I wonder how the intimate association of raisin toast with blood donation began.

The “stick around for awhile so we can make sure you don’t faint” period after donating plasma is the only part of my life that involves raisin toast at all, yet the experience would seem incomplete without it.

When I traded The Guild for the Parish Hall, I left behind an office with a theatre, art gallery, and full bar, but gained an office with a chapel.

Occasionally, when the mid-afternoon need for a break from work arises, I will repair there.

I may not speak directly to Jesus, but I appreciate the calm that others having done so has wrought.

News today that the great friend and protector of the Island, Harry Baglole, has died.

STILL BEAUTY

The Island is still beautiful ….

Still
can be seen
the spruce-lined fields;
And still
the red cliff rock
joins blue and green.

And still
the quiet grandeur
of ordered farmscape
gives way
to fits
of random
Goldenrod.

That’s Harry, in Cornelius Howatt: Superstar, from 1974.

In the final chapter of that book, Last Will And Testament, The Brothers and Sisters of Cornelius Howatt codified its own demise, finishing with:

And, finally, into the care and keeping of future generations of Islanders we give, bequeath, and entrust this Island, complete with its clean water, fresh air, fertile land and beautiful countryside, to be cherished as the very precious place which it is.

Few Islanders have ever thought as much about Islandness as Harry did, and his understanding of this “very precious place” was profound; echoes of his esoteric enthusiasms will inform us for generations to come.

The Province of Prince Edward Island announced its new Open Data Portal today in the Legislative Assembly.

I played no role in this other than as mystical spirit guide, but I’m proud to see the breadth and depth of data available there, and the flexibility the Socrata tool its based on affords for visualization.

My favourite data set so far is the Motor Vehicle Registrations from 1918, and the visualization it includes that charts registrations of cars, trucks, trailers and motorcycles vs. the Island’s population (population is the top line):

I spent enough years working with government on wrangling data and information to know that the bureaucratic processes required to release something like this are myriad and complex, and the public servants responsible for this deserve a pat on the back.

I took the next logical step toward work-life balance today, and made myself a coffee at home at 100 Prince and carried it across the street to the office at 101 Prince. It felt like an important milestone.

Meanwhile, on the information superhighway, an odd thing has been happening over the last month: I’ve been running into friends and acquaintances and they’ve been exclaiming “I’ve started to read your blog!”

I wonder what it is about the current zeitgeist that is causing this to happen now, 19 years in.

One such friend–today’s exclamation, as it happens–said that reading my blog made her feel like we’re in a relationship. Which may be the kindest thing anyone’s ever said about my writing here.

That said, I kind of wish there was a way to make it a more reciprocal one; short of “everyone has a blog,” I wonder how we could make that happen.

I’ve long thought that having a party for those that have found there way here might be an interesting idea; maybe now is the time?

Would you come?

The cardholder agreement for my new Mastercard contains a definition of mysterious disappearance.

Christopher Skinner is a prolific and talented designer and printer, and I’m a longtime reader of his blog, Lestaret, where he writes about type, design, printing and all manner of mad experiments.

In a recent post about storing up pulp for summer paper-making, he pointed to a 2012 post where he illustrated the process of turning Amazon boxes into handmade paper. I love everything about this, and have resolved to set out on a similar project (I’m fortunate to have a girlfriend of many artistic pursuits who is thus well-equipped with things like paper-making equipment, so I have a head start).

After running up to the credit union on my regular old bicycle this afternoon, I thought I might stop around MacQueen’s to test drive one of the electric-assist bicycles they’ve started to stock. I’m intrigued by this product category, tucked between bicycles and scooters, and have wondered whether having an electric motor assisting my pedaling all or some of the time would move some of my car-driving to bicycle-riding.

The cycle they rolled out for me to test drive was an Evox City 520, equipped with a 520 Wh battery and with a range of 65 to 95 km (depending on whether you’re in “pedal assist” or “throttle” mode). This is what it looked like midway through my ride:

I took it out for what ended up being an 8.6 km ride, over from Queen Street to the Confederation Trail, out past UPEI and the Charlottetown Mall, and then back down to Belvedere Avenue, up to Queen, and back down to MacQueen’s. It took me 25 minutes, and for most of that time I was flying along at the bike’s top speed of 32 km/h.

