Shopping for Bicycle Insurance in Canada

On my first break from a busy week, I decided this morning to waste some time on the computer, reading the newspaper. This is when I came across the first title I've read in local newspapers that seems to be pro-cycling in this article

My husband and I cycle to work and also take the kids by bicycle to their activities. We spend a lot of time on our bicycles.

It led me to think about bicycle insurance. I don't mean insurance to cover motorist-caused accidents with bicycles, which is virtually all of the time. What about cases when bicycles cause injury to people or damage property? Maybe the cyclist is on her cell phone and wildly slams into a car a while she wasn't looking. I am being sarcastic here. This is a reaction to the suggestion in the article that cyclists purchase insurance. Cyclists don't use cell phones while driving; drivers do, despite laws against the practice. Personally, it seems that each time a driver cuts me off as if he or she didn't see me, I see that they are on the cell phone. In the first few weeks after the anti-cell phone law was enacted, I did see a reduction in driver cell phone use. But that period of romance is long over, and drivers are back at it. Putting my life at risk.

I digress. Curious about whether other countries require cyclists to take out insurance in accidents they've caused that do not involve automobiles, I found that the UK, Australia, and the US offer some options.

In the UK, there is CycleGard Road Care. It provides personal liability coverage for cyclists for $44 a year. With the cost of the insurance so low compared to cars at thousands a year, you'd really have to question how often bicycles cause accidents that require insurance coverage, as insurance costs are based on a sophisticated system of number crunching that guarantees that insurance providers come out ahead.

But what about Canada? Google led me to Bicycle Insurance Canada, a sad one page writeup which said, "Below is a list of providers we are aware of , that will provide bicycle insurance cover. You will need to ring them because their websites don’t offer a standard option online for bicycle insurance." It listed three mainstream insurance companies. I clicked on the one which happens to provide my home insurance.


I typed in my question: "Do you have bicycle insurance (collision, 3rd party)?" and the automated computer responded with links pointing to rental car insurance! That's artificial intelligence for you, that! I tried taking out the terms in brackets, "collision, 3rd party" that were confusing Robbie the Robot, and this time I was told that the question I really asked was "What types of insurance do you offer?" Ah, that's better. In the list that followed, bicycles were not mentioned. Time for the 1-877-777-7136. This led to the general line for Client Services.

Can I help you? "Yes. Do you have bicycle insurance? I don't mean insurance for when a bicycle is stolen, but do you have insurance if I am riding my bicycle and I hit a person or a parked car?"

She did not know of any particular bicycle insurance. Luckily for me, I have an existing policy with this company. The operator looked into my home insurance to find if I was covered. She suspected I was. She read out a portion to me over the telephone: "...Personal liability, to accidents or occurrences, unintentional bodily injury or property damage arising due to personal actions anywhere in the world." $1M in liability. There is $6000 for voluntary medical and $6000 for voluntary property damage. What, you ask, is voluntary property damage? If I was at someone's home and decided to, say, pick up their Stradivarius and smash it on the hardwood floor to make a point while telling a story about how a driver was on his cell phone when he smashed into me, yes, I would be covered. But only in the amount of $6000. Dommage. Similarly, if I do decide to take my tire pump and smash in the headlights of a driver who cut me off, I would be covered.

To make certain, I ended the call with this: "So, are you sure I'm covered?" Yes. "What about my husband and my children?" Yes, everyone in the household. Excellent. Now I can text while riding again! No worries!

I did not call the other two companies that might offer bicycle insurance. One only offered service in Alberta, New Brunswick, and Ontario. So I wrote an, out of curiosity. Question to be resolved: "Does bicycle insurance exist?" That question to be answered when I hear back from them.

Then the bigger question: How often do cyclists cause accidents that require insurance coverage? I think the answer is obvious, from the $44 a year insurance premium for Brit cyclists.

Starbucks Cupcakes

For many years, I was never really satisfied with the pastry offerings at Starbucks. I like my pastries to be good and evil, mostly made of fat and sugar. The biscotti, lemon loaf, oat bar or chocolate dipped pretzel just didn't do it for me. Recently, I was surprised when my husband brought me the Double Chocolate Cupcake with a Black Cherry Mocha. Starbucks had jumped on the Cupcake Bandwagon at last! Love at first bite! Today I fell out of love with it.

