Giving Up the Car and the 3 Phases of Biking

After two decades of uninterrupted car ownership spanning two countries, I’ve given up my car. Before the rush of applause starts, I need to confess that, as a household, we still have the van so my wife can cart the kids to where they need to be. Before kids, we were making it work with one car. I drove to work and my wife got by using transit. In fact, transit access was one of the things we looked for when searching for a house. Then, of course, kids. And all the things that magically pop into existence around kids, like toys, change tables, car seats and mysterious broken things that nobody touched, descended on us until the critical mass was reached to push us into buying a van. And, voila, one vehicle became two.

No matter what you buy them for, keeping two vehicles on the road gets expensive. So when the stars aligned this March and we had a chance to go back to a single vehicle family, I was genuinely excited. For the first time in my life, I have a job that can be reached by public transit in less than an hour. I was already used to a 45 minute commute by car to my previous job, so rather than signing on for the shorter drive, I decided to try out the 40 minute bus and train ride.

All in all, it has been a great change. As some studies have suggested, I experience way less stress riding versus driving. I’ve never been known for Gandhi-like patience, and driving often brought out the worst in me. There were many days where I would find myself swearing, shaking a fist, flipping the bird and even aggressively revving the engine, and sometimes that was before I even put the car in gear. So driving has never been a good fit as far as stress or blood pressure. Public transit, on the other hand, still feels like personal free time created out of thin air. I can read, listen to audiobooks or music, work on my tablet or even catch a quick nap. The other people taking transit at the prime hours are all pretty decent. I previously had a poor opinion of transit because I only took it very late at night when everyone on it - myself included - tends to be ridiculously drunk.

I also walk way more on a daily basis as a result of public transit. This became apparent on day one when my fitbit marked 10,000 steps over my lunchtime stroll rather than late in the evening (or not at all). Now four months later, I am actually a bit lighter than when I started and I willingly get off a stop early to add some extra walking distance to the commute. To be clear, I don’t think public transit will turn back the clock so I can fit the same pants size I wore a decade ago, but I do think it will help with general health and at least counteract some of the hours I spend in an office chair. Apparently sitting to work is the new smoking and I am definitely a three pack a day guy if that’s the case, so every little bit helps.

Between the time and the general health benefits, it was enough for me to park the car permanently. As of this July, we officially are a one car family. Another interesting development coming from the change is that I am actually excited to drive the van on the weekends. I used to hate driving any distance on my days off because I drove so much to, from and for work. Now it is a special pleasure. And, of course, there is the environmental benefit of taking a car off the road. In all honesty, I didn’t make the change for environmental reasons, but it is a nice knock-on benefit when combined with saving money, gaining time and getting a bit more fit.

That said, it is not all sunshine and roses. As part of this process, I flirted briefly with biking. I was able to cut out a bus and it shaved my commute down to 30 minutes because of the ability to go a direct route rather than the bus route designed to hit as many neighborhoods as possible before going to the train. I used to bike a lot when I lived in Japan. People in general bike a lot in Japan, although car ownership is also up there. Biking to and from work remains one of my favorite memories from living in Japan. Edmonton, however, is not Japan. It is not even half as bike friendly. I’d unscientifically estimate that one in every 30 or so Edmonton drivers is out to straight up murder you through either spite or idiocy.

I went through what I imagine to be common phases for Edmonton bike commuters. Phase 1 was the honeymoon where it was just awesome to feel the wind on my face again. During this phase I bought all the peripherals like the helmet and reflectors so that I felt well prepared to ride on the road. I was right in there with the traffic following the rules that I reread multiple times. I felt confident for the single left my route required. After several close calls - all of which occurred while going straight on residential roads rather than that tricky left - I entered Phase 2.

