Canadians have a new Tax Free Savings Account (TFSA) this year.  Every Canadian resident over 18 gets $5000 contribution room each year, and any income earned is tax free (just like an RRSP). Unlike an RRSP, withdrawals are tax free too.

Now the important part. If you don’t open an account, you don’t get the $5000 contribution room. You don’t have to put money in the account right away, but you need to open it before Dec 31, 2009.

Go open one today!  And tell your friends!

1. Take a look at a comparison chart of different TFSA accounts.
2. Choose a company
3. Open an account
4. Deposit your $1, or $25 or whatever
5. Put more money in when you have it. It’s a good place to keep your Emergency Fund if you keep one.
6. Watch your money grow tax-free

Note that tax-free doesn’t necessarily mean fee-free.  Bank fees can eat up any gains you might get.  If you’re just opening the account to get the contribution room, and not putting much money in to begin with, I’d recommend the ING Direct TFSA Savings Account. Simple, no fee, and no minimum contribution.

Once you have more money in your TFSA and want better returns, you can take the money out of your first account, and move it to a TFSA Investment Account, where you can buy mutual funds, stocks and other things which can make a higher return.

The Government of Canada has details on How the Tax-Free Savings Account Works, and there is lots of other detail on the web.

Happy saving!

On the way to work each morning, I ride on a couple of major city streets. These roads have two lanes of traffic in each direction; however, they do not have bike lanes. To make matters worse, they also have square curbs. As a cyclist, if I were to follow the “keep as far right as possible” rule, I would have no place to go when a car passes me too close. In addition, the further right I ride, the more likely a car driver thinks they can sneak pass me without changing lanes. To be safe, I ride in the middle of the right most lane. Once I started doing this, the car drivers got the message “to pass this cyclist safely, I must move over into the left lane.”

Taking this one step further, anytime I am riding on a street where I think it is unsafe for a car to squeeze by me, I ride in the middle of the lane. This requires cars to wait behind me, or pass only when the left or oncoming lane is completely free of traffic. I learned this lesson the hard way; when a car passing me in a narrow construction zone clipped my handlebars with its side mirror, knocking me onto the shoulder. This would not have happened had I been in the middle of the lane, as the driver would have been unable to pass me.

Of course, riding in the middle of the lane only works if you are very visible. If you are wearing dark clothing at night, and are not well lit, stay off the road!  Unlit cyclists are a danger to both cars and other cyclists.

Prior to riding this section of highway, we had been warned about the road ahead. A kind person mentioned that all the stores in the area had bars on the window and warned us that it would not be safe for us to camp anywhere on the side of the road because it was Indian land. Riding through, we never felt uncomfortable or really all that different from riding anywhere else in Saskatchewan. Someone even pulled over while we were stopped to help ensure we were OK. So, we wonder at the power of language and if the use of the term “Indian Reservation” just reinforces stereotypes.

We wondered what alternative wording would feel more appropriate, and we saw it riding in Ontario – there was a sign announcing a “First Nation”. That certainly seems to be more politically correct, but also just feels better to us.

It was the ride from Rocky Mountain House to Lacombe which first gave me a flavor for the scope of the industry. It seemed every few minutes we would pass by another oil derrick, pumping station or processing plant. Then I started noticing the pipelines. Little signs by the roadside indicated the type of pipeline and owner. We never seemed to be out of sight of one. After a few hours of this, I started to feel like it was all part of one giant machine, and we were ants crawling slowly across. There was farm and ranch land everywhere, surrounding and covering all this infrastructure, but it felt like a thin covering, partially concealing the giant machine.

Processing plant, flare stacks and nearby fields

Every so often, we would get a whiff of petrochemicals, either the complex scent of hydrocarbons or the rotten-egg smell of hydrogen sulphide from sour gas. Not exactly pleasant, and protests by locals and farmers against the sour gas wells have been ongoing for years. Lately there have been a number of bombings of sour gas processing equipment and pipelines, especially in British Columbia.

Warning signs for a Sour Gas facility

Derricks and signs for the pipelines under the road

In the ensuing days, we saw more and more, sometimes pipelines, sometimes oil transport trucks, but never out of sight of something for more than a few minutes. Occasionally we came across some new construction, either the scar of a recently constructed pipeline snaking across the fields, or active construction on a new plant or well. Even when we entered Saskatchewan the machine stretched on around us, with storage tanks, steam injection systems and more wellheads and pipelines.

Recently constructed pipeline

Another Sour Gas Facility. The windsock is so workers know which way to run if any of the alarms go off, since un-perfumed Natural Gas is odourless

In Western Saskatchewan, oil and gas exploration and construction is helping to keep the small towns alive, as fewer and fewer farmers are needed to work the land. As part of our farm tour, Clem showed us the nearby oil and gas infrastructure, including a new natural gas-powered generating station, which will be used to power the large Enbridge pumping station as well feed power into the grid for the surrounding area. He also pointed out that crops actually grow better on top of a pipeline, so you can see where the pipeline goes, even years after construction. We had noticed the distinct lines, but assumed they must be due to different crops or recent construction. People have hypothesized that the heat from the pipeline may help get the crops an early start, or the turning over of the earth leaves the soil in better condition.