When I went to Starbucks today, there were no Double Chocolates, so I bought two each of the two types left, a Vanilla one and "Chocolate Bloom." Priced at four for $8, one for $2.25. I excitedly pulled the Chocolate Bloom out of its overpackaged home, took a loving bite, and... it was frozen, and I couldn't taste much. I mistakenly believed it was baked locally, fresh. How naive can you get?

Then, I noticed that it was "Manufactured exclusively for Starbucks, Seattle, Washington." Where was this thing baked? Finally, I perused the label, which looked alot like the labels you get on those cardboard cheap ingredient baked goods you can buy at Safeway. Ah yes. The delicious and essential ingredients of guar gum, xantham gum, propylene glycol, stearoyl-2-lactylate, and tricalcium phosphate. And that was just the yummy cake part.

The icing only had a few ingredients that I wasn't familiar with in my baking at home. Soy lecithin, palm oil (yeah! trans fats!), and carmine (colour).

Here's a rundown on these special added ingredients:

Guar Gum: thickener made from guar beans, emulsifier, stabilizer. Okay, at least it's naturally obtained.
Xantham Gum: Made by fermenting glucose or sucrose (sugars). Purpose similar to guar gum.
Propylene Glycol: Industrially derived chemical used in automotive antifreeze and used to deice planes. A humectant food additive. Ah, to keep it moist? Also a solvent for food colourings and flavourings. Not toxic at low levels. Nice!
stearoyl-2-lactylate: Emulsifier and humectant. Common organic chemical additive in bread-type products.
tricalcium phosphate: Probably used as a raising agent. Various forms are found in nature. Pass.
Soy Lecithin: Soy-bean derived fatty acid. Another emulsifier.

In confectionery it reduces viscosity, replaces more expensive ingredients, controls sugar crystallization and the flow properties of chocolate, helps in the homogeneous mixing of ingredients, improves shelf life for some products, and can be used as a coating. In emulsions and fat spreads it stabilizes emulsions, reduces spattering during frying, improves texture of spreads and flavour release.

carmine: A bright red colour pigment, produced "by boiling dried insects in water to extract the carminic acid and then treating the clear solution with alum, cream of tartar, stannous chloride, or potassium hydrogen oxalate; the coloring and animal matters present in the liquid are thus precipitated." Yay! Get your daily dose of insect extract right here!

How sad it is when love affairs don't last.

Washing Workout Wear

Recently I cycled to a singing rehearsal, removed my jacket upon arrival, and was horrified to smell a distinct odour coming from me! It is not the familiar scent that you smell at the gym when there are men working out, but there was a distinctive odour that I found unpleasant. I wash all my exercise clothing after a single wear: not so good for the environment, but I have a sensitive nose and cannot stand the smell of prolific bacteria. Regular detergent is just not cutting it for me. Nor is it getting the sharp ammonia like smell out of my husband's polypropylene technical undershirts.



After some research, I found a range of options:

1. Soak in one cup of baking soda and some water.

2. Soak in Borax before washing.

3. WIN High Performance Sports Detergent. A US company designed a superoxygenated formula that works thus:

"Using a unique technology, Win Detergent's scientifically designed super oxygenated system directly targets offensive odors and stains. This powerful oxy cleaning technology eliminates the embedded sweat molecules and odors that overwhelm the fabric. Simultaneously, these same ingredients also react with soil and organic materials causing them to either decolorize or disintegrate. Once in a soluble form after oxidization, dirt and odors easily wash away." -- from its website.

This product is widely available in the US and online. In Canada it is only available at Shoppers Drug Mart for around $6 for 946 mL.

Bicycling Magazine reviewed the product in June 2008 and felt that the product removed smell no better than ordinary Tide, not justifying the cost. He recommends it conditionally: "If you want the highest level of performance out of your riding gear or have clothes that seem to always smell no matter what you do, WIN is a winner."

In October 2007, Runner's World briefly reviewed four different detergents.

The reviewer noted that while WIN detergent removed the smell at first, but after a short time, the smells came back.

4. No Sweat Activewear Detergent. A Canadian company, with the Bio Blast formula developed by an inventor in North York, Ontario.

According to its website:

"No Sweat 's unique active ingredient Bio-Blast ™ actually eliminates odor caused by bacteria and oil lurking beneath the surface." It also claims to be the first detergent to remove armpit stains and ring around the collar.