Phase 2 is where you know the rules, but you value your life more than you fear the ticket. You start using sidewalks, dismounting and using the crosswalk, and generally acting as a pedestrian that sometimes rides a bike. This worked better, but I felt the hatred of people watching me. Some seemed to want me to ride across and get the hell out of the way faster. Some probably would only be satisfied if I sprouted seven kinds of aggressive cancer and died in front of them, such was their need to get to the next red light. Some - and I will admit we are talking about only three over the period of a month - didn’t stop at all. I don’t know if they didn’t see the blinking lights, didn’t think a walking bicyclist counted as a pedestrian, or maybe thought it was a race to see who could occupy the space first. Either way, I entered Phase 3.

Phase 3 is where you leave your bike at home and just fricking walk. Which is what I do. I even stick out a hand before I enter the crosswalk now and make pointed eye contact with the drivers. They are more attentive when I don’t have the bike - again, not sure why. Since I don’t feel pressure to run across, I have more time to judge a non-stopper versus the I-hate-my-brakes-so-I-smash-them-last-minute stopper. People still neglect to stop sometimes but my hands are no longer occupied holding the handle bars, freeing them up for the double bird.

Aside from the failed biking experiment, I’ve also had to pay more attention to weather. I’ve been drenched several times or ended up dressing for the 13 degrees when I leave rather than the 29 degrees when I return. So now I have a backpack filled with all sorts of useful stuff like windbreakers, hats and umbrellas. I still can’t shake the feeling that I am a kid again and that I should really have an adult checking my backpack to make sure I didn’t forget my lunch.

All in all though, the drawbacks have been small. And I get a little thrill telling people I don’t have a car, as this is the first time since I turned 16 that I could say that. To be sure, I am not going to swear off owning a car again. Jobs change, people move, and all of that changes the practicality of commuting. I also haven’t commuted through an Edmonton winter yet. However, with those caveats, giving up the car has been a great choice.

Thailand: You’re Going to Ride an Elephant, Just Accept It.

Like a great many tourists, I sometimes feel at odds with myself when I take the easy path and do the touristy thing in a given situation. I feel like there is some authentic experience I am missing out on - maybe apprenticing under some ancient looking master of glass blowing as the mists roll over the mountains behind us.

I am, however, a tourist. So even if an authentic experience presented itself to me, I would spend most of the time trying to get a picture of it rather than actually engaging. “Look at this picture,” I would tell my friends back home (none of whom really want to see a picture of me, whether it is of me blowing glass or even me on fire), “Isn’t it great?” And they’d be guilted into asking me how it was. To which, of course, my honest response would be “I guess it was ok. It was really hard to get the picture while holding the tube, so I actually just watched this old guy do it most of the time.”

I have come to terms with this essential flaw in my character and I accept that, if I am going to have any real connection with anything, I need time to steep it in. I am a bitter tea type of personality, I guess. This is why it took me over six years to properly wrap my head around one small city in Japan.

So when it came time for my trip to Thailand in 2004, I knew I was going to ride an elephant. It is one of those things tourists do in Thailand. I accepted it. And you should too.

I met my particular elephant on the island of Koh Samui in the south of Thailand. I was staying on Chaweng beach and had planned to make the full moon party (another tourist staple), but I’d failed to account for a Buddhist holiday. Koh Samui itself was beautiful, with jungles, beaches and an above 30 Celsius temperature during my entire stay. Of course, being of Scottish, Irish and German descent, I reacted to the sun like a hermit leaving his cave after 40 years of darkness.

So when it came time to visit the elephant show, I was resplendent in my wide-brim hat and well lubricated with several litres of sunscreen. The elephant show consisted of the mahout (a.k.a. elephant rider) taking the elephant through a workout regime similar to an early afternoon aerobics show on 80s television. The elephant backed up, lifted feet, stood up, shuffled and lifted logs with its trunk.

Elephants have a special way of doing this that conveys that shows they are still confused as to how these hairless primates ended up riding them, but they can’t be bothered enough to give a shit. After watching the elephant show, which bizarrely ends with the opportunity to shake hands with a monkey, we were finally allowed to fulfill our tourist dreams and ride the elephants.

