Who builds a NHL arena with no parking? Edmonton.

Meet the new Rogers Place. It has 250 spots for designated societal superstars but for me and you, the remaining 18,391 folks, seats in the rink - too bad so sad.

And too bad so sad for you owners of residences, wanting to make some bucks by renting out parking at your place to fill the need - you’ll be fined.

Now, a fairly official position of the burghers of this burg is: you won’t need “specific-site parking” because there’s enough in nearby neighborhoods to go around.  

Edmonton writer, Jodi Tauber, answers those that have wondered about the no site-specific-spots rumors:
“That is because there will be more than 18,000 parking stalls within easy walking distance of Rogers Place – nearly half of them are within a five-minute walk and the others are within a ten-minute walk. Plus with lots of other options like transit and LRT, a major event at Rogers Place is only expected to use 6,000 stalls. Right now most Downtown parking stalls sit empty in the evenings and weekend. This is one of the big advantages of having a Downtown arena. Rather than having to build acres of new parking lots, Rogers Place takes advantage of the many parking facilities that already exist Downtown.”

Sounds great - but will it turn out to be true – or will it turn out to be an Obama Care “Like your Plan...Keep your Plan”...kind of thing? So far reaction has been negative. The lots around the arena are privately owned, so they charge what they want and what they want to do is charge $25 to $30 per space for a game.

And don’t even think about parking on nearby streets – the city is strictly enforcing a two-hour limit.

So, if private parking lots are too expensive, and street parking is taboo, and the arena has no parking – what’s the beleaguered hockey fan, other than using the Rogers Place arena’s 2 designated drop-off-and-pick up areas, each a couple of blocks away, or using the Light Rail Transit – which does feature 5 stations within walking distance – or via Rogers and Panda Parking, buy parking passes that reserve one’s spot (if one, as alluded to above, can afford it) in a nearby parking lot --- to do?

Wait. There is an “ice district.” And guess what? Come 2019 or 2020 there will be 2,500 underground spots...Should work well if the arena capacity was 3,000 – but it seats 18,000+ for hockey and 20,000+ for concerts.

Indeed, where do the powers that be in that central Albertan city get off beggaring the long-suffering fans of the Edmonton Oilers, who have STUNK the HOUSE, parking lots, adjacent lots, and surrounding milieus around town, OUT -  for some ten years now?

Can city councils be banned holus bolus, be cashiered out of town? (Perhaps Wayne Gretzky, brought back to the Oilers as a partner and vice-chairman of their Entertainment Group, can run the parking part of Edmonton’s city government, should he become bored at Oiler front-office board meetings...)

Hey, a guy named Glen Scott, a senior VP in charge of Real Estate things says” “We’re probably running one of the most accelerated redevelopments in North America,” Running so fast as to overlook parking, and miss out on car commuter concerns, say.

And there is ongoing, running concern in the community. One of Edmonton’s city councillor’s, Scott McKeen, on his website says he’s concerned about mental health. Truncating a quote of his, has his points about parking being: “...because you have these big, blank, open dark areas.” 

To know how far Edmonton, and the province of Alberta, have fallen - is to contrast the amazing CFL Edmonton Eskimos 5 Grey Cups in a row (1978-1982) and the Edmonton Oilers running roughshod over NHL competition (kudos to Gretzky, Messier, Coffey, Kurri, Fuhr, and Anderson) throughout the 80’s, taking 5 Stanley Cups, later led by Progressive Conservative provincial government – that paid off all its debts in 2005 (thanks premier Ralph Klein) - to today’s Edmontonian/Albertan world where the Oilers – Connor McDavid notwithstanding - have been putrid – not Toronto Maple Leafs putrid, but putrid, and the Eskimos have only 2 Grey Cup wins these past 10 years (in a 9-team CFL) and despite a history of offering the world “ethical oil” as compared to that energy sold by Saudi Arabia, say - is  now run by lefties, the New Democratic Party (NDP) - that will balloon the 2016-17 deficit to the moon, or at least to ten billion.

