homes for dreaming

I was thinking about what my ultimate urban dream home would look like, and this is it.

Imagine, if you will, a "standard" urban lot where you live now. In the area I live in, this means a lot holding a 2500 square foot house (including basement) with about three meters separating the house from the neighbour's house if the home owner is lucky. Most have a decent sized front yard, and a medium sized back yard.

The problem is with this layout is that the front yard is mostly used for "look at me look at me" landscaping and is often under utilised. Because of this mostly wasted space, the back yard is smaller than it could be, which limits its use. I don't like big front yards. Impress me they do not.

So here is my dream.

Take that lot.

Place a 1000 square foot house on it. Smaller is bigger if done right. We collectively collect too much junk. Small spaces encourage having only what is needed and nothing else.

Here, we would need a basement to follow building codes, so that 1200 feet should include the basement. This means that a very small house is being built. Position the house at the very front of the lot, with a minimum of space for a flower garden. Windows there can be small, neat, and shutterable - with old school shutters. There is no need for a garage. The cars, if they even exist in this scenario, can suck it up and be outdoors. and be parked beside each other beside the house. Discussions with the city regarding variances may be needed since bylaws often limit how close to the road a house can be built. Closer is better in this case.

Excavate the rear of the house if needed to provide a walk out basement. A sunken patio would do it. One with grapes growing over it and a nice sheltered table outside. This works better of course if the urban lot has a slope on it, but can be done without it. Done right, it looks amazing (I have seen it done right). This gives a space to get the bicycle collection inside without tracking through the living space. Doors should be double wide French doors which open right out onto the patio. The back yard would be a major part of the living space during the warmer months. I envision reading and eating areas that are both practical and cosy. Both my wife and I would live outdoors but for sleeping most of the time given any kind of choice in the matter.

Just inside the house in the basement is the "mud" room. It would take up the whole basement but for the laundry/furnace area. Here the bikes, tools, potting equipment, grow lights for seedlings, and all that lot live. Put in the plumbing for water and a tiny coffee bar (serious here).

Upstairs is a small office, living room, kitchen, and bedroom. Nothing else is really needed. We don't entertain in our house now, and I have no desire to do so in the future. Our friends are of the best quality, and are not legion.

Now think back to that lot. Remember that it is set up for a 2500 square foot house. With a tiny house on it, the gap between the house and the neighbours is bigger. With the house near/at the front of the lot, the backyard is bigger.

This means a lot to my wife. The space would be hers.

She would love to be an urban farmer. A visit to her Pinterest boards and Facebook pages makes this abundantly clear.

Imagine a yard with field stone paths, raised beds, soaker hose irrigation, a proper open compost heap, no lawn, vegetables mixed with herbs mixed with flowers. Lay it out right, and there would be perpetual blooms all through the growing season. Lay it out right, and the shorter plants would be close to the house, with the plant height becoming progressively taller as the edge of the property is reached. Hem the yard in with wooden fences as tall as code allows - not to block out the neighbours so much but to block what would look like a chaotic mess from the views of more conventional neighbours.

I would want a pond. A pond right off of the outdoor eating area. I do not like decks. The outdoor eating area would be a patio. A patio with a pond with running water, fish, and frogs. A pond deep enough that fish will survive winter. And lots of blooming water plants. And a cat. There needs to be a cat dozing in the sun. Not an option. They are fun to pet and their purring is good for the soul.

A yard like this would make our most common vacation activities much more enjoyable. We do not travel. We do staycations more often than not. Paradise is where you make it, and home should be it or it is really not home.

The above is my dream. It is also my wife's dream. It is a dream built around what she wants and what I want. Ideally, she would like to be in the country, with a small hobby farm. Away from the noise and cramped conditions of the city. I understand that. Ideally, I would be in the heart of an urban core. I don't mind people being around as long as I can escape into my mind on the bicycle and use active transport to get around as much as possible. She understands that.

A small place in the city, where she can grow food and landscape into a little piece of paradise where I can ride to work and play may be just the kind of dream that will come true someday.

well done waterloo

Waterloo did a cool thing.
A very cool thing.
Really.