Unlike the mahouts, who rode behind the ears of the big beasts, we got to sit in relatively comfortable seats tied to the elephant’s backs. We also mounted by walking up the steps to the loading platform rather than scrambling up the neck as the elephant kneeled before us. This was probably for the best, as many of us in the group were far beyond the age or body type needed to scramble up anything steeper than an ottoman.

I was travelling solo at this point, so I got the single seater elephant (better mileage, but more road noise). The first thing that hit me is that riding an elephant was actually kind of fun. The roll of the motion and the sense of the size of the animal carrying you is unique in my experience. The second thing that hit me was that elephants smell pretty much what you’d expect a very large animal to smell like. And they do everything large. One elephant in front of us in the tourist train stopped to piss and, by a modest estimate, released an entire lake’s worth of fluid.

So go ahead and ride that elephant when you have a chance. It isn’t going to change your life like learning to blow glass from a 100 year old monk on a mountain peak, but it is a genuinely satisfying experience that will make for a picture that no one but you actually wants to see. And, after all, isn’t that what travelling is all about?

Apple Pie Politics

When my son began to speak actual words, one of the phrases that he repeated a lot was “no apple pie.” Several times a day, he’d go into the kitchen to assess the apple pie situation and then find his mom or myself to let us know that there was a serious lack of apple pie. We expected a different response when Rie would bake an apple pie for him, but he stuck to his guns in asserting that, whatever we thought that pastry was, it was “no apple pie.”

Seeing the media from two different national elections - Canada’s recently completed one and the seemingly endlessly upcoming American one - I couldn’t help thinking that my son would be a hell of a politician. Judging by the ads, the debates and the admittedly small amount of the election content I’ve been able to stomach, the primary skill required for politics is assertion. You must be able to repeat an assertive statement no matter what the particular facts of the situation.

I’m oversimplifying a bit, but the Canadian election can essentially be boiled down to the Progressive Conservatives asserting that Justin Trudeau wasn’t ready to take the helm and Justin Trudeau asserting that he was ready. Or, in my son’s worldview, the PC’s insisted there was no apple pie when Trudeau said there clearly was apple pie. In this case, Trudeau’s assertions won out and Canada has a new Liberal government after around a decade of the PCs in power.

The United States doesn’t yet have the clear apple pie vs. no apple pie messaging yet, but there are some definite messages that potential presidential candidates are leaning towards. Donald Trump, who is in the lead for the Republicans, seems to be tacking towards “America sucks, but I can make it great again” while Hillary Clinton, leading the Democrats, is going with “America is pretty good now, but I can make it better.” Now, you can say a lot about these two as people and candidates - Trump is a narcissist whose polling success is clearly from going after the lowest common denominator and Clinton is clearly leaning heavily on her husband and Mr. Obama for political cred - but at least their messaging is about the country they are hoping to represent.

The Canadian election was less about the nation and more about whether or not Trudeau was ready to give Canada its first political dynasty. From a strategic communications standpoint, this framed the election as Trudeau’s to lose. He had one overall “issue” to address and it wasn’t even one where an objective answer was possible. Enough people agreed that there was apple pie, and a new government formed.

With Trump and Clinton there is a similar lack of objective evidence for either assertion, but it opens the door to a more meaningful and interesting debate. Is America sucking right now or is it good with the potential to get better? Obviously your own personal situation is going to influence how you answer that question and ultimately how you vote.

Modern communications is all about boiling the complex down to a few key messages that you repeat, repeat and repeat some more. There is still room for thoughtful analysis in the long form magazine-style interviews and some journalistic channels, but most of the content we see are soundbytes. And maybe this is a demand driven problem. Maybe we want politics to be simple. Maybe all we want our politicians to be assertive and on message.

The risk is that we are quickly approaching a point where the key messages and polish allow someone to walk in with an undisclosed policy platform that - if properly explored - is not what the majority actually want. I don’t have a solution. I don’t think media will ever revert back to long form journalism when listicles are so much more clickable.

