The bump that stumps
I ride my bike to work whenever the weather is good. My preferred route in from the east end is along the bike path on the north side of Lakeshore Blvd. (It takes a few minutes more than going straight along Queen, but I get to see ducks and rabbits instead of streetcars and prostitutes.)
The bike path is pretty decent, with one irksome exception: an enormous bump caused by a tree root growing under the path.
This bump has been there for years, at least as long as I've been cycling that path. At first it caught me completely off guard, with a bone-crunching thud followed by my bike being launched into the stratosphere like something out of BMX Park.
I quickly learned to give the bump I wide berth. Soon after, I noticed that someone had helpfully painted the upper ridge of this escarpment with white spray paint. Later on, it was marked with yellow paint. Then someone added a grid of yellow contour lines (is the thing computer generated?). Then a yellow runway approach arrow was added. For a couple of weeks, there was even a pylon beside it.
It reminds me, in a painful yet nostalgic way, of the dearly departed Gardiner Hump. They placed permanent warning signs around that sucker too, but it took years before anyone actually fixed it.
Which makes me ask the same question about my hump: why make so many trips to warn people about it, and none to fix it?
OK, so the people who put up the warnings were probably cycle Samaritans, not city workers – though I can't imagine nobody has ever complained to the city about it. And perhaps the stripe painters don't know how to fix a pothole themselves.
Of course, the problem won't go away for good until someone severs the tree root, which is probably tricky and, for some cyclists, morally repugnant.
But if you let a tree get away with tripping you with its roots, what's next? Thorns in the eyes? Clotheslining your throat with branches?
Give these things an inch and they'll take an acre. Teach the brute a lesson, before it's too late!
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August 18th, 2006 - 10:25
I love it when you can see nature inexorably exerting itself against our attempts to pave over it. I wish you could do an extreme time lapse photography film to watch the roots disrupting the ground – it would be like that film tremors http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0100814/
We once walked the route of the old garrison creek (RIP) and you can’t pave over nature. Houses around the route are sinking fast.
Tree root structures are twice the size of the tree’s canopy. If you severed the root you’d either kill the tree, or have a new root there soon enough.
If I had the time and energy I would create a counterstory in a tree’s blog about how these damn humans pave over him with asphalt and how even though the tree keeps growing, they keep doing things to warn people about the bump rather than doing the sensible thing and moving the path.
August 18th, 2006 - 11:07
Hmmmm.
In general I agree with that sentiment, and I acknowledge having a little fun with an uncharacteristic rant against nature.
In this case, however, I think fighting against bike paths is counterproductive – particularly those that offer an alternative to all that pavement on its flanks. This one is squeezed in between Eastern Ave., the Lakeshore, the Gardiner and Lake Ontario – none of which offer preferable routes for bicycle OR tree…
Not sure about the sacredness of this particular root, either – it’s the only one on the whole path that causes a problem, and in just one direction.
It’s not that I don’t feel sorry for the tree – like that stretch of bike path, it’s wedged into a small space between a railway track and a construction storage yard. Neither are used very often. Move them, and we’d have room for lots of trees AND bike paths.
But that’d make too much sense. So for now, I blame THE MAN for pitting cyclist and tree against each other.
Here’s a solution: since there’s no room to divert the bike path, maybe we could build a cute little bridge over the root?
Here’s an artist’s rendering:
http://www.gorbould.com/blog/images/bump_bridge.jpg
August 19th, 2006 - 02:12
You have to fight the power of nature sometimes. I mean, isn’t some of the great literature of the world based on that premise?
August 21st, 2006 - 11:44
For those that don’t know, MC is something of a pop culture afficionado – so, here’s a challenge: what would make your top 10 list of “man vs. nature” literature (or film…)?
August 23rd, 2006 - 01:59
It is a tough question on many levels, as it usually isn’t as cut and dried as Old Man and the Sea where that is the defining conflict of the story. Usually the environment or an animal proves to be a source of conflict it is true, but other forms of conflict(like man against himself/man) come to the forefront.
For example, movies like the Thing where the environment is deadly, but there are other elements, namely an alien that can assume other forms and the paranoia that develops between the men leads to these other forms of dramatic conflict.
Or think of books like Lord of the Flies, Robinson Crusoe or the movie Castaway or the television show Lost where the environment is something that needs to be fought and in many ways it is the first antagonist that has to be tamed before other conflicts can arise, so as you can see, pinning this down to 10 choices is difficult… almost as difficult as determining the 10 best man vs man stories.
August 23rd, 2006 - 10:42
Good point, very good point.
OK, 10 best man vs. trees?
August 24th, 2006 - 14:03
Evil Dead. Although that was more tree vs. woman. *shudders*
August 24th, 2006 - 14:54
That was the only one that I could think of too.
But then I did a little poking around the internet, and came up with a few others. But they are really stretching it, and I feel like I’m missing some obvious ones…
Other man vs. tree movies:
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Ents vs. Saruman)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
(Harry and Ron vs. Whomping Willow)
Star Wars Ep. IV (Dark Side tree vs. Luke’s mind)
The Shining (Evergreen maze vs. Jack)
August 25th, 2006 - 13:11
And there is Poltergeist as well.
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