For the last six weeks I've been making an effort to go riding almost every day. In early September I got my first motorcycle, a 1999 BMW F650 a/k/a Funduro. David and I both took the Humber College motorcycle course, and he also bought a BMW motorcycle, a 1983 R65.

The primary purpose of my daily riding has been to learn and improve my skills while being exposed to real traffic situations. I live in downtown Toronto, so no matter where I go I'm encountering unexpected events and drivers who don't deserve to be on the road. Some days my rides are relatively brief, say down to the CBC Broadcast Centre, and other days I have the time to ride outside of the city and into the country and broader bio-region.

The secondary purpose of my rides therefore has been to explore my region and see more of my city. When I first got my driver's license only 3 years ago, I started taking drives to the suburbs to see parts of the city I had never visited due to growing up downtown. Now that I have a bike I'm inclined to go even further, and my trips have taken me from the urban environment, to the suburbs, on to exurbs, and finally into farm land.

What has surprised me most is just how far you have to go to get out of the city. I used to joke that Peterborough was a suburb of Toronto, and while that is not exactly true, Toronto sure stretches far and wide.

Purists of course try to argue that Toronto ends at Steeles, or even older city borders such as North York, or cultural borders like Bloor, College, and even Queen. What you realize of course as you travel further and further away is that it's all Toronto, a seemingly endless sprawl of city.

Of course it's not actually endless, it just feels that way as you drive past strip malls and box stores that all start to look the same. I've gone in all directions except across the lake, west to Burlington and Hamilton, north west to Milton, Georgetown and Orangeville, north to Lake Simcoe, north east to Lake Scucog, east to Bowmanville.

While the geography varies, the urban design unfortunately does not. The diversity of urban Toronto is a patchwork that has greatest harmony downtown, and start contrast as you near the inner city's edge. On the edge of the suburbs, as you leave the urban environment, decaying high rises mark neighbourhoods in crisis.

The first wave of suburbs are not so bad, as over time they've developed their own heterogeneity as changes in ownership and residence transform buildings and neighbourhoods.

However it doesn't take long before you enter this zone of sterility that is simultaneously both surreal and alarming. Everything kind of looks the same, and the people you encounter tend to be angry, afraid, oblivious, on a cell phone, or all of the above.

It's in these areas that I've had the most close calls with motorists who drive like maniacs, in an environment that encourages them to do so. I know I wanted to also get out of there as quickly as possible. One woman I saw was driving frantically while clutching a wallet full of money. Mad rush to the mall perhaps?

Once you finally get past the suburbs you reach the exurbs, which are a relatively new phenomena that push out the edges of the city to new stretches of opulance and indulgence. Here you see the modern equivalent of the English country manor, the McMansions that replace dairy farms with architectural cheese. Driveways are filled with Hummers, sports cars, and luxury sedans. Even larger palaces are under construction, perhaps to be abandoned in the face of a recession?

Beyond the exurbs you finally start to reach farmland, although one of the first things you tend to encounter are Horse ranches, quite a number in fact, usually at the edge of the exurbs before heading further out.

Co-incidentally during the period of these rides another horse race of sorts had been taking place, i.e. the Canadian federal election. Therefore as I rode I'd see signs for political candidates, and indeed as the election demonstrated, the further out you go the more often you see blue signs supporting the Conservative Party.

It's one thing to look at the maps and see the graphics that show an NDP orange downtown, a Liberal ring of the inner suburbs and a Conservative ring of the outer suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas beyond. However actually traveling out through these areas in successive days, taking routes that slice right through this political map, has really reinforced how these colours actually play out.

Toronto may be a single city united by sprawl, but the worlds that comprise each of its many layers are entirely different from each other. The private space of the automobile allows people to pass through oblivious to what surrounds them. On my motorcycle however I can't help but be exposed to the elements and culture of this city.

What I've witnessed is an incredible clash of cultures, of worlds, of people who live in such contrast that you start to wonder what do they have in common. By this I'm not referring to differences of ethnicity, religion, or language, but rather differences of class and urban environment.

The election demonstrated that the gulf between these groups is dramatic, and my rides into Tory territory have reinforced in my mind of how far this gap actually is. How can Canada reconcile this contrast?

The image of the city used to be a walled community with safety and power on the inside. The latter half of the twentieth century reversed that, hollowing out the core, with power and safety found in the suburbs.

However in the twenty first century the core has been reclaimed by the so called creative class, the suburbs are abandoned by those in power. They've moved further out to the exurbs, while maintaining a condo downtown.

The suburbs much like the middle class are left to decay and rot.