I don’t think politicians will ever again drop those polished facades when in front of a camera and talk about what they actually think and feel. But I have been wrong a great many times in my life. That said, my money is on there being many more “no apple pie” elections in the years to come.

Surviving In The Post-Apocalyptic Zombie Economy

Between AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and more movies than you can fit on a hard-drive, most of us feel well-educated when it comes to surviving ravenous hordes of flesh-eating undead. This article, however, won’t focus on how to get through those frightening moments when your chainsaw runs out of gas or you’re down to your last bullet. Instead, we’ll look at how to make the best choices, both for survival and your future career path in the zombie economy.

Welcome to the True Knowledge Economy

One thing that will help you thrive in the zombie economy – aside from quick legs and a strong stomach – is a longer term perspective. This will be vital in the first months when people are hoarding, rioting and looting. Very likely, someone bigger and stronger than you is going to get most of the good guns. The problem with guns, is that bullets are bound to be scarce one day. Instead of following the crowd to the gun shops, take a moment and analyze the situation according to the utility and scarcity of items. The wisest decision is to focus on items that are common enough to be carried by many stores and give the maximum utility for their weight.

Everyone’s list will be a little different, but here are some items that are likely to come in handy and that you won’t have to kill anyone to collect:

• Camping gear, including a tent, sleeping bag, crank-up lights and warm, durable clothing. Most people will be fortifying their homes, you need to be ready for when gas and electricity service no longer works.
• Tools, including axes and knives. Guns and bullets are great if you can get them, but it is harder to make your own bullets than it is to sharpen and mend basic tools. 
• Books on gardening, medicine (especially herbs), basic carpentry and trapping or hunting. Society is likely going to slip back a few centuries as zombies take their toll on the infrastructure, so it is best to bone up on how things used to be done whenever you have a spare moment. 

Now that you have what you need, it is time to run for your life.

Real Estate Tips during the Zombie Plague

People equal zombies and then more zombies as they bite people. So rather than joining massive groups that are bound to form around people with weapons, it is a good idea to look for an area with few people, fertile land and perhaps a mid-sized town nearby. If you can find an unoccupied farm with a well and a fence, then you can attempt to bunker down, but tying yourself to real estate will likely be a very dangerous decision in the short-term because the groups with guns will quickly realize that large groups need more food. And food is easier to take than grow.

The best location may be the one that is most difficult to stumble upon. Then you can set about building a minimal dwelling and securing food, supplies and seeds to bring back. Once you have an isolated area set-up, you can start looking into getting some tenants and establishing a new career beyond foraging for food and braining adventurous zombies with a hand-axe.

Building a Post-Apocalyptic Career

The key to any successful business is people – preferably people who will not murder you in your sleep for a laugh. By scouting out into the surrounding areas, you’ll likely find pockets of escapees like yourself. You can start rebuilding and securing a human settlement by smart recruiting of smaller groups. At this point, although still a threat, the zombie hordes are probably less of a threat than your hideout in the mountains being discovered and overrun.

Once you start building up a community, however, you’ll have to put some thought into what your role in this mini-society will be. You two basic choices:

• Install yourself as a ruler. This has some attractions, such as absolute power, but it comes with risks. You’ll always have to promote people in trios – two can conspire easily, but a third will usually taddle – and you will always face the chance of a shift in the political situation proving to be fatal.
• Avoid real power, but become indispensable. Using your secret stashes of knowledge and the fact you were a founder of the settlement, you can probably establish yourself as a village elder. This means you can act as an adviser to the ruler, president, council or whatever decision making apparatus is established.

Beyond the Zombie Plague

Hopefully a couple winters will clear out or at least confine zombies to the more southern climates, so a time will come when you’ll have to consider whether it is time for your settlement to establish a fiefdom or build up defenses against raiders or even try to reclaim an abandoned city. Although it may take awhile, with luck you’ll be putting down your axe and settling into a home with electricity and running water to enjoy your retirement.

