a midway bikelog

I went and signed up.

12 hour solo.

Doing my local bloggist duty to spread the word. The Strib is doing an informal poll on whether it’s a good idea to allow cyclists to essentially treat stop signs and yields and stop lights as stop signs, proceeding when it’s safe to do so. Surprisingly enough, it’s potential state legislation, proposed by Rep. Phyllis Kahn, DFL-Minneapolis, and Sen. Jim Carlson, DFL-Eagan. A suburbanite even!

As others have noted, many cyclists have long used this common sense approach to riding in traffic. When you’re earning your own momentum with real physics class-style sweat-inducing work, making a complete stop becomes a tedious thing. Boo hoo! you say, you’re riding a bike for exercise, right? What’s the big deal?

Try this scenario: you’re riding a bike home alone, late at night and hit a red light. There isn’t a car within view, but current traffic law says you should wait several minutes there until the light changes to proceed. No matter how tony the neighborhood, a pedestrian wouldn’t stand in the middle of an intersection waiting for a light to change; you would feel too vulnerable, and it’s the same for a cyclist. Substitute being alone for being cold, riding in the middle of winter, and it’s a health issue too.

The counter-argument is the slippery slope; that giving special consideration to cyclists will allow all sorts of law-flouting by 2-wheeled hooligans. That’s exactly what we’re planning, people, full-on cycling mayhem in the streets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This proposed legislation is quasi-important not because it’s allowing cyclists to stop only optionally, it’s important because it introduces into law the idea that cyclists are a different class of road user. This could backfire, of course, and lead to further laws that would relegate cyclists to permanent 2nd-class status on the roads, requiring use of cycle paths, etc. Or it could lead to cementing our place on the roads and recognizing that (just like oversize trucks, for example), we belong on the roads but with some minor modifications that allow for the reality and nature of the vehicle.

So go vote already (at the end of the article).

Over and over it seems true that not until you truly give up on something that it can become possible. Case in point: i’d given up trolling craigslist and looking at every bike on the street, now that it’s 3.5 weeks after the mountain bike was stolen, when i get a call while at my new job last night that someone had it. Apparently they saw a sketchy guy with a nice bike outside of HCMC and after some negotiation bought it for $25, knowing that it was likely stolen. He found my stolen bike post on craigslist and called, and now it’s back in my garage, apparently only missing the anchor bolt on the rear derailer. Unbelievable, and bottomless thanks to fellow cyclocross racer Matt for the recovery and for finding my post.

whew.

I saw this short but sweet analysis of the cost of the current Iraq war. Even at the low end ($523 billion), that’s enough to buy pretty nice ($500 each) bike for every man, woman and child on earth 77 times. Or, colonize Mars.

The end of national poverty? National healthcare? Free high quality education for every child through college? Rebuilding an efficient national rail system? A national hydrogen fuel infrastructure? Any one or more of these could be bought with the cost of this war. It’s astonishing how much money is being pissed away killing people in a desert halfway around the world.

It’s like the ultimate version of playing “what would you buy with $n?”. If the country won the lottery, what should we spend it on?

Some quick-thinking Chicago gal did just that, apparently… thanks to the Register for the story.

Google’s street view is at once one of the most interesting and useful yet creepy and invasive use of technology around lately. The coverage is spreading quickly, but there’s still opportunity to register how you feel about being under big brother’s eye. Or just mess with them. My neighborhood is already done, or i’d try for a full moon.

I’ve been a dad for 7 years as of today! Happy Labor Day, mama. Happy birthday, little bean.

a nice way to end the week: visions of having a 4-lane road all to you and your friends (not that it can’t be done other ways…)

plus, hey, Zooey.

The EPA of all people is asking, “Why are you or aren’t you biking to work?“. 511 comments so far, all good reading. Here’s mine:

Infrastructure aside, the biggest single impediment to increasing cycling is inconsiderate drivers. The need for bike lanes and dedicated bike paths is purely due to car traffic being impatient and greedy in their road use. If we all truly shared the roads, we wouldn’t need to build anything bike-specific. Since that never seems to change, we build.

Sure, it’s pie-in-the-sky, but i also put in a plug for more bike lanes. I’m admittedly an experienced and pretty self-assured cyclist, having ridden through city traffic for the past 20 years, and i know that i’m a lot more opinionated and confident in where and how i ride than most beginning cyclists. I know that the streets i ride on daily would deter many cyclists just because they’re either too busy or too narrow to feel comfortable or safe while on a bike. Those drivers who honk and holler are the reason we’re spending money on bike paths and bridges and lanes.

Yesterday’s post about getting hollered at is a case in point – drivers don’t think about how a cyclist needs to protect themselves in traffic, and maintaining a buffer of space around yourself while you bike is a big part of that. I get sick and tired of cars squeezing past me to pass, leaving inches of space when i’m already feeling pushed against the curb. It’s my right to use the roads, and if drivers are going to threaten me with harm by passing too close, i’m going to take the whole lane so they’re forced to make a proper & legal pass in another lane. That’s the law, it’s the safest thing to do for everyone, and as soon as practical i’ll move to the shoulder to allow anyone behind me to pass. If i were driving a 20-ton backhoe down the road at 20mph i’d get a little more respect, but since i’m on a bike people feel they can threaten me.

Now imagine someone who is riding their freshly-dusted-off bike down the road for the first time in a decade and encountering the same sort of rudeness along with potholes and feeling tired and unsteady just trying to ride. A car is a big steel cage that makes you feel safe. When you’re maneuvering through the world outside of that cage, you feel and are more vulnerable. Most people in our society are 50 years away from getting around town every day without a car; car use is assumed, and those who don’t drive treated as aberrations, impediments. In reality, cyclists humanize the roads, encouraging us to see people rather than vehicles. Drivers who think for even a second about it ought to personally thank every cyclists for reducing demand and helping keep the price of gas lower for them. A little niceness would go a long way.

…according to this nifty bicycle MPG calculator anyway. Who needs to be bribed with a gas tax holiday when they’re getting 607 mpg?

In other news, i’m 3 for 3, getting yelled at at least one on each of my last 3 bike riding days for… apparently just existing while on the road with my bike. Saturday it was a tirade against riding two abreast when there was no bike lane whatsoever, and plenty of space to pass in the opposing lane. Wednesday i was honked at, apparently for taking the lane through a narrow stretch of road construction lasting all of 30 meters. Today, i was riding down a wide road, riding on the side after having passed some parked cars when not the first car to pass, but the second honked then flipped me off after i waved back. I was laughing and laughing when i easily caught up to the impatient jerk, stuck at a red light 2 blocks later.

I happened across a couple of good links on consumerism today, just as i contemplate the new upcoming household budget.

First, and excellent article from Orion magazine about the history and rise of consumerism. It does a good job of showing the connection of big business to the rise of the consumer culture in our country. I find these sort of articles fascinating not least because of the sort of big-picture societal thinking that was going on. It’s creepy as hell and greedy, but it’s comforting that even in that sense, someone is thinking about this stuff. It would be better if it were done in an academic sense rather than capitalist, but there you go. How differently our society could have turned out if everyone had gone with the Kellogg model of just enough work and more time for play.

The related link is work from the artist Chris Jordan, who makes very large scale images depicting various statistics (small section of a million plastic cups above). The images must be amazing in person, but even in an online jpg (with accompanying zooms), the scale is staggering. I want to put one on the wall right next to the stack of styrofoam coffee cups that people at work use every single day, and have for decades. Is it really so hard to rinse a flippin’ coffee cup?