Erin's Journals

I love learning things – and hearing your opinions – both of which I got to do yesterday, thanks to social media reaction to my journal about cycling and just what rules of the road apply to those of us who like to ride on two wheels.
 
As I expected (and know) the same ones that apply to motorists should also be followed by cyclists. But just as we know drivers don’t always obey, neither do riders. @TorontoMike is a radio fan, podcaster and blogger – as well as avid cyclist on the sometimes mean streets of Toronto – and he taught me a term I’d never heard before. Here’s Mike’s tweet. 

Many of us cyclists practice the Idaho Stop. Basically, stop signs are treated as yield signs and red lights are treated as stop signs.
We pick our spots, of course…and safety (of us and others) always comes first. But if it’s safe and there are no cars you stop as you would at a yield sign. So if there are no cars, pedestrians or cyclists, you slow down and proceed. If there are, you stop.

Which is exactly what we did not see from the large group of cyclists who passed through a three-way stop when we had just cleared it. (There were other vehicles stopped at the intersection.) Mike’s honest perspective attracted some criticism that he was basically breaking the law. One wrote:

I still have a couple of scars from a cyclist who practiced the Idaho Stop and rolled right over me crossing legally at a stop sign in Mimico. I apprecate it but similarly to vehicles there aren’t enough people doing them properly and it can be dangerous.

Thanks, Mark. I thought about our recent adventure and realized that our little foursome had – single file – also participated in the Idaho Stop. We were along country roads; we slowed, all looked in both directions and then proceeded through the empty rural intersections. Am I in violation of the law? I believe so. But in spirit of the law? No. I can see both sides here.
 
As for the issue of being passed and whether I was being overly wussy by hoping someone might let me know that was about to occur (besides our fellow travellers) here’s what Barbara wrote. It gives you hope.

I still get a chuckle out of an incident that happened to my walking buddy and I a couple of months ago. We were on the walking path in Osoyoos. A young boy, thinking 7 or 8 years of age, came up behind us and as he approached, rang his bell and called out “on your left.” As he passed, I thanked him. He stopped his bike, turned to me and said, “it’s the law, you know.” Serious as could be.

I told her how he must have been the product of good parenting, and reflected on what we had taught Lauren, just as we would show Colin if given the opportunity. Stop always at stop signs and proceed with caution, walking your bike in crosswalks. But, of course, adults don’t always practise what they preach. Guilty (on a lesser count of a very rare Idaho Stop) as charged.
 
Thank you for your participation in yesterday’s discussion; I’m always eager to be enlightened. And tomorrow, I’m going to share with you just the most amazing thing we did today. I’m embracing the future and its offerings with both arms but, of course, sometimes the learning curve can leave a mark. Good thing I had an online doctor for that….
 
Talk to you here tomorrow.
 

Well, what a weekend! Hope yours was filled with fun and family, as ours sure was. Yesterday we hosted two cousins, their husbands and children and my aunt and uncle for a big ol’ family get-together. Grabbed some grocery store chickens, ribs and salads, tarted up my own store bought/homemade potato salad combo and voilà! A recipe for a super day.
 
Saturday, we donned our cowboy hats and joined in a neighbourhood Stampede-themed party. No, there was no bull-riding or chuck wagon races; we just sat, ate burgers in the warm summer sunshine and caught up. It’s an annual event and my memory of names is highly challenged, but we welcome the chance to chat with people to whom we usually just wave as they drive by on our dog walks. 
 

 
Friday was a highlight of the year for Rob and me: we inflated the tires, checked the gears and headed out for a great, long bike ride. Some of it was in gentle breezes on paved paths along the ocean, some on gravel roads through fragrant forests and alongside verdant farmers’ fields (the last of which provided us with a cooling head-to-toe shower as we rode through the spray of an irrigation system). We even had a chance to shoot these beauties having a nice summer day as we passed by a farm. Happier ‘n pigs in mud, wouldn’t you say?
 

 
It just reminded us of how good a hot tub was going to feel at the end of our four-hour adventure. We stopped midway for lunch in a park, had ice cream at a local market and even did a bit of shopping. Perfection!
 
