Maybe it's just me...

I got home tonight, switched on my computer, and spotted the following two posts on Twitter, both by someone named @taybridge:

Tweet the First: "#ottbike - Dear bonehead. Passing on the shared path with inches to spare and almost clipping me and a runner is stupid. Smarten up."

Okay, fair enough, can't argue with sharing the multi-use paths. But then he follows it up, literally less than a minute later, with:

Tweet the Second: "#ottbike - One more thing about the path. The parkway has two paths. Why, during rush hour, stupid cyclist, are you riding on the road? Argh"

Well, I didn't answer either one (although I almost answered the second. But 140 characters isn't enough time to explain that sometimes you wind up on the parkway because the path isn't going where you need to go, etc. etc.) I'd like to mention, though, that these two comments, hard on each other's heels, are a bit depressing to me. To this guy, bikes shouldn't be on the path, because they're dangerous to joggers and walkers, and shouldn't be on the road, because they should be on the path.

Circular much? What you're telling me, @taybridge, is that bikes don't belong anywhere. And that's why I'm not getting into it with you.

Spike Bike (a little healthy escapism)

I shouldn't read the comments. I know this, and yet... and yet I keep reading the comments.

I mean, of course, the comments on any article about cycling, or bike lanes, or sharing the road. I know I shouldn't look, because I'm just going to run into an ugly stream of vitriol, anger, and threats of violence. On both sides. Cyclists will be accused of being smug and self-righteous, and the cyclists in turn will proceed to prove those accusations right by telling drivers that they're fat, lazy, and polluting the planet. 

But then, I came across a comment thread that was getting the full back-and-forth flame treatment (you've all seen the kind of thing that gets said by anonymous jackasses) and someone, bless him, said something along the lines of, "Alright, I submit here the only possible response, for your reading pleasure," with a link to this archive.

Spike Bike. "In the year 1998 [this was written in 1989, on one of those old BBS boards], one man fights the tyranny of the automobile. . ."

It was just what I needed. Hilariously overblown Mad Max ultraviolence. A little fantasy fulfilment that takes the whole us-and-them hyperbole that always erupts in these comments, and extrapolates it. Here's your 'war on bikes,' and your 'war on cars.' Besides, it has a wry sense of humour that really endears it to me somehow. It catches the lunatic feel of 80's road warrior movies, and just in case you've ever fumed silently and helplessly as some jerk cut you off or buzzed you or hollered out their window trying to startle you into falling... this is guaranteed to be way more violent than anything you might have pictured yourself doing. And it's funny.

The paragraph that won me over:

My weekly raid on the old Joliet Arsenal yielded what I
 needed:   a bazooka and a couple of crates of armor-piercing
 rockets.  As usual, the morons the  Army  has  watching  the
 place  didn't  see  anything.   All  the  approaches  to the
 arsenal are pretty well guarded, but nobody expects a guy on
 a  mountain  bike  sneaking up from the river bank.  I slung
 the bazooka over my shoulder,  stuffed  all  the  rockets  I
 could  carry  into  a  set  of  panniers and a backback, and
 slipped away unnoticed. 

Back in the garage, I set about converting the  bazooka
 and  some  old Reynolds tubing into a bikezooka.  When I was
 finished, it looked pretty  much  like  any  other  fat-tube
 bike,  except  your  every-day Kleins and Cannondales aren't
 capable of firing antitank rockets out both  the  front  and
 back  ends.   The  bike handled a little funny, but I wasn't
 going to do any criteriums on this baby.

If you have a moment, it's worth it for the chuckles. And the bikezooka.

A bike kennel in Fredericton

My dad sent me this picture a couple of days ago: secure bike parking in my home town, Fredericton, NB.

 

I don't know for sure how it works (do you need a key to the 'kennel', or is there staff, or what?) but it struck me that I don't see these in Ottawa, which is arguably a more bike-friendly town (and probably has a higher rate of bike theft too). Not that Fredericton is huge, or hostile to bikes, but I don't remember ever seeing a bike lane there, and it is built on a great huge hill, which was definitely a deterrent to me as a kid, when I entertained the notion of bringing my bike in to town to get around on. But, lookee here, public bike parking. Which I would love to have access to in Ottawa (when I got a job recently on Elgin Street, about the third thing I asked my new boss was if it would be okay for me to bring my bike into the store and stash it in the staffroom. I've had too many headlights stolen to feel safe leaving him outside at night...)

Slow news day?

I was walking down Elgin this afternoon and I spotted this headline in the Ottawa Sun box. I had to stop and take the picture.

"Bike-lane changes would strip motorists of stoplight rights!" it says, there, underneath the screaming "RED ALERT."

