The Ups and Downs

It's been an uneven cycling day, all told. Leave aside the damp, -20 windchill this morning, which made it a slightly unpleasant slog at times on the way to work. That's okay, I can deal with that. In fact... I think it's been established I'm a bit of a glutton for punishment.

But it was the ride home that was such a roller coaster.

Here's the note I just wrote to the "feedback" people at OC Transpo. (Mom: you might want to skip this bit.)

I don't know if this falls under "personnel," but there was no category provided for "safety." At pretty much exactly 5:00 this evening I was on my bike crossing the Montreal Road bridge over the Rideau River. There's a bike lane there (although it's half buried under ice at this time of year.)

An articulated bus, route #12, passed me. I'm used to biking in traffic, I've been doing it for two years now, and I'm used to being passed with little space to spare. But this bus had overlapped the bike lane. It did not slow down as it went by me, and even allowing for the under-estimation of clearance that happens when a cyclist is terrified, this bus had to have passed within a foot and a half of my handlebars. I instinctively slammed on my brakes. Good thing there was no ice under my tires. It was frightening, and one thing I've figured out in my time on the streets is that it's when cyclists get scared that accidents happen. I didn't catch the bus number. I was too busy trying to collect myself.

Don't get me wrong - for the most part I have had a great experience sharing the roads with OC Transpo buses. Usually, the drivers slow up around me, give me room, wait for me to pass before pulling out, even go above and beyond and get over into the other lane on four-lane streets, and generally behave very well. That's why I felt I had to report this one. It was frightening.

Thank you for the drivers that do understand how scary it is to share the road with something the size of a bus - and please, please, try to educate the ones that don't.

Thanks -

Kathryn Hunt
Bike commuter and OC Transpo rider.


I actually had to stop a pedestrian as I was waiting to cross at Charlotte to double check the bus number. "Was that bus a 12?" I asked him, and he nodded. "Okay," I said. "Cause he just nearly hit me back there and I'm calling it in." I'm a big proponent of calling this kind of thing in, too. Nothing gets done by generally bitching about it... but call and ask to speak to a supervisor and at least someone will sweat a little. I ticked "Response Requested" on that note, by the way. I'll post whatever I hear back from them.

But, I continued on my way. Past the spot on Laurier where I spotted someone's lost agenda notebook on the street on Friday (nice thing about biking, you go slower and notice things like that; I stopped, stuffed it in my bag, and called the guy when I got home. Returned it to him today, and that was cool.) And on down the street, meshing with the rest of the traffic. By this time "Stadium Love" was playing in my right ear and I was over the jitters from the bus encounter. Pulled up at a red light somewhere near King Edward and a guy sitting on a park bench, with a Labrador retriever, said, "Hey, good for you. Biking through the winter."

I grinned. "Thanks," I said. "It's not as hard to do as people think it is."

"Yeah. People say things like 'how do you do that?' ... I say," and he made little pedalling motions with his hands, "you pedal."

"Exactly," I said. "You put on some gloves, and a hat, and you go." And he laughed, and said, "well, good for you," again, and the light turned green and I took off toward the canal, smiling.

So the fact that I was skimmed by a sedan on Heron, or that just outside my building some idiot in a car decided that just because there was a bike in the middle of the intersection was no reason not to blow through a stop sign, gunning it into a right turn and nearly hitting me ... that was just more ups and downs on the run home.

More wayfinding

Ah, a new year. Back to Ottawa and back on the bike this week, all kitted up in the new merino base layer and with the pant legs tucked into the boots... and still struggling to find a route to work.

Back in December when the snow first flew I found myself trapped on the back roads of the Cyrville Industrial Park and swore I would never try that again. I had talked over possible routes with other friends of mine who have a decent Area Knowledge modifier (to use gamerspeak) and worked out how many points there are where you can safely or sanely get across the highway. (Bank Street, where you can go under it at Catherine; Lees Avenue, where you can go over it at the Nicholas/Mann snarl; Riverside Drive just before Coventry, which is unpleasant.) So yesterday morning I set off down Heron, re-acclimatizing myself to the slush after a couple of weeks off the roads while I was visiting my family.