Where, at one time, Alberta was viewed as the most competent energy-based polity globally, it’s now viewed as an entity that belongs to a country that is against its own pipeline construction. (Although in fairness, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, despite tying up the oil and gas industry in regulatory knots, does have beautiful flowing hair.)

OPEC 10 and USA Energy Industry 10 - Alberta and Canada oil and gas 0!

OK, back to specifics, basics. What’s the deal with Edmonton Rogers Arena parking now? Well, apparently there is a gravel parking lot a couple of blocks away in use for 800 cars ($26 per car) the Oilers ownership group is hoping to extend city permissions for, for at least three years. Other than that, nothing seems to be on the horizon, but you can bet your bottom dollar, should a solution seem viable, folks like Brian Murphy, general supervisor for parking management, and Bohdan Maslo, city acting director for parking management, and the city’s director of enforcement, Ryan Pleckaitis, along with city councillors, will ensure all parking pleas, protests, and eventual possibilities don’t contravene the vaunted 43-page Traffic Bylaw, Bylaw 5590.
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Or, as city councillor Scott McKeen says: “This is a shemozzle that we’re trying to carefully arrange.”

Can Mary Keitany three-peat the NYC Marathon, 2016 edition? Definitely.

Queen Mary “gets” road racing, has good technique, a winning attitude, a positive self image, and an aptitude for peaking, says Brother Colm O’Connell “The Godfather of Kenyan running” - who has coached 25 world champions and 4 Olympic winners.

For Kenya’s Keitany, her 2015 NYC 2:24:25 victory, at 33, made her the first woman to defend her title there since Paula Radcliffe in 2008. Norwegian Grete Waitz, now deceased, won 5 in a row from ’82 to 86. She’s the record holder for most consecutive wins.

Here, besides Colm’s points, are a few other reasons Keitany’s successful: she is motivated by other Kenyan running greats - her favorite being 4-time Boston Marathon winner, Catherine Ndereba - and she believes that, despite her being a distance runner - SPEED is KEY. Take those, and toss in Kenyan foods such as Ugali, a cornmeal porridge, Ndengu, a mung-bean stew, Chapati, a wheat-flour bread, and Sukuma wiki, a collared green - and you’re looking at Mary being crowned with, not olives, but an olive wreath for winning this 2016 NYC Marathon.

And all this heavy-duty training and triumphing is done while raising son, Jared, and daughter, Samantha. Admittedly, she gets a ton of child-rearing help from her husband, Charles Koech, who, when not looking a little bit like Usain Bolt, has taken to being Mary’s understudy - by being the family-first-guy. He knows the sites she’s running in and also knows where, physically, mentally, and metaphorically their family is coming from.

So, yes, he backs her, takes a back seat - cares for the family when she’s overseas, and keeps things under control (as much as can be controlled with 2 kids.) He’s the motivator, the manager.

But, Keitany knows, as does any world-class athlete, that they are only an injury away from leaving the limelight, exiting their sport. Thus she, like her parents who raised cattle and grew vegetables, leads an unostentatious life on her farm. She’s also scrupulous about savings and serious about investments and, to those ends - oversees and pursues business ventures. Mary and Charles have many interests in agriculture but their hotel ownership of an 86-room, Five Star Hotel, AKA: Hotel WinStar – A Passion for Excellence on Eldoret’s Sosian St - is the jewel. So far. 
   
Speaking of pursuits, most of us fondly remember our first time on an airplane. Maybe we went to visit family, maybe we went to a tourist attraction, maybe we moved – but for Mary, in 2006, her first plane ride was to Seville, Spain – to compete in the half marathon, building upon her junior career of running the 1,500 and 3,000.  She won - and this despite having her world rattled due to an almost life-altering passport snafu - before even getting out of Kenya. (A few years later, before a half-marathon race in Birmingham, she and others, on the way to a press conference, were stuck in an elevator for 50 minutes. She won that race too!)

