Friday, March 23, 2007

Fab Four, Karma and Greenways

The Fab Four seen near College and Bay.

A couple weeks ago I was bugging Joe about all the flats he gets, which is the worst thing you can do for your flat karma. This past weekend, I found my bike with with a flat rear tire. Fortunately it was a slow leak, so I didn't have to change the tube on the road.

Last night I got around to changing the flat. I sat down in front of the TV and switched back and forth between The Agenda with Steve Paikin on TVO and Are you smarter than a fifth grader. I can't imagine what the screening process is for the second show. The whole thing could get a branch in its spokes if a few people were good actors up until they got on the show. For anyone who hasn't seen this 5th grader show, the woman last night won $175000 by answering that Panda's are from Japan. luckily she only needed to know which continent they were from and she knew Japan was in Asia. Years of promotion and good will by China down the drain.

Steve Paikin was, of course, covering the provincial budget.

My tire had a gash in it. Over time, the gash collected gravel, and eventually the gravel poked my tube. I need a new tire anyways. I seem to be replacing them about once a year, which I can live with. I've had pretty good experiences with the Vittoria Randonneurs, so I'll probably end up with those.

There's an announcement coming from Miller today on an environmental plan. I'm all ears. I remember he said he'd announce something big in March, so I wondered if the LRT plan was it. It would be smart for him to include the missing 3 million dollars for bicycle infrastructure in this plan.

There's been an interesting discussion about a planned bike route called the West Toronto Railpath. Some well deserved criticism is being thrown at the plan. It would be a shame to miss the opportunity for an effective car free route through the city. Discussion seems to be focussed on connections to other infrastructure and on trail widths. 2 km may be short, but I would love to have any piece of my commute replaced with 2 km on a path.

For a view of what Minneapolis has done, take a look at the width of their trail in this photo of their Midtown Greenway (official site for the midtown greenway).

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Darren J 3/23/2007 12:55:00 p.m.

2 Comments:

Specialized has a line of tires called the "Armadillo" which I've become a fan of. You can get 700 and 26 sizes in various widths.
they cost more, but they're good - they're actually supposed to be the best "puncture proof" tire on the market.

I have kind of a flat-tire phobia actually (I just find it a huge nuisance changing flats) so I buy those tire liners from the bike shops and have them inside all the tires on all my bikes.
Hey that photo is right by my work! Cool.

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