Random acts of kissing, and finding a partner in crime.

Riding home on Valentines Day, I was contemplating matters of the heart and dreaming of a kiss.

Did you know that this is random acts of kindness week?

By now you've probably heard that random acts of kindness generate a ripple effect, and you know kindness increases the serotonin (happiness) in your brain.  Dr McQuaid says happiness is being kind, that "serotonin levels are increased in both the giver and receiver of an act of kindness. In addition, anyone who witnesses an act of kindness also has an increase in serotonin levels. Kindness is a natural anti-depressant for the giver, receiver, and witness of human compassion."

It's true, too.  Have you ever tried it?  When you're down, the easiest way to feel good is to make someone else feel good. It's contagious, the pandemic with the power to save us.

(in smooth radio-announcer voice)
Last babblelog, on The Kissing Season bikesgonewild shared a perfect kiss:

His kiss was "secretly enhanced" by what he saw, and when you read the story you get some of that secret sauce, too.  You have to admit that's pretty cool. This time of year, it's reassuring to know that random acts of kissing will uplift the world around you.

But what do you do if you don't have someone to kiss? In China, you can hire a fake boyfriend to bring home to mum and dad. There are times when it's important to be single, independent.  Maybe you need to focus your full passion on an endeavour close to your heart, or maybe your heart needs healing, but certainly there are times when it's better to be alone than attached. For the most part, however, humans are social creatures who are happier attached than alone.

If you find yourself alone and wishing you had a kissing friend, well then it's time to go fishing.  When I was looking for the man, my favourite was Plenty of Fish, but there are all kinds of dating sites out there.  There are a LOT of people out there looking for love, too...  I did a general search for women in the Vancouver area 25-50 years of age, and found page after page after page of results on PoF

 Serious results.  Why, just look at Kuteepie, hiding somewhere near the bottom of the 23rd page!

Woof.

Plenty of Fish is sooo much fun. My profile was terminally earnest, all sunshine and lollipops:

I even listed all of my favourite bloody things, 

like a singing and dancing Maria Von Poppins for the new millennium.

 I used restraint and refrained from all the obvious cheese cake photos:

Dunno what I was thinking. It was a clear misrepresentation of WHO I AM, but whatev's. It worked.

It's dead simple to post a profile, and PoF is free, though you know Google and Marcus will market to you. Despite my death-by-vanilla profile, I managed to meet great guys, plenty of them.

On-line dating is easy, and it's fun.  Just be yourself.  Let the fish out there know: "This is who I am this is what I like and this is what I'm looking for." Add a selection of your best photographs, and presto, you're ready. Dive into that chocka blocka webtastic fishbowl.

Your best chance of success?  We're visual creatures.

A good picture will get you more clicks than anything else..  Don't have a good picture?  Take one, or better yet, get a friend to take some and then use the best of the best.  Edit all the rest!  One Meh photo will do more harm than six great  ones do good. And while you're editing, make sure you edit your words carefully, too.  Poison-filled rants rarely make a good first impression.  This is an opportunity to connect with all kinds of different people. Talk about what you're passionate about, what you love most, what you dream of doing.  Write about the person you are looking for. Make a wish!

Then post it and be open minded. Just like in the real world, you will find your share of fruit-cakes thrown into the mix, but the nice thing about internet dating-particularly as a woman - is that you get to screen people with anonymity and relative security before you meet.  Or not.  It's really up to you in the end, just like in the real world.

When I tell people about Plenty of Fish, and how much fun I had using it, how many cool friends I made,

 and how I met the man, people inevitably say "Oh, my friend tried it last year. She said that there are just so many creeps and liars on there," and maybe for her it was true. That's sad for her, but I know from experience that there are a lot of good people out there, too.

Do you have trouble discerning who's who? I find words help a lot.  Writing and speaking words are wonderful ways to suss out whether or not the person you're talking to is straight up, slightly bent, or completely loopy. It's pretty simple to weed out most of the weird-o's.

One of the things which makes on-line dating so appealing is the sheer numbers of people. Plus it's like home shopping. If it doesn't work out with one fish, you can just return it, comforted by the thought that there are always plenty more where that one came from.

I talked to hundreds of men before I found someone I felt like kissing, though. I had a perfect first kiss on the best first date EVER in the history of dating.  It so happened that I happened upon a profile which both claimed to like fishing, and also claimed to be absolute shite at it.  That didn't fool me, though. I've spent time in Haida Gwaii, and when I was there, I learned the fisherman's motto:  "I fish, therefore I lie."  I set the man on PoF straight, and told him he really should get with the program and forget about the truth.