We obeyed the rules of the road, stayed upright and ended up logging 30 kilometres on our first ride of the year! No pain on Saturday, either (and, yes, this will be one GREAT BIG PLUG for my favourite natural anti-inflammatory SierraSil). All weekend I was grateful that nothing hurt. I certainly didn’t deserve it!
 
Let’s talk about cyclists for a second. I believe the majority of them – us – are respectful of the rules and our relationship with the four-wheeled travellers we so often share the roads with.
 
Your experience may differ, thanks to those who don’t: the ones who whiz past without so much as a word that they’re passing or perhaps even a ring of the bell. (Are bells only for us newbies? Because I’m nothing but grateful when someone lets us know with a ring that they’re behind us, whether we’re walking or on bicycles. The last thing I want to do is veer out into someone’s path and cause any dangerous situation.) 
 
I don’t believe in riding two or four abreast, and yet that’s what we encounter when we’re behind the wheel. I understand cycling can be social: we chatted or called out encouragement or plans to our fellow riders Charles and Nancy as we enjoyed our ride. How else would I have spotted the eagles perched in a nearby tree, as I concentrated on remembering how to shift gears?
 
The worst of cycling seems to involve a hoard mentality. On Thursday night, Rob and I were out in our Mini. We came to a stop at a three-way intersection, checked traffic and then made our turn. Just then, seemingly out of nowhere, a vast group of about 30 cyclists whizzed straight through that three-way stop we’d just cleared, and kept going.
 
Rob exclaimed his surprise and added, “And I think the lead guy waved his fist at me.” I told him he was probably motioning to the group that they were going straight through. And then I wondered, why? Why is it that the rules of the road don’t apply to all of us?
 
If we had been a cop car at that intersection, would they have come to a proper, legal stop? I don’t understand the mentality that somehow, because they’re a group, they have different laws. They ride two and three abreast on narrow bike lanes, causing traffic in both lanes to veer and dodge and move over the centre line. It’s not as if it was a bike marathon; clearly, this group was just out for an evening ride. 
 
I don’t get it. If you’re a cyclist and can enlighten me, I invite you to join today’s conversation on my FB page. I’m not bashing cyclists in general; I am one. I don’t like hearing people slamming a whole group of us for the actions and misbehaviour of a few. And believe me, when, after making a full stop and then proceeding through an intersection, I make eye contact with the drivers who’ve stopped and wave “thank you!”
 
It’s my hope and plan to be an ambassador for those of us on two wheels who have a healthy respect for (and even fear of) the motorists who share the road. I just wish we could remember to be civil to one another – in all ways, at all times.
 
Talk to you here tomorrow. And if I get enlightenment through those FB comments or via email erin@erindavis.com I will share those later in the week.
 

Here it is Friday and this day (hopefully not an unlucky Friday the 13th), Rob and I are grabbing our helmets, inflating the tires and taking our bicycles out on a riding adventure with our Sidney friends. I’m told there’s lunch when we get there, so I think I can keep going! Luckily, despite a lot of hills in our neighbourhood, we’ll be on mostly flat terrain. I hope!
 
I had promised more pictures and stories today from our travels, but I just plain ran out of time this week to get some more scenic shots organized and up for you. Yesterday, Molly was getting groomed, we were visiting with family and running errands and then had a lovely dinner with Rotary members in honour of our incoming group president and board. So you see, this reWirement stuff is definitely keeping us busy! Oh, and don’t let the scowl fool you – she had just a great time and got top marks from the folks at Petsmart!
 

 
I wanted to close this week with a couple of quick shots that aren’t scenic but are, I hope, poignant.
 
On our way from Las Vegas to Arizona and Utah, we stopped in for a brief phone meeting with my publisher back in Toronto, and grabbed a quick bite while we did. The temperature was, according to our car thermometer, 44C and the asphalt of the parking lot as we walked into the Walmart/Subway was skillet hot. The desert breeze felt more like a hair dryer set on low speed, but at its highest temperature. Unbelievable.
 
