Glenn Kubish

There is a refrain among city bicycle riders you will recognize. One of the marvels of bicycle riding, it goes, is the openness of the vehicle itself, the windshieldlessness of the vehicle itself that encourages and reminds the rider to connect with strangers and places that are right there. Right there in a way more real than they are when experienced from the cockpit of a car.

I sing this refrain every time I live a ride like today's back home down the Oliverbahn.


First, there was time to stop and consider the textures of elm bark and boa constrictor skin.



A few blocks on, it was easy to get off my bike and offer an arm of help, accepted, to this friendly stranger walking warily from curb to snowy curb.



Then a quick hello and muffled conversation through neck warmers with an Oliverbahn rider who said he appreciated the bare-ish bike lane and how they (the pronoun of choice for the City of Edmonton) hit a sweet spot with de-icer applications this season.



When I caught up to this…

At the Winter Bike Congress in Calgary earlier this month, I said, in a kind of convoluted manner that took six minutes and 40 seconds to spit out...I said, in 20 slides, some of which were painful to relive, some nostalgic...I said, in words I tried to get right in the one shot I had in front of some of the very people who I most wanted to say the word to...I said: thanks.

Here's my Pecha Kucha called We Winter Together.


This was me. Making a heartfelt point about Russia at last year's Pecha Kucha night in Moscow.
I fell in with a stellar band of winter bike riders and storytellers that night.
It would take me another month to fully appreciate what I'm doing in this picture.
I mean, look! I am lifting my left arm.



This was a month later.
This was my left arm.
My shoulder is fractured and dislocated.
I fell off my bike.
Like Caesar, I did not beware the ice of March.
But I was aware of how beautiful the ride was on the decline before the fall!



Look! The riverbank trees we…