A most unusual winter

The end of January and their is still hardly any ice to speak on Lake Erie

January 31st Modis image from Great Lakes Coast Watch

The only icebreaking going on is the ice on Montreal's slippery streets, which broke my ankle on the weekend. This non-winter is winter over for me!

I only hope to be able to get back on my bike this summer.

Risk Management

It takes a fairly large and dramatic event in the maritime world for it to make the general media's headlines. Given the large numbers of people throughout the world who have enjoyed some form of cruise experience on a ship, last week's grounding and subsequent beaching of the Costa Concordia off of Italy's Tuscan coast was bound to be front page news.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Collision_of_Costa_Concordia_27.jpg

There are many 'lessons learned' that will no doubt come out of the investigation of this incident but, for me, it is yet another example of poor risk management. The technological advances in navigation such as GPS, DGPS, ECDIS and AIS have instilled in some mariners a sense of invulnerability to the hazards around them. In consequence, safety margins get narrowed, speeds are maintained at an elevated level in situations where common sense would tell you to use caution.

This attitude is not unique to the marine world, however. You merely need to drive along any major highway in order to witness extremely risky behaviour such as tailgating or excessive speed or erratic driving or using phone devices or even texting while at the wheel!

A sailing friend gave me my first lesson when handling a sailboat: "If you think you might need to put a reef in the sail, do it; and if you are thinking about shaking a reef out of a sail, wait."

Human error is frequently sighted as the major cause of accidents with the Costa Concordia incident most probably being included in this category. Still, our perception that technology will save us from the folly of our own lack of prudence is perhaps the largest error of all.

Adapt or die

In Canada, the complaint most commonly lobbed against cycling is that it is a summertime activity and Canada is a country with six months of winter though this hardly applies to the southern portion where 90% of the population resides.

Still, when you compare the effort and money expended in urban areas like Montreal to allow motorized vehicles to park and circulate along its thousands of streets, can it really be deemed the best suited means of transportation to the conditions?

What would a true Reseau Blanc cost the city to maintain in contrast to the tens of millions of dollars spent to try to fit a square peg into a round hole each winter?

Place d'Armes

Most visits to Old Montreal for me involve cycling excursions to the Lachine Canal or Ile Notre Dame via the Berri bicycle path. While cyclists often espouse the merits of two wheeled transportation over four in relation to being out in the open and having the time to look around, the reality is that cycling around the city is a matter of constant surveillance to avoid accident and injury.

Trudging through the snow, however, does offer the time and opportunity to observe and appreciate the sights of this great city as I did on a Friday evening heading towards the Centaur Theatre near Place d'Armes.

Fresh Eyes

One of the simple pleasures when returning home from a month aboard the ship is the freedom to just walk. To walk to the library or to the store or to just walk aimlessly around the streets of your neighbourhood to see familiar sights that are new merely by a month's absence.

Of course, there are always some things you had not noticed before. This corner I usually pass on my bicycle in more clement weather.

Montreal is plagued, like most urban areas, with an innumerable amount of graffiti but there is a surprising amount of quite stunning tableaus to be found on the walls of the Plateau.