Walberg's bike adventures in and around Toronto (ok, walking around Gaspe too)

Peterborough-Oshawa-Toronto by bike 14 July 2024

Biking the Grand: Reinventing tourism 06 July 2023

Shakespeare by bike 25 June 2022

If you need a reminder that there is a higher order watching over us (NOT our profane version of moneyless fusion of people under Big Brother), put yourself in danger. I mean to the edge of things. That alone should be enough - if you survive. But if you are blessed with unexpected rescue, bringing you back from the edge, that is even better. I had two such moments in this, my latest ambitious attempt to extend the bounds of Toronto cycle pleasure to the edge of the world. I.e., what's doable by bike ALONE (OK, public transit too), but sans the killer car. You'll have to read to find my epiphanies, but they were/are truly divine. No other explanation.

Trying to have a good time without a car is challenging. There are lots of scenic bits in Ontario, in Canada for that matter, but the bike magazines just assume you have a car with bike racks and plan to drive 'there', park and bike. Sorry, but you're still part of the problem. And you should be going somewhere, like Amundsen. You can be the first cyclist to reach the South Pole only in your dreams, but you can find Everests, what's doable and a challenge, wherever you are. We have to reinvent tourism if we are to survive.

GO trains have been a godsend. When they added Kitchener (Berlin till 1914*), armed with my faux sleeping bag, I planned my next adventure: Berlin Paris Brantford Hamilton. Europe, colonialism all wrapped up together. Kitchener/Berlin was newly discovered land for Eric Cyclist, and biking from Berlin to Paris? Cool.

Over time I have accumulated 'my favourite Shakespeare hits' as doses of vitamin, my protein drink, as I ride. I love to find the bull's eyes and implant them, so they can come to my aid. Reciting aloud or in my mind is like playing Beethoven on the piano. Imitating speech (and song) is what makes us humans, gives us the miracle of speech. It's our primary learning engine. Parrots, mocking birds and a few others can, but no primates. It is speech that has turned the world into our world, transforming nature into ... No comment. But there is no wordsmith to rival the Bard. Maybe Dante.

Tolstoy didn't like Shakespeare: irreligious, amoral, teaches that in morality, like politics, you can’t establish any principles because life is too complex. The Devil is the main protagonist in Shakespeare's great tragedies, which suits me fine,

I sit here, serenaded by our neighbourrhood nice crazy (as opposed to the many very irritating ones. CAMH is just across the road). He’s probably 3 blocks away and his plaintiff tenor wafts through the air. I saw him singing fortissimo a few days ago, as he skateboarded over the college st trolley tracks in the busy traffic, his head high, dressed for modest but tasteful street living, the spitting image of Jake Angeli, the Siegmund parody among the jan6 invaders of the capitol.