Kitchener's Big Winter DIg

This winter, the lake in Victoria Park is being dug out for cleaning and reshaping.

http://www.therecord.com/videozone/661313

Mary Ann and I often walk downtown, and on the way we usually stop to look at the progress of this  project, which is quite a spectacle.

Last year, Victoria park lake was the dirtiest I ever remember.  It smelled bad and was covered with scum and muck.  I have a picture of the Boathouse, a local blues hotspot, which has a deck right on the lake.  When the lake is clean, this boosts Kitchener's appeal, even if you are not sitting on the deck enjoying  beer, but just walking by.  But when the lake looks like an open sewer, it makes the city look kind of pathetic.

In the picture, you can see the layer of scum last June, but you need to smell it to know what it is. The link above is to a video of the work being done, in the local newspaper website.  Our newspaper is now known as "The Record" and apparently not the "Kitchener Waterloo Record".

Sunday the Fifteenth I am Still Not Near Port Dover

I missed going to Port Dover for Friday 13th, and I'll admit it was just because of the weather.  Up to Thursday the 12th, we had nice conditions for riding, but there was a snowstorm that night which left the roads slippery.  But I was impressed at the turnout according to these websites:

http://chch.com/index.php/home/item/6678-snow-doesnt-ice-port-dovers-friday-the-13th

http://www.thespec.com/news/local/article/653869--mother-nature-doesn-t-deter-friday-the-13th-bikers

So I stayed home Friday.  But today was a regular Sunday Tim Hortons board meeting, and a combination of circumstances got me out of the house and riding.  The temperature warning was dire, with a low of -17c  and a high of only -8c.  On the other hand, I didn't have the car today,  the roads were bare and dry, and it's too far to walk. Given that I was also a bit annoyed at missing Friday 13th, once again I needed the motorcycle.

I chose the Burgman 400, as I find it very easy to ride with heavy mitts and big boots.  I fixed the glove compartment last time, so there should be no problem today.  I never know how early to start getting ready, as it is a half hour drive, plus the amount of time it takes me to get myself and the scooter ready to ride.  To be on the safe side, I started preparing ninety minutes early.  First I went to the garage to roll out the scooter and let it warm up. It took one very long crank, then coughed to life briefly and died. A second crank got it running steadily.  I left it to warm up while I went inside to collect all my gear.

The getup today was fairly simple, as I was only riding for half an hour before I would be warming up with a coffee and muffin.  I wore the electric vest just in case, but never needed it.  However at -10c, I always need something warm for the hands.  I have a few choices, but one effective solution (if the temperature is freezing) is heavy duty leather mitts with a pull-out thermal liner. It has to get really cold for a very long time before my hands go numb.  Next I used my Scorpion high visibility jacket, with both liners and the neck protector zipped up.  With long johns, a sweater, and leather overalls I was comfortable enough even without plugging in the electric vest.

I have one more invention for the cold, it is a snorkel to breathe out of.  I described this simple device about a month ago, but had never tested it in really cold weather.  Today there were no steamed up glasses or visor.

So when I arrived a Timmy's all I had to do was take off my jacket, the helmet, and mitts, and go inside the coffee shop.  There is some cold extremely effective gear that is no good for sitting in restaurants,  one piece snowmobile suits, for example.

I was a little surprised that three different people on three different occasions at Timmy's spoke to me about riding the bike in the cold.  Usually nobody says anything - but - it could be that because I was sitting alone for 45 minutes (I obviously got started way too early), or that I brought my helmet inside to keep it warm, or because Friday 13th was all over the radio, TV and newspapers.  In any case, the cashier said I was very brave to go riding.  The couple at the next table said "Cold enough for ya?" and we spoke about riding in the cold.  Then a man came in with his wife and approached me to ask me about the scooter and tell me about a wonderful day of he spent riding a Vespa 125 with his wife on a Caribbean island with mountainous roads.

Tim's is in the middle of a huge cultural changeover right now, which may scar many tender Canadians  psyches.  They are eliminating the small coffee, renaming the medium to small, large to medium, extra large to large, and they have found a paper bailing bucket that will now be referred to as an "extra large".  They also now sell a lasagna-like meal that I really like.  So it was very pleasant warming up with some hot stuff in hand before the actual meeting started.

BY three PM, the sun was threatening to go down, so I figured it was time to leave, as I do not like driving with temperatures falling and the shadows getting longer.

