Alright, let me see if I can state this simply: if you are a cyclist and you don't want to die, you should do two simple things: 

1. Wear a freakin' helmet.
2. Obey the laws of the road like every other vehicle.

Before we explore these simple and yet apparently difficult-for-some-people concepts, I should clarify that I'm a regular bike commuter. So I have some perspective and I also have a vested interest because cyclists rely on the cooperation of drivers, and so cyclists behaving badly just make things worse for the rest of us.

Now, about that helmet thing. First, there's the simple reality that if/when your head one day collides with the pavement, a lamp post, the hood of a BMW or the side of a truck, the odds of avoiding lasting brain damage or the more permanent condition commonly known as death are better if there's something between your cranium and whatever it's crashing into. Of course, if that seemingly common sense motivation is not compelling enough for your unique circumstance, there's also the fact that here in BC the law requires you to wear a helmet. So even if you're convinced that your skull is somehow impenetrable to the force of an oncoming bus, surely your desire to be a responsible citizen should compel you to strap on a lid. 

But somehow some folks seem immune to both these arguments. For some reason, helmetlessness seems to be a particular problem with people who ride some sort of "cruiser" type bike. I think it's because they often seem to be pretending they're pulling off some sort of romantic Parisian image, gliding along as if they're riding next to the Seine on the way to an art gallery. And somehow maintaining this image makes ignoring logic and the law valid. But here's the deal: you need to wear a helmet, however un-continental it may be, and a baguette in your little wicker basket doesn't give you a free pass. 

On to issue two: a stop sign is a stop sign. A red light is a red light. If you are attached to any sort of wheeled vehicle travelling in a lane on the road, you are required to stop at either of these signals. Stop means the same thing for a bike as it does for a car. It means you cease to be mobile. It doesn't mean you just blow through and ignore the signal, your baguette bouncing merrily along. It doesn't mean you think about stopping and then roll on through, dodging the annoying pedestrians in the crosswalk.It doesn't mean just ride up on the sidewalk so you can ride through the crosswalk like you're some kind of transformer that instantly goes from bike to pedestrian. It doesn't mean only stop if it's convenient and doesn't break your momentum. And it doesn't mean pedal on through and swear at the drivers who almost cream you in the intersection as if they have done something wrong. It means STOP. It's pretty much a universal symbol on roads around the world. My kid knew what a stop sign meant when he was about two. So you really have absolutely no excuse. 

Unlike the helmetless, the most frequent offenders in this category seem to be the hardcore "look at me, I'm kitted out like I'm riding the Tour" types on expensive road bikes. I once saw a whole herd blow through a stop sign and, based on the logo on their fancy shirts, it appears they were actually a group of cycling middle-aged doctors. Doctors, people! Men who quite likely have spent at least one shift in an ER somewhere treating some twit cyclist who got mowed down by a van. You'd think they would know better, wouldn't you? Bottom line: doctor or not, stop means stop no matter how much spandex you have wrapped yourself in.

I like riding my bike, and I like going fast (well, you know, as fast as my legs and my clunky bike let me go). But I have no desire to die doing it. And I'm painfully aware that my ability to not die depends in part on drivers respecting my place on the road. The more of my fellow cyclists who ride like twits, the less that respect becomes. So if you can't ride safely for your own sake, at least do it for the rest of us. And wear a helmet. I know they can look a little dorky, but you'll look far more dorky without a head. 

Today, lad #1 insisted he didn't need a nap to rest up for his t-ball practice, which will take him past his usual bed time. Of course, he was wrong and eventually crashed on the couch (thankfully, otherwise it probably would have been a grumpy practice). I knew he would. Because I'm his dad and so I'm smart about these things. Not as smart as his mother is about these things (and so much else), but smart enough to know better than he does what he needs and doesn't. 

And by "smart" what I really mean is that, in a lot of ways, he's young enough that I know him better than he knows himself. Which is really part of what makes parenting young kids so much fun and sometimes so desperately frustrating. Because they can insist with every fibre of their being that I am wrong, and the truth is they are wrong. And when they discover that, it only confuses their poor little evolving brains even more. I don't remember being four, but I bet it's probably hard work.