This detergent may be purchased directly from the manufacturer for sale in the US and Canada. The cost for their special promotion is $30 for 4x500 mL, or around $15 a litre, plus shipping costs. The cost for a larger amount is $70 for 4x4L plus $15 for shipping. This works out to $5.31 per litre. The availability in local stores was limited mostly to Hot Yoga establishments.

5. Assos Active Wear Cleanser. The eye popping price, $63 US for one litre was enough to stop me from further researching it. (Note, added January 2012: This was selling at West Point Cycles in Vancouver, $25 for 300 ml--sorry, I don't recall the exact size. This would last you about 30-60 washes). This wash is highly rated and prized by those who buy it to cleanse their top end kits, judging by the reviews on Wiggle. Since everything I own is not "top end" I don't need the Ferrari of sports detergents.

6. Hydrogen Peroxide added to regular wash.

Products like Oxy Active are Hydrogen Peroxide in its chemically solid form after it contacts water.

7. Penguin Sport-Wash, Base Wash by Nikwax, and Granger G-Wash Cleaner were favourably reviewed by Runner's World, with no real differences noted between them. (January 2012 note: The Penguin Sport-Wash is selling at West Point Cycles in Vancouver for $14 for the 500 ml size. They also sell samples of Penguin if you don't want to commit to a large bottle).

[Update, January 2012:

8. Halo Proactive Sports Wash Laundry Detergent ($10.42 for 1 L). I found this on Wiggle, which ships free to Canada for a minimum order. It has great reviews on Wiggle. I included it here as a low cost alternative to the others.]

In the end, I chose to use Oxy Active. With a front loading washer, I have found that adding OxiClean, or an equivalent like Oxy Active, available at Zellers or Walmart, dissolved in warm water and added manually to the clothes before starting the wash with regular detergent, is effective enough. Problem solved.

Blooming Hunter Wellies

Realizing that I needed to keep up with my kids through mud and rain puddles, I decided to buy the trendy Hunter Wellingtons that Angelina Jolie wore in Mr. and Mrs. Smith. That was a year ago. Here is a picture from a Canadian store that sells them:



The picture is not accurate, however. They are not semi-shiny and all black. Even brand new wellies out of the box look somewhat chalky.

My black wellies developed a whitish cast to them, referred to as "blooming" in various Hunter information sources. This is a natural process of the rubber that occurs over time. Scrubbing with soap and water will not remove the marks.

I found an excellent source for possible solutions in a purse forum!

I will summarize so you don't have to read the whole thread. The possible solutions are: olive oil, Armorall, and McNett UV Tech. The only solution that I would consider, given the reports on the permanency of the various methods, was the McNett UV Tech. I also like the fact that it is non-toxic and biodegradable.

McNett UV Tech is available from REI in the U.S. and at Mountain Equipment Coop in Canada.

Another blogger has posted the results of her cleaning.

Now, this all got me thinking about my triathlon wetsuit. It's overdue for a repair of two moon shaped cuts. Despite all the warnings, I still managed to cut up my wetsuit with my fingernails. McNett also makes Aquaseal, which can be used to make such repairs. I'll have to conquer that problem another day.

Read an update on whether it was worth it to buy these boots here.

Buying a New Computer

On December 3, my IBM ThinkPad finally died, probably from a virus, even though I never really took her out of the house. As luck would have it, just before she died, I made copies of important files and stored them on an external hard drive. I received a message that she could not start Windows because the \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM file was suddenly missing or corrupt. ¥£$&#@!!!

The picture of the old girl in her dying days shows a broken hinge. The hinge broke due to an unfortunate meeting of the laptop with the floor while the laptop was accelerating toward the floor. The special enhanced laptop lettering is handcrafted with white paint. On November 26, the display was wavering and could only be fixed by unplugging the adapter cord or by pushing down on the top left corner of the laptop. Seriously.

I was a militant Apple girl from 1984 to 1992, when I finally gave into the dark side and bought my first "IBM" computer. And now that my ThinkPad finally died, I had the chance to be re-born as an Apple girl again.