Well that was it. Two days later I was inundated with a torrent of words which he had found time to write while he was hanging around airports, moving from Australia to North Africa,  where he was just hired as the  Managing Director of a satellite news service.  The thing I remember most vividly from his first message was "How can you call yourself a writer and then leave a lousy two line message?"

I might have run then, but as mum is fond of saying, I am not the sharpest tack in the box. And besides, the heart wants what the heart wants. After three years on my own, not even remotely interested in any of the fish, all of a sudden I fall for a man living on the opposite side of the planet in a country I would never choose for my son.

Go figure.

After an intense three month courtship, during which we exchanged enormous volumes of mail and spoke to one another on Skype at least once a day, he invited me to join him in Manhattan under a blue moon eclipse on New Year's Eve.

When our lips met, our passion was fuelled by of months of yearning, of longing and of anticipation, and I nearly passed out from pleasure.  I've never known a more poignant kiss, and I've never had a more exciting first date, and yet as wonderful as it was,  it pales in comparison with my happiness today.

First I found the best first date on Plenty of Fish, and the best first kiss.  Then I found love, and now I know joy.  I'm pretty sure the man was kissed by Cupid, because he has a perfect heart-shaped birthmark on his face, and a tender lover's heart.

And I have a secret.  The rest of you peeps only get to celebrate Valentines day once a year, so for you it's already over.  For me?  Every day is Valentines Day, and I try to practice random acts of kissing to spread the joy.  If you have a partner, please be kind. Help me save the world, one kiss at a time...

if you're on your own, maybe it's time to do a little fishing...  

It's the Kissy-Kissy season, and I'm in the mood for lurrrrrrrve.

We missed the Crow Roost Bike Ride on 2 February, 2013. 

I like that day.  February 2nd is Imbolic on the pagan calendar, or Candlemas if you're Christian, and it's a celebration of the quickening. It's the best time of year to make a wish, to plant seeds for future endeavors (you can start seeds for your garden now, too.)  If you can dream it, you can create it, and this is the best time of year to reflect on your goals.  

It's important to a healthy happy life to celebrate often, so I was sad to miss the Crow Ride.

photo by redsara

I'm also sad when I drop my chain under load. It never happens when I'm just riding for fun, it's always when I'm working it up a hill and trying to make it quick. What's a girl to do?  When I want to go fast, I want to go fast, so I dragged the boy out and we rode to a sweet little LBS called

Kissing Crows

 I say dragged, but there wasn't actually a lot of dragging going on from my end. He was determined to get the ride over and done with as quickly as possible and he rode pretty hard, bless him.
He likes to go fast, too.  :)
Once we arrived I bowed under pressure and hurriedly took some terrible photographs.  Like this:

My reason for making this trip was not to showcase how methodically and consistently I can take really bad pictures, but also to pick up one of those doo-hickies that stop your chain from dropping at the most inopportune moments. Ye olde chain drop stopper.

A kind and helpful young man named Josh showed me the stopper they had hanging on the wall, and then he went and got his bike, and showed me his stopper.  It had his name engraved on it, and it had a skull and crossbones, too.
I want one with a skull and crossbones.
It's on order now, so this is just the first of at least two trips to Kissing Crows. :)

One more bad picture, and we're homeward bound.
As we made our way back  home the boy noticed how many hills he had climbed to get there, and
I noticed how fast those little legs can go when he sets his mind to it.

They always go away very fast whenever there's any kind of kissing going on,
and that has GOT to be awkward this time of year.

It's the Kissy-Kissy season after all,
and I'm in the Mood for Lurrrrrve.

There is a touch of the divine in a kiss, isn't there?
It's mystical, marvellous, and mysterious, that delicious,
thrilling rush of sensation when first you kiss your heart's desire...
  mmm... kisses.

 I love kisses.

Kissing is so hot

except when it's not.

The Guardian said this kiss sparked a mystery, 

but every kiss is a bit of a mystery, isn't it? 

 How is it that a simple kiss is such a powerful act?  

Kisses come in all shapes and sizes.

There's the good:

The perfect kiss (you've gotta love The Princess Bride):

Since the invention of the kiss, there have only been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind. 

There's the bad, 

Jesus betrayed by Judas: the ultimate smackdown.

And of course, there's the ugly.
Best ugly, less-than-perfect, not-quite-so-passionate kiss? Here's an artisanal,  ironic kiss for you.

What do you think?

unhate

Remember when Benetton had to tear down that kissy-kissy UNHATE ad of theirs 

because his holiness Pope Benedict of the inquisition objected to it?

I like the kiss in this photograph way more than I like the kissers.
The act of love, expressed in a kiss
is beautiful, no matter who is doing the kissing.
Religion and love rarely meet.