And as I sit thinking about how "smart" I am in such a relative sense, I'm also increasingly aware that it won't last. That at some point he'll know more about him than I do. And I wonder where the balance will tip. I wonder when he'll have a better, more genuine understanding of himself than I do. I hope that along the way he learns to love what he finds as much as I love what I see in him now. Sometimes he tells me that he loves himself already, so that's a promising start.

None of us ever completely understand who we are. There are always facets of us that will be clearer to outsiders than to ourselves. But at some point we learn enough about ourselves and the complexity of being human in general, that we know who we are better than anyone else could. And then we start dealing with all sorts of other issues as we try to compensate for the shortcomings we realize we have, before one day just accepting them and valuing the flaws and the cracks.

He's a long way from any of that yet as he lies here twitching in his sleep. But every day he gets closer. Every day he gets smarter about himself. And one day I won't be so smart anymore. Although maybe I'll always be older and wiser. But I'm not even so sure about that myself.

In a corner on the wall of Cliff's Barbershop there's a small clock. It has a tacky band of blue neon light around the outside and the face is what I suppose could best be described as an ad for Dapper Dan Pomade. There seems to be some debate on the interwebs about whether or not Dapper Dan was ever an actual brand of pomade or just one they made up for the movie Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Real or not, I looked at the clock and wondered why the word dapper has all but disappeared.

Coincidentally, my wife recently told my son he was looking very dapper in a little outfit he was wearing. Always curious about new words and how to file them away into his ever-expanding vocabulary, he asked what it meant. We'll see if he uses it. Because not many do. Some do, here and there. But it's one of those words that generally feels like an artefact from a bygone era. It's the kind of word you might use to describe a character from Mad Men but not so much to describe someone real in the present real world. It's a word that belongs in an old-fashioned barbershop but not outside on the street. Anyway, such is the nature of language. It ebbs and flows, words rise and fade. And the reasons for that are many, often shaped by changes in social norms.

In this case, maybe it's partly because most men don't look dapper these days. I'm not being judgemental by that. I spend much of my time slothing around in jeans - and would do so more often if my work didn't expect something more "professional" from my wardrobe. The era of the three-piece suit as the daily default is long gone. And I'll quickly add that I'm okay with that. I prefer to be more comfortable and casual. But even when I wear a suit, I wouldn't describe the look as particularly dapper. Business isn't dapper. It's just business. Dapper is something more than a suit, something more subtle, something not so much stylish and fashionable as it is tailored. It's not handsome. It's how you present the handsome. It's the male equivalent of Audrey Hepburn in a black dress and pearls. It's Cary Grant, isn't it? Even in his era, not everyone could pull it off. Bogart wasn't dapper, even if he wore the same suit as Grant. And it's the same today. George Clooney kind of has it. Brad Pitt doesn't. Jimmy Kimmel did a funny bit a couple years ago about the Handsome Men's Club. Funny stuff. And I suppose most of those guys are handsome. But the Dapper Men's Club is a lot harder to get into I think.

And I think part of being dapper is more than how you look. It's how you present yourself. Maybe it's that dapper men use words like dapper. Not that they actually say dapper (a dapper man would never describe himself as dapper - to do so wouldn't seem dapper), but that they use words like it. Words that are a step outside the cliche and the expected. Words that convey a certain sophistication and wit. A certain something that I can't quite put my finger on, which itself should confirm that I don't have it. And maybe that's the thing that troubles me - it's not so much that so few of us actually are dapper, but that we don't even sound dapper anymore. I know language evolves. But I wonder if it's not just evolving but narrowing, becoming more limited. Or if not more limited, less sophisticated somehow. Less, for lack of a better word, stylish. Less creative. Less engaging. Less, well, dapper. I'm rambling now, which is profoundly undapper I'm sure.

