The Planet Is Saved!

Saturday night the whole world came together in a huge show of support for what's becoming their favorite planet. For an hour, all of us shut down all the points in our house that drew power from the grid. We burned candles. We talked about the environment. Some even fondue-d!

For one whole hour.

Sixty minutes.

I really enjoyed it. The house was so quiet. The neighborhood was filled with people out walking as families, taking in that suddenly-brighter starlit sky. My family got into it too. My son commented that he liked the silence, and he grudgingly passed on watching the Habs/Leafs game (which, as it turned out, wasn't the result we'd wanted anyway). My wife said it made her much more aware of the "phantom power" draws around our house.

In the midst of Earth Hour, my sister called from Arizona. I asked her what they'd be doing when their turn came in an hour and she said: "what is it?" She said there hadn't been a word spoken in their rural corner of the state. I had to tell her the concept, to which she commented that it was "a great idea." Yet she was unsure as to why Earth Hour wasn't being promoted on any of their local media.

And that's where my cynical brain starts to get fired up. In Sydney Australia, Paris, Toronto, Kingston, Seattle or any other modern, post-industrial centre, we already get it! The people in charge (the Dick Cheneys, and the Stephen Harpers) privately have to admit that we need to change some things before all is lost, but they won't in public for fear that we'll suffer dire economic consequences, and worse...they'll fall from power. The public though, is showing that more and more, we really do get it.

But in the other world... In the parts of our planet where people have for too long suffered in poverty and oppression, and where in just the past decade they've begun to taste the possibility of a better, modern, more convenient way of life...in India, China, Brazil, wherever. In those places, all the awareness in the world about climate change, won't keep the population or their leaders from the status quo. In places where the media is used for little more than just a pr service of the government, the public will know only what the government wants them to know. Perhaps rural Arizona could be lumped in there, along with rural Alberta and a lot more places that are closer to home than we'd ever imagine.

Earth Hour is a great way to get the message out to ourselves. It's a really important exercise we should partake in on a regular basis to keep us on-task, to fix what we can with global warming.

But we've got to get the other world to buy in too.

Al Gore is making trips to India now to preach environmentalism. He's teaching small classes of local folks to get the message out to the masses, in hopes that the billion citizens of that country will be there with us. He thinks he can do the same in China (if he can turn that regime around in their thinking, he deserves a second Nobel). Perhaps he could take some shorter trips to Yuma, Cold Lake, and Tamworth to make sure we're all on the same page.

I laughed on Saturday night when I saw it. We'd already overloaded the grid for the few hours before "lights-out" by charging up our cell phones, Psps, laptops...whatever. Now here in the middle of our our of self-congratulatory hour of darkness, I saw who the true benefactors of this Earth Hour were. It was written in clear, easy-to-read font right on the package of tea light candles we were all burning: "Product of China."

Time to Commit

About a year ago my good friend Chuck the Cop talked me into joining his Ironcops For Cancer team. This was a group of motivated individuals who've decided to help raise cash for the Canadian Cancer Society by fundraising, and to draw attention to this, they compete in an Ironman triathlon.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

I talk to quite a few people every day on the radio, and my family has been deeply touched by cancer, and I like to train with motivated people. So I had to say "yes."

Yes to long gruelling bike rides. Yes to swimming until my eye sockets puff out like an iguana. Yes to running long, slow, solitary runs. Yes to stinky, sweaty, filthy running/biking/swimming gear in piles near the washing machine. Yes to eating even more than I already do. Yes to constantly feeling tired. Yes to every joint in my old beat up body screaming at me to stop.

Perhaps if I'd paid more attention to what Chuck the Cop was saying to me, was that I was saying "yes" to actually RACING in the Ironman triathlon too!

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

After that finally sunk in, I started to slowly freak myself out. I've raced three 1/2 Ironmans in my short career, and none of them went well. I'm getting older, slower and no smarter, so how the hell was I supposed to turn it all around and finish one of the most challenging outdoor pursuits going?

Oh, and I've also gone on record as saying I thought Ironman "was a ridiculous distance." Oh, and that "friends don't let friends race marathons." I've never run longer than 30km at one time, and that was just last year, and it was long, and it was tough, and I swore I'd never go that distance again.