I decided to try Lees. So I took my usual route down Alta Vista to Hurdman, only to discover that when I'd walked the bike the length of the Transitway station, the pathway to and from the cluster of apartment buildings at Lees was uncleared: a foot-worn track that you couldn't bike along. I stopped for a moment, and an OC Transpo employee came out to say, "You look a little bewildered." I explained that I was trying to get to Lees Avenue, and she told me, not unsympathetically, that the only way was to walk the bike along the path. So I walked it back along the station to the path entrance, and shoved Mike, clogged with snow, from the station to Lees Avenue: the picture here highlights the amount of my trip that was spent trudging through deep snow. (Good lord, was it really nearly a mile? No wonder I was late for work.)

Lees Avenue was pretty slushy, too, and busy with cars who were all either still in highway mode or about to get into highway mode, since there's an on-and-off-ramp system to the Queensway there. I was happy to get to the other side of Pretoria Bridge, where I could get onto the canal path, and saw that the path had a strip of bare pavement down the middle of it. I  spotted another woman on a bike coming across the intersection. "Is the canal path clear through to downtown?" I asked her.

"I don't know, it's my first time here," she said, "but it's clear all the way back to Lansdowne. From Bank Street to Dows Lake, though, it's blocked off."

"But it's clear to Bank Street?" I said, hopefully, and she told me it was. Oh, happy day: this meant I could take the path home all the way to Old Ottawa South. So I got on the canal path and it was plowed and more or less clear, with little patches of ice or slush, all the way downtown. I crossed the canal at the Laurier Bridge, and took Laurier all the way to where it turns into Charlotte and meets up with Montreal Road. By then I was really tired (snow, deflated tires, and extra trudging took its toll), and the last little slog through Vanier was kind of painful. I was shaky by the time I got to the office, but I can blame some of that on bonking because I hadn't eaten breakfast; I'd gotten into town the night before at 11:30 PM and there hadn't been time to shop for groceries.

But hallelujah, I had finally found a route that I can actually use to get to work! Now, my path looks kind of like this:

 

I have to say, I used to have some real problems with the NCC. But this makes up for any differences we may have had in the past. I don't know what I'd do without the Skateway, and the cleared and salted canalside path it gives rise to. No cars. No buses. No terror. For at least most of my trip.

Tourism to the rescue!

Briefly:

... if you were driving past Billings Bridge Mall this evening around 5:15 or so, and came upon a cyclist at the intersection of Bank and the Billings Transitway exit, holding her bike up with one hand and kicking angrily at a huge ridge of slush and snow that had been thrown out across the bike lane by the plow, breaking it up and shoving the resulting bits of slush to the side of the road with her boot...

... well, that was me. Doing my civic duty.

You know it's winter when...

Mike has left a possibly-permanent set of salt stains on the carpet outside my apartment, right underneath where the rear tire and the front set of gears are when I stand him in the hallway to thaw after I get in. The one under the derailleur is the worst: chain lube plus salt plus road grime plus slush is not kind to carpet.

Well, I'm not about to bring him in to thaw and drip all over my hardwood floor, right?... I leave him out there for a half hour or so to drip dry, then open the door and allow him in. A little like a dog that's in disgrace.

It's amazing how much snow he brings in with him. The tires throw slush back against the underside of the frame and up into the rear set of gears, where it sticks and clogs around the gearshift cables. It almost feels futile to clear it off, since I'll just get the bike coated again the next time I go out, but I know I should. It's also true that I go through lubricant like a fiend when the weather's bad. Not that you tend to notice a sticky gear or a grinding in the pedals while you're teetering along at three-quarters speed, keeping an eye out for patches of ice or ridges left by the plow, but in the back of my mind I'm always aware that I'm putting the bike through really, really unkind conditions, and if I don't want to replace most of the drive train in the spring I should probably be wiping it down, lubricating absolutely everything, and probably trying to protect the paint job while I'm at it.