The battery and electric motor is located right above the pedals, and the motor uses a belt-drive to power the back wheels, leaving the chain to operate as it normal would. The controls on the bike are simple: there’s a centre-mounted digital display that shows speed, distance traveled, battery level, and mode (pedal assist or throttle):

On the left-handlebar is a gear shift integrated into the hand-grip (with 8 gears) and, to the right of that, a 3-button controller. The bottom button controls the mode, the upper buttons allow the amount of pedal assist to be raised and lowered:

There are two modes.

The “pedal assist mode” makes pedaling up to 300% easier: it feels very Steve Austin, as though you’ve suddenly gained incredible strength, or are cycling on the Moon. It doesn’t kick in until 3 km/h is reached, which makes a standing start from a high gear a little tricky. But once you’re moving it seems like the most natural and amazing thing in the world.

The “throttle mode” turns the right side hand-grip into a motorcycle-like throttle: the more you crank it, the faster you go; you need not pedal at all. This turned out to be a lot less awesome than I anticipated: you quickly realize you’re on something more like an under-powered scooter, and while I can see it being occasionally useful, I wouldn’t see this mode as a must-have. It lacks all of the Bionic Man thrills of pedal assist.

The best thing that cycle shops can do to sell electric bicycles is to encourage customers to arrive on their “legacy” bicycle and then go on a test drive: once I was done with the test, riding my trusty old non-assisted bike seemed like riding on Jupiter, and I wondered why anyone would ever choose to slog it out without a battery and motor sharing the load.

Of course there are a few good reasons why not: the Evox with the 520 Wh battery retails for $3199, which puts it well outside of the range of most cyclists, including me.

But even if one has a wallet bursting with cash, there’s a more spiritual consideration to make: is electric-assisted cycling “cheating,” in the sense that the amount of physical fitness it involves is diminished? My body still worked a little to get out to the mall and back, but that work was a pale shadow of the work it would have done if I hadn’t had the motor.

That said, I probably wouldn’t have ridden 8.6 km at all without the motor, and that’s my best chance for rationalizing an electric bike: it’s not “easier cycling,” it’s “less car driving.” It’s a rare day that I’d do anything but hop in the car if I needed something from Canadian Tire; I wouldn’t hesitate to take the electric bike, however: it would be almost as fast, much more fun, and I’d get some fitness benefit while, at the same time, using greener energy to power myself there and back.

While the $3199 price of the Evox bike is too rich for my blood, MacQueen’s also sells a less expensive model from the (unrelated) Danish Evo cycle maker, that’s $1000 less expensive, and you give up throttle mode. I didn’t test drive one of those, and $2000 still ain’t cheap, but it puts it into the realm of possibility.

Years after the Segway was going to turn urban moving-around on its ear, it seems like we’re on the edge of a revolution that involves ebikes, scotters, and electric cars; I’ve a feeling that, one way or the other, the way I’ll be moving around the city in 5 years will be a lot different.

I was chatting with Jonas this weekend about cycling in Sweden (he lives in Malmö and is an avid urban and road cyclist) and I asked him if it was more common for Swedes to wear helmets these days than the scant few I’d witnessed on earlier visits there.

He reported that, rather than wearing classical helmets, he’s seeing many cyclists wearing air bags made by the Swedish company Hövding.

At first I thought he was being sarcastic, as I couldn’t imagine how air bags would work on a bicycle: would the pop out of the handle bars?

It turns out that Hövding has invented a an “airbag helmet” that you wear as a collar around your neck: if it detects that you’re about to crash, it deploys the airbag around your head and neck without a tenth of a second.

The company has produced a compelling video that, if accurate, makes wearing a traditional helmet seem foolhardy by comparison.

The Hövding air bag helmets aren’t cheap (€299, which is $450 CDN right now), and they aren’t yet available here.

I’ll be watching for these to come to Canada.

Photo by Niklas Carlsson, Creative Commons Attribution License