I walked through our old neighbourhood this morning, past the house where a little old lady lived. I think she had a cat, of course. The place was always a little run down. Every now and then we'd catch a glimpse of her, stooped and grey like the house. I often thought it was rather amazing that she was still living on her own. The house was a character place. Probably a hundred years old at least, so probably only slightly older than her. For all I know, she was born there and had never lived anywhere else. We used to joke sometimes that somewhere there were probably much younger family members just waiting for her to shuffle off this mortal coil so they could sell her piece of prime real estate.

You'll note I'm using the past tense, because to my surprise the house was gone today. In its place is a newly built and not quite complete very modern new house. My first thought was that the imagined family had probably had their wish come true at last. The old gal had bought the farm, and not wasting any time they had torn down the old house where she may have lived her entire life and erected this fancy new place. But then I imagined maybe that wasn't it at all. Maybe she had just decided to upgrade, hiring a contractor to build her a new house.

I emailed my lovely wife with a picture of the new house. And, funnily enough, she replied that she hoped the same thing - that the old lady had decided it was time to build her new dream home. "But she probably wouldn't have built a place with so many stairs," she said. "I bet she's putting in an elevator," I replied optimistically. I'm sure she's not, of course. But it was nice to think for a fanciful moment that maybe she hadn't just faded away, only to have her old house torn down, its shattered pieces trucked away with all the memories she had left behind.

It happens all the time, I know. People and their lives and all that surrounded them pass away. But in this case the change was so visible. And I found myself thinking about how much we just pass by without every thinking it will one day pass away. And then I remembered the one day when I didn't pass by. It was one of those rare times when I actually saw her. I was walking home from work. There she was standing by her front gate, stooped and grey like her house. And I smiled and said hello. She smiled back, and knodded a bit, and that was it. It was nothing at the time. But somehow that memory seems worth a little more now.

I've always had a bit of a fascination with two things: clocks and maps. And on the surface, you might think that suggests I'm someone who likes to keep track of things. But it's actually the opposite.

Clocks intrigue me because there's something inherently futile about them. They try to capture time, to segment it, to make it visible and defined and manageable. But time doesn't really care. It moves whether we track it or not. That's why, as I've written before elsewhere, I like analogue clocks better than digital - because there's a vulnerability to analogue that is somehow a more honest depiction of what clocks are really about. 

Maps are kind of the same. They give us the ability to plan and chart a course, which is certainly helpful. We take them for granted now in a world of GPS and Google. But early maps were ultimately an attempt to capture the world, define it, segment it and preserve discovery. What a fascinating process it must have been to explore in a place you couldn't define in your mind's eye.

Clocks and maps let us plan as if we have complete control over what is next. And, perhaps just as importantly and more accurately, they let us document where and when something happened. But they can neither help us truly anticipate the actual experience of what is ahead nor fully capture the actual experience of what is behind us. As practical and useful as they are in many ways, they are ultimately ambitious but flawed.

They are also products of a natural human desire to chart our progress - to guide and capture the human experience. Which brings me around to some conversations I've had lately about plans. The smart people who write books that other smart people read will tell me that I'm supposed to have a plan. I'm supposed to have goals and timelines in my personal and professional lives so that I can "map my way forward to achieving my full potential" or some such crap. But here's my problem: I'm not much of a planner. And I suppose that's reflected in my interest in clocks and maps - it's more about their creation and how they work than how I can actually use them.

It's not that I only live in the moment. I'm not that spontaneous either. But I've never tried to set a particular course very far ahead either. The cynic in me would say that's because I'm just lazy. The pragmatist in me would say it's because I prefer to leave my options open. Neither is entirely right or wrong. But in hindsight, despite the prevailing wisdom of the wise, my lack of attention to grand plans has arguably been a good thing. Because it seems to me that often the things that have had the biggest influence on my life are things I could or would never have planned for. 

That's never been more true than in the past five or six years, when some of the most unexpected things of all would surely have knocked me far off any tracks I might once have laid. And instead of struggling to reschedule stops and put trains back on rails, I've found myself quite naturally living more true to myself than ever before. The more unexpected my life has been, the more I've become me. And the less I've worried about the plans, the more I've enjoyed the moments - large and small - as they have happened. My eyes have been on the people and places around me, rather than drawing lines on maps and counting the minutes that have passed and are left.