Alas... after researching prices, I realized that I would not be returning to my first love. The very cheapest Mac would ring in at $1200 CAD. I reluctantly decided to go with a non-Mac, as it would be about 50% less. I only need the computer for surfing, some word processing, and some online TV watching.

With such limited needs, I figured I should be looking at netbooks, until I read this. The article claims a high return rate for some netbooks. I decided to go for a full size computer.

The choice of computers today is quite astonishing. I was overwhelmed by the different brands, stores, and configurations. I tried Costco's online Canadian site ("http://www.costco.ca"), but the prices were not very aggressive. The US site of Costco offers even cheaper alternatives, but not cheap enough to justify crossing the border for a package pickup and having possible duties tacked on.

Finally I decided on an enhanced Lenovo ThinkPad SL510.

Reading multiple reviews, it seemed to be a good value for money machine, and it was not flashy but was powerful. Perfect. I didn't care if I had no choice of designer colours, or if I wouldn't be able to play a decent video game on it.

Deciding where to buy the computer was another matter. Eventually I bought the computer from Lenovo directly, using a discount code I found while surfing. A great source for researching shoppers like me is Red Flag Deals.

At redflagdeals, I found that most folks bought their computers directly from Lenovo, and I also found many discount codes, including the special one for redflagdeals that I eventually used. Before making the purchase, I obsessed over whether I would eventually find the computer for a lower price. Would it be cheaper on CYBERMONDAY, November 30? Should I wait until Boxing Day? Now that it is Boxing Day, I have finally had the chance to find the answer to my burning question. On these three days, Black Friday (November 27), Cyber Monday, and Boxing Day, I tried all discount codes and found that it was the *same* price, no matter which code I used, or which day I purchased, so let's score one for the little obsessive researching mommy. I bought it on Black Friday, and that was the right decision. According to the Lenovo website today, Boxing Day sale prices are the year's lowest prices!

So you know what to expect if you order from Lenovo, here's a timeline of my purchase process.

I ordered my computer on November 27. It was ready for shipping in Shanghai on December 5 and departed December 7. It arrived at noon on December 8 in North York, Ontario. It arrived in Vancouver's port on December 10. It arrived on my doorstep on December 14. I was promised 11 business days, and that was pretty close to what I got. It crossed the country twice before arriving in my grubby hands.

The day of the promised arrival was fairly annoying. I stayed home most of the day waiting for the package, which would arrive any time between 9-7 pm. At 4:45 pm, I gave up on waiting and took a hot bath. As soon as I lowered myself into the water, the doorbell rang. I'm pretty sure the delivery guy was waiting outside until I got into the water before he rang the doorbell.

Before the computer arrived, I worried about where I would get a web browser. I would need a web browser to download a web browser! Setting up the pristine new computer was incredibly easy. It was already equipped with Netscape AND a 60 day trial of Microsoft Office 2007, as well as a trial of Norton. Well now, they've thought of everything.

The only thing I regret is the quality of the display. It seems a bit fuzzy and low res. My old computer had better resolution. Ten days later, I'm used to the fuzziness.

Guilt Free Hair Colouring: Part 2, Colora Henna Creme

First, I have to laugh at the name of this product. Creme? As in creme brulee? As in, French cream? There is nothing better to make something sound classier by making it French, n'est-ce pas? Also, this one claims to be a "hair color & conditioner". Wow.

The box claims that this has no ammonia and no peroxide. There is a picture of the henna producing plant on the cover. I wouldn't exactly call it all natural, though. Here is the ingredient list:

Water, Henna Extract, Hydroxyethylcellulose, Cocoamphoproprionate, Dowicil 200. May also contain solvent black 5, disperse blue 1, basic violet 14, basic yellow 15.

I would be more inclined to do a test for an allergic reaction with this "henna."

The instructions are much simpler. Shampoo and towel dry, apply the "creme", cover with a plastic cap for one hour or more, then rinse thoroughly. Simplicity itself. The whole process took about 1.5 hours. For the simplicity alone, I preferred this "henna." But when I had to henna my hair again, I chose the messy Light Mountain "Color the Gray!" option.

Here is why. The Colora did not smell and washed out easily, but a few days later I went swimming. It turned the inside of my white silicon cap light brown! I could not wash the colour off my cap, and months later, despite exposure to chlorine, my cap was never quite be the same white it used to be. With the chemical additives with multisyllabic names and the unknown "solvent black 5", I wasn't exactly sure WHAT was going into my hair. This product is a compromise between real henna and chemical commercial dyes. The box claims to be "coloring your hair with organic colors". I don't know how organic "basic violet 14" is.