I used to ride at a respectable speed. Last year that all got away from me, and I found myself getting dropped by the other riders earlier and more often than ever.

Let's not even talk about the pool. I'm not a good swimmer. I'm not a mediocre swimmer. At best, I'm a bad swimmer.

4km swim...180km bike...42.2km run

By the end of last summer, I'd raced another 1/2 Ironman. My swim was so-so. My bike ride was dead-on what I was aiming for. My run blew big time. It was even slower than the last time I tried to do a half.

Another couple of races brought less than great results.

Then I got injured running.

Finally, I found every reason to not swim; not ride...just plain not do anything.

I went to a talk with Tony O'Keefe. Tony is a mutant. He races ultra-Ironmans. These take place over two days, and in them the athlete has to do basically double the Iron distance...which is ridiculous. And Tony is one of the best in the sport!

But I listened to what he said that night, and I listened very well. He told us all that we do this running and triathloning, because we want to be good at it. We want to beat our last time. We want to beat that person who finished in front of us before. We want to win in whatever way we can.

I thought about how I'd talked about the Ironman: Stupid distance. I'm not trained. There's no way I could pull it off. Don't have the time to commit to that. I've been injured. My bad friends made me enter. I realised what a load of crap that was. I wanted to do an Ironman race as badly as anyone, and I wanted to do it well.

I just didn't want to SEEM like that's what I wanted. I dreaded the thought of letting people down, so I was acting like it was something that was being foisted upon me. That way if things didn't go well, it wasn't my fault. And if I did really well, then I must be really special. What a crap attitude.

So, I went to the pool. The hated pool. The horrible, breath-stealing, humiliating pool. And I started swimming. 50 laps the first time. 50 laps that seemed like 500. Nice old ladies doing the breast stroke were passing me. I had to stop at the end of each lap and hold on to the pool deck to catch my breath. But I went.

And I stuck my bike on the trainer and rode. 1/2 Hour the first time. Didn't think I could get through another second, but I did, and I told myself that I 'd do the same thing at least twice more every week.

And I ran. I hurt, but I ran. It wasn't far, and it wasn't fast, but I ran. Funny thing is the injury went away, and I remembered why I do this silly sport: I love to run!

By the end of January, I was getting in the pool even on the days I didn't want to. I was riding the bike at a ridiculous time every morning (I work at 5am...you do the math), and I was saying "yes" to everyone who wanted to go for a little jog.

By the end of February, I was starting to see results in the pool. I was feeling better on the bike and my running was getting pretty smooth.

Now here I am about four months away from the race, and I feel like I'm on track. It's not just that I can train. I want to train. I'm having fun in the pool. The spins are giving me lots of time to catch up on my iPod and the runs wash away the stresses of the day.

4km swim...180km ride...42.2km run

It's not gonna be easy.

But it's what I want to do...and it's gonna be fun!

Shovel This!

In November my sister went to Arizona.

Her husband scored a sweet contract gig that would carry him through the colder months of Canadian winter, and they liked the idea of a paid vacation, so she went. Just before taking off, she asked my son if he'd look after shovelling their walks and driveway to make the house look "lived-in" for the winter, and of course he said "yes." She even offered him what we thought at the time was an unnecessary financial incentive, which thrilled him more as he's saving to buy a laptop.

Then she flew south.

Both my wife and I were concerned that she was overpaying our young guy, considering the four times we shovelled our own drive last winter, but a deal is a deal.

Then winter happened.

Though many respected meteorologists and climatologists have explained their theories of what's affecting our winter here in Kingston, none have made a lick of sense to me. It started snowing one day in November...and never stopped! Our driveway has narrowed to a fraction of it's size; my sister's walk is exactly one-shovel wide now, with little hope of widening soon thanks to ice accumulation, and the snowbanks are so high at the end of our driveways, that we're considering a traffic-control tower so we can safely egress into the street. Even the paper delivery people have had to quit tromping across the lawns between houses in our neighborhoods, as I believe some of them were lost in the deep snow (I shudder to think of what horrors will be revealed to us come the spring thaw).

I called my sister in Arizona to tell her this, but she seemed distracted by the extreme heat, and had to cut the call short.

