If you’d like to help with bike flag or lantern-making, please drop by 22 Melbourne Ave. in Parkdale either today (Sunday), Monday, or Tuesday – 10am to 5pm. See details in next post.

If you have any questions, please comment. 

Step 1

What:      Lantern and flag-making 
Where:    22 Melbourne Ave. (1 blk S of Queen, 1 blk W of Dufferin
               in Parkdale)
When:     Saturday, December 16, (10am to 4pm)

Step 2

What:      Winter Solstice in Kensington Market
Where:    Kensington Market (Augusta Ave and Oxford St; S of College,
              W of Spadina)
When:     Thursday, December 21 (6:00 pm till whenever)

Details:

Jean Blais Mathieu (aka velorution) is organizing a TakeTheTooker lantern and bike-flag making party this Sat Dec 16 (10am – 4pm) so that we may have a TakeThetooker presence at the Winter Solstice event in Kensington Market (Thur Dec 21, 6pm).

http://www.redpepperspectaclearts.org/

Cool Tools & Materials:

We will have most materials on hand, but if you can bring your own supplies, that’s always welcome. Possible items:

• glue gun or super glue (sorry, do try for eco-friendly)
• scissors
• fabric, rip-stop nylon or…
• rice paper
• acrylic or fabric paints
• paint roller
• bristol board to create stencils from
• bamboo or old fishing poles
• duct tape
• masking tape
• zap straps / plastic ties
• candles

Even if you can’t make it this Saturday, please come for the Winter Solstice event and be a lantern-bearer! 

Note: TakeTheTooker will likely be having other bike-flag parties, so don’t worry if you don’t get your very own flag this time. Come again!

Hope to see you Saturday or Thursday, or both days!

Here is a song written by musician Mike Ford in memory of Tooker — it’s called Le monde a bicyclette:

 Le Monde a Bicyclette.mp3

The next Take The Tooker meeting is:

Thursday, December 14th, 7:00 – 9:00pm
OISE, 252 Bloor St. W.
2nd Floor

Here is our agenda:

There’s an abundance of topics to talk about and many upcoming projects that need brainstorming and helping hands:
- Bike flag-making party
- Creating a recumbent promo-bike (Tooker-mobile)
- Holding bike-positive movie nights (Feb, Mar, and beyond)
- TTT website development
- Designing/writing petitions
- Group rides
- Tooker memorial events (Sat Mar 3 and Sun Aug 12)
- BikeWeek event (bike rally/street party)
- Fundraising 

The odds are that someone will bring cookies, and that someone else will bring Canada’s Choice doughnut holes . . . so come out and enjoy!  Enjoy our festively timed feast!  Due to the stressful nature of late December, it is plausible that this will be our last meeting of the year.

 Santa prefers cycling advocates!

Apparently cycling is a leading cause of climate change.  Please read this post on CultureChange.org :

Following the shocking revelation that heat generated by vigorous exercise is a major contributor to global warming, we are all having to reassess our own activities. It comes as a major surprise to many of us that storing energy in human fat is actually a valuable way of reducing our impact on the environment. Government may be introducing plans to extract this fat by large-scale liposuction programmes and storing it underground, but we all have a responsibility to reduce our participation in ecologically hazardous physical activity.

It is going to take a lot of melted down bikes to make one car though, so please tell your cyclists friends.  These guys have the right idea:

The beeb has posted a list of funny pictures of bike lanes.  From the article:

The cyclist is on the road where motorists can see him, not the cycle lane where he’d have to give way to trees.

Luckily we cut down all our tress in Toronto, so we won’t have to worry about this.