The last time I owned and rode a bike was in 1955. I wrote about it here. Not mentioned is how that black Raleigh replaced my horse. This is funny as while in Mexico City I was very good at playing bicycle polo on the fashionable street where we lived in Las Lomas de Chapultepec. The street was Sierra Madre.

Our neighbours across from us were the high society Rincón Gallardos. They had two sons. Their father and grandfather had been generals since the Mexican Revolution. I played polo with the boys. They were pretty good as they also dabbled in the sport on their very own horses. Every birthday some misguided soul gave me a croquet set. I would not have been caught dead with it. But the mallets did just fine for our brand of polo and the wooden balls were close to the real thing.

In 1955 my mother moved to Nueva Rosita, Coahuila, Mexico. It was a mining town run by the American Smelting & Refining Company. We lived in the American Hotel in the hill overlooking the town. Since we were part of the privileged (in spite of the fact my mother was only the school teacher at the Company American School, two rooms they were, we were all given a horse to ride. We usually went cross country (it was a very dry desert with lots of thorny bushes) to visit Stephen Frazier whose mother had a large ranch. My horse was a young guy who was as stubborn as a mule. Leaving the stables he would refuse to gallop and only trotted. I was told he disliked to be separated from his mother. Going with my friends to the ranch was a chore. Returning home I was always first as my horse/mule galloped to see mother.

I finally gave up on the horse and accompanied my school mates in my black Raleigh. I had purchased in Eagle Pass, Texas a special viscous liquid that I squeezed into the inner tubes. This rendered my tires almost puncture proof.

Once I started high school at St. Ed’s in Austin (the school in Nueva Rosita went up to grade 8 and I had suffered a year with my mother as the teacher), my bike disappeared from my radar and I never had one since then.

This will be remedied in a couple of weeks. I have ordered a bicycle from West Point Cycles. The folks there have measured me so that I will surely fit. At first I will be inflexible because of my arthritis. Should I purchase stirrups to get on?

From my Yorkshire friend and compadre (he is the godfather of my oldest daughter) Andrew Taylor I received this communication:

Buy the bikes. Among the Cognoscenti,  "Fixies" are all the rage, but I think that having a few gears would be nice. Look into a bike with themodern rendition of the old Sturmey-Archer 3 speed, with the planetary gear in the rear hub; they are bullet proof, do not need adjusting and look cleaner than the usual derailleurs.

 A.

Andrew’s advice is good as he is an expert biker who is one of the oldest and best long distant cyclists in Mexico.

Why am I now buying a bicycle at age 73? Rosemary and I are moving in a bit to a street in Vancouver that is two blocks from a very nice shopping district with restaurants, tea rooms, sports bars, a very large and new Safeway, Lens & Shutter, bookstores, a Macdonald’s, a Dairy Queen  and I must mention the Transylvanian Baker that I will bike to!

The bike will have that hub that Andrew has suggested, a wicker basket for the front, two blinking lights, one for the front and one for the back, a rear view mirror and I have purchased the cheapest helmet as it is just plain functional and will not make me look like a praying mantis. I will order some sort of rack so I can pick up my granddaughter Lauren, 13, and we can bike to the nearby Kid’s Bookstore or the nice Macdonald Branch of the Vancouver Public Library.

I cannot wait for my shiny new blue bike.

I never met Ken Millard. I saw his obituary in my October 9 2015 Vancouver Sun. But I knew who he was and I had listened to a concert at the Orpheum many years ago with my two young daughters in which his violin bows made a prominent aural appearance. I wrote about it here.

The obituary mentions that Millard became allergic to the wood of the violin bows he made. My connection to all this is that I know the man whose violin bow made Millard allergic. It is my friend, the virtuoso violinist Marc Destrubé.

