(And most handsome, and who can barbecue the meanest smoked sausage.)

After some 20 hours or so of working over the yard in our relatively-new place, it was time to bike out to the park with my little girl for some down time. At the end of last year she was barely able to climb up alone to the smallest of slides but this year she can champ through pretty much all the activities unassisted. After the slides, the swings, the springy-sitting-things and the spinny-chair-pukey-things it was off to watch the kids soccer games for a minute before heading home for (her) nap time. Of course, the ice cream trucks are not piloted by fools and so encircled the soccer fields (like an encamped army*), and my little one being also not a fool knew instinctively what they contained, so we peddled over.

So yes, with sound mind I am riding a bicycle. With a rear-mounted toddler-seat. Piloted by a 2 year old child sitting immediately at my back. Holding and eating/mushing an ice cream cone. While I peddle. On a hot day.

And yet, we got home _alive_, and I tell the story.

* Wink to Mr. Plisken

In the middle of last year we went out and picked up our first bicycle seat for our little girl. If you’re up early on a weekend or have time before/after dinner and want to burn some calories for yourself and have a blast with the little one, biking is a great option. It was still alien for me to be out the door at 7am to the park, but it was a fun way to pass the time and we ended up going out probably 4 or more days a week every week. Awesome.

That was this post should you care.

Now that winter is coming to close we’re all very sick of being couped up inside – Play-doh is good, and colouring is great, but she just needs to get out and run and dig and climb.. she’s sick of her toys and its getting harder to invent ways to entertain her :) So I plugged her into the old bike seat and with her new found words she exclaimed ‘too tight!’ and ‘too big!’ so it was time to retire that awesome little device — at least we got a few months out of it!

After reviewing options at Zellers ($89.95) and Walmart (I forget) and Canadian Tire ($89.95) I checked out Toys-R-Us again, just like last time. Usually not an inexpensive place (and always a challenge to get a small child away from after a shopping run) they nevertheless, just like last time, had a pretty good price on the “Wallaroo” sized bicycle seat. $59.95 CDN seems pretty good for a device we’ll work over all summer and likely have to discard next spring..

The Toys-R-Us page is here

After our first outing last night I thought I would offer a few comments; let me break it down into positioning and balance, size, cost and construction.

Position/Balance

The Wee-Ride we had last year was front-mount, by which I mean the chair is in front of you (between your arms when driving the bike.) This is convenient and clever for a lot of reasons — you can see the child (and any mittens they may toss aside) and they have an unobstructed view. As she got older she also learned to hole the handlebars and attack the brakes and gear-shift, which was cute after the first surprise braking :) The new device is rear-mount which makes me a little paranoid since I cannot see her, but at least she can see me. I worry that she will tire of staring at my back, but hopefully the landscape whizzing by will entertain.

For what its worth in last nights first trip out, she was crying out ‘Weeeee!’ a lot, so I think she enjoyed it :)

With both mount-positions it was trivial to get used to the different weight and balance, and as a guy it was still easy to mount the bike. (Most guys I know swing their leg over the back tire to mount, but now I have to go bent-knee’d in front of the seat due to the large throne out back.)

Momentum is a little funny though with the new arrangement; if you’re parallel to a curb and then jog-left to go up onto the ramp to the sidewalk you may feel this seat jiggle and sway as you do the sharp turn, say. When going off a curb or doing any quick turns or drops, you wil feel the resistance as the seat swings around back, since its pretty heavy (30 pound child) and big (tall!) — it wasn’t a problem, but it did surprise me a few times to feel that ‘drag.’ See below.

Size

The previous seat was a great size; small, comfortable for the child, and had a little padded play area out front (I assume should the child get whipped forward its to cushion the blow.) The new seat is more like a small throne, very large and high-backed. I’ve seen smaller rear-mount seats around so thought this one seemed large, but it does seem very comfortable – I had my daughter sit in it at the store – and lets her sit back, or lean into the chair at the sides. The foot compartments are pretty deep and adjustable for a growing child. Overall the chair seems well made.

