PART ONE
The 40-year old novice commuter cyclist

Have you ever found yourself sitting alone in your car, stopped in traffic, looking around you at all the other individuals in their cars, and thought “I’m part of the problem here, not part of the solution.” It happened to me one day, on the Knight St. Bridge.

The Knight St. Bridge connects Vancouver to Richmond, BC. It’s a busy four-lane highway, arching across the Fraser River. Traffic merges onto it from multiple lanes at both ends, and the north end features a few additional ramp choices to and from Mitchell Island. Concrete dividers run down the middle of the bridge, separating the two northbound lanes from the southbound ones. More dividers at the curb protect the sidewalks that hang out on each side of the bridge. A metal rail fence on the very outside of the sidewalk prevents pedestrians from being blown off into the might Fraser, way below. Cyclists are also obliged to share the sidewalk with pedestrians, as the roadway shoulder is narrow.

The Knight St. Bridge is what you might call a blue-collar bridge. It has none of the architectural appeal of the Alex Fraser Bridge that connects Delta to New Westminster, or the old world charm of the Burrard St. Bridge, or the modern, crisp feel of the Cambie St. Bridge. It is strictly functional, built to handle loads of trucks and waves of commuters in their automobiles. But as Vancouver and Richmond have grown, those waves of commuters often become not so much a wave, as a standing pool. Driving across the bridge at rush hour is what the perky radio ‘copter-riding reporters might call “stop ‘n go”.

Sitting in my minivan one morning, in the stop ‘n go, I noticed a cyclist ride by on the sidewalk. He looked hardcore—helmet, sunglasses, fluorescent-coloured bike jacket under a beat up backpack, army green shorts and black leggings, and riding a stripped down mountain bike. Over the next several minutes a few other hardy souls rode by as I inched along. “Man”, I thought, “those guys are crazy”. I could not imagine myself ever doing that.

That night I woke up in the middle of the night, with a chest pain. I’d heard of 40-year old guys like me dropping dead of heart attacks. Was I having a heart attack? I waited, kept breathing and seemed to be OK. But I had more nights like that, so I went to my doctor. She figured it was stress, but just to be safe she sent me to get an ECG. “If there’s any problem, I’ll phone you, otherwise everything’s fine.” The next morning when I arrived at the office, there was a message waiting from my doctor. She was sending me to a heart specialist, pronto. Uh-oh.

The specialist got me on a treadmill, wired me up, and then nearly killed me running on the thing for 30 minutes. I got off, drenched in sweat and with a burning sensation in my legs. I was gasping for air, and feeling sorry for myself. The result was I had a heart arrhythmia. Maybe I’d had it all my life, no way to tell. But he did tell me I needed to get going with some cardio exercise immediately. This desk-jockey was going to have to get physical.

I took up running. Well, jogging, really. The problem was, I hated it. And when you hate something, you resist doing it, right? So I decided to try something I had really enjoyed as a kid—riding a bike. Recreational riding was fun and I got into it, and eventually I started to think about those nuts commuting to work.

The headline worried me: “Bank slashes rates as markets crash”. Slashes? Crashes? Like, the Bank of Canada suddenly, unexpectedly dropped the prime lending rate by a full percent? Like, my RRSP mutual funds have tanked? Um, no, turns out the Bank of Canada cut the rate by the usual increment when they change the rate up or down—a quarter of 1%. Oh, so that’s a “slash”? OK, so the USA cut their rate by .75. That is approaching “slasher” territory in my view. But a cautious .25 is barely newsworthy, let alone justifies the worrisome headline. As for the crash, well, the main Canadian index was actually up today, but whatever.

Are we really so saturated with information that a simple .25 cut story needs to be presented as a five-alarm fire? Well, not everyone reported it that way. In fact, for some BC pundits, it was almost good news.

Now, I don’t know how I can explain this without sounding like a flake; maybe I’ll just have to sound like a flake. But here it is—if we all believe the markets are going to crash and economic woe is heading our way like a runaway train, well, guess what—that’s what we’ll get. I am not advocating ignoring financial realities, of course, but I am saying we need to think for ourselves and dig a little deeper, because if we just read the first slash and crash article and took it at face value, we’d probably be looking for some rope and an exposed rafter right about now. If we all believe that we can muddle through together and find ways to create a sustainable future, I think that’s exactly what will happen. We can choose what we want to focus on, if we can just filter the media hype down a couple of levels.

Is the US economy in trouble? Depends who you ask; sort of like climate change, in that respect. My view, based on my financial experience as someone who has a mortgage and knows how to balance a chequebook, is that you can’t take on huge debt, run a deficit, and keep spending money, forever. You just can’t. The people you borrow the money from are eventually going to say no more. Let’s just say whoever wins the presidency in November is going to need more than a few energy-efficient light bulbs in the White House to find some black ink on the national balance sheet.