Photo: Friday 13 Port Dover from the Toronto Sun, I was shocked that I know one of the people in this picture.  No, thank God, it is not the nude guy. http://www.torontosun.com/2012/01/13/snow-fails-to-deter-friday-the-13th-revellers

Are Foreigners Trying to Block Canada's New Pipeline?

There was a disturbing article in our local paper "The Record" about non-Canadians trying to block a new oil pipeline that the government wants to build.

The article is written by Kathryn Marshall of EthicalOil.org. In it she blasts "foreign" money being used to sway Canadian decision making about oil pipelines.

In her article, she quotes an anonymous environmental radical saying that they would accept money from Mars.

"An organizer from the foreign-backed, anti-pipeline group, Dogwood Initiative, recently declared: “If I got duffel bags of money delivered from Martians from outer space I would still take that money.”"

Obviously, this is a hypothetical situation, but if (some) environmentalists would accept money from Mars, then you would obviously take money from Al Quaida, the Taliban, Socialists sources, and other unCanadian and unwholesome people.

The main tactic of this article is to sidetrack the argument away from "Is this pipeline good for Canada" to "Foreigners are trying to block a pipeline that Canadians obviously want, and need, and a pipeline that would be good for them".

Should I play along with this debating tactic, or should I take the high ground and refuse to get into "where does the money come from" and "who is more Canadian, you or me?".

We have had many debates about the environment in the last 50 years. This pipeline is a sub-debate about global warming, and is also about pollution from oil spills and destruction of habitat. So it is another environment vs. profits debate. In the past, these debates ended up being the little guy (environmentalists) mounting a grass roots opposition to giant, wealthy multinational corporations. In those debates, the government often sided with the corporations in the early stages before public opinion became unstoppable.

So up till now, it was always big corporate money vs. private individuals sending in small donations. If it was just about money, no environmental cause would ever win. But now it seems things have turned around. Now the big money, according to Kathryn, is behind the environmentalists. And if Martians had money, that would also go to the environmentalists.

Now it's time to stop and think. A reality check in other words. If Martians existed, their support would not go to the environmentalists on Earth. And if anybody has a lot of money, it is not environmentalists, it is Exxon Mobil, Shell, BP, Suncor and the like.

Exxon Mobil's Market Capitalization is 412,016.05M (I normally cannot count that high, is that 412 billion dollars?)
BP's Market Cap is only 139,661.83M (And that is AFTER the money spent in the Gulf oil spill.)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/markets/stocks/summary/?q=XOM-N

"Dogwood Initiative" as a non-profit organization is not listed on the stock exchange. It is based in Victoria B.C., and apparently its most recent campaign was to put stickers on loonies to oppose oil tankers in British Columbia waters. If you want a ballpark estimate of their financial resources, I would think under $100,000. (Or as they say in the oil business 0.01M) That means Exxon alone has about four million times as much money as Dogwood Initiative. (if my guess is right).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogwood_Initiative

It looks to me like not much has changed in the environmental debates. It is still the local people pooling their puny resources against giant mega rich multinational corporations and their puppet governments (like Canada and the US governments for a start Yes Obama that means you.). Now if by chance some money should come to Dogwood Initiative from a "foreign" source like Greenpeace, let's remember that Greenpeace got its start in BC and became a worldwide organization later. And that fundamentally, it is still supported by small contributors around the world.

But even more important is that the global warming debate is a world wide concern, and it is natural that world wide support should be available for decisions that have a world wide impact.

I believe that by framing this debate as a purely Canadian internal matter, Kathryn Marshall is attempting to dismiss the global warming issue entirely.

I looked up the funding for "Ethicaloil.org", Kathryn's organization and found out that it does NOT accept foreign funding. (Greenpeace is specifically mentioned as a foreign source that they (or she) will not accept money from). She does accept donations from "individuals and companies, including those working to produce ethical oil". Kathryn does not list the companies producing "ethical oil" but Exxon and BP would probably be acceptable according to her own definition.

http://www.ethicaloil.org/about/

So, to summarize. Despite the conservatives and oil company propaganda to the contrary, the big foreign money is still 99.9% on their side. And no matter what Harper or bloggers like Kathryn say, some Canadians (including me) are still in favour of limiting corporate damage to planet Earth. Now let's get back to a sensible debate about things that matter before I start asking questions like "Is Kathryn a Canadian?".

Picture: Some random pipeline I got off the internet, I think our new pipeline is still on the drawing board.

The Book "Your Money or Your Life" is now Twenty Years Old

"Twenty years after publication of "Your Money or Your Life" by Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez, it is featured as one of USA Weekend’s 5 Personal Finance Books for 2012 you can bank on."

