this and that, thunder and lightning edition

The dogs are back!

The backside of the place des arts / place des festivals had these dog sculptures. After renovations, art sometimes disappears. But the dogs are back.



The Mont Royal lookout over downtown. It's obligatoire folks.



New, freshly completed but not yet "announced" multi-use recreational bike path beside Cote des Neiges road.

This is a multi-use trail, unlike the Cote Ste-Catherine bike path, which is for bikes only.



The greatest place to see the sunset in Montreal, Oratoire Saint-Joseph.

Obligatoire, again.



Some unofficial bilingualism for our American visitors.



Bike on sidewalk zooming along. Scaring every person she passes.

If you make only one change for safety this year, please stop riding on the sidewalk.



Villeneuve at Cote-Ste-Catherine bike path. Cyclists are forced into the funnel of death inside the car lane.

Notice there is no space for bikes to travel beside the cars at this newly-rebuilt intersection. Oops.

Bike path and cars supposed to coexist on Villeneuve where it meets Cote-Ste-Catherine bike path. The re-designed intersection is rebuilt expressly for the new Cote-Saint-Catherine bike path.

Notice they narrowed the street and now there is no space for bikes and cars to share access to the intersection. It is now bikes OR cars.

That green strip on the sidewalk should have been accessible by bicycles crossing the intersection. Look at the successful integration of sidewalk and bike path along Clark street at St-Viateur or Van Horne. The removal of a separate space for bikes to travel through this intersection is a complete failure of design.

Another example of what bike-unfriendly Outremont thinks of providing safe infrastructure for bicyclists. Or just the usual complete incompetence concerning integrating bike infrastructure by the design engineers who redesigned this intersection.



Free anti-bike stickers are available from bike-unfriendly Outremont borrough.



Hmmm, that's a funny cloud, oh, lightning too? Uh-oh.

There was some very interesting weather this morning. As we rode along we noticed the sky to the north was black. With frequent lightning bolts. The problem was that we were headed north, right into the fun.

The result was that the last 5 minutes of the ride to work was in a thunderstorm, 4 minutes of this was super heavy rain that turned the road into a river, and every car passing us gave us a very big mega-splash that we had to ride through, it was a wave big enough to surf.

The roads were dry when we left home, and the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds on our ride. So, it seemed to be the usual super-fine conditions for cycling to work (a.k.a. vélo-boulot). And that's why we keep one set of dry clothes at work. Except we didn't. Doh.



This is NOT looking good.

We like taking a shower after a hard ride. Just not before the end of the ride please.



Is this a bike path? The childs' chalk drawings are good camoflage, but this is actually a bike path though the traffic circle in the middle of VMR/TMR.



Lots of places have mediocre bike parking. This Jean Coutu has good, easy-to-use secure bike stands.



Notice the "Walk Your Bike" sign in the upper left corner?

Neither did that woman on the bike on the the narrow sidewalk underpass on boulevard Saint-Laurent.



Get yourself to the Point a Calieres museum and see this pseudo giant Easter-Island head.



Highly visible "walk yer damn bikes" sign, bilingual too.



Also highly visible: this red light for bicycles.

Obeyed? Not in this city.