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Erik de Vries

@erikwdv.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.3K following 795 posts

Bikes, dad jokes, urbanism, and cats. Occasionally beer and baseball. Victoria and Ottawa are home.

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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 8h
Yes. 🤨
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 9h
I’m hoping this episode will be a useful learning experience: check the overhead sign before boarding! She’s more likely to be up on the latest astronomy news than where the ferry is going.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 10h
She’s travelling with a friend (apparently equally clueless), whose dad is driving to pick them up (an hour away).
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 10h
This time she somehow got on a ferry to Nanaimo instead. Got a ride from a friendly person to Duncan. Remaining trajectory is still being negotiated. Unfortunately there is effectively no transit on the Island.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 10h
I love my kids unconditionally and think they are generally pretty smart. But my daughter has somehow managed, for the second time, to get on the wrong ferry while trying to travel from Vancouver to Victoria. Of course the BC Ferries staff should have caught it, but what the heck.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
Chain smoking could be de rigeur before Christmas.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
The PQ’s demand that federal rail funding be redirected to provincial highway expansion is very 1976.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
I don’t even live in Ottawa anymore and I think about these things all the time too. Also: building the Vanier Parkway over the old rail lines; the implemented parts of the rest of the Greber Plan; amalgamation.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is a great story idea
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
The zillion shoppers with iPhones in the area keep it updated to within a few minutes most of the time.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Still live!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
These are very cute!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Yes, that’s our experience too. And when one of them decided to go for a walk 2 km from our house (and was almost certainly lost) it enabled us to find her and take her home.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Cat is safe and sound with a new tag, but thank you for your concern!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
Probably better to be safe
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
I suspect @simonplittle.ca’s suggestion that a bird picked it up and dropped it on the roof could be the key here.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We have found AirTags to be really precise, especially in recent years. We can almost always find them, even when cat collars have been left in shrubs or under fences.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is an interesting idea, although doesn’t line up with where we live. But also: do the storm drains empty into Bowker Creek? That seems like a terrible idea if so.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is a real possibility I hadn’t considered!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
A recent photo of Matilda for her fans.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
We have visited the Thrifty’s multiple times to try to find it, with no luck. We can’t locate it inside the store, and the lost and found doesn’t have it. So where is it? Equally baffling: how did Matilda’s collar get all the way there?
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
This is a local grocery store, Thrifty’s, about 25 minutes’ walk from our house across two busy roads and a big parking lot. This is very far for any feline, but Matilda is a very homey kind of cat; unlike the other two, she rarely ventures out of sight of our house.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
An enduring mystery around our place: All three of our cats wear AirTags on their collars. Inevitably, sometimes the collars come off, but we can usually use the AirTag to find them. But for more than a year, an AirTag belonging to Matilda has been showing on the map here:
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
One triple-layer chocolate-jalapeño surprise cake coming up!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
Yep
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 02/10/2026
This is the third time this has happened. I requested three jalapeño peppers as part of my grocery order. This is what they sent.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
If you look closely, you’ll see an ageless David Fine in there holding a sign about “land lift.”
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Reposted by Erik de Vries
Charlotte @bigorangebike.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
I moved to Victoria from Ottawa 7 years ago and these are some of the many things that I love about living here. Bathrooms, water fountains, bike valet, cleanliness, whimsy. I will add flowers. Municipal governments all over Vancouver Island plant flowers everywhere. Life can be beautiful.
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Reposted by Erik de Vries
Daniel Moser @dmoser.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
Map showing Lower Pollution levels in London after 10 years of advancing sustainable transport.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
I ended up dropping it off at the address they sent me. Unfortunately it was a multi-unit building and they didn’t bother to tell me which unit they were in.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
1:00 pm: I post a thing on the free stuff group 1:00 pm and one second: somebody tells me they want it 11:00 pm: still negotiating how and why they can’t pick it up, but also can’t give me their address so I can drop it off, but also why I shouldn’t give it to the next person on the 17-long list.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
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Reposted by Erik de Vries
Spokane Rising @spokanerising.com · 26/08/2026
imagine spending your retirement doing this
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Reading the local FB exchange on this project reminds me that every town is the same. Angry drivers complaining it’s a waste of money and claiming nobody will use it, even to people who say they will. Also that the park it connects to is “dangerous”. We ate lunch there today. It was fine.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Nice new bike/pedestrian infrastructure in Courtenay, BC.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
“My personal costs of living have gone up, and I demand compensation from gummint. Cut taxes! Power to the people!”
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Exactly. No polling means a lot of guessing. And online anger turns out to be a lousy predictor.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I don’t even know what GOTV is.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
Yeah, fair. I don’t get the impression this is a group that pays a lot of attention to what’s really happening. More of an angry, vibes-based team with weak reasoning ability.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
I have no idea! The loud angry people are so, well, loud, that’s it’s hard to know what decent normal people think.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 01/08/2026
The Save Our Saanich platform is a fantastically consistent compendium of “I’m not against this good thing, but not in this, or any other achievable, way,” across every area of municipal policy: housing, transit, taxation, social services, policing, or zoning.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
I took your advice to heart and spent some time with my good friends on the Save our Saanich site today, doing the same. They are so confident, so ill-informed, and yet so angry about an elementary school finally getting some bike lanes, sidewalks, and crosswalks after 10 years of asking for them.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I hear anti-slow defences of this conduct regularly on SM: apparently the city has a moral obligation to stop the traffic-calming and pro-pedestrian projects, because the inevitable result is angrier and more dangerous drivers, who are blameless for their rage.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
This week I saw a woman in a wheelchair, unable to use the closed-off sidewalk at Fisgard and Quadra, get honked at for being on the roadway by a slightly-inconvenienced, motor-revving pickup driver.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Some compelling insights here into a behaviour pattern I have always had trouble understanding: people who object disproportionately, and oddly personally, to others who choose ostensibly slower and higher friction ways of getting around and living. medium.com/@cody.little...
medium.com
We Don’t Have a Culture of Convenience in North America. We Have a CULT of Convenience.
And you can tell the difference by what happens when you question it.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Ugh, Vancouver.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I did the same project when I started woodworking (and mine was way less nice than that). But it gave me the confidence to try making other things.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
That doesn’t look janky at all. You did a great job, and it will be useful for all your new woodworking projects!
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Whoa, looks like local developers just got 8% less greedy. cheknews.ca/victoria-apa...
cheknews.ca
Victoria apartment rents fall nearly 8% as B.C. rental market continues to cool
Apartment rents in Victoria have fallen nearly eight per cent over the past year as rental prices continue to drop across British Columbia, according to a new report.
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Erik de Vries @erikwdv.bsky.social · 02/06/2026
Everything but the section circled in red is curb protected.
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