While maybe I should be, I'm not worried about consciously mapping and chronicling my life. In a way that's happening inside me anyway. To some extent, the map is there in the lines around my eyes and the healed scars on my heart. The passage of time is marked in ways that matter somewhere in the flawed record of my memory. And where I will go next and when is not defined just yet. If someone is setting schedules and laying tracks, it's not me. I'll just follow and see where they go. 

"Did you catch the sunrise this morning?" the girl in the cafe asks me as she takes my money. I tell her I didn't. She tells me it is the one benefit to getting up early and riding the bus into town to make coffee for strangers on a Sunday. While she does that for me, we talk about how I knew how that felt when I used to commute an hour and a half each way to work every day. I tell her how there was always a brief period of weeks in the fall and the spring when that long drive would allow me to see both the sunrise and the sunset through a smudged car window.

Then we talk about how I moved into the city and didn't have to do that anymore. How my commute became a 10-minute walk. "Did you still wake up really early though?" Yes, yes I did, out of habit and heartbreak and all sorts of other reasons. At least for a while. "I got over it though," I tell her - the waking and everything else. But I tell her how now I have small children, and so it's not unusual for me to be waking woken up before the sunrise again these days.

"At least now you have a really good reason," she says. And, while it doesn't always seem like it when my eyes creak open in the dark, I have to admit that she's right. I imagine there will be a day when I'll wake up before sunrise, listening for little voices that are no longer little and no longer there. And I'll miss them. I'll have to remind myself that tomorrow morning. And I'll have to open the curtains.

It seems I should apologise. It started with my lovely wife. She couldn't resist posting a status update on Facebook about something I did for her on Valentine's Day. That resulted in a number of comments from her friends either a) complaining that I was making them or their husbands look bad or b) asking if I could give their partners some lessons. Both responses are slightly awkward and I can only hope they were made in jest. Then came the colleague who confronted me at work, with good humour, to explain how his wife had seen Amy's post and subsequently confronted him at home asking why he hadn't been as kind to her on Valentine's. Again, "you're making me look bad" was the theme.  

So apparently I have broken some sort of manly code that commits us all to a mediocre level of expression of our affections on the day of the year generally accepted to be a celebration of love. I must have missed the bro memo on this topic. But the truth is that I would have shredded it even if it had crossed my desk. Because the greater truth is that I am completely, shamelessly and undeniably in love with my wife. As the letter I gave her yesterday expressed (among other things), I deeply treasure everything she has brought to my life in the last six years. And my only regret is that I probably don't tell her that in as much detail more often.

I know there are some guys who play the ridiculous "I don't believe in Valentine's Day, honey, because I love you every day and I'm not going to fall for some Hallmark marketing gimmick of a holiday" line as an excuse for not making an effort. Forgive me, but that's just lame and she shouldn't put up with it. If there is anything worth dedicating a day to, it's love. If you take the time to carve a pumpkin on that fun but most meaningless of holidays Halloween, then you can't justify taking a pass on Valentine's Day. What better thing to celebrate than the thing we all search for and yearn for in our lives, whether we admit it or not? And yes, it is something to embrace and recognize every day because once you find it you realize how precious it is and how empty you'd be if you lost it. But life gets in the way sometimes, and so the least any of us can do is remind ourselves and each other for just one day how much what we share matters.

I don't claim to be the perfect husband by any means. I was only partially kidding when I observed that I need to make the most of Valentine's Day to compensate for my many flaws. But I do believe that romantic love is not just a woman thing. It's the most profoundly human thing to seek and feel and express. Maybe we just don't let boys know that as they become men. Maybe we try to teach them otherwise for some ridiculous reason. I hope my boys learn better as they grow, and I hope I show them better by my own actions. They'll be better, happier, more loved men for it.

So you can call me a soft romantic if you like, but I'll only consider it a compliment. And if you expect me to apologise for being so happily and openly in love with the most remarkable woman I have ever known, I'm afraid that is not going to happen. If I make you look bad in the process and that's a problem for you, then you're just going to have to up your game my friend. 

