Cycling and Staycations

Like many of you, I've been itching to travel but hesitant to do so, as safe conveyance remains an issue. That's especially true for those of us who rely on public and intercity transport to take us where we're going. Enter the venerable bicycle, which will take a non-athlete like me modest distances and get me some good exercise, too.

I bought a new bike recently, not out of indulgence but necessity. I seem to have reached old age a bit early, because back in May I fell off my old bike while trying to get on it. Lifting my leg that high has always been a challenge, but this was the final blow. Right then I realized I could no longer ride my bike safely and needed a new model with a lower crossbar. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Specialized Crossroads 2.0 Step-Through:

 

 

Now, back in the day, we used to call this a women's bike. As a certified male I'm grateful for the modern rebranding of "step-through," because whatever you want to call it, a bike like this is what I needed to keep cycling.

I'm very lucky to have procured mine, and here's why: even though it's a 2020 model, they're already impossible to find. The guy at my bike shop told me I snagged one of the last ones. See, back in the spring when the pandemic made public transport a dicey proposition, everyone took up cycling and mid-range bicycles like this flew off the shelves. From what I was told, it's hard to find any new bike these days for under $1500. In any case, the Specialized Crossroads 2.0 Step-Through has been out of stock on every bike-shop website under the sun since mid-June. There really aren't any left.

I won't bore you with bike-tech details, but here's what sold me on the Crossroads 2.0: (1) the lower crossbar, obviously; (2) 21 speeds, accessed by thumb-operated shifters; (3) mechanical disc brakes; (4) puncture-resistant Armadillo tires; (5) the reasonable price ($749). It's a beauty in appearance, handling and comfort—the perfect bike for recreational and fitness riding.

Now that the days are getting cooler, I'm starting to venture out a bit. Last weekend I had a picnic at Taylor Creek Park, which can be accessed from where I live almost entirely on bike paths. Yesterday's outing took me to The Beaches, again mostly on off-road trails. I'm aiming to bike out to Long Branch next weekend, and this I'm planning as a multi-modal trek, using GO's Lakeshore West train to shorten the ride back. In the coming weeks, weather permitting, I hope to make even more use of the GO train. With careful planning, I can take the train to far-flung places like Barrie and Burlington, tool around there on my bike and ride the rails back.

If you live in the Golden Horseshoe and are interested in active-transportation staycations, check out these helpful pages from GO Transit and the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail. If you're not a cyclist, not a problem. You can skateboard, roller-blade, hike ... whatever suits your fancy. As for me, I aim to squeeze in as many bike trips as I can before autumn's chill sets in.

Baseball and Slow Travel

You don't need me to tell you that we suddenly find ourselves living in extraordinary, unprecedented times due to the spread of COVID-19. I've certainly never experienced anything like this, and I've been around a while.

A few weeks back, I was basking in my usual spring ritual: listening to the first baseball games of spring training and eagerly awaiting the regular season, which was due to start on March 26. As of March 13, all spring training activity has ceased and MLB rather optimistically says that opening day will be "delayed." As far as I know, this is the first non-labour suspension of baseball since World War II.

For years now, I've been hoping to pull off a week-long visit to Florida for spring training. (I may be the only Canadian who's never been to Florida.) Thank God I didn't have the means to do it this year, or I'd be stuck in the Sunshine State with no games to see and a 14-day quarantine awaiting me upon return. I'm still quite excited about the trip, which has progressed well beyond dreaming into planning, but my enthusiasm is now tempered. Even if I can afford it, who knows if in a year's time anyone will be able to travel anywhere?

Nevertheless, let's envision a world where COVID-19 has done its business, moved on, and a modicum of normalcy has been reestablished. If I could take in spring training, what might that look like?

The Blue Jays train in Dunedin, a small city in the Tampa-St. Pete-Clearwater metro area. A flight from Toronto to Tampa would get me there in under three hours, and I'd be all set, right? Yes, but I dislike flying, the biggest reason for my disdain being that it's like teleportation. You don't get to see what's between here and there, and to me that's the whole point of travelling.

I don't drive, but I toyed with the idea of simulating the well-worn trek down I-75 popular with snowbirds on Greyhound. Like the road-tripper brigade, I'd take it slow and stop along the way, roughly at the end of a day's drive. I even mapped out a six-day itinerary: Toronto-Detroit-Cincinnati-Chattanooga-Macon-Orlando-Tampa. And for variety, a different route back over five days: Tampa-Jacksonville-Raleigh-Baltimore-Albany-Toronto. All well and good but for one consideration—safety. Greyhound's bus depots are often in spotty if not outright scary parts of town, and I soon realized that my fantasy of walking several blocks, in the dark, to the nearest hotel could result in a mugging or worse. And even if I made it to said inner-city hotel, it might not be the kind of place where I'd want to bed down for a night.

