Mean new machine.
Enchanted ice forest where we stopped to chat with a walker.
Calgary Spring
We didn't let a lack of actual Spring keep us from a first ride on the new Pivot's today. Frozen ice on the prairie grasses at Nose Hill.
Employment
I'm deviating a bit from bike talk here, but it's irked me for years how media, and therefore the collective social intelligence discuss unemployment rates as barometers of the economy.
For those who are innately familiar with the statistic, how it's calculated, and therefore it's measured changes have a context to you, that's great.
It sounds so simple, but it isn't. Unemployment rate is the ratio of those who are unemployed divided by the labour force. Makes sense. However, those two variables have a lot of caveats, which statistically speaking, are valid. In reality though, they give a lot of ability to modify the number - who's discouraged? Who's in the army? Who can't find work at their level? Who is actually in the labour force? The descriptions here illustrate where, and why there's leeway.
Sometimes its good to step back to the more abstract. Less unemployment is good, meaning more employment is good.
Why don't we look at something more fundamental. If we're measuring the health of an economy, why not use Employed/Population? The only way to fudge that one is to not count illegal immigrants, although most census data appears to capture them, and/or to hire more people on the taxpayer dollar (not the best system, but at least you in theory get more output that way than just paying benefits).
You may say this is irrational, as babies and grandmas aren't workforce. But they are part of a nation's population, and they do consume national resources to care for. Therefore, in comparing health of nations, those with higher Employed to Population ratios are likely to be somewhat better off. Each person employed is one less on the dole, one more paying tax, one more paying into pensions, one more person who has better cash flow than collecting government checks provides. If you're on a boat crossing the Atlantic with 100 people on board, you're better off wit 64 people rowing than with 57 people rowing. Simple.
At times the US and Canada have appeared to be 4 percentage points apart (low-mid 60% level vs high mid 50% level).
At the very least, help me understand how the US' poor trend correlates to the incredibe performance of major US indicies such as the S&P 500 and DJIA year to date. It just doesn't make much sense to me.
IMHO, this is also why countries who surpress an additional half of their work force capability into not being able to be productive, are economic backwaters. Women are capable of much more than what many places on earth let them contribute. Not hard to pick those countries off this list.
For those who are innately familiar with the statistic, how it's calculated, and therefore it's measured changes have a context to you, that's great.
It sounds so simple, but it isn't. Unemployment rate is the ratio of those who are unemployed divided by the labour force. Makes sense. However, those two variables have a lot of caveats, which statistically speaking, are valid. In reality though, they give a lot of ability to modify the number - who's discouraged? Who's in the army? Who can't find work at their level? Who is actually in the labour force? The descriptions here illustrate where, and why there's leeway.
Sometimes its good to step back to the more abstract. Less unemployment is good, meaning more employment is good.
Why don't we look at something more fundamental. If we're measuring the health of an economy, why not use Employed/Population? The only way to fudge that one is to not count illegal immigrants, although most census data appears to capture them, and/or to hire more people on the taxpayer dollar (not the best system, but at least you in theory get more output that way than just paying benefits).
You may say this is irrational, as babies and grandmas aren't workforce. But they are part of a nation's population, and they do consume national resources to care for. Therefore, in comparing health of nations, those with higher Employed to Population ratios are likely to be somewhat better off. Each person employed is one less on the dole, one more paying tax, one more paying into pensions, one more person who has better cash flow than collecting government checks provides. If you're on a boat crossing the Atlantic with 100 people on board, you're better off wit 64 people rowing than with 57 people rowing. Simple.
At times the US and Canada have appeared to be 4 percentage points apart (low-mid 60% level vs high mid 50% level).
At the very least, help me understand how the US' poor trend correlates to the incredibe performance of major US indicies such as the S&P 500 and DJIA year to date. It just doesn't make much sense to me.
