could take them in the shower. You know, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into.

These bags come with waterproof covers, but the bags themselves are water resistant and I haven’t yet bothered using the covers. Lacking a true deluge in which to test them, Denise did put one bag into her shower with the cover on, and it remained waterproof.

And they look great, attached to my new rear rack. Needless to say, I must have them. Sorry, Tris.

Soon now. Soon they will be mine.

[1] Tris is running a series of WordPress classes in the next few weeks: don’t know WordPress? Need to know WordpPress even better? Check them out.

My house is situated directly on top of Tea Swamp, an offshoot of Brewery Creek. Consequently, the ground is not what engineers generally consider to be “solid”, as they say.

16th Avenue. That’s… different.

As previously mentioned, my neighbourhood is composed almost completely of two-storey, basementless, concrete-slab-foundationed Vancouver Specials sinking into the muck. There’s also one impressively-designed house that’s not going anywhere. On the other hand, the roads and sidewalks around it are shifting most entertainingly. (This doesn’t make cycling nearly as awesome as it sounds, believe me.)

From False Creek: Then and Now

Today, aside from a good thousand houses listing to one side, the only other sign of the underground rivers that once dotted East Vancouver are the now stagnant Trout Lake, where tonight I hope someone will be Blogathonning the Illuminares lantern festival, the myriad orange manhole covers, identifying their contents as a culverted stream rather than storm sewer or wastewater, and the Tea Swamp Park community garden located at Main and 16th.

So really, that’s a lot.

There are ongoing plans to rehabilitate many of the culverted streams beneath Vancouver, the most prominent example of which is located next to Superstore on Grandview Highway. Impressively, it’s actually home to beavers… who promptly cut down all the trees in the parking lot. But you know, that’s what happens.

Naturally, I would have had to have opted for the extra loud-and-obnoxious zippers with which to feel totally self-conscious.

I’m also panting for breath and for some reason, carrying more stuff than everyone who drove. (“It’s cool, that just means you’re OCD, Catherine.”) Perhaps it’s time to invest in some panniers for my bike. Anyone got a pair in good condition they’d like to sell? One on its own?

Being that this is my first Blogathon, and that there’s never been one hosted at Workspace before, I suppose we’re all going to be feeling things out, but come on, people. Party. Party down. Also, I suppose I ought to consider the fact that it’s 7 AM and, judging by the cups here, only one of us has had coffee yet — including me!

There’s at least one or two “actual” Workspace people here getting things done that aren’t alarming 24-hour blogging binges, so I suppose it is best that we not all be topless and hooting and hollering, but I expect we’ll get there as the day drags on.

I’m wondering how likely it would be that I could get away with quoting excerpts from other bloggers’ posts, concluding that no, that’s probably not quite in the spirit of things.

Edit: Raul is finding something exceedingly amusing. And now he’s gone into the other room. What’s up, Raul?

To say I was skeptical of some aspects of the conference beforehand would be a terrible, terrible understatement. On the ride up with former coworker Jnet:
Her: “So are you recovered from your flu?” [Swine flu, I swear.]
Me: “I guess, yeah… I’m still not very hungry.“
Her: “Well, you’ll have lots of good vegetarian cooking at Cortes.“
Me: “…Whaaah? Awwww.”

I know! Fortunately, said vegetarian cooking turned out to be delicious and, contrary to our hosts’ warning, I didn’t totally fart the entire time. Upon leaving Cortes, Jnet and I immediately went to a Wendy’s in Campbell River, but that’s neither here nor there. It was good, trust me.

Now, I’m not a super-huggy person, and there was a bit more hugging than I’m used to, which is honestly saying a lot, coming from the Vancouver social media scene. There was also a substantially greater-than-usual amount of talking about ambitions and goals and feelings and things. On the other hand, there were parts I was really interested in, such as answering the question, “is it possible to create a new medium and use it for artistic purposes without the first few years of its existence being used expressly to discuss that medium?” (See photography, cave painting, the web, Twitter, etc.) The answer: maybe?

Despite my skepticism, it turned out that there were parts that proved extremely valuable to me. Incredibly, these were the parts that involved tackling issues and feelings! And talking about them! If the words “coaching circle” make you wrinkle your nose in pain, you’re experiencing more or less the same sort of anticipation as I was beforehand.

And yet, the coaching circle was extremely helpful after all. Of course, there were still parts of Media that Matters that I was perhaps a little too much of a cynical prude to enjoy.

