Calgary

I volunteer at the Calgary Science Center, aka "Telus Spark".  It's pretty cool, and I'll make a post about it some other day.  But anyways, tonight they had a special screening of three shows for their staff and volunteers in the new 'HD Dome Theater".  The last show we watched was called "The Last Reef", and to summarize it, it went like this:  "Fish are cute and pretty and humans kill them when they drive their cars!".  Basically, as you may or may not know, increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are causing the oceans to acidify, and causing les fish and les reefs to die.  It's le science.  At the end of the show, in an homage to PM Harper's recent attack on any and all environmental protection regulations, I yelled out "foreign funded environmental radicals!  Harper is going to shut you down!".  It was a joke, but I don't think the moderator got it because she said "Uh... ok that's one opinion.  Anybody else?".  So that was a bit of an Elo humour fail.

Anyways, I normally feel pretty bad about how we are killing the earth and all that, so today it was fortunate that I rode my bike to the science center, so I could ride home feeling very self righteous.  It was late in the day, so I wan't able to take awesome pictures, but I wanted to write a post promoting cycling in Calgary to commute.  I'm sure I'll write more.

People complain about the $5 parking fee at the science center, but how many bikes have I EVER seen in the beautiful new, privately donated bike racks out front??? One, two at most.  And why?  There is a beautiful network of Nose Creek/Bow River/Elbow River bike paths that run along behind the science center, that will connect you North, South, East and West on any of Calgary's 900+km of bike lanes and bike paths.  Personally, I can get from home to the Telus Spark bike racks with only about 50m of road.  The rest is all bike path.  So, I'd like to contrast my commute home to the commute of people who drove today.

This is the science center.  The bike path is on the right.  It is close, see??  And pretty.

When you drove home today, what did you see?  A fat man eating a cheeseburger?  Well, I saw J. Beaver, in the flesh!! And took a shitty picture to prove it.  Mr. Fuzzy Pants.

 I also saw a bridge.  A nice one.  Look how high the river is.

On the way home I cross the bridge by the zoo (you can see tigers and lynxes if you are lucky) and you get a great view of downtown.

This is what it looks like when you are riding your bike on the bike paths.  Bet you could never have pictured it yourself.

I also get to go right past the saddledome.  Basically, I hit the science center, the zoo, get some great views of downtown, and go right past the stampede grounds.  It's a pretty nice tour, all in under 30min.

One more shot across the stampede ground towards downtown.

Now it's too dark out to really take any more nice pics.  But you get the gist.  Today I got to see some views and some nature and burn some calories and not kill the fish and the coral reefs.  And so I think that's a pretty good thing.