Guest Article: The Urban Transit Guerrillas

The author of this blog has allowed me to tell you about our movement. I'm a member of the Urban Transit Guerrillas (the UTG) in Toronto.

We are an underground movement that attempts to get people out of their cars. It is a daunting mission. We do so because urban transit needs riders to justify its demands for money, but ridership only goes up once enormous amounts of money is spent.

Toronto's transit system has languished because of this Catch 22 problem, and we of the UTG have decided to force the matter by sabotaging the motorist's experience. We are NOT violent, but we are determined. Typically we make the motorists life HELL.

What do we do?

We capitalize on all those many nuisances a car driver will deal with in the course of their daily commute. For example, some of our members may work on road construction sites, narrowing lanes for work that will only be starting the next day. Others push cross-walk buttons as often as possible during rush-hour.

One of our most popular (and effective) activities takes place along the busy highways running into and out of the city; originally, one of our members managed to talk his buxom stripper girlfriend to walk with him along the median between east and westbound lanes during rush hour. Brother, that tied up traffic for miles!!

She has since left him, but another member has stepped up to the mission; a transvestite who loves the attention. Lately however, we've found that even a bald old poop with a moose-horn hat can snarl traffic.

We also have autophiles among our membership. Many have rare and/or antique automobiles that they argue thay can't enjoy because the motoring experience has been overrun by way too many cars. Rarely can they take their valuable cars for a spin for fear that some snoozer on their cellphone will smash into them.

For awhile, we had infiltrated the nerve center of the traffic light co-ordinating office, and managed to set traffic light timing so that a driver just kept missing the green lights as they proceeded along some of the major streets. Unfortunately our man retired. We're looking for new talent.

We have many honorary members as well. These people are professionals when it comes to souring the driving experience, like all of tow truck drivers, parking police, parking lot attendants, taxis, etc. You get the idea.

Our American counterparts, collectively know as the Transit Rebels, are having a trickier time since Homeland Security harrasses all underground movements. However, they still make headway. They have better success getting their recruited truck drivers to clog roadways.

We recognize the value that the car is capable of adding to modern life, but we also know that excess is NOT best, when the most expensive luxury ladened car is still no more than an noisy, polluting chair that its frustrated occupant has chosen to drag around because s/he wont consider alternatives.

Urban transit is like any other aspect of social existence: it requires our cumulative energies to work. To neglect this because 'I don't want to stand on a crowded bus full of smelly people' means that for all the taxes you pay to live within a city full of conveniences, an inordinate amount will need to go to support the added infrastructure for your car. While some amount is necessary, huge snaking roadways are a sinkhole for cash.

Eventually, urban densities will squeeze out the real estate hogging needs that your ton and a half of metal requires; we can already see that in London, England. Also, there's the matter of those walks to and from the bus stop that your doctor has been telling you you need in order to lose a couple of pounds.

So if you have a bus or subway or commuter train stop close by, but you still insist on driving, remember, we're out to get YOU.

Learning to Ride a Bike

Yesterday, I went to work at 3:30 am. I was home just after noon and I was exhausted. Still, I felt that I should take the time and take my 7 year old daughter with her bicycle and teach her to ride without the training wheels.

I couldn't help wondering how pitiful it was that fatherhood was such a grind. I love my kids, all 3 of them, and I'd like to enrich their lives every opportunity I can get, but far too much of my life is consumed with distracting obligations and I don't get around to them.

As it is, I wont work overtime; while this brings more money, it would make me a stranger in my own home. When I am home, I have too much to do there as well...

Is this normal? Am I a whinny wimp?

We bought a tiny bungalow (800 sq ft) in a suburban community. When my wife was pregnant with our third child, with two preschoolers and a raft of kids she was doing daycare with, we decided that we would need a bigger house. We looked around, but nothing suited us. Since I had overseen other renovations in the past, we chose to renovate.

I was the general contractor for a reno that tripled our floor space. When my daughter was born, my wife had to vacuum out her crib of wood and drywall dust before she slept, in our stud-wall 'room'. For anyone who has done even modest renos to either the family kitchen or the washroom, you probably have some idea how much stress is involved. Doing the whole house was a recipe for divorce.

But we survived it. Furthermore, since our debts had likewise grown, I now needed to finish the basement in order to rent it out. Before I got married my parents had done this for many years, so I knew how to make this work.

I spent the following 5 years doing the evening and weekend work in the basement. My kids would ask me 'Daddy, can you take us to the park when you're finished renobating?' Perhaps now you can understand why I wanted to take my daughter and teach her to ride her bike.

During these last 5+ years, I had to stop doing my 6km runs because I needed the energy when I got home to do the basement. Despite doing construction, the net effect was my gaining 40 lbs, and my blood pressure went up too.

I'm done now, and I've gotten back to running, though I haven't lost any weight yet. I can only tell you that as a parent trying to give my kids as much as I had, its too much work. I'm not lazy, but I can readily see why families break up, even if they don't take on mad missions as my wife and I had.

I have a life long history of documenting and analyzing the events of my own life in order to understand what goes on around me, and I know that society favours having one or no kids. Little allowance is made for the huge undertaking that kids require, and while it is the most rewarding thing anyone can do, it's a reward that can easily crush you.

What a thing to conclude...

Where to now?

OK, so I'm trying to sell myself as a Visionary Philosopher.

I'm really smart.

Just ask me. I'll tell you.

I wrote an essay about how civilization had inverted the dominant psychological role of the woman in the sexual relationship, making her the aggressive pursuer. Before even the most primitive law and order of early civilizations, the woman pre-empted rape by diving into her man's head in order to predict him, and later control him.

My wife told me to stop talking foolish.

Maturity Map based on AQAL and SDi structures