My son is just one person. The dumps of snow, ice pellets and just plain ice are too much for any one, so he's recruited my wife and me to help him perform his duty. He barely has the energy left to clear the snow from our drive and walkway, let alone deliver his papers, do his schoolwork and play Wii! But now, even my wife and I are losing it. Her back is aching, and my arms have gone to jelly. It's so bad that I can barely last an entire swim workout...actually, I was never all that good at swimming, so I guess this is just a really good excuse for not improving this off-season.

People all over our city are fed up. They've booked last-minute vacations; flocked to shopping malls and perhaps even tried drinking their way back to being able to deny this cruel season the pleasure of imprisoning us in it's icy grasp!

Every fall, I start gearing up. Literally. I get all my winter running/biking/existing clothing together; buy what I need to add a little more comfort to the dark days, and begin to prepare mentally for the lack of sunlight, the snow, the cold and the rest of what winter brings. It's usually pretty easy to predict what's coming.

If I do all these things correctly, I can usually make it to March Break with a sense of hope for the warm days ahead.

Unfortunately, to quote our city's snow-removal managers: "I just didn't budget for this!"

I wonder what they're talking about today in Arizona.

Evolution sucks!

It may be one of the hardest things to admit for a good red-blooded Canadian, but here goes: I suck as a hockey player!

For anyone who's played with me over the years, this revelation is on par with "gas prices are going up," "there are idiots driving amongst us in Kingston," and "gee, TV is really getting bad!" My dad had me read "Hockey, Here's Howe" cover to cover when I was a kid. Didn't help one bit. I played three years of outdoor shinny in my formative years in Kenora. Nothing. Later in life (my 20's) I got the hockey bug so bad that my wife had to do an intervention to pare things down to just 6 games per week.

And still, my hockey skills never seemed to rise to the level of the effort I put in to them.

Right from the beginning though, I learned that "other" way of making the score sheet: penalties! With the exception of spearing and fighting, I think I managed to spend time in the sin bin for every possible infraction. I still have the distinction of being the only Labatt's League player ever to be assessed 3 minutes in the box for hauling down my own player!

There's something haywire in most male minds that turns us into hacking, slashing, high-sticking morons as soon as we get a hockey stick in our hands. I am a proud member of this fraternity.

About ten years ago, I hung up my skates, and hid my stick away, deciding that I just didn't want to be that person anymore. I played one last tournament (got in a fight), and one ball-hockey tourney (earned the ire of every team for my stick work), but that was it.

But I got the bug again at the last Fronts game at the M Centre. All the good stuff about playing came back to me. Hauling the gear into a too-small change room...staking out a place. Taping my stick just right. Taping my skates just right. Taping my pads. Tape! Gawd how I miss hockey tape!!! Then there's the warm up, where you assess the other team, crank off some feeble slap shots to get your goalie into it and even try to figure out which officials showed up, so you know what you can and can't get away with. The up and down the ice action of the game...the penalties! Even after the game when you sit sweaty, stinking and sore trying to peel off the layers of wet gear, while talking a better game than the one you just played. I miss it so badly!

So I signed up to play in the ball hockey tournament put on by Startek last weekend. As soon as I showed up, I knew I was in trouble. This wasn't going to be a "fun" mixed-gender, no-skills bunch. No, these were the usual bunch of has-beens, would-have-beens, and never-coulda-beens out hacking away at the ball and more often, each other.

My first shift was great. I got my face right into it and scored a cheesy one. By my second one though, my stick was getting up, and I was grabbing, pushing, bumping and basically working my way into getting a well-deserved two-hander. But for once, it wasn't just me! This whole tournament was full of hackers. I'm so glad the Big Brothers (who were the benefactors of the day) didn't bring out any of their little Brothers to see it.

The older, slower and less-skilled the player was, the more apt he (never she) was at those nasty little slashes on the ankle, or the ever-popular awful slap shot into a crowd of unprotected and unsuspecting players.

We lost all three games, even though our goalie stood on his head. We played them all close, but just ran out of gas by the end of each game.

