In the early morning rain

It was still raining when my alarm went off at a quarter to six this morning. But then, I'd expected as much. It's apparently going to rain for about four days. It's October. These things happen.

It's also really dark that early in the morning. But at about 6:15, when I left the house, traffic was blessedly quiet, which was good, because I was out in the middle of the lane on Heron to avoid the puddles (you never know what's under the water, and the potholes on Heron are epic).

I took Bank past Lansdowne and only jumped onto the convenient shared sidewalk once, to skip past a bus picking up passengers. Then it was off to the corner of Catherine and O'Connor to meet up with Hallie Cotnam, from CBC Ottawa Morning, and JP (better known to Twitter as @MrOneWheelDrive).

I got there early, so I got to go a little further up along the lane, and then go hide out underneath the Museum of Nature's iceberg sculpture. I hadn't really been up close to it before: it's a beautiful piece. And it provided a little shelter from the chilly rain. I also pedaled around the new Museum gardens and read a couple of the information panels by the light of my headlamp.

One of the cool things about going places by bike: you can stop and poke around. Even if it's 6:45 in the morning, still dark, and raining.

After a bit, I headed back to the corner, propped my bike up against a wall, and then spotted JP rolling along O'Connor in my direction. We said hi, waited a little bit, and then Hallie appeared, toting the CBC field kit - a briefcase packed with all kinds of telecommunications stuff - and a transparent plastic umbrella.

We talked a bit about the lane while we waited for the green light from the station, and Hallie got a photo of the two of us to post on Twitter.

One kind of funny thing was that we all more or less knew each other from Twitter (well, and we knew Hallie from listening to her on the radio) but I'm not sure I had ever really been introduced to JP. Still, we all knew each other from #ottbike, so it wasn't like we were strangers.

We got a couple of other photos and tweeted them out before the interview actually kicked off. Then Hallie got the headphones out, and we all huddled under the plastic umbrella (which I was sort of holding over the field kit, although it wasn't raining hard at that point) and had a chat about the lane.

It's hard to know for sure yet where the problem points will be, and I'm sure there may be some. But for now, O'Connor actually feels safer than Laurier - mostly because there are fewer driveways and turnings but also, since O'Connor is one-way for cars, the cars aren't crossing the bike lane from all possible directions. It's less busy as well, with fewer pedestrians ducking across and fewer cars turning at the entrances to loading docks and parking garages.

And the advance lights for bikes actually made me giggle as I crossed Isabella and went from two-way South O'Connor to one-way North O'Connor, across the highway ramp. I honestly felt as though I was getting away with something.

After the interview, we talked a little longer and then I headed off northward in search of breakfast and coffee. On the way, I passed someone in a yellow vest who waved at me as I passed. I grinned and waved back, then stopped, turned, and circled back to ask what was up (seriously you guys not enough has been said about the fact that you can just change directions on the O'Connor lane and you don't have to use a crosswalk or wait for a light or anything you can just double back).

It was Kathleen Wilker, who I know through Citizens for Safe Cycling, but who was there with EnviroCentre. They had people stationed at the intersection to wave and welcome cyclists to the new lane, and also to explain the bike boxes, installed so you can make left turns, in case anyone didn't know how to use them. I think she said they'd be out handing out coffee the next morning, as well. Even in the chilly rain, she was still pretty cheerful.

Then I rode on to the intersection with Laurier, turned left and dropped my bike off at the Centretown BUZZ office, and went over to Minto Place in search of a hot breakfast and a very large coffee.

O'Connor (legitimately this time)

The O'Connor lanes are open! Excitement is in the air! It's palpable!

Might be more palpable, to be honest, if on the day the lane officially opened it hadn't been slowly, dismally raining for hours.

It's open #ottbike pic.twitter.com/u8ia2baz3S

— Giacomo Panico (@GiacomoPanico) October 20, 2016

And 3:30 pm might have been an odd time to open it. I saw a couple of friends posting on social media that they were looking forward to riding on it, then being confused that it was still barricaded.