I read the book "Your Money or Your Life" about twenty years ago when it first came out. It might have transformed my life, if it did not restate a lot of ideas that I already believed in or gave instructions on how to do things I was already doing. I figure there are really not that many different ways to get control of your financial affairs, so it makes sense that the book's basic methods were very similar to mine.

But there was one significant area that my ideas differed from the book. As I recall, the original edition of the book advised against using a computer to track your expenses. The authors seemed to think that using a computer would be a distraction, and instead they gave detailed instructions as to how to track finances with a manual paper system. But I had started developing my own system, which was very similar to theirs (remember there are only so many ways to accurately keep track of expenses) and I had converted my system over to a computer about six years before I read the book.

Now, twenty years later, one of the authors seems to have softened the anti-computer stance, saying a computer "may be useful" but

"A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers."

In my opinion, people who enjoy using spreadsheets, or can write basic programs, or at least have a spouse who likes programming or using computers, will do better using a computer. I'm not the only one who likes writing programs that serve some good use - and achieving financial independence is one of the all-time best uses of a computer in my opinion.

The problem with using a computer to achieve financial independence, is that you must have a clear idea of what the computer can do and must do to help you, and the computer must not get in your way by either requiring you to do all the work, or making you do extra meaningless work, and in the end not providing the results you really need.

For example, if you check the Internet for home financial spreadsheet templates, you will find that most of them are "budget setting" spreadsheets. You input your monthly total expenses for each category, and the spreadsheet will compare the totals against pre-set budget limits, and highlight the ones you have gone over budget, and calculate what percent you have gone over budget. While this idea may actually appeal to you, I would point out that the computer leaves you to do all the hard work on your own: namely inputting the monthly totals per category of expense. The only benefit the computer provides is telling you how far over or under you are compared to your budget - which is basically a pointless exercise because (a) you set those budget items arbitrarily in the first place (b) you are wasting a lot of time doing something you don't need to do, and (c) provides no real extra insight in your financial affairs.

The remaining spreadsheet templates are of the "Checkbook balancing" variety, where you input all your bank transactions and checks, and the spreadsheet helps you see if any checks have not yet been cashed, or if any checks have been cashed that you didn't write. In this age of instant withdrawal debit cards, I don't see much use in writing checks let alone balancing them.

Here is what I see as the basic requirements of an expense tracking system. The computer must download your bank statements (or credit card accounts) into a series of similarly formatted worksheets. With today's technology. the computer must leave you the task of going through the transactions to identify a category you want each transaction to be included in. (forty years from now, the computer may have enough intelligence to do this for you, or at least to argue intelligently with you about which categories should be assigned, but this is not possible today). Then, once you have had a chance to adjust the data as it suits you, the computer can take care of the job of summarizing the whole thing on a final year-end summary. The final summary is best presented in a classical spreadsheet format: one column for each month, a row for each category. This is fundamentally what needs to happen in an expense tracking system, no more and no less. Any other functions would only be needed for for ease of setup, ease of making ongoing changes, tracking errors, backing things up etc.

In the nearly forty years of tracking expenses, I have progressed from adding things in my head, to electronic calculator, to using a computer and writing my own programs to handle these functions. My latest version consists of some spreadsheet templates in "LibreCalc" the free spreadsheet program in the free operating system of Ubuntu 11.10. And I have written three Libre-BASIC macros that I will put on the Internet as open source, in keeping with the spirit of Linux. Who knows, maybe one day someone will enhance these programs, make them even better, (for example by importing from banks other than CIBC or TD) and I can in turn benefit from their work.

The files are here:
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/Readme.txt
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Sum.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Import.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieLogger_Details.bas
http://www.microverse.on.ca/cd175/LoonieEmptyTestFile.ods

Here are some quotes from a quick summary of the book "Your Money or Your Life" from the official website

http://ymoyl.wordpress.com/summary-of-your-money-or-your-life/

"B: Keep track of every cent that comes into or out of your life.

So far we have established that money equals life energy, and we have learned to compute just how many hours of life energy we exchange for each dollar. Now we need to become conscious of the movement of that form of energy called money in every moment of our lives — we need to keep track of our income by keeping a Daily Money Log.


How:

Devise a record-keeping system that works for you (such as a pocket sized memo book). Record daily expenditures accurately. Record all income.