It also did not seem to last quite as long as the Light Mountain henna. It washed out after maybe six weeks, and my grays become light enough to be noticeable again. This may have also been a result of my colour choice, mahogany, which is the fourth darkest shade. I could have chosen Chestnut, Brown, or Black for darker colour.

For my next move, I may try to find henna in Little India.

Guilt Free Hair Colouring: Part 1

It wasn't long ago that I said that I would never dye my hair. I would age gracefully. Naturally. Well, that was before The Whitening, also known as the day I noticed kinky long white hairs were popping at a rate too fast for my husband to pluck out of my head while I flossed my teeth.

The search was on for a green environmentally friendly non-toxic alternative to conventional hair dyes. A quick Google search turned up henna as a possible alternative. If I was going to do something as vain as hair colouring, I wasn't about to wash chemicals into the drain to achieve it.

Google's top site was Henna for Hair, which linked to www.hennapage.com. Here I learned about henna. To save you reading time, I will summarize.

Henna is derived from a plant with the latin name lawsonia inermis. Henna by itself is a red-orange dye. The range of colours available is made from mixing henna with other ingredients. One ingredient that can be added is indigo, derived from the plant indigofera tinctoria. This is the same dye that is used to make blue jeans blue.

Henna supposedly penetrates the hair shaft and does not simply coat the hair. You should be able to achieve a fairly permanent effect. My experience did not bear out this claim, as I will discuss below.

Not all henna is created equal. The www.hennaforhair.com site recommended that I buy body art quality henna and mix it myself. As a mother of small children, this option sounded like too much trouble. I did learn, however, that I would need to buy around 200g of henna to cover my medium length hair. Long hair would require 300g and short hair would need 100g. Locally, I could expect to find body art quality henna at the local India town. I just couldn't see myself doing this either. "Hello. Do you have any body art quality henna?" It was a fear of the unknown that led me to make a trip to the shopping mall instead.

A trip to the drug store to buy henna turned up... nothing. There were dozens of different kinds of permanent chemical hair dyes with all the big names, but absolutely no henna products, except some henna shampoo. I was dismayed to finally find henna at my local mall in a Health Store. You know, the kind that sells vitamin supplements, fasting plans in a box, and protein supplements for weight lifters in big plastic jars. You know. The kind of place that I would never set foot in under normal circumstances.

There were no hippies, muscle men, or frighteningly emaciated customers in the store the day I searched for henna. Bingo, there were three different kinds of henna mixes! Two were from the "Light Mountain" company of Twin Lakes, Wisconsin. One was called "Color the Gray!", complete with exclamation mark!, priced at $15 CAD. The other did not claim to "Color the Gray!" so I did not seriously consider it. The last remaining product was from the "Colora" company of Little Ferry, New Jersey. It was the "colora henna creme" all in small caps. In fact, everything on the cover of the box was in small caps. There was a reassuring picture of a plant too, plus the reassurance of "no ammonia" and "no peroxide." This was priced at around $10 CAD. Even more convenient, you can also buy the Colora product at www.well.ca, with free shipping. That online store also carries "Hennalucent" which I have not reviewed for this article.



First I gave the Light Mountain Natural Color the Gray! a whirl. I chose Dark Brown. According to the box, the ingredients are henna and indigo leaf powders, "only the pure botanicals listed above and nothing else." Excellent! Opening the box revealed two bags of powder and instructions with plastic gloves and plastic bag attached to it. The box had a strong pleasant perfume-like scent to it. This was NOT what the powder smelled like, when I opened the bags. I can only describe the scent as being like in a Chinese store, like sandalwood.

After reading the instructions, I was a little scared and a lot intimidated. I was working with a semi-permanent dye! I was going to do this alone! I prepared by putting on a full robe made of dark purple fleece and safety pinning a burgundy towel around my neck. I put vaseline on my ears, neck and all around the hairline as suggested in the instructions. I wasn't about to risk having my clothes or skin turn colour from my sloppiness. The entire operation would be done while crouched in my dry big jacuzzi tub.