But that aside, it's worth celebrating - making a big deal out of, even - the opening of a major new piece of infrastructure. We've been waiting for this one. It's even open ahead of schedule. Pop the champagne!

Someone at work complained this afternoon about the concrete barriers, which make it harder to cut the corners on right turns. "You have to make such a sharp turn," he said, "or you'll scratch up your car on those things. And it'll just be worse in winter." He complained that traffic was already slow on O'Connor and now people making left turns were having to stop and hold it up further. Someone else mentioned that the adjustment period while drivers got used to looking for bikes coming northward on a predominantly southbound street would be dangerous.

But then I bumped into a friend this evening who told me that she had just driven through the mess of on- and off-ramps where O'Connor crosses Catherine and Isabella and runs under the highway, and she told me it was far less scary and confusing now. "You know which lane to be in if you want to get on Colonel By, and which one goes to the highway," she said. "The signage is a lot better. It's a lot clearer."

Anyway, this morning, my cell phone rang at work. It was someone from CBC Radio's Ottawa Morning wondering if I would be willing to come downtown tomorrow morning to talk to Hallie Cotnam about the lane. I said sure, and then they told me the interview would be at 7:00 am.

(But I would have said sure anyway.)

They also asked if I could give the lane a test ride today so I could check it out. I had an evening meeting, so I started home on the lane at about 8:30 pm. It was pouring. The kind of rain that comes in around your glasses straight into your eyes and makes you blink constantly, and gets all over the lenses, which are already steaming up from your body heat and breath in the cold night air. And makes all the signal lights reflect off the pavement so it's hard to tell what you're looking at, and obscures road markings, and makes unlit cyclists and pedestrians damn near invisible.

So, when I set out on the O'Connor lane, I was doing it under the worst possible biking conditions. Go me.

First impressions, rain-glazed and unclear though they are: the intersections felt okay. Where cross streets enter O'Connor, the bike lane is marked out in green thermoplast. Stop lines are further back, "yield-to-bikes" signs are more sensibly placed. I had my head up and my antennae cranked at each cross street anyway, because I didn't know how they would work. But between the fact that it was late, so there were very few cars on the cross streets, and the fact that it was pouring rain, so there were no other cyclists (none), the ride was confusion-free.

The only thing that made me jump was the sheer speed of cars coming up beside me. Even though I knew they were separated from me by a concrete barrier, cars fly along that street and are noisier in the rain, and I flinched a couple of times as cars blasted by on my right.

At the Catherine/Hwy 417/Isabella crossing, I didn't know what to expect. When I rode this lane illegitimately, jumping the gun, this intersection was unfinished and baffling. Terrifying, even. But now it was kind of glorious. You just stay on the east side of the street.

How bafflingly simple is that?

The bike lanes continue straight, on the east side, across Catherine, under the highway, and across Isabella, with two different, very clearly defined, separate bike signals to allow cyclists to cross before left-turning, highway-bound traffic proceeds. The bicycle lights are even bike-shaped to make it more obvious, and the green thermoplast leaves no doubt about it. There's a bike signal before you cross Catherine, and another at Isabella.

(I haven't seen how the traditionally hellish pedestrian crossing has changed, if at all, on the west side of the street. I guess I will tomorrow.)

Once across Isabella, the bike lane continues for about a block, then the southbound half of it crosses to the west side of the street. It was very dark and rainy, so I couldn't see exactly how but, on a street as quiet as O'Connor suddenly becomes at this point, it's not such a crucial thing. Then there's a painted bike lane which runs up and over pedestrian bulb-outs at the corners, the rest of the way to Lansdowne Park. It was flooded tonight because of the rain, and my shoes got drenched: the pavement could be better, but at least there's not a lot of traffic.

At Lansdowne you have to turn up along a contraflow bike lane on Holmwood, which is scary in the dark and the rain: narrow, with cars coming toward you past a line of parked cars, and a narrowish bike lane. I was unnerved by it. And the less said about my experience of Bank Street past Lansdowne, over the bridge, through Old Ottawa South, and on to Billings Bridge, the better.

