Playing In Traffic

Two days of bike commuting and I’m feeling better already. Although it’s definitely National Bike to Work Week out there; lots of amateurs. Today I experienced a first. Trying to scoot between traffic and the curb crossing the Mass Pike and I was stopped in my tracks by a dad with a bike trailer, who was effectively and efficiently blocking pretty much the entire lane of traffic, from curb to lane divider. I didn’t know whether to be amused or frustrated that he was holding me up.

On the less-ambigulously-positive side, the Studio Without Walls art installation along the Muddy River in Brookline is going on. It makes for a very pleasant 2 minutes of riding. Hopefully I’ll remember to start bringing a camera along for the ride, and post some pictures. That of course assumes I’m able to get out of the house early in the morning. Never a sure thing.

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Probably won’t be doing too much posting this week. The Wife’s out of town until Sunday, it’s both Little League (2 games/week + practice) and spring soccer (game + practice/s), and there are various and sundry after-hour appointments/meetings/shopping that need to get done. Bottom line — not much time flexibility to ride a bike in 11 miles and out 11 miles. Plus the weather’s probably going to be lousy.

One bike commuting note: driving in this morning saw a nicely dressed (i.e. pressed shirt & tie) guy riding his heavy step-through framed bike, complete with child seat on the back, come down off of Fresh Pond Parkway, and start to ride over the Elliott Bridge in the traffic lane. You know I’m all in favor of taking the lane, but there are times to do it and times to retire to fight another day. This guy should have retired. Thankfully he had the good sense halfway across the bridge to get up onto the sidewalk. I lost track of him after that; hopefully he found the bike path before he decided to roll down Soldier’s Field Road.

Music for the day: Drive by Truckers, Southern Rock Opera. Only halfway through the first disk, but it’s a keeper. It’s for everyone who has a fond spot in their heart for both Free Bird and Southern Man.

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Filed under: Music, Taking the Lane

I had grand plans of keeping a tally on this blog of the number of stupid auto tricks vs. bad bicyclists vs. oblivious pedestrians. That idea’s kind of fallen by the wayside due to a lack of technical know-how on my part. (Anyone out there know of a widget I can get that keeps a running tab of stuff like this?) But I still do try and keep track in my head during my bike commute of which constituency — cyclists, pedestrians or autos — demonstrate the highest level of idiocy.

Yesterday morning on the way down Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge I had an epiphany of sorts. I was thinking how surprised I was that autos, or more precisely drivers, hadn’t risen quickly and overwhelmingly to the top of the list. The whole reason I started this blog was because I was convinced that was the case. But in reviewing the few posts I’ve actually written, and thinking about the rides I’ve done so far in 2009, it just didn’t seem that cars were responsible for an outrageous amount of stupid. Just then a few car lengths in front of me a new Civic slid out of the left lane into the right, without signaling/slowing down/seeming to look, and cut someone off in the curb lane. No big deal — it probably happens about 500 times a day on that stretch of road. Didn’t even get a honk of the horn from the car they cut off. And hence the epiphany. If that had been a bike instead of a Civic — if I had decided to move a few feet to the left and take the whole curb lane without looking behind me — there would have been horn blasts, glares, middle fingers, and maybe a bruise on my arm when a rear-view mirror brushed me. At the least.

So here’s the exegesis: We’ve just come to assume that during the course of driving you’re going to see stupid & rude behavior. And because it’s expected, and in some ways planned for, unless it’s really bad we don’t get outraged and pissed off by it. We don’t make comments on news articles about hit and run accidents. We don’t yell at drivers we see running lights, or not yielding for pedestrians in cross walks. And we don’t bitch and moan about spending on infrastructure that helps drivers. We see so much internally combusted idiocy on the road that we’re inured to it. It’s totally, and literally, unremarkable.

But we’re not used to seeing cyclists do anything, whether it’s stupid or considerate, lawful or illegal. So drivers are predisposed to think anything done on a bicycle is out of place and inappropriate.