We are blessed (no sarcasm) with improving parking in the Uptown for bicycles. In fact, as I have mentioned before in this blog, part of the parking structure for cars is given over to bicycle parking. This is a new thing for our area (we are not Amsterdam...). The part that is for bicycles has clear signage, is easy to get to from the street, sidewalk, and a path, and has this nifty cool thing there now:

Yep, you guessed it, the city has installed a work stand.

Tools are on aircraft cable and located inside the tower tube, there is a spot to hang the bike, and an air pump.

Colour me impressed.

Keep up the good work Waterloo (all we need is some action on the street redesign that puts the proposed bicycle infrastructure between the sidewalk and the parked cars, not between the parked cars and the moving cars as was officially proposed.)

As an aside, men's clothing is boring. Can I have a men's version of this sweet tankie?

And one last thing. My 2014, a year of my bike page has started to get its updates. Check back daily if you are interested as updates will be frequent.

there are a lot of angry people out there so let's not join them

Via various wanderings around the Internet while home sick today, I came up with the following observation:

There are a lot of angry people out there.

Now this is not news to anyone who has had a social interaction in the past decade or so, but it is worth the mention I think.

Much is being said in the media about the "war on cars" etc being led by the pro bicycle movement. Every time there is any mention of creating more bicycle infrastructure, a suggestion that motorists need to share the road with cyclists ,etc, the vitriol in the comments sections of whatever news media outlet publishes such stories reads like a litany of death threats towards cyclists by irate motorists, and Social Darwinism, taking the form of "if you swim with the sharks you will get eaten" type of comments, at its worst. Makes me feel great knowing I am sharing a road with sociopaths. Weeeeeee...

Cyclists don't help themselves though as they knife through traffic, cut people off, and often times act like asses themselves, pissing off the people in cars through irresponsible behaviours seemingly designed to "prove" the negative stereotype of the urban cyclist right, and giving "justification" to the screw loose crowd to risk some innocent person's life in a dangerous game of tit for tat. To them I say thanks for nothing.

Which leads me back to my original observation. There are a lot of angry people out there.

This past year, I have had several motorists deliberately take runs at me in their cars in order to "teach me a lesson" and get me out of their way (in all cases, I was not in their way - I am very careful not to be that ass I mentioned above) for having the nerve to take the lane in order to make a left, avoid a car door, or whatever. All of which, by the way, I am allowed to do - no, supposed to do - according to the Highway Traffic Act of Ontario.

This has prompted me to want to get one of the nice new GoPro cameras. The one with the adjustable focal length so that I can mimic the field of view the naked eye has so that it will be easy to prove how close a person in a car got to cancelling my stamp. So when (notice I said when not if) a person does this again, I will have video for the police.

I have not done so though, as I do not wish to become angry. I am working hard at not being angry, at avoiding situations where this might happen, and why go hunting for reasons to become so? I don't want to litter this blog with videos that show what we all know to be true: There are a lot of angry people out there.

I don't want to be one of them.

That said, as I was watching someone on YouTube have an angry bike ride through downtown Toronto this morning, yelling at other road users who broke the law, who got too close - legitimately too close I might add - that a lot of what I was seeing was actually good. Many people were giving this cyclist a lot of room. They were not cutting him/her off. They were doing what they should be doing. So too were most - as in almost all including the one making the video - of the cyclists that were visible.

So if most of the interactions are good, most of the road users no matter what the mode of transport are behaving themselves and managing to get along, why live in paranoid angry fear?

I don't see the point myself.

Yes, a cyclist has to be cautious. Yes, there are risks. I know all the arguments. But that does not mean that it is worth living in fear.

So I do want the GoPro camera with the adjustable focal length. Littering the blog with good news stories of interactions between road users, high speed "bombs" down single track, and the such would I hope help, for my two readers anyways (heh), inject a little optimism into what I am trying to do here.

And should someone be an ass, I would still have the video for the police.

I just would not fixate on it. I would not waste my time and yours with more pointless negativity designed to give justification for more sociopathic behaviour on the part of motorists and cyclists alike.

Because in a civil society, or in one that pretends to be civil like the one we live in now, we simply don't need any more of that negative crap. We need instead a realization that the other is simply a person. They are not a label.

And the sooner we collectively get that message, the sooner we will live in a civilization that is actually civil.