This year I broke off with dragon-boating. It was initially a conflict with the manager of the Club program over a protocol and has become a longer break. Some paddlers paddle dragon boats every summer from May to August. I have enjoyed the evening practices and the frantic transformation of couch potatoes into weekend warriors,…
In 2008 my logged rides were 804.4 km. I cycled to the Victoria Canoe and Kayak Club for a dragon boat practice on 2 Saturdays in February and April, and to the GO Rowing Centre on the Upper Harbour for a day of dragon boat racing in March. My ride in Victoria were on my…
Reuters Science News has a new story today reporting that the genome of maize has been sequenced, which reminds me that corn is a grain. It is a starchy carbohydrate. Like rice and wheat it could be cultivated to produce an abundant harvest that would feed villages and cities. It was a miracle food. It…
In Defence of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto has received favourable reviews in the LA Times and the Sunday Times (of London), and is a bestseller at this point in time. Michael Pollan is an experienced journalist and writer. He reviews a fair amount of history and science in a short book. He tries to talk…
In 2007 I used Cateye cycling computera to monitot my speed and distance, and kept a record of my trips. Most of my rides were on the Giant Yukon. A couple were on my old road bike, a Kuwahara Apollo. My recorded distance in 2007 was 1,384.2 kilometers. I road a century August 6, 2007…
Link to an excerpt from Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, a new book by Gary Taubes, published in New York Magazine, The Scientist and the Stairmaster. Taubes says that the idea that light exercise is a way to lose weight has been oversold. He agrees that…
Team Loco Motion won silver medals in the Pearl event in the 2007 Victoria Dragon Boat Festival. Our coaches and the experienced paddlers had tried to explain how this would work, but it wasn’t real until I experienced a big festival. Now I understand why people stay with this sport. I saw our team work…
Is the sale of bottled water one of the great triumphs of marketing? When it turns out that Aquafina sells filtered tap water, what is the value of buying bottled water, as opposed to tap water, or filtering your own water? Buying many high end bottled water brands appeals to snob value – the idea…
After about two months of practice, VCKC Loco Motion made its debut in the Vancouver Island Island Championships, at the Gorge Rowing and Paddling Center. In the first heat, we were put in against Blu by U, a competitive team that finished 8th overall on the day, came in at 2:14. We were second at…
Mick Hume, editor of Spiked, happily skewered Hattie Ellis, author of Planet Chicken in his review, Stop Planet Chicken, I Want to Get Off. He says that if she is able to view the production of abundant cheap food as a bad thing, her values are off. Ellis is not a vegetarian but she thinks…