For the past ten years I've turned my attention to a completely different past time from hockey. Triathlon has taken over my spare time. I love the training, the racing, the challenging of what I used to think were my limits. With the exception of the swim, it's relatively no-contact. The only thing close to a penalty was the course marshall who cautioned me about drafting the bike in front of me (which I wasn't).

After a six hour plus tri, I'm usually pretty tired, kinda sore and starved.

Today, one day after my first hockey tournament in a decade, I'm sporting some interesting bruises, my muscles are so sore that I'm walking like a 90 year old, and my back has never felt so sore.

Think I'll stop into Canadian Tire on the way home today and see if they have a good price on that really good hockey tape!

Nice Rink!

Just a few thoughts regarding the new arena:

1) After being at three events there in three days, I'm still having difficulty actually believing that it's here. I caught myself on each of the three days thinking "wow, this is really Kingston!" It's an awesome facility, with a very motivated and energetic staff. Even the Fronts have taken their game up several notches.

2) Kingston people have needed the ability to drink beer at their seats for sporting events and concerts for far too long. At the Hip show on Saturday, one could hardly get to one's gate for the long lines of thirsty music fans waiting in line to buy beer. During the show, people in our row kept going back for more. At five bucks a cup, it's not only one of the best prices downtown, but it's also going to dig a huge chunk out of what we owe for making this place.

3) The Fronts games will slowly become better-attended. The thousands of faithful who said they'd never go "all the way downtown" for a game? Well they came. Hundreds more were at their first OHL game in a long time (or ever), and they'll come back. It's excellent hockey, and it's cheap!

4) The people who cried about how the parking was going to be a disaster have gone back to complaining about other things such as expensive gasoline and the fact that they'll never stop using the word "township" to describe parts of our city. At the end of the Bulls-Fronts game Friday, I waited at my seat for about 15 minutes to let the crowd die down, fully expecting the streets to be crazy with people. They weren't. I was home in the west end just 15 minutes later. It was even more efficient after the Hip concert Saturday. Sunday was even better. The arena will not be the source of traffic headaches. CFB Kingston/RMC/every government office, all spilling out at exactly the same time will continue to be a far bigger problem. This is where I could tell you to use Kingston transit, but I get the feeling you're just not listening when I say how easy, cheap and efficient it's become.

5) Downtown bars, restaurants and shops are LOVING the response to having an arena downtown! Even after the game on Sunday afternoon, it was tough to get seated in some places. The best thing that could happen is more great restaurants, bars and shops opening to take advantage. Perhaps our old derelict Police Station would be the anchor in a block of cool new places running down Queen from King Street.

6) Wolfe Island people will love how easy it is to get to and from the arena. In the summer, Marysville residents won't even need to take their cars! However, they'll be unhappy that some will continue to park on the ferry dock instead of paying for the incredibly cheap parking that's available.

7) It still needs a name. Maybe the Drivec? I'll keep working on that.

Did we lose a bet or something?

My first impulse was to puke.

After getting up at 3:20am to work myself through a 65 minute bike spin in my basement, the last thing I needed was to see a note from my wife saying "Are you ready for ten years of The K-Rock Centre?"...gag!!!" At first I thought she was doing that thing she does. You know, keeping me on edge, so I don't let down my guard for the inevitable bad news that could come at any time. (she feels that perhaps I tend to react in a rather sagiune way, and need the occasional SCARE)

But she woke up at 4:30 to tell me that it was indeed true, that K-Rock had been declared the sponsor of the new downtown arena. She and my politically savvy daughter stayed up ridiculously late to watch city council make the declaration live on channel 13. Both of them found the news disturbing, off-putting, even creepy. My daughter's instant concern was that NONE of the groups she'd go to see would ever come to Kingston now. We eventually calmed her down.

When I got to work, it was obviously even worse. Our morning staff were reeling over the news, and the notion that we had to deliver it in some way that a) informed our listeners, yet b) didn't give a competitor any publicity. Second-guessing, speculation and rage dominated our off-air activities. We put our GM Greg Hinton on the air to give the company line, and got our fair share of indignant emails from our audience, slamming city council, the mayor, the arena management group and just about anyone else involved for making such a stupid decision.