IMHO, this is also why countries who surpress an additional half of their work force capability into not being able to be productive, are economic backwaters. Women are capable of much more than what many places on earth let them contribute. Not hard to pick those countries off this list.
Urban Sprawl Myths, Bicycle Tariffs in Canada
The debate I've heard on bicycle tariffs has brought up some interesting side discussions.
One is that cycling as transportation is not feasible with the size of sprawling North American cities, Calgary included. I tend to reject that, this article and link give that some creedence. I'd say the more practical barriers are weather and road attitude. Road lanes, bike paths are great for riding on, convenient, and help deal with road attitude via separation of transport types, but in the presence of a collaborative citizenry, probably wouldn't be as necessary. Excellent google work from Copenhagenize.com!
I've actually been on a several month stretch where, for the most part, car traffic has been totally cooperative. It's nice, as I try to be the cyclist that is predictable and follows the rules, such that I'm not actually irking motorists by disobeyment of the law (although some will always be irked by the mere presence of a bicycle).
It's helpful when people's minds function more like "oh, some person riding a bike. interesting. I'll just nudge over and give them a smidge of space, no big deal, I'll still get where I'm going just fine." That's great. Only once in the last few months have I had the "oh look, some dumbasses on a bike. ha I'll show them. I'm gonna downshift my 1989 Dodge diesel truck, semi flood the engine, then smoke them out with black exhaust soot. Ha, watch this. I'm so unaware that each of their bikes is worth more than my truck right now and that besides being on bicycles, these are productive members of society who will help subsidize the costs of my eventual emphysma, but I'm emboldened by my truck's size, and really enjoying my cigarette, and I own these roads!".
One is that cycling as transportation is not feasible with the size of sprawling North American cities, Calgary included. I tend to reject that, this article and link give that some creedence. I'd say the more practical barriers are weather and road attitude. Road lanes, bike paths are great for riding on, convenient, and help deal with road attitude via separation of transport types, but in the presence of a collaborative citizenry, probably wouldn't be as necessary. Excellent google work from Copenhagenize.com!
I've actually been on a several month stretch where, for the most part, car traffic has been totally cooperative. It's nice, as I try to be the cyclist that is predictable and follows the rules, such that I'm not actually irking motorists by disobeyment of the law (although some will always be irked by the mere presence of a bicycle).
It's helpful when people's minds function more like "oh, some person riding a bike. interesting. I'll just nudge over and give them a smidge of space, no big deal, I'll still get where I'm going just fine." That's great. Only once in the last few months have I had the "oh look, some dumbasses on a bike. ha I'll show them. I'm gonna downshift my 1989 Dodge diesel truck, semi flood the engine, then smoke them out with black exhaust soot. Ha, watch this. I'm so unaware that each of their bikes is worth more than my truck right now and that besides being on bicycles, these are productive members of society who will help subsidize the costs of my eventual emphysma, but I'm emboldened by my truck's size, and really enjoying my cigarette, and I own these roads!".
Bicyle Tariffs in Canada going up - and why they shouldn't
Tariffs in theory can serve several purposes - protection of domestic industry, raising of revenue, and discouragement of a behaviour due to increased costs.
Canada is looking to raise tariffs on a wide variety of sporting goods, including bicycles, with carve outs for the political hot topic of hockey gear. My first suggestion is that all bicycles now should be labelled as "offseason hockey training equipment", but there are more fundamental reasons why this is questionable policy.
If you agree with any of the below, or have issue with tariffs on sporting goods in general, please consider participating with the petition here.
Here's at least a few more reasons why increased tariffs don't make any sense:
Protection of a domestic industry. Canada doesn't have any meaningful bicycle manufacture industry. It's not like we're talking a nationally critical industry which could be argued for some strategic protection, or an employment concentrated regional industry that'd be a pain to have erased by offshoring. Even Canadian brands manufacture abroad (Dorel/Cannondale, Rocky Mountain, Norco). The manufacturing we do have is generally Quebec based, which is fine, but kind of raises the debate on regional wealth transfer through protectionism of specific industries. But regionalism isn't what this is about. Bicycles are, in the grand scheme of manufacturing, relatively simple to create. They are well suited to offshore applications, and have been made offshore for years - that's a comparative economic advantage in simple manufacturing that isn't worth combating through policy. This tariff increase isn't going to do more to foster a significant Canadian bicycle industry.
