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Notes from a Garage

With John Gardiner

Dangerous bike lanes; learning to skate; and dumb, dumb, dumb…..

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Well, folks, time to talk a little about bike lanes today…..First, let me say that most of my friends consider me a liberal, meaning I’m a bit of an environmentalist and a conservationist as well. I’m all in favour of people riding bikes instead of using cars – I love the idea of groups of people out on bike vacations. I just think it makes sense and helps the environment. Now to the bike lanes in my adopted hometown of Wallaceburg. These things are downright dangerous. It was confusing to some degree during the good weather because of the bewildering array of lines on some of Wallaceburg’s main streets. But now that the snow has moved in and is covering parts of the roadways, it is almost completely impossible to tell exactly where you’re supposed to be driving. The result is a lot of misses and near misses as people jockey to try to get into the right lane. No, I thought I’d keep quiet about the bike lanes and give them a chance….but they are creating a potentially dangerous situation in the Glasstown. I would also like to see real bike lanes created in our community and throughout Chatham-Kent. But not as some sort of makeshift system where you just add all these new lines to the old lines and things get crazy. Anyway, I’m doing my best to avoid a fender bender and that can be difficult enough during a Canadian winter, but with these bike lanes it’s become a bit more of a challenge…….strange, but true….

Had a huge bit of excitement on Sunday…..got to take my little grandson Isaac ice skating for the first time. What a thrill for an old guy like me! Well remember teaching my own kids to skate – my son on an outdoor rink in Guelph and my daughter in Wallaceburg’s Memorial Arena. I had a truly great time on Sunday and think Isaac made out okay as well, but I know he found the going a little tough. A couple of times he said, “I can’t do this”, but we kept encouraging him on. I should explain that he’s only three-years-old, so he hasn’t even been walking too long. Still, it seems like not that long ago when I was skating myself as a young guy. And one thing that’s really changed since I was a kid is the amount of time the arena is available for public skating. These days, it’s limited to 1 ½ hours per week, with hockey and figure skating taking the rest of the time. When I was a kid, there was public skating likely three or four nights a week, plus Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The arena was the focal point in the community for all children and a lot of adults. Today, a community like Wallaceburg lacks that focal point for its young people. If you’re not involved in some type of organized event or sport, you’re sort of left out in the cold – so to speak. As it sits now, I won’t be able to take Isaac back to the arena until next Sunday and I’ll have to hope he hasn’t forgotten everything he learned on his first outing. Would sure like to see more public skating time in our arenas. Not everybody wants to play hockey or figure skate…..and you likely didn’t read that here first!

It’s interesting……was watching a TV documentary this week about the island nation of Haiti and the enormous difficulties faced by that country. And the gist of the documentary was that Haiti needs more jobs – needs to get a manufacturing sector going to lift the country out of poverty. I see this as completely wrong-headed, but, of course, I think the whole direction the planet is headed is wrong. We certainly don’t need more economic development of the type we’ve seen over the last couple of hundred years – we don’t need more trade and more goods moving around the world….processing Canadian food in China – dumb, dumb, dumb. What we need is some type of sustainable economic model that will take us safely into the future. These days, all the world leaders are talking about stimulating the economy, getting the world economy growing again. What none of these so-called “great” people don’t seem to understand is that the whole darned system is unsustainable in the extreme. If we keep going the way we are, we’re going to see more extremes on the planet….more desperately poor people, more people abused and oppressed. We need to bring some type of equity to Spaceship Earth. It’s the only way it’s gonna work….

Oh well, out of time for another week….and offering thanks that people are reading along….hope you’re staying warm during the cold snap…..take care and remember…”Hew to the line; let the chips fall where they may.”




John Gardiner is a 25-year-veteran of the community newspaper business, but he is also a prolific writer of moralistic short fiction he refers to as "emotional thoughtscapes" or "adult fables". Samples of his fiction can be found at:

He has also produced a noteworthy piece of humanist philosophy which can be found at: http://www.xs4all.nl/~aboiten/ad502.htm He welcomes comments on his work.