Lake Effect & Bikes

They call it "lake effect" snow.

It's not snowing here, even though Toronto sits on Lake Ontario. But across the lake it's apparently snowing so much, that it beat some crazy record.




I'm still in awe of the amount of people I see riding their bikes around here.

I went outside today after doing my "top secret" assignment. I'm determined to stuff in a little bit of exploration even though I'm here on business.



I walked outside to catch some sites and to see if I could make it over to the museum. I figured the museum would be a good "warmth" goal. Once inside I petered around for a while and then headed back outside again for more browsing of culture. Today was colder then yesterday. I heard someone say something about 17 degrees maybe.

As the sun was starting to set and the wind was picking up, I went down into the subway and came upon the underground PATH. It's a long winding path of tunnels under ground filled with restaurants and shops - 17 miles worth of tunnels.

I'm not a big shopper but it was interesting enough to walk and walk throughout the maze underneath the city and get a little lost. Apparently they were first built in the early 1900's and a few more were built to connect some of the hotels in the 1920's. In the 70's is when most of it was built.

If I were homeless, it's where I would spend time walking and hiding from my demons in the winters.

It's very beautiful here. Reminds me a lot of SF, but cleaner. Even with all the homeless, they seem to maintain things here well.

The bikes, well they're every where; chained and locked to bike posts and being ridden around. And there are bike posts every where. Lots of abandoned bikes, left to wilt in the snow with rusty chains and smashed fenders. And plenty of bikes just waiting for their riders to return to bring them back home.

I read last night that during the warmer months they have a program called "bike share" where you pay a small fee to use one of the city owned yellow bikes. You check them out like library books and can use them for up to 3 days at a time.



They also like to do this around here. ..

I'd need to be drunk to do it myself. A few martinis and then I might consider it. I think that's how I was coerced into taking this Canadian ice trip - drinking a few too many martinis.