Consider the sports car. Ah yes, the quintessential symbol of a full blown mid-life crisis. If you find yourself with a little disposable cash, and an urge to recapture a youth that you probably didn’t actually have because you couldn’t have afforded it at the time, then you my friend may find yourself seriously contemplating acquiring that big toy. But before you lay your money down, let’s have a little look at a few do’s and don’ts.

First of all, it will have to be a vehicle that says “sporty”, even if only in name and looks. So, for example, if you’re thinking that a restored ’56 International Harvester pickup truck just like the one your Dad used to drive would be the ticket, forget it. Nope, sorry, that won’t do. Really it comes down to two choices: foreign two-seater or Detroit iron muscle car.

If you want to say to the world “I’m eccentric”, look for a used Italian or German sports car from 40 or 50 years ago. If you want to say “I’m jolly eccentric, and I like to spend more time under the car than in it”, then get yourself an old British sports car (don’t forget to budget for a tweed cap and jacket, pipe optional, for those times you can actually get the thing to run). Unfortunately, if you decide Detroit iron is the ticket, you may be saying “my best days are behind me”, just like Detroit. I mean, what do you really think when you see a gray-haired guy piloting a ’74 ‘Vette into the parking lot at the mall? Yeah, me too; Viagra. And if he’s driving a brand new ‘Vette, you’re probably thinking “has a boatload of money, has left his third wife and taken up with some 21-year old he’s constantly trying to impress. I’ll bet he’s not really happy”. Admit it, you do.

But the feeling won’t go away. You still hanker after the kind of car you couldn’t have as a teenager. The manufacturers know this. Look at the surge of old-is-new-again designs out there: Mustang, Camaro (coming soon), Mini, Challenger (also soon), VW Beetle and so on. Even Fiat figured it out.

If you’re not a weekend mechanic, then new is probably the way to go. The upside is better reliability, better fuel economy, lower CO2 emissions, airbags, traction control, ABS, and of course the most significant automotive advancement in a long time—cupholders! What you’ll be missing is chrome, fins and carburetors.

If you sit tight and do nothing, the feeling may pass. Or you may settle for a compromise. I’ve told my wife if the urge hits, she may come home one day to find I’ve bought a set of mags for the minivan. In the meantime, you can window shop to your heart’s delight online. You can find a lot of cool stuff here. But be warned, we tend to make the world out of those thoughts we keep feeding, so if you’re not careful, you could wind up with a ’73 240Z (some rust, runs good) and a puddle of oil in your driveway. But hey, if that’s what it takes to find your mojo, let’s go for a ride!

The Steinway piano is to pianos what Rolls Royce is to cars. It may not be everyone’s favourite, but its’ name is synonymous with the best that money can buy. And so it was with great anticipation that we music students awaited the arrival of a Steinway grand at our college. We already had a Yamaha grand piano, but this—a Steinway—this was something else altogether.

The big day came, and the piano, still in its’ crate, was carted into the music building. There were several of us hanging around that day, and we were keen to help the college facility guys un-crate the piano. The piano teacher would have none of it, insisting that we must wait until a local piano technician is available to oversee the whole procedure. We assured her there was nothing to worry about. We were just going to help these guys get it out of the crate and mount it on its’ legs, and since there were so many of us here today, it was a good time to do it. Maybe when the technician arrived, there wouldn’t be so many people around to help him. She fluttered around like a bird whose nest is under attack, a picture of nervous anxiety. We men got on with the job, and she left the room, no doubt to track down the piano technician at once.

If you’ve ever seen a grand piano delivered in a crate you’ll know that they’re delivered with the legs and pedals detached. The piano is stood on edge in the crate, and that’s how they’re able to fit them through doorways.

The facility guys got a crowbar and started pulling off one side of the crate, revealing the dull black lid-side of the piano. When the side of the crate was completely removed, they walked around to the other side. All of the students walked around to the other side too, to watch the work in progress. Except for me. Something told me it just wasn’t a good idea, with the piano on its’ side like that, for everyone to be standing on one side of it. So I stood there, hands in pockets, while the un-crating continued on the other side. Suddenly after one vigorous jerk with the crowbar, the piano did a little bounce and flopped—if you can imagine a Steinway grand “flopping”—my way. I was about to be crushed by a flopping great Steinway.

In an instant, my hands came out of my pockets and came up between me and the Steinway. Time stood still, more or less. I stood pretty still, too, palms pressed against the lid, knees bent, back swayed. Everyone stood there motionless, silent, like they were expecting me to just push it back upright. Finally I gave out a little grunt that meant “hey, could use a hand over here” and a bunch of guys rushed around to my side and we got the piano back. What happened next was a real guy moment. We all stood looking at each other, and it was understood that we had just had a real close call, and a silent pact was being made that we would absolutely not mention this to the piano teacher or any of the faculty.