I see some debate out there in the blogosphere over using fixed-gear bikes for the winter; the sort of single-speeder that you usually find in either older style bikes, or seriously heavy-duty ones. The idea is that winter is so hard on your gears, and you're so unlikely to be traveling fast or hard enough to need more than one gear, that you're saving yourself a lot of replacement parts and headache by switching to a simpler bike with fewer working parts. The only downside is having to work a lot harder on hills (and you really don't want to stand up on the pedals on a slick, icy hill.) It's a moot point for me: even if I wanted to get a second bike, I don't have anywhere to keep it. As it is, Mike is dripping on the floor inside my apartment because there's no bike parking downstairs.

So, I have to do what I can to protect my bike's delicate bits. MEC (bless their hardcore little hearts) posted a great set of tips for winterizing your bike. New Years Resolution: get that midwinter tuneup, some studded tires, a can of WD-40, and a gallon or so of all-purpose lubricant.

And a rubber mat for the hallway. Sooner or later my landlord's going to complain.

Illuminated!

A couple of days ago a co-worker said that she was heading to MEC, and did I want her to pick up a new headlight for me? I had been mentioning that I needed one, if only so I didn't have to leave work at 4:00 in order to catch the light, but it's hard to find the time to get all the way across town. So I said, yeah, sure, and went online to figure out which one to send her off to get.

I used to have a Planet Bike Beamer. A little LED that could be quick-removed from the mounting on the handlebars and double as a flashlight. But I discovered that it didn't really throw enough light to make the trip home along the path very comfortable. I remember midnight runs home, peering into the darkness, with a faint little circle of light on the pavement, failing to show me the potholes, rocks, and branches until I was basically on top of them.

I needed something that would provide light to see by, not just visibility to cars, like a Turtle light, but you can spend upwards of $90 on a commuting headlight, and MEC had one - "for 24-hour races and competitive night riding" the catalogue said - for about $400.

Then I spotted these (MEC brand "Sharks"), and the catalogue suggested that for $12.50 each, you could get two and double up. Well, of course! So, I did. They're super-bright: the day I got them I headed home around 9:30 PM from an after-work meeting, and was astonished. They cover the whole path. They're bright enough to light up the ceiling of the highway underpass. And it was actually quite beautiful, getting on the bike path with the city lights across the river all shining on the water, and putting on my headphones and zipping along in the dark cold, listening to "Ideas" on CBC as I pedaled.

It was even better last night, when I went out for a drink with some friends after a reading in the Market, and we suddenly looked up to realize it was 2:30 AM. It wasn't raining anymore - it had been earlier in the day - so I packed my rainpants into the pannier, flicked on my lights, and headed off for the canal. I had the whole canal path to myself, and it was still warm enough out that I didn't even need to wear my mittens, and at that hour of the night there's no stress. The streets are all yours. And I had plenty of light to see by on the pathways, and I knew that the cars that were out could see me. Freedom! I no longer have to scurry home before dark like some sort of small diurnal scavenger!

And come on, doesn't it look like Mike's got beady little eyes? Aren't they cute? Doesn't he look like WALL-E?
(The friends I was with last night think I should get four or six more and line them up along the handlebars like deerjackers. I'm half tempted. It would make Mike look like the low-tech version of a truck from a post-apocalypse movie. Which would be awesome.)

Fellow Travellers

I was having a terrible ride home today. It was raining, and by the time I was climbing Bank Street it was dark. I don't know why it is that people seem to be worse drivers in the rain - maybe it's a matter of my perception, maybe not. It's true that in the rain, the cars are louder. They seem to cut closer to you, and to be more impatient. I swore out loud at someone in a black truck that passed me with about a foot of clearance, and then again when a minivan nearly made a left turn right into me. I was bitching out loud at them all, and at the unfairness of having to worry about being critically injured or killed by my goddamn commute. (Once again, the thought crossed my mind that it's very strange how people who find out I enjoy rock climbing think I'm some kind of crazy daredevil, but don't bat an eye at my biking to work every day.)