On the ride home yesterday I tried to keep count of incidents involving drivers demonstrating behavior that, if done on a bike, would generate a hostile response. 30 minutes into my 50 minute home-bound commute I had seen 35 stupid-car-tricks, and stopped counting right there. I didn’t even get into Arlington. So the tally idea might die an organic death, because if I truly and honestly kept count the numbers would look out of whack and bogus.

Action items and/or take aways? Let’s be careful out there. Take the lane. Work to get more people on the road on bikes, so they’re not viewed as an aberration. And the next time a driver gives you grief don’t respond (you’ll never win). But maybe try to remember their license plate number. You may want to report it if you see them a few blocks down the street, turning without signaling, running a stop sign, or not yielding to kids in a cross-walk. You never know when useless information can come in handy.

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Filed under: bike commute

This afternoon’s winner is the young gentleman trying to impress his lady friend by driving so aggressively with his Hyundai Tiburon. How can you generate enough testosterone in a Tiburon to make an ass of yourself? I guess it can be done.

The young sir didn’t like the fact that a car had stopped for traffic before turning right off of Jones onto Mason, by the Cambridge Common. So Mr. Tiburon just pulled into the left lane, turned right and zoomed off into the gathering dusk. Maybe it was an emergency. I’m betting it was an excess of hormones. But whatever, he wasn’t going to get anywhere very fast on a weekday at 6 PM around Harvard Square, no matter how many traffic laws he was going to break.

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Filed under: bike commute, Cambridge Common

Beautiful day to ride a bike today. It’d be considered a little cool, if we were in mid-July, but for early April you can’t hope for much better. Light breeze, sunshine, mid-40’s on the way in. It looks even better considering the weekend looks sucky.

But on to the main event… 4 — count them, 4 — note-worthy incidents this morning.

It took me all the way into Harvard Square to find the first culprit. Newish, bright blue VW Golf (I think — sure about the blue, though) puttering along in the right lane when, with nary a warning, it stops in the main lane. It wasn’t in the bike lane right then, but we’re all smart enough to know that stupid behavior never stops with the initial incident. Sure enough, as soon as I start to pass — in the new, well-marked bike lane — the passenger side door gets opened, and Mr. Oblivious leaps out. Hope he appreciated the non-obscene comment I gave him. I doubt it led to any realistic epiphany on his part.

15 seconds later, after getting through the stop light in the Square, when a flock of pedestrians are perched in the bike lane, all looking to jay walk across the road. Heaven forbid they take a step back out of the travel lane. I wonder if they would have if I had encased myself in a metallic shell with fake headlights. We’ll never know.

And the first two-fer of the blog! Stopped at the light on Comm Avenue at the end of the BU bridge, when a CO spewing 1st generation mo-ped pushes his way between me and the car on my left. And I do mean push. There was hardly any room there, and he damn well was going to take it. Because you know he was going to be faster then a stupid bicycle when the light changed. Well he was right, he was faster off the light. No surprise there. But I was (slightly) surprised to see him make a blatantly illegal right turn — closer to a U-turn — onto Montfort. Where are police when you need them?

A brief aside on the sudden popularity of scooters (and 1st generation CO spewing mo-peds): I’m all for getting around town in more fuel efficient ways. And there is no need for a full-blown car to accomplish most inter-city trips. (Although having access to a nice sound system with a 6-disc CD changer might get me to cut you some slack.) But the bottom line is, once you put a motor on it you’re dealing with a whole different set of rules. You can’t use the bike lane. You can’t ease up on the right side of cars at stop lights. Signaling a turn is mandatory, because what you’re riding weighs a lot more than a bike and is going to cause a lot more damage if you hit someone. Not that drivers pay any attention to this last one. So no, you don’t get the best of both worlds on a Vespa. You’ve made a choice to play with the other hydrocarbon consumers. You’ve got to play by their rules.

So the score for today: Autos 1 Pedestrians 1 Scooters 2

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Filed under: bike commute, Harvard Square, scooters, Vespas