So I may not be taking the O'Connor lane every day. Mostly because it's lovely until you get to Holmwood, and then you're dumped onto Bank Street at Lansdowne. Which is not great at the best of times, and terrifying in the rain. If I take the canal to get to South Ottawa, I get to skip all of that horrible crap and get onto Bank down by the Rideau River, avoiding the whole stretch between Holmwood and Riverside. So I'll probably keep taking the canal for my commute.

But that's not to say that O'Connor won't be my very first choice if I'm going to the Mayfair Theatre after work, or to Lansdowne Park, or if I want to get to the Glebe Community Centre or McNabb Park. Or if I need to stop at Kettleman's Bagels on the way home. (This is a need that could happen.) And if I need to get north/south in the downtown core, this and Lyon will be my go-tos.

What's the opposite of microaggression?

Crossing Billings Bridge this morning, I was in the middle of the outside lane. It's a four-lane bridge, with sharrows painted on the outer lanes, but it's wide enough that if you ride along the sharrows some drivers will still think they can squeeze by you, so I always claim the full lane. 

I had cars behind me, but I figured the drivers wouldn't mind, since I was still going faster than all the cars lined up bumper to bumper in the inside lane. (Just after the bridge the outside lane goes over to parking.) I was just thinking how it was kind of ironic that I was going faster than all the cars and had the lane to myself when -- 

-- Someone in a white Golf suddenly pulled out of the lineup and nearly right into me, cutting me off. 

"Whoa! WHOA!" I shouted at the top of my lungs (the only way to make a noise loud enough that you have a hope of a driver hearing you), first as I saw the car begin to turn and then as I realized it wasn't going to stop and I swerved and braked a bit. The car continued on, and I did the large, arm-sweeping "what the hell, man?" gesture, but kept pedalling along behind him.

He turned right onto Riverdale just past the bridge, and as that was where I was going to turn anyway, so did I, thinking, now that guy probably thinks I'm trying to chase him down. 

And then he slowed down, and pulled over to the side of the road. 

A few things went through my mind. First, here he was doing something else I couldn't interpret. Was he parking? Pulling over temporarily? What was he going to do next, and could I get clear of him before he did whatever it was? Second, I saw his window rolled down and thought: ah shit, he's going to try to bawl me out because he thinks I wasn't supposed to be in the middle of the lane or something, and this is going to be one of those stupid yelling matches. Third, I thought: well, okay, but I need to say something, right? 

Anyway, the window was down, so I stopped beside him. Not caring if I was jamming up the cars behind me or anything. They could wait or go around: presumably they'd seen what had just happened between the two of us back on the bridge. And the driver looked up at me through the open window and said, "I'm so sorry."

Which was unexpected, I'll admit. I'd been bracing for all the usual recriminations.

"I'm really sorry," he said again, "It scared me too. I honestly didn't see you till I heard you yell, and then there was nothing I could do about it. The sun just blinded me and I shouldn't have pulled out like that."

I assured him that I was okay - I was, after all. I'd seen him start to turn so I'd had time to react: he hadn't even really scared me as much as he'd clearly scared himself. It was all a lot more sudden for him, after all. And, being aware that we were stopped in the middle of the street, I said thanks and yes, I was fine, and to have a good day. And really, I wanted to say more. I wanted to tell him that I hoped the rest of his day was utterly confrontation-free, and that I wished him nothing but good people and kind interactions, in return for his having stopped to talk to me. But all I really said was something like, "Have a great day, man," as I got rolling again.

So, to that guy: thanks. Genuinely, thank you. For the kindness of stopping to speak to me, and for reminding me that it's very possible, in those cases where I shout, gesture, and mutter, "asshole," at someone for cutting me off or whatever, that maybe that person actually drives away feeling remorse for their moment of thoughtlessness, and just doesn't have the presence of mind - or the opportunity - to pull over and try to apologize.