Plan B, which didn't last long, is the no-bed-required option, a continuous 41-hour trip on three Greyhound buses, again getting there one way (Toronto-New York-Orlando-Tampa) and returning another (Tampa-Tallahassee-Cincinnati-Detroit). The way there wasn't too severe in terms of layovers, but on the return trip a five-hour layover in Cincinnati (9:00 p.m-2:00 a.m.) didn't exactly thrill me. In any case, I've done this before, 20 years ago, when I took the Greyhound to San Francisco and back. That trip was even longer, and when I straggled back home I vowed I'd never again sleep on a bus ... because I can't sleep on a bus.

I've now landed on Plan C: Amtrak, the USA's passenger rail system. This entails one compromise: I'd have to return the same way I came, and checking the Silver Star timetable, the same part of the country (NC, SC, GA) is in darkness both ways. Boo, hiss! Also, a continuous trip from Toronto isn't possible by rail; the schedules simply don't hook up. I'd have to take the Maple Leaf to New York, stay overnight, then board the Silver Star in the morning. On the plus side, I'd have only one sleep on the train which, though not a proper bed, is far better than the bus. And if I had the cash, I could splurge for a roomette.

As for getting around the Tampa area, public transit will do the trick, though I can see from researching schedules that PSTA and HART aren't exactly the TTC. But with careful planning, one can make it from A to B. It's also dirt cheap. And lucky me, I'd have three teams' games to choose from in the metro area, with the Phillies training in Clearwater and the Yankees in Tampa proper.

The rather pokey way I like to get to and visit new places now has a name: slow travel. I'm not sure I subscribe to or follow all its tenets, but in both my preferred transportation modes and sightseeing predilections (offbeat, weird stuff), I qualify. Anyway, once COVID-19 has run its course and I've saved up sufficiently, I look forward to getting to know Amtrak, seeing a bit of Florida, and taking in some spring training baseball—something any serious fan really should do at least once in their lives.

Words and Music Are Everywhere

Now that the CD is out, I've returned to one of the things I love best: songwriting. And I'm here to tell you that songs can come from some pretty odd places.

In November I took a train trip to Cornwall, and between Via's attendants handing out Remembrance Day poppies, the music I was listening to on the way (Miles Davis Quintet, Live in Europe 1967), a piano sitting in a downtown square with jammed keys and a bit of research on the Lost Villages, I came up with a tune called "Lost Villages Wail." (It's not really about the Lost Villages—they provided me with good metaphorical meat, though.)

I generally write chords first, then melody, then words. If nothing comes spontaneously I go back to my "bits," those fragments I've recorded that on their own are little more than promising parts lasting no more than 10 seconds. If I'm lucky, I can string two or three together in the same song, but more often than not I create the music from scratch around one strong bit. And again, if I'm lucky, sometimes I get a melody so evocative that the words practically write themselves. That's what happened with December's new song, "The Lord's Glue."

This month's new song, "Let Love Strum You," springs from a truly bizarre source: a lumber outlet jingle I heard on a baseball broadcast. I pilfered the chords and melody verbatim, made it my chorus, and wrote the rest of the music around it. For the lyrics, I drew inspiration from this poem by John O'Donohue that I saw in a church bulletin. Nothing was used verbatim; I simply borrowed a few of his words, then filled in the rest. In fact, the tone of my lyrics differs considerably from that of the poem.

Words and music—they really are everywhere if you look. And all this is coming reasonably soon, I hope, on my second album, Days of Secret Seeing.

Songwriting Trips

Thanks to the generosity of my brother and sister-in-law, I've got a nice stash of Via Rail gift cards that I'm using for day trips. The original intention was to busk in these small towns, but having decided that busking is not for me (see previous posts), I'm now using these little getaways, among other things, as impetus for my songwriting.

It's like fishing: whether the catch is bountiful, nothing at all or somewhere in between doesn't matter, because it's always relaxing. Sometimes I will get a whole song out of the deal. A few years back a rainy day in London turned into a full set of lyrics that eventually became "After You," which is now in the can and will appear on my album. Yesterday was Kingston's turn and I got only one line, but that's okay. I don't force it; rather, I travel with the intention of staying open should inspiration come. If it doesn't, there's always the scenery, exploring the town and dinner to enjoy.

Unsurprisingly, music is my constant companion on these jaunts. Yesterday's trip featured Gordon Lightfoot on my mp3 player as we chugged through the countryside ("Canadian Railroad Trilogy" being quite apropos), with Steeleye Span and Miles Davis providing the soundtrack for the return leg. Often the tunes will spark arrangement ideas as well. If you're a recording musician, you tend to hear music like a record producer—at least I do. Always have, even when I was a boy.

Coming up: Woodstock in September, Ottawa for my birthday in October.