Glenn Kubish

It’s been cold here.  Cold is a preserving agent.   Here are three things that left behind tracks of happiness and gratitude during a bike ride home through that cold.                               1. Cold comfort   I was breakfasted up, helmeted up, goggled up and ready to head into the dark December morning. First, though, a quick reality check with Siri from Cupertino. This is the actual convo: Me: Siri, what’s the temperature outside? Siri: It’s negative 26 degrees outside. Me: Well, that’s a rather negative comment. Siri: I’m sorry. Me: No, that’s what we say up here! Siri: Is there something else I can help with? Me: Well, if you can help with the temperature? Siri: It’s negative 27 degrees outside. Before another degree went south, I resolved up, opened the back door and walked outside into an atmospheric cloud of dryer exhaust, got on my fatbike and pedalled for downtown. Thirty seconds of ...

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! ...

There must be imperceptible valleys of isolation between us. Email has revealed this communication gap. You email me. I see it drop onto the top of the ladder of messages on my smartphone. I am content for now to know that your message has come in. I do not respond. You may feel slight anxiety with my delayed response to your call. I respond later. This is called asynchronous communication. But it is all asynchronous communication, isn't it? The email version is just easy to see. Like the interval of white space between communication  in the previous paragraph and It is at the start of this paragraph is easy to see. After I had hit the enter/return button. Yesterday, Coffee Outside was marvellous. Most Fridays for almost three years now, summer or winter, for 10 minutes or two hours, a group of us bicycle riders in Edmonton have met in Faraone Park to drink and brew coffee and talk about the weather, the city, our travels, the media, bicycle components, issues of the d...

Tonight in Edmonton, NextGen hosted a pecha kucha evening devoted to winter as part of the Winter Cities Shakeup conference now in full swing. I shared the stage with some really interesting speakers, and am grateful for that. I used my 6 minutes and 40 seconds to thank my friends at Coffee Outside. I’m going to give you the inside scoop on a little movement called Coffee Outside, but let me jump to my all-important conclusion: You’re all invited to join us for Coffee Outside in Edmonton. We meet most Friday mornings, summer or winter, in a park by High Level bridge. If you’re in the neighbourhood, please make a point of stopping by. Because next to appreciating coffee, and the outside, appreciating stopping by , stopping , is what you have to do to appreciate Coffee Outside. The ability to stop is an overlooked good of riding a bicycle in the city. It’s completely overlooked when we seal ourselves in our automobiles, that’s for sure. Stopping can be existentially diffi...