a midway bikelog

Another shoe dropping on the legacy of the Bush administration, from ABC News: Exclusive: Inside Account of U.S. Eavesdropping on Americans.

“This story is to surveillance law what Abu Ghraib was to prison law.”

The Simpson’s Movie has never seemed so relevant.

There’s nothing quite like a mis-calibrated bike computer to make you feel fast on a slow, tired morning.

It was oddly foggy this morning too. I ran into a fog bank about 1/2-way to work, stopping to turn on my lights because visibility was less than a city block. I expected it was just fog settled into the river valley, but i was out it again before i descended the hill toward the river. Obviously i was lucky to escape.

inspired by Jim’s post and a short break in the work day, i took a short political quiz only to get the entirely unshocking result that i’m a lefty libertarian.

Find your inner Ghandi or Margaret Thatcher, as the case may be.

The New Yorker magazine, not surprisingly given their excellent in-depth coverage of the current administration, endorses Obama in an incredibly well-written column this week. Worth a good read.

I rode the Ghostbike memorial ride to honor fallen cyclists yesterday with my two girls and almost 300 friends and fellow cyclists. We’ve had 4 cyclists killed in collisions with automobiles in the last month. This is both sad and highly unusual; we have a lot of cyclists on the road here, but accident rates have actually been on the decline the last few years. For many of us in St. Paul, the death of Virginia Heuer hit very close to home, as she was an adult rider on Summit Avenue, one of the most-traveled and longest-established bike routes in the cities. Many of us have logged hundreds of trips on that road, so it hit close to home for us.

The ride was organized by Jeremy Werst, who also runs the Minneapolis Bike Love forums, an excellent for local cyclists for the past couple of years that is fun to have in the best of times, and invaluable for times of need. Thank you, Jeremy, for all your hard work.

The route began at Ginny’s ghostbike, and proceeded to south Minneapolis where Jimmy Nisser died, then on to downtown where a ghost bike marks the spot Nik Morton died on the way to class at MCTC. In the afternoon, the ride proceeded to Blaine to install a new ghostbike for Dale Aanenson that had been pulled along for the entire ride.

There was good coverage of the ride from the Star Tribune, WCCO, KARE 11.

The ride was extremely well-done, an excellent example of a large group of cyclists using lanes properly, leaving room for car traffic but using the roads properly. The sight of 30-40 cyclists in groups changing lanes for left turns as a cohesive group was wonderful. There was no parade permit, no police or lane blocking until just the last few blocks into downtown, and everyone that i saw behaved admirably. I’m proud that we created a positive presence for bicycles on the street and happy that there was some news coverage and recognition of the ride.

Wow, those Denver police sure have a sense of humor. Serving and protecting is for suckers! Hurting people is fun! Gee, I can’t wait to see what the St. Paul police will come up with now.