Really, the goal (aside from carrying) of these seats is to keep the feet out of the spokes, and this chair should be fine; the legs naturally dangle into the approproiate compartments, and the plastic is molded around to cup the child at all points so she’d have to go out of her way to get into anything .. just dawdling or kicking will not be a problem.

The chair can be removed from the bike pretty easily, as the previous younger-child model can be.

Construction

The chair is a strong plastic and seems fine for its purposes; a large lock-screw is used to hold the seat to the mounting bracket, so that it can be moved forward or back as the child needs, and can be removed alltogether. There is a safety strap fixing the chair to the bike, presumably for use if the bracket slides down the post .. seems dubious to me.

The main curiosity is the design — it uses a U-fork that plugs its tines into a bracket mounted on the main post under the real bike seat. The bent part of the U then sticks up and back over the wheel and the seat mounts onto it. Pretty clever in a way, as its a free shock absorber — drop off a curb and the chair just bounces an inch, no biggy. It strikes me they could pretty easily have run a bar down to the wheelmount axle to make it much stronger, but maybe they would have had to pad the chair heavily or otherwise provide shocks… still, as long as the bracket on the post holds it should be fine. If it slides down then at worst the wheel will start to rub on the seat bottom which should present no danger beyond your deceleration.

Cost

The cost seems good — $59.95 for a bike mount seat seems fine to me. $100 was starting to cross my line of interest, but I imagine thats where you get shock absorbers and such in the kits, but this seems a well built and inexpensive solution.

We loved the previous front mounted seat so much it gave me some trust in the brand, as foolish as that may seam.

We were decorating the house today for the Christmas season; the baby was out with grandma so we diug out the tree and ornaments, the garlands and lights, the figures and wreaths. We’re not Chevy Chase’ing it but someday my frienbds.. some day!

When it came to running garlands up the stairway we decided not to wrap them around the the banister as we’ve done in the past – it makes the total length shorter, and the wiring in the thing tends to scratch up he handrail a touch. So what to use? String would be too slippery and we didn’t have any dark colours around to stealth it in there. Being a good little nerd and eletrical junkie I had a good assortment of nylon cable ties around, including some black ones of 12″ length. I have to say, they were perfect — fast to apply, good and strong grip with no slippage, and easy to trip to the appropriate length to avoid nasty bits sticking out. And being black, they hide right in there against our dark coloured banisters. Perfect! (You can of course use the standard dirty-white nylon colour, white, black, and even brown ties.)

So there you go.. being a geek does have some use!

A friend of mine pointed me to this instructional article for new fathers; read with the utmost of concentration!

Hit up Skepchick

(Aside; I just described something to someone and liked the analogy, so thought I would repeat it here. Maybe its wanking but here goes — I was describing one of the reasons I like to code so much, and so many free games and tools and so on; I compared myself to a ‘chef’ – as someone who likes to code “for other people”, as a chef likes to cook for other people. There is a pleasure in the act itself, to seeing life come from nothing, to achieving the desired goal and all that.. but there is a joy also in making something from nothing and giving it to other people to also enjoy. So there you have it, at heart I’m an entertainer of the geek sort. A techsihibitionist?)

I’d like write up a full and lengthy review of the Wee Ride bicycle seat but let me be a little brief; essentially though it is a ‘front mount’ seat, which is to say it sits in your lap as you bicycle, so that a small child (40 pounds and less it suggests) can go biking with you, relatively safely. For this sort of device there are a few main options — the common rear mount seat, the bicycle trailer/chariot, and the front mount seat.