Step 3: Where Is It All Going? (The Monthly Tabulation)

Don’t worry. Relax. This program is not about budgeting. Budgets, like diets, don’t work. They don’t work because they deal with the symptoms and not the cause. The cause of fat is not really the calories in the food, its the desires in our mind.

Every month create a table of all income and all expenses within categories generated by your own unique spending pattern.

How:

Simple arithmetic. A computer home accounting program may be useful.

(A computer is not essential as both authors achieved Financial Independence without using computers.) "

A link to a review of this book as a life changing event
http://www.passionsaving.com/your-money-or-your-life.html

Picture: from this blog http://blog.icysedgwick.com/2011/07/friday-flash-your-money-or-your-life.html
"The highwayman in the image that accompanies this flash is the dashing David Marshall, tour guide with Alone in the Dark Entertainment. They're about to start running a new ghost walk around Washington in the north east of England"

Scooter Maintenance without the Zen

This is a story of "The Lost Motorcyclist" repairing Mary Ann's 2005 Suzuki Burgman 400 scooter.

I took the Burgman out for a ride and noticed the big glove box didn't close any more. The striker (a loop of steel that the lid latches on to), was loose and simply retracted when the box lid was pushed closed. The striker has to be solidly mounted for the latch to work. I continued my ride holding the glove box door up with my knee, but obviously Mary Ann will not be too happy with that arrangement.

Today I removed the panel just over the box lid, called the "Front Panel". It also is removed when checking the coolant level, and so I tried to not get distracted by the fact that I didn't see any coolant in the overflow tank. To get this front panel off, there is a single screw clip inside the glove box, which you need to screw out a little bit, then pull out the plastic clip assembly that it is screwed into. (One of the typical wacky fasteners on the Burgman's plastic bodywork.) Luckily I didn't lose it when it flew out of my hand, because its $1.83 for clip (black) 09409-06322-5PK - according to online parts manual under meter panel http://www.suzukipartsnation.com

With this panel off, I was able to see what was wrong: the striker is screwed into a plastic post molded into the "Front Box". The plastic post had snapped off. Naturally, the "front Box" is one of the largest and most expensive plastic parts of the Burgman.

The latch mechanism on the box lid was sticky. The way it normally works is that by simply pushing the lid closed, the latch will retract when it hits the striker, and then clicks back into place to hold the lid closed. On this bike the latch does not retract easily, and the last time I was slamming the door shut, the force probably broke the striker bracket.

I removed the latch from the door, disassembled and lubricated it. The latch slides, and unless it is slathered with grease, it sticks. It was tricky to put back together, and one little steel ball didn't make it. But the latch still seems to work as well as it did before I took it apart.

Then, under the "front panel" I found a way to unscrew the broken bracket from the striker, and I found a much longer screw and drilled a hole completely through the base. I inserted the new longer screw and tightened it up and it seemed to hold the big plastic fairing, broken plastic stud, and striker together.

I bent and sawed up some plastic bits while getting all the Tupperware back together. (Tupperware is a motorcyclist term for plastic bodywork on motorcycles or scooters.) Finally I closed the lid, and still, the only way it would close was if I held the latch open until the lid was in place. I informed Mary Ann that the latch was fixed, but that she must remember to hold the latch while closing the lid. She answered "I'll never remember that." So as a compromise, when the lid does not close, I asked her to call me before trying to slam it harder.

Bigger Bikes Have Their Advantages Too

With the arrival of the Gunbus motorcycle, you might wonder if we have now gone about as far as we can go with bigger and bigger bikes. "The Lost Motorcyclist" has the feeling that no, we have not. Because no matter what we say about small motorcycles, there are some real advantages to bigger bikes.

I have gone over the advantages of small motorcycles. Cycle Canada's latest issue was devoted to small motorcycles. Now is the time to get real about the advantages of bigger bikes.

The advantages of bigger bikes may fall into two groups. The imaginary advantages and the real advantages. Lets start with imaginary, just to clear the way. Big bikes attract chicks, carry more weight, are not affected by side winds, are safer, go faster, run over dogs without crashing, and are as cheap and as easy to handle as small bikes. I'm going to stop here, even though there are hundreds more BS reasons why big bikes are better than small. All those reasons are crap, and are only useful to convince your wife that you need a bigger (and newer) bike.

Now for the real reasons big bikes are better. They are harder to lift into the back of a pickup truck, and are therefore harder to steal. They can go farther on highways without needed maintenance. They have more crankshaft torque at low engine speeds, and because of that, are easier to start rolling using the clutch, and without a super low first gear. They are less twitchy on the road, so you can spend more time looking at scenery while the bike goes more or less straight. They often have higher top speeds, and can travel at high speeds more safely (mainly due to larger tires).