Raising of revenue. It's quoted that these broad sweeping tariff changes will add $330mm to Canada's revenues. First, let me remind us that a) the tax system is the most efficient, appropriate place to garner revenue for the country, which doesn't single out industries or subsectors, and b) any time spent by civil servants running numbers on incremental revenue from tariffs on bicycles is a complete waste of time, when we've been selling crude oil to the United States for decades on discount, continue to do so, and haven't achieved export capacity to other customers, which could be measured in the [call it $50 million per day according to this link] millions of dollars per day for decades should we be able to narrow the discounted pricing we recieve as a nation. 80/20 rule here on priorties... this is like deciding to spring clean your entire house one weekend, then starting in the corner of your living room with a Q-tip rubbing away some dust. Senseless. But let's pull back that digression to why we want more revenue - we have large governments in the modern age. They attempt to do so many things for us that us simple citizens didn't really know we needed help with - and it has become comedic. Let's look at trimming costs first rather than finding more revenue to fund bloat - gun registries, military purchases, and other projects of questionable excess expenditure could single handedly have multiples the impact that extra taxation on sporting goods could have. The world I envision has government providing reasonably unobtrusive yet peaceful and organized living conditions for citizens, rather than prolific and deep reach into all aspects of the citizenry's life, business and being on a daily basis.
Discouragement of behaviour due to increased costs. Tobacco is cheap to grow, dry, and roll into cigarettes. Cigarettes are very expensive. Why? Because it's detrimental to society to have smokers who then become high probability of high cost health care patients for everyone to share treatment costs of. High costs of cigarettes through taxation is disincentive. Lets step back a second here - this is a broad tariff increase encompassing sporting goods? So we want to curb sporting activities through raising their costs across the board? What kind of country are we in? Sports are healthy, generate camraderie and entertainment. Bicycles in particular are inexpensive, pollution free health machines. Why retard the spread of such a wonderful invention? Bikes should be a child's, a university student's, an athlete's viable form of casual transportation. Do we not want this? Canada, do you have any idea what the health care cost line item on your national budget would be annually if we could magically replace every 2 pack a day smoker with a set of fresh lungs and a person whom instead of smoking rode their bike to work daily? This in itself would probably entirely solve our national budgeting quagmire. Bicycles are low up front cost, virtually nil variable cost transportation machines - for students, urban dwellers, and athletes. In the abstract, a road exposed to a million bicycles vs. a million cars would need monumentally less repair and upkeep, again shifting Canada's cost structure. This will never happen in practicality, however as a nation, the points illustrate that each percentage increase in those who cycle in this country have postive aggregate benefits.
If all this fails to be heard, "hockey offseason training equipment" imports will be through the roof. Bicycles offer excellent threshold interval training potential that will help anything from hokcey kids to pros to speedskaters to skiers further their excellence in their sports.
Want to turn the dirty word of "import" into "exports"? Look at Canada's role in progressing mountain biking, where we export film media worldwide that is cutting edge in terms of what humans on bicycles (Kranked series anyone?) or unicycles (thanks to Chris Holm) can accomplish.
Canada is looking to raise tariffs on a wide variety of sporting goods, including bicycles, with carve outs for the political hot topic of hockey gear. My first suggestion is that all bicycles now should be labelled as "offseason hockey training equipment", but there are more fundamental reasons why this is questionable policy.
If you agree with any of the below, or have issue with tariffs on sporting goods in general, please consider participating with the petition here.