Have you ever noticed how many people hate the Catholic Church?
It's absurd.  Time to shake hands with truth, people.  It's time for a reality check, and this leadership junction is a great time to stop and take stock.

After the Pontiff's surprise resignation, the BBC examined the highlights of his papacy, including this little gem:

Amid continuing revelations of institutionalised paedophilia within the Catholic Church, in March 2010 Pope Benedict took the unprecedented step of writing a pastoral letter to Irish Catholics in which he acknowledged and apologised to those who had "suffered grievously". 

The letter went on to "openly express the shame and remorse that we all feel", and said that those guilty of abuse must "answer before God". 

The apology fell short of demands from some victim groups, who had urged for an admission that abuse was systematically covered up by the church.

You think??

Everyone knows that the Catholic church abused tons of kids, but how many people are aware of the 50,000 Aboriginal children who allegedly died at the hands of the Catholic, Anglican, and United churches in Canadian Residential Schools from the late 1800's till the 1980's and whose bodies were never recovered?  It's called the Canadian Holocaust, and it's hidden from history.

That's what you call the kiss of death.

The Church is long overdue for some radical reform.

Einstein defined insanity as "doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results."  We're not going to see a different church if we continue to elect leaders from within the rank and file.  Nothing is going to get better unless we really step it up, and that is why I would like to offer to take the helm and lead the Church out of this miserable morass.

First Edict?
Use a condom.
It's the immaculate act of non-conception.
That's not spam, that's an e-dict.

Fuller was right when he said
"there is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come,'
because once we reach critical mass, change is swift and inevitable.

Please celebrate the season and plant a seed of thought in your heart today.
Dream of a world worthy of the term
Heaven on Earth.

a case for baskets from a basket case

Do you like my new basket?

Before I had my basket I was a basket case. Life is full of stuff, right? Whether you're walking, or in a car or on a bike, you've always got stuff. I used to be the bag buddy, and then I got a basket and my balance and my back are both the better for it, and suddenly life is full of sunshine and lollipops.

Oh who am I kidding?  It still rains here in the rainforest, and I am still a basket case, only now I am a basket case with a basket. Why am I a basket case?  Because I have been through five of them in the two years I've had this bike.  I got a great deal on the bike, but now I've spent half again on baskets!

The last one lasted the longest, 

but it broke in the end

just like all the others.

 It doesn't make sense.

 I never throw more than a bottle of wine, my camera bag, and my purse in there.

And the bike never ever falls over.

Ever.

Right.

I need a basket built like a tank.

Or a brick ...

...er...

sorry.

Hey. S*!t stuff happens.

 Right, Dirty?  

 (Sorry about yer luck, sunshine.) 

Ouch.

from   Drunk Cyclist

Stuff happens a lot.  That's why I like hard things.

 Titanium suits me better than plastic, as sweet and springy as it can be. 

I love this Colnago, but my Lynskey suits me better, because

  I like to ride hard and I like to ride fast and I like to do it every day.

And I can be hard on things.

This appears to be a function of my tribe of genetic mutation.  I am definitely a carrier, because my son has the same condition, poor thing.

It's a good thing the man is strong. 

He put an industrial basket on one of his bikes. 

I put a ding in it. 

Just a little ding, but that is one sturdy basket - it looks like something out of Mad Max, doesn't it? I put a ding in it the very first time he rode with it, and I didn't even have to touch his bike to do it.

  

It's like magic or something.  

I parked my bike and walked away and a great gust of wind came along and blew it to the ground, taking his along as collateral damage.  His bike broke the fall and protected my wicker basket, and it shows. 

He didn't flinch. Just nodded and said "That's about right. Just under an hour."

It's always that way with Bea bike and baskets.  I'd blame it on basket gremlins, but grown-ups don't believe in gremlins so let's call it the winds of fate.  They come along and blow the bike over, and the basket bounces off the pavement, which is never good.

This new basket is wicker.  I love how it sits upright like that. So pretty. Did I tell you that it's wicker?  Lovely, bendy, biodegradable wicker.

I hear laughter on the wind.

 (Georgia St Viaduct, separated bike lane)

Yeah, it probably won't last long. 
I'll be a basket case all over again as I watch it fall apart, because life is full of stuff, and it's good to have a safe place to put your stuff when you're riding. Our landfills are full of stuff, too, and I have contributed more than my share of basket parts and pieces to the mix over the last two years. 

Only now that I've had a basket for a bit, I don't know how I ever did without it.

Idle no more, we're off to the Tomahawk. This is definitely not life in the fast lane.