Nothing has come easy for Keitany.

In 2008, her racing came to a screeching halt – baby Jared was born in June. Just a scant 11 months later, in India, she set a personal best in the 10K, 32:09.

Back to marathon-type races. In her 2010 NYC Marathon debut she finished 3rd and said it would be her last marathon (paraphrasing) because it paralyzed her body. But Mary’s one tough cookie.  

Her tough stuff was honed, not only in rural toil, but in the conscious decision she made to enroll in - - - "The National Hidden Talents Academy" an institution for orphans and the destitute. This was, she thought a, no pun intended, step up.

In 2011 she shattered the half-marathon record, in the Ras Al Khaimah Half Marathon, finishing in 1:05:50 via a solo break-from-the-pack attack.

For winning the 2015 New York Marathon she took $100,000 prize money and another $25,000 for running under 2:25.

Now what of this NYC marathon generally?

Despite the guide runners that help the blind, despite the first responders and volunteers everywhere, and despite big-time celebrities such as singer-songwriter, Alicia Keys, in the 2015 race, somewhere(s), and despite a lovable set of competitors who down a beer in each borough,  and despite some competitors wearing outrageously non-marathon-type gear, and despite motivational music throughout the course - all of whom, and all of which, give - if only for a day, the impression that New York City cares – there might be signs about that speak to (and give the essence of) the NYC state of mind.

“If a marathon was easy, it would be called your mother.”

Happily, however, this marathon believes in gender parity. Prize money for women is equal to prize money for men. And there’s some global participant parity too, with an estimated 40% of the entrants being citizens from abroad. In the 2015 running, 125 countries were represented.

Right now, Keitany, who got into competitive running thanks to an older sister, is leading the way. But she’ll grow older. We all do, and when she does we must ask: will she be able to top the time of 5:40:23 set by Agnes Roest-Bomers from the Netherlands?

What’s so special about a 5-hour + time? Nothing – save for the fact that Agnes Roest-Bomers was 84 when she set that mark last year.

But this year, let’s celebrate Mary’s successes in private and public life and laud her performances and perspectives. And let the world, and the upcoming November 6th TCS New York City Marathon, yield to Mary Keitany, a wonderful winner, on and off the road - as she strides and strives for a three-peat.

Was Kane Petersen nuts? Got a two week-old son and Dad’s gotta hit high wire heights, THREE TIMES higher than his previous personal best?
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His wife says rearing a new boy is scarier than anything, so she’s smart, and can predict the future - and is smart enough to have hubby do the skywalk in the present - but neither, surely, could have known that he’d almost lose everything because his right leg would cramp up - between tower peaks...on a windy - with gusts whooshing UPWARDS - daredevil Melbourne, Australian day - - - could they?

Did this funambulist/funambulator (for high wire/tight rope walking is called funambulism) cause a Kane Petersen brain cramp? Is that why he took on this trek firstly and got another cramp, a right leg one, secondly? But you know what? What was freaky was how Petersen so calmly lied supine on a wire while slowly, and carefully, shook out the twitches of the offending limb. To have one’s right leg muscles tighten some 300 meters (almost 1,000 feet) high - forcing a total change in cable-wire plans, is incredible.

Who is Kane? He’s a man without a net. Or at least for this meander in the Land Down Under, on a morning (and wouldn’t this freak out people dashing to work) with no safety net in sight.  

No worries.

Have to admire his physical ability, once the cramping cleared, to command his left leg to (and this is the ultimate one-leg-stair lift) propel his body vertical, starting from a position where his butt was BELOW the wire - to get his left foot back on the wire, facing forward straight ahead on the wire, then - cat-quick - get his right foot on the wire in front of the left - and after standing...legs wobbling (almost probably as much as his heart was pounding) to then finish off his act.

He was about halfway through the feat, which must have got him a bit upset knowing that getting there, through this test, and getting the last question wrong, would mean certain death - except...we’ll touch upon that certain-death part shortly.