But this made me hotter under the collar than the weather ever could have:
 

 
Of course, we’d seen our share of T-shirts like the one from the casino I shared with you earlier this week. But this? Absolutely disgusting. I couldn’t resist taking a shot – but only with a camera. Clearly this person is armed to the teeth, and damned proud of it. Meantime in Utah, the March for Our Lives kids from Stoneman High in Florida are being met this week by Utah gun nuts driving a tank and pointing what I’m told is a fake machine gun at them. Lovely.
 
Fortunately, the entire state of Utah hasn’t lost its collective mind. As we made our way through the orderly grid of streets that make up downtown Salt Lake City, I had Rob back the car up after I saw this on a stop sign near an elementary school.
 

 
Thankfully, saner heads at least attempt to prevail once in a while. 
 
Whatever you’re doing this weekend I hope it’s restful or memorable. Thanks for coming by and we’ll get right back at this again on Monday. Take care. Stay lucky.
 

After making our way out of Nevada, we stayed a night in Provo, Utah and got up the next morning for the hour-long drive into Salt Lake City. The largest city in the state, SLC is a study in dichotomies: founded by religious leader Brigham Young, in the past decade it has been named one of America’s 51 most gay-friendly cities. Also, based on the number of plastic surgeons in practice and cosmetics sold, it’s been given the nickname “vainest city in the USA.” (Really? Not LA or Miami or NYC?)
 
And yet, this place of some 200,000 residents, which makes up part of a larger 2 million person metropolitan area, gives one the impression of humility. Of cleanliness (despite its “worst air quality in the nation” rating in 2017). Of spaciousness. Of peace. Of a cosmopolitan feel borne not so much out of the outward signs of many cultures, but out of young men and women leaving the US to fulfill their missionary obligations and coming home learning myriad different languages.
 

 
We found parking easily (and for free) on a tree-lined street a few city blocks from the Mormon Tabernacle and the massive Temple Square, around which the city’s grid was designed and built. Granted, seeing this one place during our quick stop in SLC is akin to the blind man meeting the elephant; what we touched on was surely not the entire picture of this state capital. And we recognize that.
 
But there’s something that feels so different in this place, a sense that one has gone back to the era of Pleasantville. Shiny, happy people, as the song goes. As we approached the square on foot, we found ourselves behind a small group of well dressed, cleanly coiffed young men, carrying attaché cases. Undoubtedly students of LDS, it was our first introduction to something we noticed more and more, the closer we got to Temple Square: everyone looked dressed for a wedding. Not just to go to church, but to go to a wedding. To the nines.
 

 
We strolled the pristine, well-manicured grounds of the square, having missed any opportunity to hear the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in their home church, had we chosen to enter it.
 

 
As you see, a sign said they were on the road, but we read online that on Thursday nights you’re welcome to come in and listen to recordings in the temple itself, which took 40 years to build and was completed in 1893. Undoubtedly the acoustics matched the exterior, which sparkled in the late morning sunshine.
 

 
We were wary of being approached by people on their mission to proselytize the LDS word, so we didn’t make eye contact with the smiling, well-dressed man who greeted people out in the square. (Sometimes retirees are encouraged to become missionaries as well.) It was for that reason, too, that we didn’t enter the Tabernacle. We simply didn’t belong.
 
Unlike when we chose to explore the inside of a mosque in Turkey, we felt that here there might be attempts to engage us in conversation about our beliefs and we weren’t there for that. But I still felt just about as out of place. And don’t get me wrong: it wasn’t them, it was us. 
 
I sometimes reminisce about the Saturday mornings I spent as a youth in a Trenton convent, both for piano lessons and as a fairly frequent guest of a nun there. Occasionally, I’ll miss the ceremony and ritual of a mass and the shivering, tear-inducing joy I felt in hearing voices raised as one to express their beliefs and to sing praise.
 
I confess, while I walked those grounds in Salt Lake City, to feeling somewhat envious of those who feel so committed to their beliefs and are part of a much bigger, tight community, an extended family. I don’t understand it exactly, but it’s something tribal that makes me long for it, somehow. One day I may find it.
 
