A few people I know have posted these things to their blogs, so I thought I’d give it a try:

The weather was nice enough that I headed out for my first ride of the season. There are two or three routes that I typically follow. This evening, I followed the bike paths along the Ottawa River from where I joined them at Parkdale to the Ottawa Locks and then along the Rideau Canal to Dow’s Lake before returning home via Preston->Bronson->Sherwood->Holland. It’s a nice loop that’s about 15km in length and doesn’t have a whole lot of uphill slopes other than at the Ottawa Locks. I usually finish it in 50 to 60 minutes, depending on how much I’m pushing myself and how many pedestrians are wandering along the path 15 abrest. (Note to pedestrians: It is a shared-use path and when I’m dinging my bell at you it’s to let you know I’m there so you don’t wander in front of me and get hit. Please don’t give me dirty looks when I’m trying to avoid running into you.)

If you live in China, you will probably come to the conclusion quite quickly that Disneyland is too far away to visit. But you need not despair any more because now you can visit Beijing’s Shijingshan Amusement Park, a state-run amusement park that has a replica of the Magic Kingdom, right down to Mickey, Donald and a host of other Disney characters. Before you say “hey, isn’t that infringing on Disney’s copyrights?”, rest assured that the characters are not, in fact, the beloved mouse, duck et al. The character that coincidentally looks like Mickey is a cat with big ears. At some point, someone will point out that in an infinite universe like ours anything is possible, regardless of how improbable it may be. So, it’s entirely possible that the creator of cat-with-big-ears came up with his character having never seen or heard of Mickey Mouse. (But I think that’s highly improbable.)

You can judge for yourself on the Japan Probe website.