I had to laugh. And get annoyed. And shake my head. All in one. Which made me look very silly, I'm sure, standing there on the sidewalk. Actually, crouching so I could snap the photo of the box. Anyway, I posted the picture to Twitter, with a comment along the lines of "Seriously, Ottawa Sun? Those nasty bikes are going to take away our god-given right to turn right on red? OH NOES!"

I appear to have struck a nerve, anyway - quite a few retweets, most in agreement. One, apparently in favour of the headline, pointing out that the bike lanes are inside all right turns regardless of whether the light is red or green. (I still don't see the problem, as bikes have to stop on red too, but hey.) What really amazes me about this, and about the headline from yesterday saying that the new Laurier lanes are going to impede emergency vehicles (I also tweeted about that, with a similar amount of scoff) is that it's got to be a slow news week or something if the media is having to invent controversy over the lanes. Which open Sunday, and with luck these stories will fade into history once they do.

Please note: I'm not expecting the earth to move, the sun to go dark, or cars everywhere to raise their mechanical little voices in despairing screams on Sunday, either. I just expect to see more bikes inside the concrete barrier, once they remove the pylons.

One right (and one left) make two wrongs

(Mostly posting this because I thought of the title and it amused me.)

As I was on the way to work this afternoon, heading north on Elgin Street, there was a car waiting to turn left. The car behind it cut me off (not sure if he was even aware I was there) to duck out around him. I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting the side of his car as he did so, and said something loud (a sarcastic "Nice!" I think it was.)

He then proceeded to turn right, once he'd cut me off, and paused for a moment. Switching his turn signal on - which was entertaining - at the exact moment he completed the right turn and headed off down the side street. I rolled my eyes and continued to work.

Coming home from work, south on Alta Vista, I came up to the left-turn lane onto Heron Road. Signalled, merged over into the left-turn lane. Didn't get the advance green, but the green light was still on. There was a car ahead of me making a left. I pulled up behind him and, seeing another car heading toward me, decided to wait till it came through the intersection before turning left. I started to roll forward toward the intersection, though, in preparation to turn.

At which point a truck appeared from my left side, having run the length of the through lane, passed me on the outside (hi! illegal!) and then cut over, turning left in front of me so he could gain that precious half-second of time.

Sigh. I rolled eyes. Continued riding. No point in trying to decide whether the drivers are impatient, or just blissfully unaware. Not sure which I'd rather.

Happy Monday

Here's a little video for anyone who rode or is riding to work today. Happy Monday: enjoy.

Get scared or get stubborn

A car blew past me today so close I could feel the shockwave on my hand. A foot, maybe, off my handlebars. Too damn close, and going way too fast (it was on Heron Road, and the speeds there are a bad fit with how narrow the road is.) I shouted; I couldn't help it, just an inarticulate shout that came bursting out of me as the car passed.

And it had been such a nice ride, otherwise, too. I had a split second where I could have gotten terrified, or mad. I got mad. Which is a sign of how long I've been riding. I can remember times when I screeched to a halt when that kind of thing happened. Now, though, by the time I'd processed what was happening, I was looking to see if the car was going to hit the red light ahead and if I could catch up. I wanted to tell the driver that he'd been far too close, dangerously close, and if we lived somewhere with the one-metre rule, he would have been illegally close. So I started pedaling like mad to catch up.

But I didn't catch up. The light changed, and he went on ahead without knowing how angry I was. Although maybe he heard me. I can hope that the Doppler effect didn't steal my shout as he flew past me. By the time I got to the traffic light it was red again, which was not such a good thing, because it gave me a minute or so where the delayed adrenaline - and the short breath from my sprint - kicked in and I started shaking. Mad and about to cry all at once. So I sat there, calming myself back down, until the light changed, and then I set off again. Just as I got back into my stride, another van came past - not as close, but it was a van, and so its sheer size startled me.

Okay, fine. Fine, I thought. And again I kind of surprised myself: I got mad, and I got defiant. If they were going to keep blowing past me, then I was going to get out into the lane and make it impossible. So I came out about a metre into the lane - where, technically, I should be, but way further out than I usually ride - and I stayed there, determinedly ignoring the sounds of cars coming up from behind me. Or at least, not ignoring them, but not letting them push me sideways. I was absolutely done with being intimidated by cars.

A couple of things about that. One: I not only knew, but had internalized, the idea that the further out in traffic you are (within reason) the safer you actually are. I stay a long way over to the side out of courtesy for drivers, but if you want to be visible, and to avoid drivers thinking they can squeeze by you, you take up space. Two: I have a lot more confidence than I used to, about a lot of things. And I thought, as I rode the rest of the way home, about my Amazon friend's insight about the relationship between being femme and biking (or any kind of non-mainstream-ism and biking): that you have to take up your space, stop shrinking to the side to avoid being 'in the way,' stop trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Unobtrusive is sometimes way too close to invisible.