Is Anpanman Going to Be Ok?

I worry about Anpanman a lot these days. Anpanman is a popular show for children that we get on the TV Japan channel and I get to see a lot of it because my son is currently a fan. All I can say is that Japanese children’s television is deeply concerning.

With Anpanman, my concerns are largely metaphysical. Anpanman is a bit like Superman, if Superman had a removable head made of pastries and sweet bean filling. Anpanman can fly, he is incredibly strong and he goes around helping people and punching out bad guys. This is all great stuff. I hope that Aito grows up incredibly strong with the ability to fly, help people and punch out bad guys, so there are many lessons that he can pick up from Anpanman.

Unfortunately, like Superman and kryptonite, Anpanman has a weakness - the fact that his head is basically dough and sweet beans. If his head gets dented, dirty, wet, or fed to hungry animals (as sometimes happens), Anpanman’s power wanes. The solution for Anpanman is to replace his head with an entirely new head. This brings him back to full power and allows him to “An-punch” his enemies so hard that they disappear over the horizon.

What I wonder, though, is whether or not Anpanman is actually Anpanman anymore after switching heads. Sure, we think that Anpanman is the same person because he does and says the same things, but isn’t it also possible that Jam Ojisan, Anpanman’s creator, is baking a new individual with each head? Could we be seeing the death of a hero every time Anpanman’s head gets changed?

Besides the existentially terrifying question of the disposable hero heads, there is the change that would have on the show itself. If each head is a different hero, then Anpanman’s nemesis, Baikinman, doesn’t actually fail each episode. In fact, he’s slowly working his way through all of the potential Anpanmans until the day when Jam Ojisan runs out of sweet beans and flour.

Of course, it would be easy to chalk up my worries about Anpanman to Japanese cartoons being quirky, but I’ve realized that it has nothing to do with Japan. Thomas the Tank Engine, another of my son’s favorites, also contains some big questions. Sir Topham Hat can’t go one episode without mentioning that all the train’s should be “really useful engines.” In fact, most of the episodes are about the trains competing to be more useful or agonizing about not being useful enough. The question I have is what exactly are the engines so scared of? What did Sir Topham Hat do to inspire that kind of fear? What happens to the engines that don’t measure up?

Now, you might say I am reading too much into both these shows - and you’d be right. I have a lot of spare time to think while watching these shows. Anpanman and Thomas tend to be a bit formulaic in the plot department. It’s almost like they were written for kids. As a person in an international marriage, I am all for understanding and appreciation between cultures. And one thing I think we can agree on is that children’s shows are crazy in any culture.

The Things You Forget: Japan Five Years Later

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Japan. I lived and worked in Japan as an ESL teacher from 2003-2009, but since then we (I met my wife in Japan) hadn’t returned. From the time we touched down in Narita, it felt like we were enacting the Japanese folktale, Urashima Taro. In the folktale, Urashima Taro returns from the ocean to find decades passed while he partied in the undersea kingdom and the world moved on. It really felt like decades passed while we were away rather than a few years, but I think it is just the things you forget when you aren’t in a country day in and day out.

For sure, some things are different. For example, Tokyo station has touch panel vending machines now, street lights have gotten slimmer and you can finally pay with a credit card in most large stores. However, there are all sorts of things that must have once been familiar and now seem strange and new. The counters and tables all felt a few inches too low, the airport and bullet trains were unbelievably clean, and the average combini (convenience store, but so different from Canada’s version) held all the products a person could possibly need in their daily lives. Even the cars were surprising as there seemed to be an endless selection of makes, models and colors.