Finally someone said to me, “I have never seen someone move so fast in their lives”. Having to catch a piano will do that to you. You will move faster, be stronger, than you ever thought you could. But like any hero, I just did what I had to do.

A few years ago I got past the denial stage and finally acquiesced to acquiring eyeglasses. I hadn’t read CD liner notes (anyone remember what a pre-recorded music CD from a store looks like?) for a couple of years before that, and no kind of squinting was working any more. I could not see the small print, but I did see the writing on the wall.

Without my glasses on, I now notice a lot of design elements that I never did before. It’s been surprising to discover just how many gadgets and packages come with such small printing, directions, instructions or interfaces, that without my glasses I have no hope of operating them. I cannot tear along the dotted line, I cannot plug the headphones into the hole marked because the symbol is just slightly raised off its’ same-coloured background and I cannot make it out any better than Helen Keller could have. I cannot open this end only, see details below, and read the fine print that all smart shoppers are applauded for reading. In short, without my glasses, I have to live in the macro world. The micro has become, if not invisible, very fuzzy to me now.

As a kid in the summer, I typically spent a lot of time outside. This was OK because back in those days the planet was protected by something we used to call the “ozone layer” (feel free here to make quotation marks with your hands, a la Dr. Evil). And spending all that time outdoors, we became acquainted with bugs and insects, and the details of things growing in the garden. A big treat was to look at anything, and I mean anything, under a microscope. As a kid, it’s easy to live in the micro world. The macro world is for grownups. Cuban missile crisis? Whatever, kids want to know how rockets work, and whether we can build one in the back yard.

As grownups, we are encouraged to see the big picture, plan ahead, think globally whilst acting locally and all that. Very macro stuff. (Sing with me, “Macro macro man, I want to be a Macro man”). I think this has something to do with that saying of stop and smell the roses. It’s back to a micro world, where little things mean a lot. When you watch folks even older than me, many of them seem to have found their way back to that micro world, at least part of the time.

Once in a while, I guess, it’s good to sweat the details, read the fine print, and take a close look at the bugs outside your house. But whether you find yourself living large or small, macro or micro, stay curious. If you’re not learning, you’re dying.

Now that we have the internet, and blogging, it’s easy to surf around and find a whole lot of people talking about a whole lot of things, from lousy service to lousy products, pet peeves to rants about former lovers. And it seems like some people forget that it’s not a case of “what happens on the ‘net stays on the ‘net”. Uh-uh. Anyone who’s ever used Google’s cached pages knows stuff can hang around a long time. So that rant you posted about the company you work for when you were having a bad day is still out there, and maybe it’s been copied and pasted and printed who knows how many times by how many people and shared with people outside your immediate circle. You are leaving your legacy. It used to be people had cute little locks on their diaries. Now they put it out there for the world to read.

Anytime I’ve ever researched any college or university, public or private, if I dig around enough I will find dirt. Always. Huh. Isn’t there a perfect school out there who pleases all of the people all of the time? Guess not, but there certainly are charlatans in the business, and it’s disheartening to those who really take education seriously.

Any of us who remember our college and university days remember blowing off steam and railing against the authorities who ran the place and didn’t get it. We did not know, or care, what challenges they may have been facing in terms of their budgets, staffing issues, office politics, and who knows what. And should we have? We were there to get an education, without necessarily realizing all the ramifications of that word, “education”. I always liked that Mark Twain quote about never letting my schooling interfere with my education.

But if we were railing against our schools 30 years ago, why haven’t these problems been solved? Why should anyone have to still be complaining about incompetent teachers or inadequate courses, etc.? Well, one of the trickiest aspects of delivering education is that it’s a moving target. In my lifetime, I have already had jobs THAT DIDN’T EXIST when I was in college. So how did my specific schooling ever train me for that?

Anyway, if you’re thinking of publicly lambasting your school or teachers on the ‘net, let me offer two points to consider (albeit, from my middle-aged out-of-touch perspective, but hey, don’t rub it in, alright?). As you’re probably at that point where you’re trying to start a career in your chosen field, and this will invariably require you to work with other people (whether you work for them or they work for you), if you slam your schooling, your prospective employers and employees will learn two things about you:

1. You make poor decisions
You picked the school, right? It cost a lot of money, and you did the research, right? And you still blew it on a big, expensive, important, decision that could affect your entire life?

2. You don’t take responsibility
Who is ultimately responsible for your education? Apparently not you—it’s all up to your lame teachers and the crooked, bonehead administrators who created the living hell that was your school experience.

I am not advocating putting up with crap, or shrugging off inept, or worse—academically unsound—schooling. Of course you should do something about it.