At first I wanted to narrow down and the front mount appeals to me much more than the others — the rear seat is traditional around North America but means the poor child is stuck looking at your back or side to side the whole trip (which seems dangerous to me with the child wanting to tip themselves over to see!), and of course you cannot much see the child should they cry out. (They are on the other hand protected from anything you might bike into such as tree branches or bugs in the air and so on.); the trailer can be cute (certainly everyone loves to wave at them as you go by right?) but shares similar issues as the rear mount seat.. it worries me that you cannot directly see the child, that something might run into the trailer behind you, or that you drag it into something :) Still, those are low chances, so trailers are a good option I believe.. and further, the better ones can double as pushcarts with an extendible handle at the back. Still, for my goal of just hopping on the bike and getting around, heading to the park or even to do small chores, the front mount seems ideal.

As to which brand, there seem to be a half dozen various seats that can be found; in my immediate area there are only a couple available, mostly at expensive bike shops. So while I did various reviews online and decided I liked the Wee Ride, it turned out to be readily available at Toys-R-Us and Canadian Tire, so that made the brand decision easier.

The price on Wee Ride is very good, certainly a very good value IMHO — for a little plastic seat and mounting bar they’re making some $$$ — but for all the enjoyment we get out of it, $69.95 CDN seems a very good price. (Factor in you must buy a toddler friendly helment for about $25 CDN.. a helmet that is slightly different than a small child helmet.) (The seat was $69.95 at TrUs while being $89.95 at CanTire, fwiw.)

Installation really was quite simple — theres a bar that you bolt on under your handle bars on the post, and onto your seat post. The bar extends as needed to fit various bike sizes (male or female styled), and bolts on using O-clamps so should fit on pretty much any bike; the construction of the bar is very good. The seat itself just has a single thumbscrew to attach it to the bar, which seems a little weaksauce to me .. but the advantage is the seat can be removed in one minute, should you wish to bike without the child carrier in place, which seems a good feature.

My only real complaint then is the buckles on the seat .. I need to adjust them tighter perhaps, but while looking around or fidgeting my 15 month old daughter can wriggle out of half the harness, though the waste belt stays good and tight on her. Furthermore, while in motion the drivers arms are cuddling around the seat, so theres minimal chance she could possible slip out.

As to seat positioning — you might worry having an extra 25 pound child monted on the bar would raise the center of gravity and unbalance the cycle, but it seems not a problem; they suggest carrying a bag of flour around for a minute to get used to the weight, but in pratice it took me all of 5 seconds to be peddling around, no problem, turning and braking on hills and such. No problem whatsoever with balance (and I’ve not biked in years!) Furthermore the seat is not uncomfortable — your arms go arond the sides to the handle bars no problem (though it might be weird on a ‘road bike’ with curled horn handlebars, but on my T-bar mountain bike, no problem. You do peddle a little wide, so your knees aren’t near the seat.. so you lose a little power. Better exercise, and practice for when you want to waddle….. All told, fine!

Summary – the Wee Ride might not be absolutely perfect, but it is a Very Good value for the money, and is extremely fun to have. Did 10km or more last night to the park and back, and tootled around the area to explore. With my daughter. How awesome is that? And everyone you pass waves and giggles since it is so adorable.

That phrase has popped into my mind a few times over the last couple weeks. I suppose I’ve been revisiting old vices to work out if I want to attempt to discard them or not, but its tough — vices are vices because they’re just so darned lovable. Consider caffeine — I don’t drink coffee (its disgusting) or tea (too lazy), but imbibe cola by the truckload. (I’m trying to work the word ‘imbible’ into this somehow, but its just not going to fit.) Anyway, I don’t drink the cola for the caffeine — its a nice little boost (and yes, all you coffee drinkers will note how patheticly small a boost it is while you gag on your vile bean) but I just dig the taste. Of late I’m hooked on the Dr. Pepper, much as I was as a child when they ran a contest whereby cans would have a Space Invader printed on the bottom.

Now that was something. Hell, I can blame them right — who can refuse a delicious beverage with a giant pixelated monster on the bottom?