So I got back and decided I needed to make some changes. So I’m trying new things this summer. First of all, as mentioned in my last post, my knees have finally recovered enough for me to get places with my exercise regimen. (I think my problem with the stationary bike is that I get bored and always have a sneaking suspicion that I’m accomplishing less than I ought to be. I might end up buying a trainer for my bike, since there’s plenty on Craigslist, but actually using it without feeling like I’m just screwing around, that will be the challenge.)

So, exercise. What else?

• Writing more. Theoretically.
• Actually building a bicycle instead of just buying one.
• Knitting classes at Three Bags Full on Main Street. I’ve never knit before.
• Going to more art shows. More barbeques. More events.
• Quitting my job and going to art school.

Oh yeah. That last one. I’m entering Langara College’s Fine Arts program in September, then transferring to Emily Carr to finish up my undergrad. So that’s new too.

I’m tall. Really, really tall. (Yes, taller than that one friend of yours. No, I don’t care if he’s single. A swimmer, you say? Does he have a sister?)

Now, what you may not be aware of is that there tends to be a few downsides to being tall.

On the plus side, I never get heartburn and laugh heartily at the signs that read “please ask for assistance for items on this shelf” at the pharmacy. On the other hand, humans tend not to have joints built to handle a larger frame, and with much greater distances to pump, our hearts don’t work as long.

One other issue tall people can face is actually pretty difficult to claim as a particularly bad thing, — though it is if you’re as unaware of it as I was. Differences in proportion and scale being what they are, I can gain 20 or 30 (or 60) pounds without anyone really noticing much difference.¹ Including me, unfortunately. (Yes, that’s right. I just complained about my appearance being too forgiving. Stone me now.)

However, as ridiculous a “problem” as that is, it’s actually not super for one’s health, particularly if you don’t realize it for a year. In late 2008, wracked with knee pain so severe that my doctors had been talking about osteoarthritis and the possibility that I might be unable to walk by the age of 40, it was discovered that I was just in disastrously poor shape. In fact, despite walking fairly regularly and having a “healthy” BMI^[2], I’d managed to develop virtually no muscle mass whatsoever.

On the one hand, this was a relief. On the other hand, it would have been nice to have had no culpability whatsoever.

So, back I went to physiotherapy. Again. Years ago, I tore the crap out of my rotator cuff while working as a shop assistant in a giant ladies’ clothing store. Carrying jeans, yes. You see, the thing about jeans for tall women is that they have to be much longer, contain more fabric, etc. The thing about bones for tall women is that they don’t just tend to be longer, they also tend to be bigger. So we’re not talking about carrying around Size 0 capris here, we’re talking dozens of pairs of Size 16 and 22 jeans, each leg several inches longer than what a regular store carries. It adds up, trust me.

Messageboard testimonials suggested Vancouver’s best physiotherapist was Kelvin Tam of Kelvin Physiotherapy Clinic. I am pleased to report that this appears to be highly accurate.

“So let me guess,” he said, looking at my chart. “You hurt your shoulder playing volleyball?”

“No.”

“Basketball? Softball? Soccer?”

“…lifting pants?”

I think Kelvin still thinks I might be making that up. This would be much better if I hadn’t seen him a further time for my elbow, suffering from both golfer’s and tennis elbow — from using the mouse too much. I had to make a significant lifestyle change there too as well.

Annoyingly, if I had injured my shoulder or elbow playing sports, I probably wouldn’t have had this problem with my knees. Of course, I likely wouldn’t have suffered those injuries either.

So, several months of physiotherapy and exercise later, I’m finally moving up from walking to jogging. So far, things seem to be working out okay. I’m currently in week two of the Couch-to-5K Running Plan from Cool Running. So far, so good, but it’s pretty exhausting, I have to say. I suspect I’m still not quite in good enough shape, given my struggles last week, so I’ve inserted a second “week one” into my own exercise regimen.

I’ve also been eying the Nike+iPod gadget for my iPhone — which is ridiculous, frankly. I don’t need that and I really don’t want to use any of their social media features like sharing how far I’ve run/limped about. Let’s all just assume that things are going really well for me, okay?

Anyway, dealing with sports bras and running shoes is novel, but dealing with bikes is fun! Yes, I’m secretly an aspiring bike nerd, and I’m finally able to ride one again. Sadly, it turns out that Catherine-sized bikes are fairly difficult to come by, but I’m pleased to report things are progressing smoothly despite that. I will post details of the great bike-building project shortly!

[1] Case in point: as of the writing of this post, the last time a close friend has called me a “skinny bitch” was approximately 36 hours ago.

[2] Seriously, Body-Mass Index is the worst possible measure of physical fitness there is. Not only does it have trouble scaling at the top and bottom ends, but it doesn’t even account for what that mass consists of. Ouch.