Natural gas powered electrical generating station under construction

One thing we had not noticed was the underground natural gas storage facilities. These are massive salt cavern formations where gas is pumped underground until it is needed. I wonder how many other bits of this giant machine we missed?

Huge oil storage tanks, much easier to notice than the underground salt caverns

It is a massive amount of infrastructure, all pumping non-renewable resources east and south to the voracious appetites of Eastern Canada and the United States. All this to give us the gasoline to fuel our cars and the natural gas to power our electrical plants and heat our homes. I hesitate to think what the area around the Tar Sands must look like! I found the engineering for this huge machine to be fascinating, but it is also scary to think of all the things which could go wrong.

Even if nothing goes wrong, we’re behaving as if there is a limitless supply of this stuff, and the quantities we’re using are huge. Throughout our travels, we saw how people in other countries – especially the less developed ones – conserve the energy they have (people actually unplug TVs and appliances when they are not in use – they drive small cars and use public transport). Now that we’ve returned to Canada, we see so much waste it is no wonder our energy use and carbon footprint are so high. It is easy to wonder at the lack of sustainability in a typical Canadian lifestyle, and we wonder how our lifestyle will change when we get back home and become “normal” again.

A fellow traveler reported something on their blog about current events in the country they were visiting, including some seemingly innocuous commentary by a local friend. Later, that friend was arrested and incarcerated for several days, and was questioned about the comments reported on the blog. We like to think are writing in our own obscure little corner of the Web, but it appears some countries are monitoring even the obscure corners…

We tell you this vague story to remind any fellow travelers that we have a responsibility to the people we meet while we are travelling. Some of these people live in places where our speech may adversely affect their health – so we must use our speech responsibly. Our new friends may be made accountable for what we say. We hope that we have been careful enough in our blogging to not get anyone in trouble. We don’t think our self-censorship has had much effect on the stories we have told, but are unhappy that we needed to do it.

The entire time we were in Jordan, Israel was bombing the Gaza strip. That definitely influenced our impressions of Jordan and the entire region. More than 50% of Jordanian citizens are Palestinian refugees. Every store that had a TV was showing the constant news reports showing blood soaked children. This led strong feelings of empathy for the people of Gaza, which could not help but wear off on us.

We met Egyptian hotel owners who were very friendly and provided great hospitality and yummy breakfasts.

We met an Egyptian trained doctor who was more than happy to give Becky more medication than she needed and possibly did more harm to her health than good.

We met Egyptian store owners, restaurant owners, and vendors who were more than happy to charge exorbitant prices and to see just how much money they could extract from tourists.

We met Jordanian Bedouins who were very friendly and welcoming. They were happy to share their culture and provided what felt like genuine hospitality.

We met Jordanian Christian hotel owners who provided hospitality that felt familiar to us.

We met Jordanians of Palestinian descent. One of them made some comments that we still find disturbing. His view seemed to be that no peace was possible while Israel existed, and he made several comments in favour of the Holocaust, including “Hitler did not kill all the Jews, so they would remember why he did what he did.” If this is a common sentiment, (and from what we understand, it is), there’s little hope of peace. Until Palestinians and Israelis can feel empathy for one another, and view each other as neighbours and fellow humans rather than faceless enemies, we don’t hold out much hope for the future.

We experienced a Jordanian state hospital whose staff gave the appearance of cleanliness but the bed sheets did not. We were later told that the private hospitals are much better.

We laughed at the story of a Jordanian tourist association who printed 50,000 copies of a brochure on desert tours in Arabic while only printing 20,000 copies in English. Do they really think that Arabs would come to Jordan to see the desert?

We enjoyed the stark and yet varying landscape of the Western Jordanian deserts. We spend many hours soaking in the sun and enjoying being alone in the desert.

We spent two days taking in the atmosphere and the awe inspiring vista of Petra. We rode camels and donkeys along the streets and pathways of Petra. Becky was given a gift of a necklace by a Bedouin girl that is one of her great treasures of this journey. Petra is a special place.

We saw the Dead Sea and enjoyed picnicking on one of its many cliffs. For 12 JD each (about $20 CAD) we enjoyed a brief float in the Dead Sea followed by a very cold shower!

We saw the rustic site of Jesus’ baptism and the construction of a tacky “baptism resort” on the Israel side of the River Jordan. We came within 5 or 10 meters of Israel, but never crossed over.

We drove through many police checkpoints with young men holding machine guns, smiling, and welcoming us to Jordan.