Still by the by, we all know cola (diet or otherwise) is really bad for us. I’ve given it up before a few times and endured crippling headaches for a few days to emerge the better man, only to decide wholeheartedly I’d rather be on the sauce than not.

Another vice (I prefer ‘feature’) is a certain piece of jewellery embedded in my person. In my tongue, you perves. Its pretty happy in there, and that location is relatively private .. so I’ve never been worried about the job interviews or the like. My daughter seems fascinated by it, too. But really, my teeth have been severely damaged by it over the long years I’ve been sporting it (probably 15 or so now!) As my brother would put it – “Its harder than you“. The partial solution is to pick up plastic studs for the bar instead of the usual stainless steel ones — plastic should wear on the goods so much more less.

But the question that has entered my mind so many times the last few weeks — to be an example for my child, should I be healthy by default? I love my cola and my tonguering. But ditching both would improve my overall health and knocking off a few poounds due to reduced cola consumption would add some time (and isn’t _any_ time worth it) to my existance on this terra firma. And cost less to boot.

But damn you Mr. Pepper, you makes a fine bevvy. So many long nights over these few decades have we danced the ends of the candle together..

Hmmmm.

(And yes, I’m nearly the least qualified to ask that question.) Still, I called up my family doctor to book an appointment but was lightly scolded (though very politely) for not having come in sometime over the last two years. Without sed attendence my file had been archived and that my next action should be to request admission as a new patient – they’d call me in a week to let me know if they could lower themselves into accepting me. I suppose it should come as no surprise as this office has historically been terrible for its customer service — it once took me some 30 phone calls over a couple weeks to get a human. The doctor herself has always been very nice so I just blame the help.. but here we have a policy issue.

In this day and age (even with the ineffective new health care levy) doctors are scarce but it is surprising that you can be ‘fired’ for not wasting their time enough. Apparently my former doctor requires you to pop by for a physical every year, at minimum. Seems silly to me — perhaps in your earliest and latest years, but I’m still plenty in the middle of my days (hopefully!) If I’m not sick and not at risk for developing a third arm.. why should I waste the systems time?

Ah, right.. teh money. So the doctor requires a levy against my time and our taxpaying wallets to keep me as a patient. One can only imagine that next there will be a fine for not booking the above bogus physical, or for not being sick enough to line anyones pockets.

S’alright though, I went to a walk-in clinic and they asked if I needed a new family doctor. Timing is everything.

I briefly considered clutching this information close to my heart while rolling pig-like in the mud, but this restaurant absolutely needs to stick around. So I can tell you about it and still feel self-serving, that you and I are sharing some deep Mexican cuisine conspiracy.

Rio Grande Cantina is located in northern Mississauga, upon the east side of Dixie Road south of Aimco and somewhere north of Eglinton Avenue. A little plaza sporting a Yuk Yuks, an Irish pub, some variant of Indian restaurant.

Like pants have two legs, Mexican restaurants must have a certain look and feel when in North America, but this fine place differentiates by opening up into a little gift shop. My cynicle nature didn’t care for this at first, but it’s always good to know where you can – in a pinch while on the run – find good hotsauce. Still, the simple interior of most restaurants like this is welcoming and homey, so nothing to complain about here. Decent music (and not too loud), a hearthy atmosphere, and cheap tables.. good to go.

I ordered chicken fajitas (that or a three layer club sandwhich are my yardsticks by which diners are compared), while my wife ordered a beef burrito (’wet rolled’ for sauce and melted cheese on top.) Its hard to really say what happened here for most assurredly sed food arrived, but it was hot-damned fantastic. We left stuffed silly, but not full and satiated .. but let me start at the beginning. We received the obligatory freebie chips-and-salsa, with warm tortilla chips and homemade salsa. Really good, and I’m again inspired to find a good sweet-but-tangy recipe so I too can have good salsa on demand. The main course arrived and it too was tasty and full of flavouring spices, without being hot. (My wife is having huge heartburn issues with the pregnancy, so keeping the hot-ness down is a priority.) Food was heaped up, fairly priced, and seriously gorramned delicious.