Some of us are geniuses and some of us are fools. Some of us are wise and some of us are naive. Some of us believe and some of us deny. Some of us respect and some of us dismiss. Some of us run and some of us stumble. Some of us trust and some of us destroy. Some of us choose and some of us blame. Some of us act and some of us rest. Some of us hear and some of us listen. Some of us shout and some of us sing. Some of us dream and some of us are awake in the dark. Some of us are bold and some of us are insecure. Some of us join and some of us divide. Some of us reach and some of us withdraw. Some of us fear and some of us hope. Some of us create and some of us condemn. Some of us control and some of us concede. Some of us defy and some of us defend. Some of us dance and some of us yearn to. Some of us repel and some of us attract. Some of us break and some of us are broken. Some of us are strong and some of us are human. Some of us search and some of us are found. Some of us love and some of us wait. Some of us bleed and some of us heal. Some of us are children and some of us are childish. Some of us are old and some of us chase our shadows. Some of us are honest and some of us are lying to ourselves. Some of us are always right and some of us know better. And every single one of us will, at some point in our lives, be all these things in some way.

I'm no jetsetter, but I've spent enough time in enough different hotels to know that hotels are weird and artificial places. Some of them are weirder than others - some deliberately so and others rather unintentionally.

Case in point: this place I'm staying tonight while I'm across the water for work. It calls itself the "Executive" something or other, because that's what mid-range hotels do to make themselves sound more like the fancy hotels (which themselves are still weird in their own ways). Experience has taught me that any hotel that calls itself the Executive something or other is probably trying to punch above its weight. But no matter - I'm not all that fussy and it's not my dime so I can't complain. But if you're going to aspire to cater to the Executive Business Traveller (their capitalization, not mine), one does wonder why you:

1. Would even have something called a "Honeymoon Room."
2. Would not do something about the peeling wallpaper, which really does detract from what people might expect from a Honeymoon Room. I imagine it's peeling because of the moisture from the dubious-looking jacuzzi tub in the middle of the room, but still.
3. Would do things like "upgrade" one of those business travellers to said Honeymoon Room for no apparent reason upon his arrival. I'm travelling by myself on a government account. Does that say "free upgrade to the Honeymoon Room" to you?

One of my favourite hotel experiences was when I took a trip to San Diego for a concert and checked into a magical place called the Pink Flamingo, which I picked from an ad at the bus station based on its cheap price and proximity to the concert venue. Turned out it was a theme room place, which was fun and I rather enjoyed the decor of the Saloon Room. I even got a discount when the desk clerk realized I was checking alone. Now that kind of makes sense. So it was weird in a quirky and slightly sleazy way, and that's fine because you expect quirky and slightly sleazy from a place called the Pink Flamingo. It didn't bill itself as the Executive Pink Flamingo after all.

But this place I'm in tonight is weird in a slightly uncomfortable and I-feel-a-bit-embarassed-for-it kind of way because it clearly isn't what it aspires to be and yet doesn't realize it. It's the hotel equivalent of a gangly, pimply teenage boy trying to impress a cute girl. Welcome to the Executive Awkwardness Suites.

It was stuck there, its ribbons tangled in the high branches and it's crinkled foil scraping against bark. And I thought about how balloons don't belong in trees.

Some child's hand had almost certainly let it slip away. There were probably tears. Whenever my kid loses a balloon, there are tears. Sometimes it seems no matter how carefully you tie the ribbon around a wrist, it is determined to slip the knots and slip away. And then there are tears as the balloon is caught by the wind and lifted away. 

I sometimes wonder if the tears are just for the loss, or if they are for the loss and also for the joy that the balloon seems to embrace. Because, despite our insistence, balloons don't belong in children's hands any more than in trees. They don't really deserve to end up in the corner of a child's bedroom, shrinking away. They belong in the sky, drifting, as they do. Hold them for a moment, but they're never at their best in our hands.

When the balloon defies us and slips away, it's just trying to be what it truly is. It wants to be free.