As Summer 2022 blends delicately into Fall, I have been thinking back to all the jobs I had during my high school and university years. Most students experience the agony and the ecstasy of working at summer jobs. In reflection, I thought of those jobs as kind of in-between real life time with a view toward making as much money as possible to have during my secondary school academic years and to help pay tuition and attendant costs while doing university degree programs. Some of the summer jobs extended into the academic year; however, playing sports limited the amount of time I could commit to working during school time. I…

Bicycle, bicycle, bicycleI want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle I want to ride my bicycleI want to ride my bike…  Queen, Bicycle Race, 1978 (lyrics on original video here) How could I begin a blog about my lifelong fascination with one of humankind’s greatest of inventions, the bicycle, without homage to my favourite Rock band, Queen and its iconic lead singer, Freddy Mercury. There is an element of escapism in the song along with political undertones, and rampant sexism (65 naked female professional models rode around the Wimbledon stadium track on bicycles in the song’s video release). I abhor the sexism. However, like most things in my very limited…

For me, Christmas pretty much always has been steeped in traditions, rituals, and kind of living tableaus of memories anchored in smells, tastes, sounds, and emotions. Growing up Protestant in the United Church of Canada, I did know what Christmas was supposed to mean in the Christian religion. And yet, during the 1950s Christmas was just chock full of secular, celebratory events that seemed to overshadow or subsume the religiosity of the annual event. Perhaps this word cloud encapsulates the admixtures of Christmas-time meanings…. It seemed to me as a boy that the richness of Christmas was akin to this word cloud in that there were so many layers to…

In my last blog, I ruminated on developing hip osteoarthritis (OA) and the impact of living with OA, in particular its impact on my lifelong passion for running. I have adapted and over the summer, I became a cycologist (an alluring new kind of cerebral nuance on cyclist that I saw on a t-shirt with an obvious pun on psychologist) sporting a new electric assist bicycle, this one: It is a Gazelle Ultimate C80 53cm, Sienna Light in colour. In late June, it was mostly assembled and shipped from a company called Citrus Cycles in Chemainus, British Columbia. Behind it, on the wall is a shelf I built for the…

Today, on 28 June 2021 as if to reify and bolster my intention to start to write this blog, a book I had loaned was returned to me. It was this one: The title always reminds me of the start of every good story, ‘once upon a time.’ In another blog, I have alluded to this book briefly. First published in 1978, Parker’s fictionalized account of Quenton Cassidy’s long distance running discipline, devotion, and physical skill remains the best selling running novel to date with over 100,000 copies sold. There is a sequel, Again to Carthage (2008) and a prequel, Running in the Rain (2015), neither of which appealed to…