Overall, we very much enjoyed our time in Jordan although are wary of Jordanian health care, but were also very happy to return to Syria where you don’t feel ripped off every time you go to the market to buy vegetables. The influence of Egypt is strong (a country where poverty and tourism meet – such that tourists are constantly bombarded with scams and overinflated prices), but the friendliness and genuine hospitality of the native Jordanian’s provide a balance. It is definitely a country at the crossroads in the Middle East and is influenced by its various neighbours.

I’d like to say thank-you to everyone who has left a comment on our blog. It really helps keep me motivated to keep writing about our journeys.

If you see a delay between writing and posting that is because the comments are moderated. Once you’ve had a few accepted then your comments become automatically approved; until then, we must manually approve them. That allows us to keep the spam comments out.

You’ll likely see updates in batches rather than daily for the next while. We are soon about to enter rural Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and I’m not certain how often we’ll be able to get Internet. Once we make it to St. John’s, we’ll be sure to spend a few days updating the blog.

Cheers,

Becky

If you are reading our blog using the email subscription method (right panel), you may notice that when you view the website later, the posts have changed. This is because the email subscription only sends out posts when they are first published. As we find snippets of time on the road, we go back to posts and update them pictures and additional information. Unfortunately, the email subscription utilities does not inform you when we make these changes.

I don’t have a great solution to this problem yet; however, it is something we will look at when we get back to Ottawa. Hopefully, we’ll have the time to find a better way to let you know when things are updated. For now, if you want to see pictures, then please browse back over articles a week or so after they occur.

The alternative is that we wait to post the articles until we know they are finished. Unfortunatley that would mean that you would first see posts 4-5 days after they occurred. I think our families would prefer to see partial posts in a more timely fashion, rather than completed posts later.

Cheers,

Becky

It is possible to get detailed GPS maps with turn by turn routing, but they’re expensive, and a paper map worked just fine as a backup.

During our rest day today, I discovered that someone had uploaded an RLCT route to Bikely, and that I could download a GPX file from Bikely to Mapsource, and then to my GPS. Pretty basic stuff to some I’m sure, but I’m impressed!

I discovered that my recollection of the RLCT route was spot-on as far as Perth, but I was confused about the Perth to Kingston portion. Good to know now before tomorrow, since my planned route would have put us on more heavily travelled roads.

I do want to be careful that these new tools don’t cause us to artificially limit our routes though – sometimes the best adventures come from unplanned detours!

I’m sure there are other useful routes on Bikely, as well as other sites like www.gpsies.com. Alex Carr’s article on Bicycle Touring with a GPS on CGOAB has more details and other suggestions. Perhaps if I had re-read it after getting the GPS I wouldn’t be discovering this now…

RLCT Classic to Kingston

Share your bike routes @ Bikely.com

This was a painful process.  Although I’m sure I’ll never look at many of them again, they represent knowledge hard-obtained, over my five-year undergraduate degree.  With my poor memory, they are also touchstones reminding me of events and activities I had otherwise forgotten.  Among the treasures I discovered were:

• A journal I kept during my Religion and Ecology course
• A technical report on my implementation of Internet tools at Northern Telecom in 1994, including Usenet, Gopher, and that most modern of tools:  World-Wide-Web, with Hypertext links!
• A number of lab reports and commerce papes which brought back fond memories

I kept most of this, as well as many of the notes from my commerce courses, but the majority of Physics, Math and Engineering Physics notes went into the recycle bin.  As I let them go, I felt like the knowledge contained in them was lost, but I reminded myself that it was unlikely I would need it again.  If I do, these are not insights into the nature of the universe, they’re undergrad course notes.  Somehow, I’ll find the information again, probably faster than if I had to dig through my course notes.

I’m glad I finally did it, and also that I took the time to glance at everything, say goodbye to the things I discarded, and keep a few of the small treasures.

You will also notice that I am posting some articles in the past. I struggled with which date I should use for posts – the date the event occurred or the date in which I completed the article. I decided that when I am writing about specific events in the past (that is, specific journal entries), that I will date stamp them with the date they occurred, rather than the date I got around to finishing the article. I am not sure how this affects the various blog readers and email subscriptions. If this is a bad idea or really annoying for those of you reading, please let me know! I expect it will be easier to follow for those that are reading at least a month after the events, as things will be chronologically correct.

I am inspired by Kevin Kelly’s 2007 Christmas Essay about willingness to accept generosity, although it will certainly require effort to reach out past my shyness and ask.

One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded. One year I rode my bicycle across America, from San Francisco to New Jersey. I started out camping in state parks, but past the Rockies, parks became so scarce I switched to camping on people’s lawns. I worked up a routine. As darkness fell, I began scouting the homes I passed for a likely candidate: neat house, big lawn in the back, easy access for my bike. When I selected the lucky home, I parked my bag-loaded bike in front of the door and rang the bell. “Hello,” I’d say. “I’m riding my bike across America. I’d like to pitch my tent tonight where I have permission and where someone knows where I am. I’ve just eaten dinner, and I’ll be gone first thing in the morning. Would you mind if I put up my tent in your backyard?”