The place was fairly quiet at 6:15 on a Saturday evening, and no rush. (I mean, it was prompt, but relaxed so we could chill if we liked.) The chef was out and about a few times, and I had to pass along the word that everything was just peachy. We’ll go back, and soon so as to not forget. Damn. Really, I wished the tummy had a latch to open up a backup storage area so I could drop in another order.

<Pats belly>“Soon my precious, soon.”

P.S. I should note that Mississauga has become home to numerous Mexican restaurants of late; Mexicali Rosa’s has opened up a joint, and several fast food places have popped up, including the nearly famous Burrito Boyz. Be sure to check ‘em out :)

P.P.S. As a brief aside, let me humbly note that it would appear there’s been a new Trancers film. Zombies and future-cops sent to the 80s ftw!

P.P.P.S. While I’m linking to goofy things, check out Christopher Walken

Like so many recent episodes of Battlestar Galactica, I shall start at the end and work backwards. (Apologies to the walking souls on this Halloween Day for having miraculously tied Battlstar Galactica to funerals. Point, game.) This is the last in this series of Obit posts.. a quick walk through the funeral that was yesterday. I had actually written a more sorrow-oriented opener to this entry yesterday right before leaving for the funeral, so that my writing style shift from begin to end would be more obvious.. but this next morning my spirits about the matter have so changed that I cannot keep it. With the passing of the funeral has gone the period of mourning and my eternal happyness is returning so I cannot write in that same frame anymore. I am sorry to see that emotional context gone, but it is my way — it is time for the living now.

There was something I took away from the funeral of my grandfather a few years ago, and now something I take from this one. I expect a few more funerals in the next few years and then hopefully not for another decade or so, but will try to always learn something from the experience of each I think. Perhaps you really never understand the truth of the event until your own is near coming, instead only seeing them as from a distance – a rain storm racing across a lake towards you where you can see the pattern of interference in the otherwise smooth surface. It is a cynical reality to view life as a discrete timeline like an FM radio wave – that rain storm has its rugged and shapeless beauty, its inevitible approach, but we do not see it for the physics underneath. We do not look at a painting solely for its brushstrokes. Anyway, I will take away from this one the faces of family and some of their stories as we talked at dinner afterwards. The casket was being lowered and we were chatting and you know — it felt okay, it felt good – it felt right. So many were in attendance — young to old, from my nephew up to an uncle-in-law – bright faces, defiant faces, happy faces. How can a funeral be sad when there was a newborn baby present, and stories of relatives going to Pakistan to help restore the shattered lives of that terrible earthquake? You can obsess over the utter truth of a removed life, but that is not why we are here .. the funeral reinforces that message – we are here to live, right now. As trite as it sounds, as if from the very mouth of a glam rock band — live and love now. (I can almost see it in Star Trek from a Klingon — “live now, for tomorrow we all may die!”)

The day began with some.. not dread, but pensiveness. I thought it would be a hard day, to listen to my mothers eulogy and to the service at the grave. I won’t dwell much on either but to say — my mother found an itemized list of proceedings for grandmums funeral: the Bible readings, the songs to be sung, the fees to be paid. I could say that she was well prepared but that would not be as strong a statement as it needs to be — the readings grandmum had chosen were perfect and comforting, some of the most powerful available in the Christian bible. I suspect this is why grandmum didn’t leave us any letters or goodbyes — this customized service were them, to all of us gathered. One song was I think a shorter version of “It is well with my soul”, and one of the readings was about being “uncrushable” — very good representations of her spirit as a very strong woman, an intelligent and proud mother, who was satisfied with her life and ready to go on to meet her waiting husband. In there was also one of my favourite readings, present so far at I think every funeral I’ve attended – the moving Psalm 23. I was raised an athiest (I think that is the correct term; I always forget the exact difference between agnostics, atheists, and others. I do not disbelieve per se, and like Darwin do not see any real collision between theology and science, but simply do not really care since it is all, by definition, unknowable. Instead, I try to live well and Do Right. The Bible and others do exist as guidelines for Right, but I’ve never read one.) but many of the readings are still powerful. I always said that when the darkness comes, I will be taken screaming and fighting for desire to live, so Psalm 23 hits me many levels: “Even when I walk in the valley of darkness, I will fear no evil”.