And the traffic was just awful - backed up all the way down Bank. I was dodging around the cars trying to angle in off side streets and keeping an eye out for anyone that might be cutting in through the lines and turning left, and I got stopped up behind a bus that was trying to merge back into traffic, so had left no space for me to get between it and the curb. So I stopped, waiting for the bus to budge, and then I heard, "It's awful today, isn't it?"

There was a guy behind me on a commuter bike in a yellow rainjacket - older than me; I'm fairly certain he had grey hair under the helmet. I said something like, "Yeah, and they always seem to drive worse in the rain," and he nodded.

"Well, it's all clogged up," he said. "I haven't seen it this bad in a long while."

And then the bus moved a little, so I slipped between it and the curb and pedalled on up to the intersection. The light was red, so I pulled up. The guy was still behind me.

"How long are you going to keep riding?" he asked me.

"Long as I can," I told him, and mentioned that I use the River Path, so when the snow gets deep I'll have to find a streetside route. I also told him about the rumor I'd heard from the NCC about keeping part of the western path clear this year.

"Does that help you?" he asked me, and I said no, not really. "But it's a start, right?" I said.

"Yeah, it's a start." And then the light turned green and he said, "Have a good night," and I said, "Yeah, you too."

Biking on up the hill to my place, I felt a lot better. Something about the question: "How long are you going to keep riding?" There was a companionability about that question, and a sense that we both knew anyone out there in the cold mid-November drizzle in their rain gear was probably a committed cyclist. Still riding at this time of year, and in weather like that? The question isn't whether you're going to be riding in the snow - the question is how much snow you're going to try to handle.

Sometimes a little smidgin of esprit de corps can really improve your day.

Chilly Morning

There were frost stripes on the way to work this morning: lines of frost on the grass that matched up with the shadows of the trees. That's one of the things I think I like about November. It was probably hovering around freezing, bright and sunny. Where the sun hit my black jeans was warm, but I had wool mittens on to keep my hands from getting too cold. And where the sun hit the ground the frost just vanished: on the east side of the street, though, in the shadows of the houses, the grass was dusty-white.

The weather and the daylight are getting more tyrannical as winter comes on. They dictate more. It's interesting, in a way. My headlight died back in September or sometime, and until I get a new one, I have to stick to lit streets or get myself off the pathway before dark actually falls. With sunset falling at 4:35 (as of today), I need to get on the road by at least 4:20 in order to make the main streets by the time it gets too dark to see. It sets a real, cosmos-induced limit on my schedule - not something we're used to in the 21st-century West.

And I have to check the weather before I head out, too - is it cold in the morning? Will it get warmer through the day? Should I pack the raingear? It makes a bigger difference than in the summer, when getting rained on doesn't really inconvenience you much. Now, I'm starting to think I should just have my raingear with me, at all times, in case of snow or sleet or rain. I got caught a couple of weeks ago. When I got home with soaked clothing, after a terrifying ride through the dark along a major street in the rain, I was completely surprised when I started trembling in the elevator to my apartment. I hadn't thought it was that bad, until I got home, and got the shakes.

So I stick to the daylight when I can (I biked in the dark to my rock gym last night, but it's a well-lit, wide street. Had it been raining, I might have opted to bus it just that once.) And I have to plan ahead more. It helps, though, with some of what I find hard about winter. We're usually disconnected from the seasons, and so we wind up, in winter, working through the day, arriving in the dark and leaving in the dark, and wondering why we're depressed; standing shivering waiting for the bus with the wrong jacket on a damp night and wondering why we're sick. Biking is actually forcing me to pay a little more attention, and that makes the season a lot easier to live with.

Bad roads and good intersections

I just discovered that the CAA has developed a site where you can vote for the worst roads in Ontario. While I'm sure I don't have roads anywhere near as bad as they probably have in, say, Kenora, I have been keeping a tally of the worst roads in Ottawa, back in a bottom drawer of my mental filing cabinet. Some of the worst offenders:

Somerset where it turns into Wellington, just on the west side of the train overpass. You know, down in front of the Giant Tiger. Bone-jarring, that.