Tough ordeal. Only took him a few minutes, though. To put his bravery into perspective, all told, on the roof, there looked to be only a few folks, including mom and dad, fearless enough to stand on solid, albeit high up, ground.

Now, as high wire deeds go, it doesn’t compare to Jay Cochrane walking 800 feet between the towers (some 300 feet high) of the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas - BLINDFOLDED - nor does it compare to the Flying Wallendas, who, through generations, have thrilled watchers with their high wire acts (and chilled watchers, with some horrifying deaths) nor does it boggle the mind like knowing that Jorge Ojeda-Guzman lived 205 days atop a high wire - - - but Kane could not have anticipated his leg cramping up. And, with the exceptions of Wallendas’s dying, they, Cochrane, and Ojeda-Guzman knew what they were getting into.

If wife, Jessica McCrindle, screamed “Eureka!” it would have sounded like a shameless property promotion. Everyone knew Eureka was the site. The Eureka Tower is the tallest residential building anywhere.

​For his Eureka excellence-in-balance, his wondrous walk between two peaks on the north-western side of this edifice - - - besides getting a massage for the right leg - would be getting his getting an oh-so thorough free look into his DNA, specifically into his DRD4 gene, which possibly/probably amped his thrill-seeking needs to hit the heights; just like some DNA makes maniacs ride bulls in rodeos or ride logs down mountains...

Where were we?

Oh, yea: some think his high wire act was basically a cakewalk, saying he used a safety harness attached to the wire and that, therefore the biggest risk he took was a possible fall in his prestige, rather than a cannon ball fall to his demise: his act, in other words, could be construed as lying if publicized as death defying.

His sky walking act was to help promote an upcoming movie, out this October, called “The Walk” about Philippe Petit. (Petit had no safety wire walking between the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center.) Kane’s high-wire walk is, despite the harness, nevertheless unique: most of us can’t get off the field of play with a cramp – but this guy with his leg in spasms, contracting, surely hurting – had the mental presence to keep it together, let the pain subside – and carry on. Talk about from heaven to hell – to heaven again.

Wife and husband met on earth, at a circus.

Why isn’t that surprising?

Specifically, they joined in craziness and hijinks at the National Institute of Circus Arts.
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But what is surprising is that the Petersen baby spent a week in intensive care – BEFORE – Dad’s 21-metre walkabout town!

Kids. What do they know?

Hard to say what Australia’s overall take on this. Sure, Petersen set an Australian record in this but remember that that country has record-breaking spiders and snakes in every scary category already.

Hard to say, too, how many, looking at his images on that high wire, thinks he looks a bit like Canada’s hunky Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.)

Yet Australia did create “The Walk Experience” an illusion giving the impression of walking a tightrope over Melbourne. And Ross and John dug it. Of course, they were working for 3AW Breakfast Live, covering the sky-high stunt...

But 36-year old Kane, a former Ulverstone fellow (therefore a Tasmanian devil??!!) knows this: "I've just lived a dream just then, so it's fantastic".

Good thing he had the harness, and his amazing body-and-brain control prowess, otherwise his son’s life could have been a nightmare; wondering how life with Dad might have been.

Pete Willett despises American Ryder Cup fans. To his credit he doesn’t go all namby-pamby, he goes all in – doesn’t mince words. Brother Danny Willett, playing for Europe, was initially dismayed:
Here are Pete’s thoughts, shortened a bit:

“Team USA have only won five of the last 16 Ryder Cups...For the Americans to stand a chance of winning, they need their baying mob of imbeciles to caress their egos every step of the way. Like one of those brainless bastards from your childhood, the one that pulled down your shorts during the school’s Christmas assembly...a giggling group of reprobates...[Europe] - They need to silence the pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hotdog so they can scream ‘Baba booey’ until their jelly faces turn red. They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators and belting out a mini-erection inducing ‘mashed potato,’ hoping to impress their cousin. They need to smash the obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth, Lego man hair, medicated ex-wives, and resentful children. Squeezed into their cargo shorts and boating shoes, they’ll bellow ‘get in the hole’ whilst high-fiving all the other members of the Dentists’ Big Game Hunt Society.”

