Category: Toronto

September rain

Today was unusually draining.

I rode in through the rain, skipping breakfast to give myself more time to sleep / cycle a little slower; then didn’t feel the allure of BBQ food so skipped lunch; then got caught up in a too-long task which became overly too long because of the hunger and tiredness.

I also keep seeing event notifications for ghost rides for newly slain cyclists — sometimes with the galling euphemism/evasion “bicycle accident”, when crashes involving just bicycles are seldom fatal and what is generally being left unsaid for politeness in these notices is “killed by a car”.

Still, I rode home safely, made a nice meal, and am progressing toward feeling capable of handling life’s affronts.

Toronto is a bike city

A friend from the Toronto group bike ride community directed me to Jeff Allen’s intringuing and beautiful cartographic work.

One especially striking map – which supports my view that bicycling has become the best and fastest form of transport in Toronto – shows which areas it is faster to reach from Yonge-Bloor by bike than by transit during rush hour:

You can get a long way! Straight north to York Mills. Southwest past the mouth of the Humber. Southeast past Tommy Thomson Park and into Scarborough.

The map is from 2016, but I would imagine things are worse now with transit underfunding and all the slowdown zones, plus all the streets blocked up by summer construction.

Group bike rides build community

I have been getting a lot of satisfaction lately from group bike rides. Community emerges naturally when people ride bikes in groups. The contrast underscores how automobile culture is a death cult: every driver gets their own sarcophagus for the living to move them through places while keeping the driver sealed apart. The driver is isolated from nature, from community, and from life at a human scale. They begin to live at a car scale where our instincts and experiences no longer bind us to our neighbours. The car is built to move at 60, 80, 100 km per hour, and to be indifferent to anything it might need to kill to do so.

Group bike rides provide a tangible vision for an idealized future without private cars. That’s a world where people who take the same routes and live in the same neighbourhoods know each other and talk: where they are neighbours. That’s a world with flower fairy girls on lavishly decorated cruiser bikes, and with guys in motorcycle helmets and body armour riding on zippy electric unicycles.

On a bike in the city, you live with the constant awareness of being killed. When riding alone, the great majority of my attention is always directed to nearby drivers and what abrupt, dangerous, or illegal thing they may do next. For drivers in the city, they may live with a mild awareness that their every careless action threatens to kill others, but they are distracted by bluetooth calls and streaming media, alienated from their fellow residents by socially atomized affluence, and shielded by public opinion and a legal system where killing someone with your car through simple carelessness is a minor and unimportant oversight which ought not to impede your happy motoring.

Toronto’s Neon Ride

Toronto’s Neon Ride group bike ride is great fun. It leaves weekly from Nathan Philips Square, beside city hall, at 7:30pm on Thursdays. Their Facebook page is the best place to look for photos and updates.

After getting hooked again on cycling during my Vancouver visit during the summer, I got a Bikeshare Toronto pass in September and did most of the Neon Rides until I got a job in December and was too busy.

This animation shows the 9 rides I have done with them, including whatever I tacked on before and after the formal ride from Nathan Philips to Nathan Philips:

The ride is much reminiscent of Critical Mass at its best. There is an able crew that leads, corks streets when the mass is crossing, and sweeps at the back for stragglers. All the lights and boomboxes make it energetic and fun. Quite notably – and compared with Critical Mass – the fun and colour of the Neon Ride virtually always produces a positive reaction from passers-by. It’s also a large enough group that you can ride in the middle while giving little thought to cars. Much recommended.

There is also a fine community within the event. As it is assembling and at the frequent pit stops, I have had great conversations and enjoyed the feeling of community and group spirit.