climate change activist and science communicator; photographer; mapmaker
My actual travels, those I aspire to, and those of others
I took my Dutch bike in for servicing today (to get my brake pads replaced) and calculated some usage statistics.
Indeed, on the ride from home to the bike store, I crossed 7,000 km of total distance on the bike.
One interesting element of that is how it has nearly all been done at a modest pace. 90% of all my travel is at less than 19.3 km/h and 50% was under 12.2 km/h.
It’s a hauler, not a racer, and I am often occupied with tasks more complex than just getting from Point A to Point B.
Muscle exertion, and drawing by moving, on foot and by mechanical bicycle:
Photos by Alena Prazak
Though crazily tired from the daylight savings shift, plus a workweek, plus two straight days awake due to travel, it was heartening to get to Victoria, see my brother Sasha, and explore a few parks and scenic sights with him, my brother Mica, his wife Leigh, and their daughter Mila:
I’m too tired to process any photos from today before sleeping.
Tomorrow is Sasha’s benefit concert.
My youngest brother, Sasha, had a bleed in his brain and is scheduled for surgery in Victoria, BC on March 20th.
My whole family is going to Victoria to support him, including me on Friday.
Remarkably, his friends there have organized a benefit concert for March 15th, to raise money for the physio and speech therapy which he is likely to need after surgery.
He also recently appeared today on a video podcast celebrating Vancouver Island music:
Sasha is a remarkable, caring person who has done a great deal for his students and communities. As frightening as his condition is, it has been impressive and heartening to see his friends bringing such exceptional support.
In the summer of 2003, I broke with my long avoidance of air travel so that I could first help my brother Sasha move from Behchokǫ̀, in the Northwest Territories near Yellowknife, back to Victoria, BC.
We did the drive through a vast terrain of wildfires in three intensive days, with Sasha driving.
I had been meaning for ages to get our photos processed, but because of the financial pain of the long PhD all my computers and software are quite obselete and were unable to handle the RAW files from his specific Fuji camera.
I have finally figured a workaround using Adobe’s digital negative (DNG) format, so now the photos are up.
Living across the country and avoiding flying, I have seen far too little of my brothers in recent years. I justified it because I thought I was living my values by making lifestyle choices to reduce my climate impact, and because I still hoped humanity might be reaching a level of understanding where we take the crisis seriously and respond in a useful and adaptive way.
Now I think I need to do a complete re-evaluation of what sort of political project makes sense. Ever since I first became involved in environmentalism in the 1990s, I had thought that eventually the universal experience of how the world is changing in frightening ways would make people willing to make changes themselves. Now, I really don’t know.
Still, I am immensely grateful that I got to spend this intensive time with Sasha and that our relationship is still deep and meaningful after years of almost exclusively telecommunicating. His integrity and determination are inspirations to me, and I try to draw from his example while trying to live my own life well.
Related:
Our provincial Premier — head of a government which is effectively the political wing of the property development industry — now hopes to get rid of both bike lanes which I use every day: down Yonge Street and along Bloor.
This is going to be a packed month.
For Thanksgiving weekend, I am going on a camping trip with friends to do some trail repair near Temagami.
Then, from the 24th to 27th, I am photographing a diplomatic conference in Montreal.
Both will require a fair bit of packing and preparation, and I expect a week or so of evenings spent post-processing the Montreal photos after work when I return.