Glenn Kubish

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...

Tonight, I was one of nine Pecha Kucha presenters at the Winter Cycling Congress in Montréal. We gathered at a restaurant in Parc-La Fontaine to share our takes on riding a bicycle in this beautiful season. I talked about Leonard Cohen.   I’m Glenn from Edmonton. It’s so cool to be here. In winter. On the streets of Montreal. Dis-moi ce qui se passe dans les rues de Montréal, the great Leonard Cohen asks us.  Tell me what’s happening on the streets of Montreal. Well, Monsieur Cohen, we are riding our bicycles on the streets of Montreal. Just like you. Montreal is Leonard Cohen’s city. This is the poet when he was four, riding his tricycle on Belmont Avenue.  It’s all there already, isn’t it?  The passion. The fashion. The commitment to rhythm. When you pedal down-up, down-up, down-up enough times, that rhythm gets inside. That picture is from summer... ..but let’s claim Leonard Cohen as the poet laureate for winter bicycle riders, shall we...

This morning I woke up sick. My chest was tight. My nose was dammed. There was a pain behind my left eye, probably because liquid was backed up into my sinuses. I breathed a big breath in three noticeable stages to fill my lungs. I had two things to do. Get my fatbike back from Redbike. They were bringing up the handlebars so there wasn't as much stress on my upper spine. (See 2015 for painful story behind the need for this modification.)  And I had promised to see Dub. He is a good friend and I don't see him as much now that I'm no longer in the newsroom. He helped get me through those five years and helped me put in perspective some unpleasant people. Cue my first wrong decision: He was gracious, as always. Texted back to get better, see you soon. Then I went to Redbike to pick up my bike. On the way home, I saw what I rarely see on the Groat Bridge in the winter, which was people standing by the railing, looking downstream. Then, in a pool of water on the ri...