Bank, anywhere south of Billings Bridge. I know because I travel it every day. It's big, it's fast, and there are unexplained long gouges in the pavement that seem placed so that they'll grab your tire and yank it sideways. I am thankful, every day, for Mike's burly 2" tires. What kind of crazy person relies on 3/4" racing tires in the real world?

The same goes for Heron Road, also part of my commute. The potholes on Heron are easily an average of two inches deep, and they appear and disappear like mushrooms, overnight. The drain covers are surrounded by them. You feel like maybe the entire road around the drain will suddenly crumble away, leaving only the metal cover and whatever cartoon physics is left holding it up.

And, construction or no construction, burning summer heat or driving nasty autumn grit, the snarl of crap at the bottom of the escarpment where Albert Street turns into Scott, near Lebreton Flats, is unnavigable, unpleasant, unfriendly, and full of buses and trucks and chuckholes and gravel and misery... oh, and it's also apparently a posted, city-approved bike route.

My least favorite pothole in all of Creation is the one on Heron, heading up the hill from Bank. It's exactly at the point where the right-turn lane fades into the street itself. It's at least three inches deep. And it's right where, if you're pedaling up the hill, you have to move out into the actual traffic lane, where people accustomed to the Parkway are accelerating away from the light and up the hill. So you're pushed by the curb into traffic. The road is narrow. It's popular with trucks. And just as you have to get close to the cars whizzing by you, your wheel rattles over a chuckhole the size of a salad plate. Not fun. I'm tempted to go down there late one night with a bucket of filler and fix it my own damn self.

However ... I do have a surprising favorite intersection.


I know, it looks kind of hellish, doesn't it? But it's actually, once you get to know it, one of the sanest intersections I know.

Coming up from bottom right is Alta Vista, which is pretty and residential and has a bike lane down its entire length. (Cue angelic choirs here.) The big road is Riverside Drive: ignore it, we just have to cross it. You come in along Alta Vista. Merge left across two lanes once your bike lane runs out. Now you're in the innermost of a double left turn lane. You stay to the left, because the lane you're in becomes a through lane, and slip into the outermost of another double left turn lane onto Riverside... but then you don't quite turn left, you make half the turn and then swing right onto (hooray!) the paved bike path. Then you just have to cross Hurdman Transitway Station (the big parking lot at left) and you're on the Eastern River Path, and it's all joggers, wildlife, and senior citizens feeding the ducks from there on in.

It seems like any intersection that involves a bicycle and double turn lanes should be scary and senseless - but somehow once I got the flow of it, it became almost dancelike. And the traffic stays out of your way, and it's pretty calm. Only once did I have a driver go into some sort of weird fit, banging on his horn and swearing at me for taking up the lane... before then turning right onto Riverside, which confuses me. Since that means I wasn't in his way at all. But I figure he was probably just having a really, really bad morning.

For one thing, he wasn't just about to turn onto a pathway lined with Michaelmas daisies and people out walking their basset hounds. Poor man.

Freedom

Last Christmas, my parents gave me freedom, in the form of a full set of rain gear from MEC. Of course, I didn't really know it was freedom at the time. I knew that it was a parently gift: it came with a card saying, "Happy, dry trails - Mom and Dad," and like the gift certificate I got for my birthday when I first started biking (the one that I knew, although it wasn't stated, was given in the hopes it would be used on a helmet, which it was) it made me smile. Sure, I'm a grown woman, but my mom and dad still worry about me out there, on the roads, in the rain.

I didn't know how much it was going to change things for me. It was the middle of winter, and although Ottawa was in the middle of a horrific transit strike, I wasn't biking too far, and even when I did, I was wearing a parka. But then spring rolled around. And as soon as the snow was (mostly) off the Riverside Path, I was out there, with my gloves and warm sweaters on, skidding and slaloming my way through the ice and slush on my way to work (because the bus strike had also taught me that I could bike in pretty much anything if I had to.)