Phew, thank you, Sir, for reminding us the British are still peeved at post WW2 USA power and prestige, and thank you, Sir, for reminding us that sibling rivalry still peeves, pre-and-post all wars.  
 
I have never attended a Ryder Cup. So I haven’t seen or heard the worst of the worst (or the best of the best, depending on your point of view.) But I have never attended a soccer match either, but global media splays English fans (Yobs) as crude in display – and that’s just leaving Britain. When they land in Europe, well, from what witnesses say, we’re talking WW3.

Simply, all countries have boors – for us Canucks, some might remember Alan Eagleson’s finger to mother Russia in the 1972 hockey duel.

Moral equivocations aside let’s deride, in no particular order, Saint Peter’s pontifications.

Accusation: Pissy Beer. Answer: Beats room temperature British beer.

Accusation: Cookie Dough. Answer: A pale replica of the Scottish diet Trifecta. The Macaroni Pie, Munchy Box, and Square Sausage.

Accusation: For the Americans to stand a chance of winning...Answer: The Yanks had better ensure, first, that Britain (Europe didn’t join into the Ryder Cup until 1979) come out alive - first - by, uh, lending a hand to beat the Nazis in WW2, allowing the Ryder Cup that started in 1927 and ran up to 1937, to continue after the war - saving Peter from having German as his first language - though funnily enough Peter seems, in language-loathing of the “Other”, a wee bit Nazi-like, doesn’t he?
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Accusation: Baying mob of imbeciles. Answer: Can’t answer – as a dumb Canuck I didn’t even know baying was a word. But I have heard tell of the word "imbeciles" – and so far as I can reckon the new definition of imbeciles is: the media, academic, and political “elites” in the United Kingdom who thought Brexit would never happen.

Accusation: ...the one that pulled down your shorts during the school’s Christmas assembly...Answer: I took this slightly out of context; in its entirety, it doesn’t improve - so bear with me when I respond with the FACTS that: the Britain’s Rotherham Sex Scandal of some 16 years had not only the shorts and skirts down of young girls, it left the skirts and shorts - and pants - down of British political and police officials - who allowed this filth to start – and thrive – and all because of political correctness and because of a mindset to ignore complaints - because five perpetrators found guilty were, ahem, from the Religion of Peace.  

Accusation: “They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators and belting out a mini-erection inducing ‘mashed potato,’ hoping to impress their cousin.”     Answer: it is powerful writing. But uh, unfortunately, Pete has used a colloquialism that many on this side of the Atlantic might not understand (i.e. WTF ‘mashed potato?) Now, true, American rockabilly star, Jerry Lee Lewis was so impressed by his cousin, he married her. But that was decades ago, and his career suffered badly because of it. Now compare that to today’s problem in Britain of many - again from the Religion of Peace - marrying their cousins - with many kids there, therefore, suffering from genetic illnesses...

Accusation: obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth...Answer: Is this the time to insert the depiction, thanks to Austin Powers, of British dads, and their gorgeous teeth?

Hey, we can forgive Pete his rant. And we can admire the man for not standing down. In fact he doubled down. Pete tweets: He means every word. Good for him. His observations have some humor, some sanity, a lot of ludicrousness, and some prose - some might suppose.

And you know what? With one fan taunting “suck a d---” to McIlroy – perhaps some of Pete’s points are, if not worthy of fulsome debate, at least worthy of pondering. (And Pete could add how Phil Mickelson noted that Scottish fans treated the leftie wonderfully at the 2014 Ryder Cup, in Scotland. For his part, Rory said 95% of the American fans in Minnesota were fantastic)
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As for Danny? Well after going pointless in this 2016, and after taking in the audience ambiance-antics, he now says some fans proved his brother was, in fact, correct.