I have a very small brain. It makes me happy every time I notice that I've multiplied and it stuck.  Yes, you're right. It's hardly rocket science, making babies, but still it pleasantly surprises me, with my very small brain, to notice that my progeny are both wonderful people, despite the fact that I've made nearly every parenting mistake in the book.

Children are remarkably resilient, bless 'em.  :)

 My mate had to go out of town on business this weekend, so she left her cat Sushi, her cute little yellow Mini, and her adorable younger son in my care from Friday evening till Sunday evening.  The party was on! Friday night the boys settled in with pizza and video games, but on Saturday the man and I were determined to get them out on an adventure, so we bribed them across two bridges with the lure of a mythical place devoted to the best bacon and hot dogs in the land.


That's right.
 We bribed them with happy bacon from Tomahawk restaurant. 

 Er... that's incentive, we offered incentive.  It so totally wasn't bribery.

We're off!

Riding over the bridge, I heard a noise and figured my bike had Budnitzed on me again.  Then I realised that the sounds of distress weren't coming from my bike, they were coming from the bike behind me.  Only it wasn't the bike, it was the rider.  It was a high pitched squeak, which turned into a whine, and built to a fever-pitched crescendo, a great, rumbling meltdown loud and clear over and above the din of the engines all around. There was enormous frustration on the day's first climb. Not mine...

and not the man's, either, trying to film the event and find some continuity in the fits and starts progress of our rag-tag mini peloton as we were first getting underway. Jackets off, tempers cooled, a quick attitude adjustment, and the ride down was actually fun.  They got it.

Then we made our way around English Bay. It's sooooo pretty on the Bay.

We entered Stanley Park, and took a deep breath.

This is a sweet spot if you like breathing.

Least it was till we crossed the causeway and that endless flowing stream of traffic.

The boys tested their mettle and discovered they had more mojo than they knew. It's more of a climb than you'd think, cruising the trails through that forest. They really worked for their bacon.  By the time we came out onto the approach to the Lion's Gate Bridge, we had nearly climbed to the summit of our journey, the middle of the bridge being the highest point on this epic quest, and they rocked it.

It was clear sailing after that...

Mmmmm... we're within smelling range now. And nearly out of camera range, too.
Management prefers you not take pictures inside the restaurant.  The many totems and carvings inside have soul and you might steal some with your camera.
Or that's what they used to say, anyway.
But you can walk right out the door with a place mat identical to the ones the man remembers from 40 years ago.
Racist cartoons 'n' all.

It's like you step outside of time when you walk in the door. I like it cause I know I'm feeding them happy meat.  For years I shelled out a premium for Maple Leaf's Country Naturals hot dogs and lunch meats, thinking I was sparing the boy's body the stress and strain of sodium nitrite and all the other nasties. "Nothing but the good stuff," they claim. 

Then I found out that Cultured Celery Extract is a nitrite, and their marketing nothing but bald faced lies...

Tomahawk bacon is happy bacon.  No nitrites, no hormones, no anti-biotics, no GMO feeds.  Happy meat makes for a happy mummy, but it was downright heavenly for them.

With bellies full of bacon, their ride was suddenly divine.

We set our sights for Waterfront Park, where we took a moment to pause and reflect, rest and digest.

  

The seabus was about to dock, 

it was time to head for home, 

but buoys will be buoys.

I sometimes have a thing or two to say,

but the man hears no evil.

That's ok.

The boys don't often hear me, either. 

As we were leaving the Terminal on the other side, our young guest said

"Wow!  This is like a marathon."

And for them, I guess it was.

Home is just a bridge away, and behind me I hear a young boy's voice saying

"So... what's for dinner?"

To air is human; to do it right, divine.

Dear China,
Suck it up, Buttercup.

Smog over China

Dear Canada,

What the fuck is up?

Christy Clark, our esteemed premier, chose to phase out air care as soon as she took office.

It's a popular measure with everyone who owns a car, but it will have terrible consequences for those of us who like to breathe. 

Humans are crazy sometimes.

Ok, so everyone knows that pollution is a problem in China.  The astronauts on the space station don't need Vogue magazine to figure out what's going on. They can tell you this season's colours by looking carefully at the rivers in China. That picture of the smog up there?  That was taken in 2005.  

Today it's worse.

Waaaahay worse, in oh so many ways.

And what's their solution?  They're hoping for wind.

The pollution in China is everyone's problem.  We create it with our insatiable appetites and our "grow at all costs" economic philosophies. We do evil things to the environment over here in the western world, too, on a different scale, and in different ways, 

each of us, every day. China's little pollution problem is everybody's dirty little secret.