Here's at least a few more reasons why increased tariffs don't make any sense:
Protection of a domestic industry. Canada doesn't have any meaningful bicycle manufacture industry. It's not like we're talking a nationally critical industry which could be argued for some strategic protection, or an employment concentrated regional industry that'd be a pain to have erased by offshoring. Even Canadian brands manufacture abroad (Dorel/Cannondale, Rocky Mountain, Norco). The manufacturing we do have is generally Quebec based, which is fine, but kind of raises the debate on regional wealth transfer through protectionism of specific industries. But regionalism isn't what this is about. Bicycles are, in the grand scheme of manufacturing, relatively simple to create. They are well suited to offshore applications, and have been made offshore for years - that's a comparative economic advantage in simple manufacturing that isn't worth combating through policy. This tariff increase isn't going to do more to foster a significant Canadian bicycle industry.
Raising of revenue. It's quoted that these broad sweeping tariff changes will add $330mm to Canada's revenues. First, let me remind us that a) the tax system is the most efficient, appropriate place to garner revenue for the country, which doesn't single out industries or subsectors, and b) any time spent by civil servants running numbers on incremental revenue from tariffs on bicycles is a complete waste of time, when we've been selling crude oil to the United States for decades on discount, continue to do so, and haven't achieved export capacity to other customers, which could be measured in the [call it $50 million per day according to this link] millions of dollars per day for decades should we be able to narrow the discounted pricing we recieve as a nation. 80/20 rule here on priorties... this is like deciding to spring clean your entire house one weekend, then starting in the corner of your living room with a Q-tip rubbing away some dust. Senseless. But let's pull back that digression to why we want more revenue - we have large governments in the modern age. They attempt to do so many things for us that us simple citizens didn't really know we needed help with - and it has become comedic. Let's look at trimming costs first rather than finding more revenue to fund bloat - gun registries, military purchases, and other projects of questionable excess expenditure could single handedly have multiples the impact that extra taxation on sporting goods could have. The world I envision has government providing reasonably unobtrusive yet peaceful and organized living conditions for citizens, rather than prolific and deep reach into all aspects of the citizenry's life, business and being on a daily basis.
Discouragement of behaviour due to increased costs. Tobacco is cheap to grow, dry, and roll into cigarettes. Cigarettes are very expensive. Why? Because it's detrimental to society to have smokers who then become high probability of high cost health care patients for everyone to share treatment costs of. High costs of cigarettes through taxation is disincentive. Lets step back a second here - this is a broad tariff increase encompassing sporting goods? So we want to curb sporting activities through raising their costs across the board? What kind of country are we in? Sports are healthy, generate camraderie and entertainment. Bicycles in particular are inexpensive, pollution free health machines. Why retard the spread of such a wonderful invention? Bikes should be a child's, a university student's, an athlete's viable form of casual transportation. Do we not want this? Canada, do you have any idea what the health care cost line item on your national budget would be annually if we could magically replace every 2 pack a day smoker with a set of fresh lungs and a person whom instead of smoking rode their bike to work daily? This in itself would probably entirely solve our national budgeting quagmire. Bicycles are low up front cost, virtually nil variable cost transportation machines - for students, urban dwellers, and athletes. In the abstract, a road exposed to a million bicycles vs. a million cars would need monumentally less repair and upkeep, again shifting Canada's cost structure. This will never happen in practicality, however as a nation, the points illustrate that each percentage increase in those who cycle in this country have postive aggregate benefits.
If all this fails to be heard, "hockey offseason training equipment" imports will be through the roof. Bicycles offer excellent threshold interval training potential that will help anything from hokcey kids to pros to speedskaters to skiers further their excellence in their sports.
Want to turn the dirty word of "import" into "exports"? Look at Canada's role in progressing mountain biking, where we export film media worldwide that is cutting edge in terms of what humans on bicycles (Kranked series anyone?) or unicycles (thanks to Chris Holm) can accomplish.
engine lights back on
Bunnin and I caught up on the weekends events with a duo ride on Sunday. After backtracking a ways through town to find a dislodged brake pad of his, we were off. Did a Cabin Jam loop, save for a small detour by Cochrane for some additional nice roads.
