Election Day

For my readers in the US Tuesday is Election Day, find out the candidates’ positions on bicycles and vote accordingly. You don’t want to vote for somebody that doesn’t know which end of the bike to sit on 😉

PSA Opus

NaNoWrMo, I ain’t

For those of you who aren’t writers, NaNoWrMo is the acronym for National Novel Writing Month, where someone is supposed to write 50,000 words in a month and include plot and characterization, and you know tell a story, all between 11/1 and 11/30. I write, (duuhhh!) and out there in the Muggle world I have been asked if I’m going to do this. To make the answer concise and understandable:

NO, I’M NOT WRITING ANYTHING FOR NANOWRMO!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for your time and attention.

Opus

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Some good news, some bad news, the Feed

OK let me just say that last week was extraordinary for this blog. Extraordinary not in the number of hits, I have had much better weeks for hits, but in the subject matter. Tasha Borland’s sentence was the first that I have ever seen that killing a cyclist with a car carried anything like the sentence for a non-traffic killing. Seriously for too long the judicial system has treated traffic deaths like part of the scenery or something, like the victims were collateral damage rather than victims of a crime. And that treatment wasn’t confined to cyclists, pretty much all victims of death by motor vehicle were treated like that, even most that were driving cars. But the case with Tasha Borland was different in that besides being drunk she was on prescription meds and also hit her victims some 8 feet from the road proper on the shoulder. Her previous communications about cyclists not belonging on the roads being discovered pretty much sealed her doom, as now the prosecution could say it wasn’t really an “accident” but something she had been planning to do for a long time, not against these cyclists personally but against some cyclists at some time. The sentence handed down will keep road users safe from Tasha for at least 20 years and as long as 30 years if she isn’t allowed to work out her driving ban in prison. If the driving ban ends with the expiration of her probation on the suspended sentences for the guy she didn’t kill, then we have more than 30 years safe from her as Tasha will be close to 70 years old when she again becomes eligible to take a test for a license and given her bodily damage from the drugs and alcohol her being medically fit to drive is not a given.

The bad part? There were almost no links in the Feed today, and every one was from outside the US except for the one about the guy trying to ride a stationary bike for more than 200 hours straight (well kinda straight because he gets 5 minutes off the bike for every hour he rides) and stationary bikes don’t fall under the purview of this blog. This is Witch on a Bicycle, not Witch on an Exercycle.

Up first because it’s our only link from North America is a hit-and-run in Toronto. Cyclist injured in hit and run The police are looking for a Ford F-150 in this case. I’m not surprized that the vehicle is an F-150. I don’t know if the situation is the same in Canada but in TX the Sh*t-Fifty attracts the most arrogant, self-centered drivers of any vehicle. They are the only ones who should be on the road and everyone else should either get out of their way or just get off the roads completely. Now this may be a case of confirmation bias on my part, so don’t take this as gospel.

Well, this is embarrassing, my second link from South Africa is busted now when I tried to pull it back up to do the paragraph. Synopsis the rider was on a mountain bike on a gravel road and crashed off the road and had to be airlifted out because he ended up so far away from the road and was so far out in the bush that transport back would have taken too long by ground. No word on why he crashed in the first place.

So, ride safe out there and remember the protocols to keep you safe, and use them.

Billed @$0.02, Opus