What I did not do was a test strand. I am not allergic to anything of any significance and I do not have chemically treated hair. I doubted that anything would go wrong.

There are fairly detailed instructions, but here they are in a nutshell. There are two separate powders, labelled "STEP 1" and "STEP 2". You need to mix the powders with boiled distilled water (distilled being highlighted in bold) to the consistency of yogurt in non-metallic bowls and let them sit for a time to "cure." I used filtered tap water, but I felt that the risk of some unforeseen chemical reaction was unlikely with our great local water supply. I used a plastic spoon to mix in glass bowls. Also, to save time you can mix STEP 1 and STEP 2 in separate bowls, rather than doing them in sequence as you require them.

There are some ingredients you can add to the mixes:

Condition: 2T yogurt or 1 egg
Golden highlights: use half warm lemon juice or chamomile tea
Golden or copper highlights: 3T vinegar or lemon juice
Enrich brown or red: 1t ginger, allspice, nutmeg or paprika
Enhance brown: replace water with old black very warm coffee

You apply STEP 1 to your clean, towel dried hair in sections (using non-metallic hair clips), cover your hair with the provided plastic cap (which I secured with a wooden clothes pin), and leave it on for up to 15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes, applying "intermittent heat." My heat source was a hair dryer on warm setting. Rinse it out with water, then towel dry it. I read reviews of this product online and read a recommendation to fill the tub with water and immerse my whole head and body in the tub of water to help rinse it out. Afraid of getting dye on my skin, I first rinsed off with the shower spray attachment in the tub before filling the tub with water and lying down in the water.

Now, this whole process is INCREDIBLY MESSY. You've got this slop falling out of your hair in clumps as you keep applying more. There is no way to avoid getting this stuff on your wrists and your face, but I found that if I rinsed soon after slopping it on, it didn't leave much of a mark. A wetted corner of the towel around my neck to wipe off slopped bits worked quite well. The clumps fell everywhere, including all over the tub with some bits ending up on the rim of the tub, who knows how. These were easily rinsed off with some warm water later without staining the white tub surface. Also, you have to remember to rinse off your gloves after you've applied STEP 1 because you'll need them again in STEP 2. I ended up getting water down my plastic gloves (too short!), but my hands didn't stain at all since I rinsed after.

STEP 1 was the henna, I think. STEP 2 was probably the indigo, or at least it was in my case.

STEP 2 is pretty much the same as STEP 1. However, it "could take up to 3 or 4 hours to achieve the desired colour" for STEP 2. Yikes!!!

The whole process took me about 3 hours from start to finish, not including curing the powders, but it could have taken much longer had I not had to hurry off to pick up one of kids from school. I cut short STEP 2 just a wee bit. The rinsing took a considerably long time. I tried to wait until the water rinsed fairly cleear, but this meant filling and refilling the tub at least three times. It never did run absolutely clear, but the first shampoo post-dye would take out the rest of it.

You are asked to avoid washing your hair for at least 24 hours. The henna makes the hair smell like wet hay. It is not entirely unpleasant. This smell lingers for days. I did not see any colour transfer onto my pillow, but I did take the precaution of sleeping on a dark coloured towel unti I had the chance to wash my hair.

The package contained 197g of "100% PURE BOTANICAL HAIR COLOR", which was perfect for my shoulder length hair. There was probably enough for longer hair, if I was more careful about application and slopped less.

So, how did it turn out?

The white hairs appear lighter than the other hairs, but they appear like highlights. What I love about this colouring is that it lasts for around 3 months before the colour fades enough to notice the white hairs again. I have dark brown hair with natural red highlights, and less than 1% white hairs. I know that I had previously written that henna is supposedly permanent, but indigo is less so. Perhaps that explains why the colour does not last until the hairs fall out. The gradual fading means that I never have to touch up my roots. Now, I wash my hair almost daily because I exercise heavily, so the colour might last longer for you.

Despite the mess, I feel that the whole henna process was worth the trouble. Any mess was easily cleaned up by spraying down the bathtub and washing my bathrobe and towel. I also take comfort in knowing that henna is "good" for my hair, unlike commercial chemical dyes. Perhaps you could recruit a friend to do a henna night. That might make it easier. It was certainly challenging to slop on the henna without seeing myself in the mirror.

Next, in Part 2, we look at the Colora Henna Creme.