The eulogy was not sad but instead a precise of grandmums life, her meeting grandpa, the difficulties of life during the Great Depression and War, from stories of climbing down the woodpile to go out with friends and to literally hopping on and off moving trains to travel from town to town. It was a wonderful history and a beautiful way to say goodbye. It was also the test — sitting beside my mum and holding her hand as the minister read – would we all break our proud masks.. but being a stubborn bunch we did okay. You can cry at funerals but not this family… not much anyway.

Likewise the service at the grave, though that was a quick one. I suppose it is quite final — what more is to be done than to send the body off to its new home and to apply the last goodbye. I know a few times in the last few days I deliberately baited myself or made hard thoughts to ensure I would cry a little and remember the good times, but watching my mum crumble a little was perhaps the hardest part of all these days. Still, she is as strong as her mother and only wept a little at the end before putting on her mask and helping people to pick a flower or two from the arragements. At the end, I knocked on the casket near to where grandmums left shoulder would be I think, said my traditional “Happy Trails”, patted my grandfathers headstone lightly, and walked off.. any more would’ve made me tear up and this round, I am refusing that to occur.

But as we drove away to the restaurant, I was calm.. almost happy. It was over. Grandma was taken care of just the way she wanted, and its not like she was taken early. She soldiered on past the point of even wanting to live, and it was a beautiful send off. I should only hope my service could come off as well, in the hopefully distant future.

I imagine my nephew took it hard, but he took it all pretty well — he can’t have been to many funerals yet, so still has his innocence. I know for sure my heart broke for the first time when my dog of many years died, back when I was a tot. It is tough to come to terms with new tenses for people and on the funeral day you always notice when people switch from “she is” to “she was”. I guess one other observation .. my grandparents both got to our wedding years ago, so that was nice; I last saw my grandfather alive at the hospital, hours before he died.. but I couldn’t stay for I had to head to the wedding of a friend of mine. Likewise, at this funeral there was a newborn baby. Perhaps all funerals are tempered by good, since there is always something new occuring despite our eyes seeing only the bad during these times.

Anyway, my spirit is restored and my memories are intact. I only need to enter the date into my family tree application, type in some stories I do not wish forgotten, file away the many found photos, and move boxes of goods to the basement so they don’t scare the children coming for tricks-or-treats tonight. Time to close the chapter and stop making my blog readers cry :)

A piece of the original opener to the blog is here:

My goals this day are simple — try to not cry much during the service or lowering of the casket, be strong for my wife so she doesn’t feel sorry for me and stress the little one in her belly, and be there for my mum if needed. Such little but at this moment so important duties… but when my mother gets up to read the eulogy I imagine there will be few dry eyes, if she can even manage it at all. A cynic might say that the funeral is where you take thoughts from the active part of the mind and stuff them in the closet of memories at the back, that this is the natural defense mechanism for life so we don’t go around with regrets clouding our vision all the time. For sure there is some truth there, but I would suggest the funeral is where the family gathers to share some memories, to finally stand and face what has happened and say goodbye, to close the last few days off and begin anew to face forward for the living. Thats what the deceased (see how quickly it became impersonal as we shove the hard thoughts aside) — thats how Grandma H would have wanted it anyway. No sadness — this is how life works, we all face it, and we all move on. Remember the joy of life, and of their life.

Time to start getting ready. I do wish I’d snapped a picture from my phonecam of the grands place before it had gotten dismantled, but such is life and perhaps best it wasn’t done anyway