I was never turned away, not once. And there was always more. It was impossible for most folks to sit in their couch and watch TV while a guy who was riding his bicycle across America was camped in their backyard. What if he was famous? So I was usually invited into their home for desert and an interview. My job in this moment was clear: I was to relate my adventure. I was to help them enjoy a thrill they secretly desired, but would never do. My account would make an impossible dream seem real and possible, and thus part of them. Through me and my retelling of what happened so far, they would get to vicariously ride a bicycle across America. In exchange I would get a place to camp and a dish of ice cream. It was a sweet deal that benefited both of us. The weird thing is that I was, and still am, not sure whether I would have done what they did and let me sleep in the backyard. The “me” on the bicycle had a wild tangled beard, had not showered for weeks, and appeared destitute (my whole transcontinental trip cost me $500). I am not sure I would invite a casual tourist I met to take over my apartment, and cook for him. I definitely would not hand him the keys to my own car, as a hotel clerk in Dalarna, Sweden, did one mid-summer day when I asked her how I could reach the painter Carl Larsson’s house 150 miles away away.

The other option is to stealth camp, which requires finding a quiet corner of wilderness (or abandoned area). This will require a fair bit of bravery the first few times I expect. I try to remind myself that it’s all about opening myself to the experience.

On a more practical note, I found a great article on erecting a tent in the rain which clarified my thoughts about that. I’ve always done the “spread out the the fly first” approach, but never with the elegance of the author’s approach. I’ll try it with our Mountain Hardwear Viperine 3 and see how it works. Since the poles anchor to the tent with clips and not sleeves, we should be able to do it.

I do want to learn at least a few words in the major languages we’ll encounter, and I have been gathering up a list of resources. The list of languages is pretty long, but at least we have some long freighter voyages to study. I’m planning to start with Turkish and Arabic, and then move on to Mandarin. We’ll be spending a bunch of time in countries where other languages are spoken, so I hope some of this early study will help loosen up the corners of my mind dedicated to language.

• Our local library has a variety of Berlitz CDs and phrase books which should be helpful. So far we have a couple in Arabic and Mandarin. I’ve copied the CDs to my iPod for easier rewinding when I miss something.
• I also found some recommendations on ask.metafilter for free podcasts from Open Culture, including a series on Jordanian Arabic from the Peace Corps.
• According to another ask.metafilter post, getting comfortable with the alphabet is critical for Arabic, and likely for Chinese as well. I think that will be my biggest challenge.
• Folks on ask.metafilter also recommended a Mandarin podcast subscription called ChinesePod and Clavis Sinic, a method for learning the script.
• For Turkish, I’ve requested a Teach Yourself Turkish course, which doesn’t have great reviews on Amazon, but we’ll see how it works for me. If I’m struggling, I may get Conversational Turkish instead.
• There are also various versions of the U.S. Foreign Service Institute language lessons available online. Since these are government-produced, they’re in the public domain, so some kind souls on the Internet are digitizing them and making them available for free. This looks like a good option for Cambodian, Lao (text only), Vietnamese and Thai.  There are various other paid versions of the FSI lesson plan as well.

There are lots of other options out there, but this is more than enough for me to get started with.

instead of this?

We did as any good Canadian would, we strapped on our skis and skied to church this morning. Our neighbours who were brave (or foolish) enough to be out shovelling were quite amused.

It’s a good thing we didn’t try driving – there was a car abandoned in the middle of our street.

Once we made it off of our street, things got a little better. The main roads are all plowed. We didn’t ski all the way to church (that would have been a challenge). We managed to catch a city bus for about 1/2 the distance. We skied about 5 km, including a stretch near Lincoln Fields bus station where we frequently sank to our knees (yes, even on skis!)

After church, we were able to get a ride to the top of the street. We skied back home and then began the daunting task of cleaning out the driveway.

In the last 2-days, we have received 51 cm of snow. For some extra excitement, we also had some snow lightening (very spooky). Last night’s snow (over 30 cm) came with high winds, which meant that anything that was previously shoveled was now packed with snow drifts. It is a good thing it is a weekend, and for the most part, people can stay close to home and enjoy the sunny weather.

To make our lives that much more difficult, this year we decided not to pay for snow removal. Last year, we paid the yearly fee and the snow plow only had to come by twice. This year, we are questioning our wisdom in not renewing the service!

To give you a sense of just how much snow we have, see below:

[local /wp-content/uploads/2008/03/snow2008_0004.wmv]

For those that can’t view the video, here is a static action shot: