Biking weekend - good and not so good ...

I was pumped about riding after finishing a 4 hour clinic with Alex Stieda, former Tour yellow jersey wearer (1st North American actually), on Saturday -
and best of all it was free. (My city hosted the World Masters Games last year, not sure if there was leftover money or something, but they had a series of "Masters Training Clinics" in various sports).

I was a bit nervous ahead of time , hoping that everyone else wasn't super-experienced/strong/super fast riders and that I'd feel out of place ... especially when the first few who arrived were talking about their Ironman tri experiences, but then a lady arrived in jeans, so I knew I wouldn't be the weakest in the group.

The clinic covered a lot of areas - climbing, corners, descending, sprinting, riding in a group - got more experience and some tips, improved my confidence (I only got my road bike in May so still a little nervous sometimes on the skinny tires), overall a great experience. And "Alex" was very friendly and made everyone feel comfortable (even the lady in jeans who ended up walking up most of the hills, she almost went home before it started but he encouraged her to stay and at the end she felt she had learned a lot).

Not sure if I'm more excited about the clinic itself or the fact I've now met and ridden with a former Tour yellow jersey! There's a good account on Cycling News by Davis Phinney about Stieda's ride in 1986 that got him the jersey.

Then today (Sunday), Ed and I went riding with a friend from prior running clinics. It was a nice fall day, sunny and warm, and we had a really good ride. Then something happened that I'm sure looked an awful lot worse from the perspective of those around me than it seemed from my perspective - my first (and hopefully last) bike crash into a car. It happened so fast I'm not entirely sure what all transpired, but I'm fairly sure that the reason I didn't stop before crossing a street was because I thought the car was not turning my way by their signals. By the time I realized that they *were* in fact coming my way, I was almost but not quite able to stop in time - my front wheel hit the car and turned and I went down. I was pretty quickly able to get off the road to avoid any further problems - I'm sure the driver of the car was pretty traumatized but Ed was able to reassure them I was ok. And I was - gash on one leg, bruising/muscle strains on the other leg. Amazingly enough, my bike was fine (Ed thought from his perspective that I'd actually hit the car myself and my bike had been run over).

To tell the truth, I think this is much less of a confidence-shaker than some previous crashes when I really wasn't doing anything much - then you start to wonder "how can I do difficult stuff if I crash on the easy stuff?". Whereas with this, I think blame was on both sides (I should have stopped to be sure where the car was going, and they should have signalled better and not have been going so fast), but at least there was a reason for the crash so mentally I'm feeling fine about riding still :-) .

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may

... and beware the Siberian High (that most dreaded of all meteorological phenomena). Bill Matheson, 1926-2006

Still more movies...

Little Miss Sunshine (2006) - went to see this with some friends, we chose to go to the semi-art-house theatre rather than the multiplex - not sure that the audience at the multiplex would have applauded at the end of the film. Actually, I don't remember the last time I recall an audience applauding at the end of a film ... I enjoyed this one a lot, perhaps in some ways a bit over-the-top. I really liked the scene where Frank, Dwayne, and Grandpa managed to get Olive to eat her ice cream without the guilt that her father was trying to impart ... also the horror of the pageant organizers and audience when Olive started her "dance" routine, as if all the other competitors were innocent and pure compared to Olive.

8 femmes (2002) - recorded this a while ago but only just watched it tonight. This musical-mystery was intriguing, good interactions between the actors, and overall quite amusing - not a typical Hollywood ending for sure. I liked the colour contrasts of all the outfits they were wearing - a lot of bright colours. The musical numbers weren't quite as jarring as in some films I've seen (see Bride and Prejudice below). I'm now interested in seeing other films by director François Ozon. (and some good practice for the French class I'll be starting soon ... vocabulary review when you hear French words you recognize and then can confirm via the English subtitles, I'm a long way still from understanding a French film without subtitles).

Bride and Prejudice (2004) - seeing that Pride and Prejudice is one of my all-time favourite novels, of course I had to watch this at some point. It was the first Bollywood-style film I had seen, I thought some of the musical-dance numbers were a bit much (I fast-forwarded through a few of them). But it was an interesting twist on the story, setting it in India with Mr. Darcy being a rich American.

Sense and Sensibility (1995) - I couldn't remember whether or not I had seen this one previously - I had, but I watched it again anyway. Directed by Ang Lee and starring Kate Winslet, Emma Thompson, and Hugh Grant, it's another film based on a Jane Austen novel. Like comfort food for me ... (ie. not very challenging, but enjoyable in the right context).

Looking forward to see what will be showing at the Edmonton Film Festival that starts on September 29, they were supposed to have their schedule online yesterday but it isn't yet.

Traffic in Edmonton...

I started working at the University Health Centre again this month, and I've been finding that the traffic is horrendous - even just compared to last spring. I drive almost downtown then take the LRT across to the university, and had been cutting it really close leaving the same time I was previously used to leaving. So, the other day I left earlier - but the traffic was even worse so I ended up 20 minutes late for work :-( . I was somewhat stressed over that, felt a need to apologize to the assistant director, was reassured that they understood etc. etc. - but still felt badly.

It's somewhat comforting in a way to know that it's not just me hitting bad patches of traffic, everyone's complaining - there was a whole series of articles in the paper this week about it. Presumably because of the economic boom in Alberta and the population growth here ... and that Ralph Klein recently admitted the provincial government had no real plan to handle the growth spurt ... from a column today in the Journal by Paula Simons:

It is, says Statistics Canada, absolutely unprecedented.
Alberta is in the middle of the strongest period of economic growth ever recorded by any province, in all of Canadian history.
This isn't just the biggest boom in Alberta's long and checkered history of booms. It's greater growth than Ontario experienced in its 1960s glory days or than B.C. saw in the 1980s during the great Hong Kong diaspora. It is, quite simply, the biggest boom Canada has ever seen.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, even if Klein didn't have any plan for the economic boom, he did manage to entrench the idea of the one-party state within Alberta, Frank Dabbs writes in the Tyee that

"Klein has consolidated the unwritten constitutional framework for a workable one-party state, now so deeply entrenched in Alberta's economy and political culture that it may never be dislodged.
He has completed the creation of the first functional post-democratic government in North America, run by elites for elites -- with the citizenry left on political standby to profit from a predatory economy if it can, and otherwise to fend for itself".

(and any Albertan who wants to pay to join the PC party can vote for Klein's successor as party leader/premier, plus out-of-province supporters can donate to the candidates' campaigns because there are no rules controlling the leadership contest...)