GreenerPolitics

One of the nice things you can do when you run your own website is that you can tell people about the cool friends you know. One of the coolest for me is Jan Triska: painter, thinker, poet and, judging from what he does to himself in triathlons, Death Races, birkebiners, a masochist.

He has been a good friend of mine for many years and he is the person I credit/blame for getting me involved in the Green Party. In a particularly frosty November, he ran as one of 6 candidates in the Alberta Provincial Election.

He is also a regular contributor to GreenerPolitics, writing under the pseudonyms Mountain Man and Minimalist. And he isn’t exaggerating when I say minimalist.

When I visit Ottawa, Canada, I have always crashed at his place. We frequently go out for long bike rides along the Ottawa river and swim at Britannia beach. After a particularly challenging time of doing politics, it’s great to be able to get this kind of exercise.

The reason Jan is a minimalist is that he saves his pennies for travelling: Spain, Mexico, Costa Rica and many other places.

My most memorable trip with Jan was when we backpacked through the Mexican highlands over Christmas 1999 - 2000. Much in the same way that it is a momentous moment when your odometer in your car turns from 99,999 km to 100,000 km, the change from 1999 to 2000 was deserving of being celebrated. We marked it in a special way apropos to where we were: we toasted with shots of tequila all the good things that we were taking from the 1900’s to the 2000’s: democracy, rock music, the internet, the United Nations, etc, etc.

We then toasted with a no-label (and rather vile-tasting) mescal all the things that were destined to be left behind in the 1900’s (with good riddance): the Inquisition, despotism, the topsey tail, foot-binding, and so on. Needless to say, we got violently ill to the point of experiencing hallucinations, but there is no one on this planet who could make getting violently ill a relatively pleasant experience.
Jan is the a-typical Renaissance Man, always learning, always trying something new. I am privileged to know him.

Happy birthday, Mr Triska.