 It's also a weathervane for the rest of the world.

The BBC calls it 

   Airmageddon

They're talking about how the smog "raises doubts about modernisation."
Shocking.

 "How bad is the smog in Beijing? Well now, people can buy cans of fresh air, sez George over on CBC, courtesy of ABC, or something like that.

George introduced me to the ironic activist, Chen Guangbiao, nice guy. 

I have a serious weakness for nice guys.  (Just ask the man.)

Mr Chen is actually giving the cans of air away for free, cause he's such a nice guy. When asked if someone might buy some of this canned air, and being such a nice guy, Chen said yes.  

Bless.

Can you believe it?

He's giving away Artisanal Air.  

"The air comes in different "flavours," including pristine Tibet, post-industrial Taiwan, and revolutionary Yan'an, the area where the Communist Party got its start."

I'll take some pristine Tibetan mountain, please. cbc

At first I was all, "Yeah, this guy probably has his own mountain in Tibet," right before I remembered how people laughed when bottled water first came out.

 I got a chill, thinking of a future where you have to wear hepa filters and carry oxygen tanks, just to get around out of doors.

 Then I read this next bit and fell into a bit of a swoon of hero worship:

"He's also given away 5000 bicycles in the last two weeks to encourage people to ride instead of driving,"  which sort of reminds me of the man, who's forever hooking people up with wheels. 

It's the coolest thing, really. 

a few of the "cruiser fleet"

Who knew?  Turns out Chan's a man, too.  Blessed be, you've gotta love a hero.  

Chan's waaaaaay more man than Steve could ever be. "Who's Steve?" you're thinking, and THAT's a good question. I spent a good year or so wondering the verysame thing.

 A couple of years ago there was this running joke between a certain tribe of seven and eight year old boys here in the hood.  One of them would say "Steve," and the rest of them would always snicker and snigger with wicked delight, as if someone had just passed gas.  

Kids are highly intuitive, you know. That's when I noticed the army of Steves out there. 

It was a shocking revelation! 

Shocking! 

Now every time I hear the name Steve, I always snicker a little, too.

Steve of the zombies can't even imagine life without his precious car.

 Steve makes my petty ego all cozy and superior... I scorn his undead existence and revel in my elevated smugness.

 Cars are yucky.  I'm in a room full of bikes right now. I can put them all on rollers, one after another after another and make them go really fast for a very long time, and that would just make me stronger, fitter, healthier, happier.  I love bikes.  

Do the very same thing, get all up close and personal in a room and run your car on some rollers, and that will be that.

Shocking, but true.

 In the olden days, when mum and dad used to smoke in the car, they could open the windows and let some fresh air in.  Welcome to my early exposure to the principles of relativity: when it's thirty below, and you're hurtling down the icy highway travelling a solid 65 m (110 km) per hour, a cigarette actually takes an eternity.

Here on Planet Earth, we don't get to open a window to clear the air as we hurtle through space.

But we can still hope for wind, right? As kids, we used to love the frosty bite of that icy cold blast, at least compared with the toxic stink of their nasty cigarettes.

Life is so much better on a bike, Steve, you have no idea. And in your undeadness, you think your drive-everywhere life is alright, that all you need to do is switch to diesel.

Not only is Steve dangerous and deluded, Steve is ubiquitous.

 Steve IS the zombie hoards...

Fer real. And you know who their fearless leader is, don't you?

The CBC called him a control freak.  Shocking.
That he muzzles scientists is old news.

Worse, he's clearly unaware of his very own nature. Look at him.  You can bet he sleeps well at night, thinking he's fighting the good fight, when all along he's king of the zombies.
It's sad, really.

The First Nations are all over it, though.
It's all about the water, you see, and environmental oversights, which were dismantled with the second of  Steve's two omnibus budget bills. Poor Steve.
Clueless as usual.

China is choking on its smog, and we're all facing a system which is broken and yet we let our elected leaders press on with a misguided energy agenda which doesn't even remotely serve our best interests.

The leader of my Canada had better figure out that the most precious, valuable resource we have here in this rich nation of ours is fresh, clean water.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out which way the future lies,
but it does take a certain humanity to lead us into that future with grace and strength.

This leads me to that notorious cliff of existential despair, as I ponder the age old riddle:
Can a zombie be made to change its mind when it has no mind to speak of?

Like China, I am waiting upon the winds of change.

Dear Canada.
Please wake up.

There are simple, elegant solutions right here at hand;
there are heroes in our midst.
If we can imagine it, we can create it.

"There is nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." Bucky Fuller
This could be Heaven here on Earth." Tracy Chapman
The time has come.