Although the Gunbus does manage to look good in pictures from some angles, I'm not sure if these reasons are quite enough to make me want to buy a Gunbus, with its 410 cubic inch (6728 cc I believe) motor. But I would be interested to see one riding down a street sometime during my life.

Can Higher Speeds Save You Gas?

Getting better gas mileage at higher speeds goes against my intuitive understanding, which has been reinforced by many years of experience. Apparently some new research indicates that going faster can save you money at the pumps, that the optimum speed for fuel economy is over 100 kph.

I thought this might be similar to the campaign a few years ago to convince drivers that using a car air conditioner could save them gas. At that time, I looked into it and concluded that it was baseless.

In that blog the Lost Motorcyclist (me) said "Here is another debate pitting science and reason against vested interests and wishful thinking." I found this idea had already been written up in Wikipedia, with references. It was on an entry called "Fuel Economy in Automobiles", subheading "Speed and Fuel Economy Studies".

Quoted text

"The most recent study[16] indicates greater fuel efficiency at higher speeds than earlier studies; for example, some vehicles achieve better mileage at 65 mph (105 km/h) rather than at 45 mph (72 km/h),[16]"

I read the reference given "[16]" and found the graphs and charts started on page 27. The report itself referred to other reports, and so I went back to Wikipedia for another research tack.

Two graphs were also given in this Wikipedia section. Interestingly, each graph seemed to give a completely different result. One graph showing the fuel economy vs. speed of eight different cars, and in every case, fuel economy was better at lower speeds. The other graph was completely different, showing peaks of fuel economy for every vehicle in the range of 50 to 60 miles per hour. The source for this second graph has disappeared. The source for the first graph is available at

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/fuel_consumptio.html

There is a possible explanation for this difference in fuel economy vs speed. Years ago, I believe most scientists and researchers were working with cars that had standard transmissions, and were left in high gear during the test. A standard transmission's efficiency does not vary much with speed. However, it seems that now many tests are being conducted on automatic transmission cars, which brings up a whole new set of variables.

Automatic transmissions do not have constant efficiency at various speeds, and the type of automatic transmission with an oil fluid torque converter may indeed be more efficient at high speeds. A torque converter decouples the engine from the rear wheels, and all power is driven from a turbine which turns at engine speed, which spins the oil in a housing that in turn spins another propeller driving the rear wheels through a gearbox. That is why manual transmissions are more efficient than automatics with torque converters (i.e. 99% of automatics). I don't know for sure what the efficiency vs. speed of these torque converters would be but I do know that some cars have a device that bypasses the torque converter at a higher speed, to achieve similar efficiency to a manual transmission. That could be one factor leading to new results that cars get better gas mileage at higher speed.

But there is another major factor, and that is the gear selection. In the past it was simply assumed that the car would be run in high gear, and that it would not be shifted to a lower gear at lower speed, as this downshift would result in lesser fuel economy. I'm not so sure today that these cars are run in high gear only, in fact the multiple peaks seem to indicate downshifts taking place as the car slows down.


Here is a thread on the Ecomodders blog, debating this point.

In that forum is a link to another blog by "King of the Road" where he has all kinds of mathematical equations and test results from his own vehicles. The results seem to indicate maximum efficiency of 50 mph. But to me the most telling point is later when he answers a comment with

"Yes, those calculations are run based on numbers gathered on (nearly) level ground, with the transmission using whatever gear the engine map assigns in cruise."

Do people really think an automatic transmission shifting itself is not worth mentioning, even with detailed explanation of experimental methods?

My conclusion is that this story may indeed have some truth, but only if you are using an automatic transmission, and the automatic is doing certain things at arbitrary speeds - which to me seems to be unscientific, and yet it also appears acceptable to many people.

I drive a manual transmission, but a few months ago I was driving my mother's car (an automatic with torque converter). I forgot to pick up gas at the last station on the 401, and with the needle on empty, decided to drive the remaining 40 km. to her home on back roads at a very low 60 kph. I don't think her transmission shifted down on me, as it is only a three speed (not the six speeds like some newer cars). I thought for sure at the time I was getting exceptionally good gas mileage, but in her 15 year old Chevy Cavalier I had no instant MPG display like many newer cars have. In the end, we did make it home without running dry.

Picture: Some ultra low speed driving from http://blog.coredump.ca/2009/06/03/photo-friday-high-speed/