It's funny - after yesterday's sufferage of the engine room having no power, Sunday felt great. We jammed hills, we traded pulls, we held tempo. Now of course I'm not going to make it to the top of climbs before that guy, but let's just say I wasn't embarassingly in the rear view mirror. What a difference a day can make, and how much fun is it to carelessly burn matches knowing your energy is flowing vs. having nothing to give. Awesome!
It's funny - after yesterday's sufferage of the engine room having no power, Sunday felt great. We jammed hills, we traded pulls, we held tempo. Now of course I'm not going to make it to the top of climbs before that guy, but let's just say I wasn't embarassingly in the rear view mirror. What a difference a day can make, and how much fun is it to carelessly burn matches knowing your energy is flowing vs. having nothing to give. Awesome!
Tandem ride of commitment
Sometimes a tandem ride goes down as a memorable one, this definitely falls into that category.
Water Valley 200 2013 edition
8 of us departed from Cadence, plus one who joined on in the NW, but wasn't going to complete the ride once he asked what this group was up to this morning. From left to right: Gary "Big Ring" Chambers, Devin "Surprise I'm here" Erfle, joiner, Cesar "getting in as much riding before the twins as I can" Martin, Trev "I've wanted to do this ride for 4 years" Williams, Jeff "cramming all my volume training into one day" Nielson, Craig "I did a loop of the Water Valley this morning before breakfast to check it out for you mere mortals" Stappler, and Kate "I'm so happy from my coolest birthday cake ever" Aardal. Erik not in photo.
Mmmm... cake. So I hadn't felt good the night before, and Saturday morning my stomach felt ok but not super. I struggled up the first couple km's of climbing out of town, but held in expecting to feel better. I kept wanting cake. I didn't feel much better all day, but true to word, this was a no drop ride, and I got pushes from everyone involved at various times.
The cafe in Water Valley supplied excellend mid morning snacks for us before we headed further west, and also served as Devin's turn around point. From there we did the beauty gravel roads of climbing, and Craig used his supercharged engine to help me along. Very impressive. Gary of course didn't shift out of his big ring, Trev dressed light like it was a summer road ride, Kate just motors on with a smile and no complaints. Jeff and I kept each other good company, and I helped his leg strength and diesel training by being dead weight for him to push at points ; )
The forestry trunk road went well, nice gravel fast pace we held for kilometers and kilometers. No flats all ride other than my double flat in a paceline on the last stretches of gravel where a rock pinched out both tires.
I'd like to have reported on the race to the top of Wildcat Hill, but I was so far off the back! I actually zig zagged the road while the rest were hammering. After lying down at the top for a minute, we coasted down then pedalled into the surprise-wind-shifted-perfectly-for-us late in the day headwind once again.
Quick refuel in Cochrane and the paceline home, I felt decent. All the peel-offs into town left Jeff and I as the two standing outside Cadence at the end. I sat down on a bench waiting for my ride while Jeff packed his stuff into the car, both of us chatting with Alana. Some kids walked by, then turned left into a shop I didn't look at twice before. Pizza by the slice. Holy cow that's exactly what I needed. We slayed a few slices of deliciousness. It's hard to communicate just how good cheap pizza slices can taste after 210km of depletion!
All in it was a great day. Fair weather, good company, great friends to help me along when I was suffering, and what goes around comes around (I got back more than the pushing I gave Cindy in Andalucia, and last year Jon was having a rough day on the long ride). It's not a training ride, 9h rides aren't really something that needs to be worked into most people's training efforts. It's an adventure, it's camraderie, it's scenery, and in some ways it's been kind of the ceremonial closing of the 'cross bikes/gravel roads/winter season of riding.
About 9h and 210km!
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