And spring brought rain (and freezing rain, and wet snow, and snizzle.) And I discovered that what I thought was a bright red rain jacket, black rain pants and boot covers was, in fact, freedom. The first morning that I woke up and saw there was cold, needling rain coming down, I bundled up in all my rain gear, and feeling a little like an astronaut - the boot covers in particular made me feel that way; they're dorky as hell, but do they ever do the trick in keeping rain from running down your legs and into your shoes - I wheeled Mike out and into the elevator, and proudly smiled at anyone riding down with me. Yup, that's me, heading out into that, on my bike. I'm hardcore.

It was liberating. I got on the bike, wrapped up my Velcro wristbands and stuck my mp3 player in the little zip pocket (I know, we'll get into the ethics of the mp3 player later) and regardless of the downpour, off I went. Not even avoiding the puddles. I think I actually enjoyed blasting right through them, with the cascade of water thrown off my front tire and onto my legs. I was a force of nature. I was a duck. I was a cyclist in the rain.

I thought of that today because it was another hot, oppressive day when I left for work this morning, and it was obviously going to rain. I brought a change of clothes for the office, and when I felt the first sprinklings on my way out of my apartment, I didn't blink. When I left work today and there was a full-on rainstorm in progress, I didn't blink. I biked home. I loved it. Of course, it's the middle of summer and the rain is warm. I don't mind getting soaked. But it used to be that I would think twice and take the bus if it was pouring out. Leave Mike at the office and pick him up the next day. Maybe in fall, when it's cold out there, if I've forgotten the raincoat, I'll do that. But right now, I will bike in the rain and I will love it.

There's a lot fewer people on the trails when it rains, and you can just skim along. The river is beautiful in the rain. The puddles are warm when you splash through them and douse your feet. The breaks in the clouds (because these summer storms come and go in fifteen minutes) let through sparkling sunshine that catches in the beads of water on your arms. And once when I was coming home I watched the front edge of a rainstorm actually make its way up the path toward me - one moment it was clear, the next I was watching a wall of rain come toward me, the next it was driving into my skin so hard I think I said, "Oh!" When it's hammering down rain, you just push on through it, and as soon as you're soaked it becomes like swimming in your clothes - freeing. The grit on your feet and ankles is even lovely. And today I came out of the rain into a patch of sun and the pavement on the trail was smoking in the sudden heat, and I slashed through a patch of steam that smelled like earth. And you start wondering what the hell it was you were thinking when you dashed from sheltered area to sheltered area in the rain.

I think I might have continued to think you can only bike when it's dry, though, if it hadn't been for those freezing mornings in my full-body rain gear this spring, when I watched the rain roll right off me and realized I can go anywhere, in any weather.

A couple of things I've learned...

One: Bixi operates in Ottawa/Gatineau! How long has this been going on, and why didn't I know about it?

If you don't know Bixi, it's a public bike-share system, where you pay by credit card to sign out one of their beautifully-designed bikes. I discovered this when a woman I work with arrived at our venue for a reading tonight on one of their bikes; there's a stand near where she lives in Gatineau. They're hard to miss. Distinctive. Sturdy but not, somehow, unlovely.
The idea is that you get a membership, or you pay by the hour, to take one of their bikes from a self-serve, solar-powered stand. Then you truck around doing whatever you need to do, and drop it off at any of their locations (doesn't even have to be the one you left from.) How cool is that?

The other thing I've learned is: if you're heading south along the canal after dark, you have two choices: Queen Elizabeth on the west side of the canal, or Colonel By Drive on the east side.

Take Colonel By. I had never before realized how much of a difference it makes to be travelling beside a road and going in the same direction as the cars in the nearest lane. If you're heading in the opposite direction, those buggers are blinding. Then you can't see the pedestrians in front of you because of the glaring retina-burning headlights, and you run a nasty risk of hitting them. Plus, for some reason, there are more joggers and pedestrians on the Queen Elizabeth side. Or at least there were tonight, when it was still about 35 degrees Celsius at 9:30 PM.

Oh, and thanks to Sari for this link, which she sent me after the last post about skirts and bikes... I spent the weekend in Toronto, and damn if there aren't a lot of gorgeous people on bikes in that city. Including a great many well-dressed women in skirts.