But if you really want to kick start a career, despite a dodgy educational experience, maybe you would stand out from the crowd a little better if you expressed what you learned from your poor experience, how you would apply what you’ve learned in the future, what you would suggest the culprit school do to mend their ways, and finally what advice you could give the next batch of prospective students to help them pick the right school, or at least make the most of the school they’re already at.

I mean, picture the job interview. “It says here you graduated from the” Acme School of Everything”, and you reply “Yeah, but it was a crap school and they ripped me off. I never learned a thing there.” Ooh, impressive. Next!

No, I’m not suggesting you blow smoke. If the school sucked, it sucked, but put the emphasis on what you learned from that experience, if not what you learned from the school. Rant to your friends. Rant to the school. But rant on the ‘net and you just may be closing yourself off from some golden opportunities.

I’ve read (so it must be true!) that as many as 3 in 4 HR execs google prospective hires. I’ve done it myself. What if googling your name brings up some blog where you’ve posted a poorly-spelled, petulant hissy fit, running people down and making derogatory comments about your peers, colleagues, or alma mater? What would a prospective associate think of that? You can bet it won’t do a lot to make you look like someone other people would want to work with.

When you’re watching a soccer game (football to some), the clock ticks up to note how much time has passed. The actual time the game will end is a little fuzzy, ultimately up to the referee to decide. I think a lot of us live our lives that way. We know it’s going to end, but not sure when, exactly, so we kind of run around, trying to work with others towards a common goal.

In the game of ice hockey, the clock ticks down to show you how much time is left. Hence, the familiar announcement “last minute of play…”, which usually spurs the players into one last effort to do whatever it is they can to win the game. So I got to thinking, what if my life was timed that way. If I was given the rules of the game early on, say, “you have 65 years, 3 months, and 5 days to live, and there will be no overtime, no scoring shoot outs. You get to play regulation time only”, what would I have done differently with the time I’ve “played” so far? What would my “game strategy” have been? Would I play defensively, try to stay out of the penalty box? Or maybe offensively, driving to score on every shift? Maybe casually, like hey, it’s just a game?

Of course the game strategy we employ as adults is very much the result of our upbringing. Were we raised in an atmosphere of conservative pragmatism, dreamy optimism, or a confused mix of both? Was it OK to be ourselves growing up? Is it OK to be ourselves now?

Well, thinking backwards from the end is something some of us can do, and those lives give rise to phrases like “living for today”, “live each day as if it were your last”, and so on. If I were living today as if it were my last, what would I do today? Party like it’s 1999? Or get the Dalai Lama on the phone for some last minute advice?

So guys, we’re in the game, the clock is ticking down, and if our game strategy hasn’t made us feel like winners so far, maybe we need to call a time out, have a chat with our peers and the coach (hmmm, maybe finding a coach is a good idea at this point), and figure out how we’re going to play out the remaining time. Because wouldn’t we really prefer to have our victory in the bag before the clock runs out?

Um, like I’ve been saying…
Music’s Future Digital and Online: Experts

Welcome to mid-life, man. Maybe I got here before you, maybe you got here before me, but whatever, here we are. You can tell you’ve hit mid-life because it suddenly dawns on you one day that perhaps you now have less of your life in front of you than you have behind you. When that thought crosses your mind, you’ve arrived.

So when that mid-life thought is mysteriously triggered (is it built into our brains, like a neural timebomb?), you can’t really see things the same anymore. Oh sure, at first there will be lots of lapses as you forget all about it and carry on just like before. But bit by bit, that little thought gets louder and more insistent, and starts drowning out the other inane stuff vying for attention. Yep, you eventually have to face it, say hello, and start figuring out what it all means.

Once you have firmly grappled with the idea that perhaps the clock is winding down, you will find yourself asking what you’re doing with your life. For the majority of us, that means we realize that somewhere along the way (and for those of you who are, or were, married, do not use your first marriage date as a default date to determine when your self-determined pleasure-seeking authority-bucking life officially died) we sort of lost track of who we were and what we thought we were going to be when we grew up. I mean, how many of us dreamed of a career in middle management? Exactly.

We had no idea what it would feel like to feel so young yet look in the mirror and see some guy with grey/thinning/no hair, an expanded waistline and nose hair, with a bathroom shelf that includes potions, pills, elixirs, patches and pastes for everything from whiter cinema-quality teeth to, well, you don’t even want to know. I mean, who the hell is that guy? And what did he do with ME?

• As a manager, empowering people is great, but you have to follow up
• Someone else can make you the boss, but it’s up to you to make yourself a leader
• If somebody bugs me, I’ve got to look at what they’re doing that bugs me to see the same behaviour in myself
• Nobody really knows what I mean. I don’t really understand what anyone else means, either
• Listen. No, really, listen
• Assume the best, provided you’ve done all you can reasonably do
• How to play guitar
• How to make pancakes and coffee
• How to use e-mail