As for me (glad you asked), well, it was a challenge. First off, a lot of my friends know that my easy-going, sometimes stoic demeanor is a total fabrication. My temper is so quick that it catches me off guard sometimes. But, I work hard at "not letting things get to me." When I do my "who gives a crap" schtick, it's usually in an attempt to hide my feelings of "who can I strangle?"

So, at work I was the most peaceful, objective, even thoughtful person for most of the morning. I slipped a couple of times on the air, but it was barely noticable. Then I eventually went home, and thought about the whole thing some more.

I watched John Wright on the CKWS 6 o'clock news. He said that this would be "good for the city, and good for everyone" which I guess means: "screw all the other media, I got the rights, too bad for you." Mayor Rosen told us it was time to "move forward" though I'm sure what he wanted to say was "where were the rest of you cheap bastards when your buddy Johnny here came to us with some real hard cash?"

And that's when I started to see things as they truly are.

Is having to deal with the major sports and entertainment venue being branded with our direct competitor's name for ten years going to be challenging? Yes.

Did city council make a bad decision? Yes, but they had guns held to their heads, and would have been just as wrong if they'd turned it down too. These people made the best choice humanly possible under very very diffcult circumstances.

Does anyone care about the impact of other media pulling some of their support for events at the new arena? Probably. But I'm not 100% convinced that is ever going to happen.

Our radio business is not easy to understand from the outside. We're constantly defending our brands, while changing our product to attract more listeners, more clients and more money. We live and die by ratings, which are driven by how successfully we get our name recalled by as many people in the listening area as possible. It doesn't necessarily mean they listen to us, just that they remember us. By which we can prove ourselves an efficient and economical vehicle to get our clients' products and services recalled by these people. Which means we have a steady revenue stream to afford us the resources to do it all over again.

Spending huge piles of money is rare in this biz. It's even rarer in a market this size.

The fact that a national arena management firm, a very thoughtful and skeptical city council and a non-network owner all came together to create a radio sponsorship on a 42 million dollar project, means our business is still for real.

No internet station...no TV network...no satellite "radio" provider has of yet been named as sponsor on a valid entertainment venue.

Thanks to John Wright and whatever means he had to use to get this to happen, everyone in our business feels just a little bit more valid today.

Get Me Outta Here!

Some time after Christmas it started. The first thing I noticed was how difficult it was to get going after napping (when you get up at 3:30am, napping is normal...try it). Then workouts were getting "missed." Cooking started to become a chore, and the very thought of leaving the house after coming home each afternoon was, well, appalling.

All that should have added up to "something's wrong" but I still didn't get it. It wasn't until I found myself one Friday night on the couch, watching TV (no not a show, just something on the tube) that I realised what was going on. I was getting depressed!

For weeks the newspapers and TV have been filled with stories about SAD. When the daylight wanes, and the fun of Christmas is long past, our bodies naturally react by going into a kind of light hybernation. I can't remember it ever getting to me before now, but then again, I've always been either too busy with work, or too lazy to work out, so there was no opportunity to actually sit motionless and feel totally bummed.

That awful Friday night, I ripped myself off the couch, put on my stuff, and did a 45 minute spin on my bike. It wasn't great. I was still stuck in the basement, sweating like crazy, and going nowhere, but at least I was getting out some agression.

Last week it started getting to me again. The crazy snowstorms and flash freezes didn't help, as they gave me just another reason to put off going to the pool, riding my bike or going for a run.

So I did something about it.

My son and I piled a couple of shovels in the car, and headed for my sister's place. We spent over an hour and a half digging out an enormous pile of snow from her drive. It was hard. It was cold. It was wet. In fact it was potentially the least pleasant thing either of us could think of doing at that time.

It was brilliant!

Three important pieces of my life came together: vigourous exercise; a team-oriented task to accomplish and being outdoors! By the time we were done, both of us had pulled outselves out of the SAD doldrums, and were ready to sleep like dogs.

I applied my new-found psychological knowledge the next day by going for a run in the snow with a good friend who was also feeling seasonally down and out. The holy trinity of movement, accomplishment and outdoors came together, creating...two bummed out listless individuals.

Stupid psycho-crap.

I'll try again tomorrow, but right now I just need a nap.