One thing I was shocked to have forgotten was the natural beauty of Japan. It is easy to think of Tokyo as being Japan concentrated down into a single city of skyscrapers and concrete, but outside of Tokyo Japan is a country of mountains, oceans, fields and rivers. In Alberta, we can drive 600 kilometers in any direction without a huge change in the countryside. In Japan, 600 kilometers takes you from Ueno station in Tokyo to the snow covered forests of Aomori. For such a small country, Japan packs in a lot of scenery.

There were many other moments of rediscovery, including the quality of the food, the high-level of service, the mild weather, and the weight of history and culture in Japan. There are many things I wish I could bring back with me to Canada, and also some things I wish I could export to Japan. I wish my Japanese friends took more of a Canadian approach to work and took all the holidays they were entitled too. I wish Canadian restaurants could offer the service and food quality you get in Japan.

I guess I really wish I could live in a Canadianized Japan or Japanized Canada, but that’s not how the world works. That said, every time we travel to Japan or a Japanese person comes to Canada, you can’t help but take a piece of that culture with you. Piece by piece, the connection is built between both cultures. Sure, you can forget the little things like the spotless bathrooms and the talking ATMs, but the truly important things like respect and appreciation of nature stay with you forever.

The Challenges of Flying With Children: Babies Are Just As Bad As Pipebombs

When you have a child, you become part of a tribe of sorts. There are things that you discuss only with other parents – and usually only after the two beers you can fit in after your children's bedtime at 8pm and your own at 9:45pm (wild times, I know). These are things that seem frankly criminal when you write them down, like how sleepless nights you fantasized about leaving your screaming and crying child on a stranger's porch (I am not a monster - I would have at least rang the doorbell.). I've now added another story to this cache of dark humor: air travel.

Flying with a child of any age is challenging. Hell, flying as an adult is no great shakes. It seems like planes are being designed to pack the maximum amount of people in the minimum amount of comfort. The economics of airlines dictates that planes are not airworthy until passengers are skin-to-skin with the strangers sitting next to them. This type of thing, plus the fact that a plane is really a metal tube held up by a suspension of belief in gravity, used to make me dread flying.

Now, I have so many more things dread as a parent flying with my child. The first major change between your old travel habits and your family travel habits is the amount of baggage you require. Aito is around 20 pounds and, if packed properly, fits on my lap. Despite the relatively compact nature of my son, he requires another 80 pounds of luggage, not including the baby carry on with diapers, wipes, snacks and clothes, as well as the significant portion of our own carry on given over to his books, toys and eating utensils. My wife and I must have looked like especially put upon pack animals pushing the six check in bags, the three carry on, and our son through the airport.

Thankfully, we were able to check everything and then quickly breeze through security riding on the backs of understanding unicorns. I am, of course, joking. The Edmonton Airport Security – the alert and tireless force that let a passenger fly after taking away his pipe bomb in 2014  – were very concerned about the baby bag. As well they should be.

After all, how could they be sure that the baby we had with us was in fact ours? More importantly, did he pack that bag himself? So the stalwarts of airport security had my wife – who I suspect has radicalized over the course of our marriage – rummage through the bag to pull out the suspicious object. This was, of course, wipes. After opening the potentially lethal package for the security officer, we were allowed to keep our wipes. We cackled manically. Our plan worked. We were now free to commit acts of extreme hygiene at 30,000 feet.

Although we did not, in fact, have a bomb or any act of terror planned for the long flight to Japan, we did feel like terrorists. People boarding the plane flinched at the sight of an infant, anticipating 10 hours of uninterrupted crying. It was my first time flying with a child and, aside from the metric ton of luggage, I had prepared as I usually did – I brought a book.

....

Sorry, I had to take a moment there to let the laughter pass. As you more experienced parents will know, a book is a bit ambitious for in-flight entertainment. I did not do enough reading on the plane to finish a postcard, let alone a book. What was I doing for 10 hours? My wife and I were both providing non-stop entertainment, snacks and soothing to the volatile and sleepless infant we had smuggled aboard. In retrospect, I owe an apology to the Edmonton airport security. They should have tasered us at the check-in counter.