Tomorrow, we’ll take you back on the road. Idaho is so much more than what you might expect, while Montana lived up to my hopes.
 

Thanks for coming along on our US travel adventures. We began in Nevada (after Rob drove down there – in two days!) and made our way up and across to Utah. The scenery, as we moved from desert to mountains, was too much for my iPhone to take in fully, but it didn’t stop me from trying.
 

 
We spent our one and only night in Utah in Provo, a place I’d heard of in Osmond interviews as a teen. Nestled among mountains and rivers, Provo is a quiet city watched over by gleaming white temples of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as LDS or Mormons. 
 

 
After a long day’s drive in 40+ temperatures, and taking in a stunning sunset near Nephi, Utah because of a nearby wildfire…
 

 
…we settled in for some home(like) cooking at a Cracker Barrel, where we chatted with our LDS server about her having moved there to go to Brigham Young University. She met the man who would be her husband in second year, and there she is.
 
Her enthusiasm and kindness were remarkable; she had the kitchen improvise chicken in gravy when they’d run out of the dish for the night. And it was excellent, or so I’m told; your trusty scribe just had salad. And, thankfully, not a MAGA hat in sight (although it does seem that no one takes their hat off in a restaurant anymore).
 
In the next few paragraphs here and again tomorrow, I’m going to indulge in something I usually try hard to steer clear of, and that is generalization. But I’m honestly sharing with you the impressions I got of our time in Utah and our fleeting association with a few of its residents.
 
I’m not going so far as to say that everyone in the state follows the same religion (they do not), nor will I make the leap that they all have the same personality traits, but the warmth and friendliness of the people we encountered were remarkable. A seeming sincerity that you don’t always find when you’re a traveler; a kind of welcome, both implied and expressed.
 
Perhaps it was the chatty friendliness of our server, or maybe it was the kindness that was extended to me by the young man with gleaming teeth and sparkling blue eyes at our hotel later that same night.
 
After a satisfying dinner, we drove the few miles as directed by our GPS and pulled up to a budget hotel in a sort of industrial park nestled next to a river. As Rob began to unload the car, I proceeded to the front desk. A young dark-haired man named Mike met me and welcomed me. Then, strangely, he couldn’t find the reservation I’d made the previous day on Expedia.
 
I opened my email from Expedia and handed him the phone, inviting him to scroll away. And that’s when he found it: I’d inadvertently booked a room for the previous night and was obviously a no-show. Well, there was about $150 US I wasn’t getting back. I sighed and apologized, saying we were in the midst of a lot of travel and bookings and I’d clearly messed up. I wasn’t angry or disappointed; I just kind of went, “Well, what are you going to do?” – meaning me, not him. I expected and asked for nothing.
 
That’s when Mike said, “Well, you’ve already paid, so I’ll tell you what: just stay here tonight instead.” I was gobsmacked. As I say, I had considered that I’d made a mistake, I’d have to eat my error and just pay to book another night. I thought I might ask if he had a “walk up” rate that I could take advantage of. But no. Mike extended that offer and I gratefully accepted.
 
Is Mike LDS? I’m going to guess a solid yes, just based on my impressions and, yes, generalization. Was this part of his religious teaching – to extend to a weary stranger a bit of comfort and help? I don’t know. I have no idea what prompted him to do this, especially when I’ve read plenty of reviews of other hotels where similar hapless guests had made the same mistake and not a thing was done or offered to them.
 
But I am grateful. And that, to me, is Christianity as the teachings of Jesus would want it practised: kindness without avarice and compassion without judgment. Just almost exactly the opposite to the policies and actions we are reading about daily south of the border. 
 
I wondered who Mike voted for in 2016.
 
Our next day’s journeys took us the hour-long drive (a longer one than usual, thanks to construction) to Salt Lake City, home of the Mormon Tabernacle and its world-famous choir. The experience we had walking SLC’s streets was, in a word, surreal, and I’ll share some of it with you here tomorrow.