 Ken Millard, the co-founder of the Galiano Conservancy Association and a key figure in the land trust movement in BC and Canada, died suddenly at home on September 27, 2015 on Galiano Island, at the age of 74. Ken leaves behind a legacy of more than 500 acres of Galiano land protected forever, and a strong organization dedicated to conservation and education. Kenneth Young Millard, born on July 10, 1941 in Tacoma Park, Maryland, is survived by his wife Linda Millard, and their two daughters, Beth (Reg) Thiessen and Lisa Millard, and Lisa's five children; as well as Ken's older brother John Millard, of Virgina, and younger sister Doris Spencer, of Colorado. After achieving his PhD in physics from Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio, Ken taught in Missouri and at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, BC. Then he followed his love of early baroque music to a successful second career as a luthier, studying in Salt Lake City, Utah and apprenticing with luthier Anton Smith. He became one of the world's finest makers of baroque violin bows, selling them to renowned musicians worldwide. Sadly, Ken developed a sensitivity to certain kinds of wood and ceased his work as a luthier. Ken first came to Galiano Island in the late 1970s, to perform in an early music ensemble in which he played the viola da gamba. The Millards loved Galiano and soon bought a 24-acre waterfront property on which the family camped until they built a cottage with co-owner Dan Bloomberg. Ken and Linda became fulltime residents by the late 1980s. Ken co-founded the Galiano Conservancy Association in 1989, with a group of like-minded islanders who were concerned about clearcut logging and sought to preserve Galiano's sensitive forest ecosystems, watersheds and coastline. Ken volunteered the last 26 years of his life at the Conservancy, achieving protection of hundreds of acres, including the 188-acre Learning Centre site. Since 2000, the Conservancy has provided nature education programs to 30,000 people of all ages. Ken fostered partnerships with government, business and land trusts. He mentored hundreds of volunteers and leaves behind a strong community committed to conservation, along with a dedicated staff that has vowed to continue his work while deeply mourning his passing. His grieving community of colleagues, friends and family will gather at a memorial service for Ken on Sunday, October 11 at 1 pm, at the Conservancy's Learning Centre land, at 10825 Porlier Pass Road, on Galiano. In lieu of flowers, Ken's family requests that donations be made in his name to the Galiano Conservancy Association.

Published in Victoria Times Colonist from Oct. 8 to Oct. 9, 2015

Of late I have been looking around my house for stuff that I can say I have done for the last time and that soon whatever it was will be in our new house.

I never thought that the Ikea-type mirror that has been in our guest  room  since we moved here in 1986 was especially beautiful. But it has served it its purpose in providing me with the opportunity to photograph my subjects before or after a formal session. Especially fun has been to include myself in the picture.

What has made the shooting of this convenient, effortless I would say, is the use of my Fuji X-E1 digital camera which I purchased three years ago on the urging of my more intelligent Rosemary.

This batch of double selfies (as I call them) are of the Seattle baroque cellist Juliana Soltis.

I remember with some distaste browsing a Hallmark Card shelf at a local stationery store. This may have happened about ten years ago. The bulk of the cards were supposed to be funny.  For me a Hallmark Card was always a reduced exercise in the Cyrano de Bergerac syndrome of having someone else say what we could not personally put down on paper.  A nice birthday letter for me always trumped a Hallmark Card.

Thankfully in this 21^st century when Hallmark Cards, like newspapers are moribund, and Christmas cards are almost forgotten we need not trouble ourselves in going to that stationery store. We now have the improvement of being able to text our greetings and even end relationships via that smart phone.

Socially we are becoming inept as we increasingly rely on “Social Media” to wish or friends happy birthdays. We no longer need to apologize  for forgetting. Facebook gives us reminders.

But the worst aspect of this decaying social media is the event invitation. They are now coming fast and plentiful. The appearance of intimacy is only superficial. This is plain mass-mailing-without-stamps. Some of the mass mailings of the past at least contained a personal signature in longhand.

I would like to find a Facebook tool or app that would enable me to stop receiving event invites.