Glenn Kubish

Dear Land Rover, My name is Glenn. I'm the bicycle commuter you passed this morning on 102 Ave. I am writing you this short letter to remind you that you were supposed to turn right on 105 St. And then you were supposed to turn right on 104 St. And then on 103 St. And then I lost sight of you. You were trucking it pretty good. Take a look: You were supposed to make those rights because, at that time of the morning, the lane you were in, the curb lane, dictates that you not go straight through. Straight through at that time of the morning is reserved for buses, taxis, and, yes, bicycles. Times of the sign There are signs posted to this effect. They are easy to read and interpret. All you really need to know is the time of day. You have a clock on your dashboard to help you with this. If the time of day is, like it was when you zoomed passed me, around 7:30 am, then it's not legal to do what you did. And did. And then did again. These are the signs you ignored. (...

It's 1975. The Edmonton Eskimos have just scored a touchdown. The CHQT fire truck is about to start a victory lap around the Clarke Stadium infield, its riders skilled in dodging with some élan the rain of hot dog foil balls to be aimed towards them by jubilant fans.  Jogging onto the field is #26, Dave Cutler, the toe-tied place-kicker on his way to convert the touchdown. For Cutler, this is automatic. For those in the Knothole Gang, the fenced-off bleacher zoo in the endzone into which the football will be drilled, the real battle is about to touch off. Knothole Gang Patch The Knothole Gang was sponsored by Woodward's, the grocery-department store that, like CHQT, Clarke Stadium, the young Dave Cutler, and 1974 themselves, are no longer around. But then it is very much alive. Like anarchy is alive. And at that moment, with the convert about to happen, there is no collection of kids more alive in the whole north end, or the world, same thing. In your imagi...

#coffeeoutside attracts a crowd The view from the ground of a #coffeeoutside meeting in Edmonton is pretty cool.  I also imagine the view from above.  I see bicycle commuters pointing in from all directions of the city toward Faraone Park, or Government House Park, or to the gazebo at McIntyre Park in Old Strathcona, moving along the spokes of road and path toward the hub of our Friday morning community meeting.  We are a loose affiliation of people who love bicycles and coffee and the outside and what Edmonton is becoming as it becomes a little more tolerant of those who go no car or low car. It's a good scene As many Fridays as we can get a quorum (on some days that has been a gathering of one), we start in a park outside over coffee. Some bring coffee in thermoses. Others take some morning warmth from the communal thermos. Others fire up miniature stoves and brew on the spot. We're on the verge of one of us roasting fair trade beans right there. W...

I have again begun to appreciate the complexity that it is to eat a cupcake. It started, innocently enough, with a question. "How," asked Brian, a friend at work, " do you eat a cupcake?" (I am wary of these "questions" at work from "friends" ever since being stung by this one: "Glenn, as an outsider, what is your opinion of the human race?!" Yikes. :) The very fact of the cupcake question suggested that the three obvious answers -- remove crown from stem and eat them individually; tip cupcake sideways and have at 'er; and, dive into icing head on-- were not the right answers, so, it was learn-to-do-by-doing time. The crumbless floor was Brian's: Step 1: Detach crown from stem Step 2: Invert crown and reassemble by gently squishing upside-down crown and stem into shape of sandwich Step 3: Eat, enjoy Step 4: Tell someone else Cookie sandwich discovery moment! Once the laughter lessened, a rich lesson was lef...

I saw four interesting things on my walk home this afternoon. I am still thinking about what I saw downtown. First, the driver of a SUV yelling at a cyclist, who was so incensed that he had let his bicycle drop onto the sidewalk, broken off a chunk of icy windrow and hurled it across two lanes of car tops and toward the sealed SUV driver. The icy meteorite of rage gently landed short of its target, in a puff of white. That was on 102 Ave. near 103 St. I walked on. A half block later, a pickup driver shot the motorist in the next lane the finger. Seconds later, at 104 St, a pedestrian running for the bus received the driver's signal to meet him a block ahead at the marked stop. The running woman exhaled a twist of water vapour and stepped into the intersection and slipped and then lost her balance and fell onto the street with enough violence that the purse and satchel she was carrying landed on top of her helpless body. She heaved herself up and said she was okay, twice, a...

January 2015 A fair chunk of what I write about in this blog are the upstream thoughts the break loose and float silently into view as I ride my bike along the North Saskatchewan River in Edmonton. I keep a Go Pro on my handlebars to preserve the scenes. And, then, typically, I add music as I edit the video, falsifying it all. Falsifying it toward a kind of truth, for sure. The music does stand in for feeling of the ride, music suggested by the sky or the light or the joy of it all. But the truth is that the rides are very quiet. No car radio. No bass line. No iPod. No screens emitting sounds of any kinds. But there are things to hear. Below are seven short pieces in real-time flows of a morning commute earlier this month. Together, they make a silent case for why I talk so much about riding a bicycle. Chapter One (38 seconds): Cars Cars Cars Cars Cars Then No Cars On days like this, as I pedal north on the 142 St. service road, the red-eyed, segmented, million-ton ...

Bill Clark, from all I have seen, is one great cop. The city owes him a lot. The families of murder victims that he has given answers to owe him a lot. Prosecutors owe him a lot. News reporters, who get the benefit of his unique personality and his talent at clipping up (as we would say in the TV news game), owe him a lot. He's the real thing. Like Andy Sipowicz on NYPD Blue. Now, Bill Clark has convinced more than a few of us it is time to pay. :) Bill Clark is making news these days, angry that the Edmonton Police Service did not get all it asked for during budget hearings at city hall. Quick background: Edmonton city council granted the police service only 87 of the 136 new employees the force asked for in the 2015 budget.  Clark made his case to the media, and made headlines by comparing the money the cops didn't get to money that is going to other city initiatives, including bicycle lanes and a suicide-prevention barrier on the High Level Bridge. Quick backgro...