After a long-ish ride to pick up some things that have held up progress and to check out the infrastructure in the next town over, the Feed

Just try reading that headline out loud on a single breath.

OK what I did this morning was to use part of my tax return check to pick up some stuff that has been holding up progress by not being there to get used, in this case drill bits, electrical terminals, and the one slightly frivolous item a solar powered path light. Every so often people will forget I’m not home after dark and turn off the back porch light. This leaves the walk from the garage to the back door in deep shadow as we have a near-daylight bright light on the garage lighting the garage front and driveway in back of the house but it doesn’t light up any of the yard next to the garage, including the path from the driveway to the door. My night vision is pretty good, but I can’t handle the transition from the driveway’s brilliance to the ambient light under the liveoak tree that shades our back yard. So the path light is not a necessity but more of a “nice thing to have when I need it”.

While I was coming back from the store, my route crossed a recently opened bit of infrastructure in Richardson called the Glenville Trail, touted as the closest thing to Dutch bike infrastructure in TX by one blog. Well if that is as close as they have gotten to Dutch infrastructure in TX, they have a long way to go yet. I was riding Blue with the kitty litter buckets and there were places that I had to paddle through because it was too tight to ride. Intersections were heavily traffic-calmed, for traffic on the bike path. They put chicanes in the bike path in the middle of the freaking intersections! I mean who does that? Outside of the US and maybe the UK that is? And the frustrating part was the chicanes were so tight they effectively made the path alternating direction instead of 2-way at the intersections because of the narrow path and high curbs on the chicanes were only wide enough to allow one bike at a time through. I could put one foot on the left curb while my front wheel was next to the right curb and my back wheel was in the middle of my lane. I mean Blue is slightly longer than a standard road bike but not so much as you would notice without a tape measure, so regular bikes would have been in pretty much the same situation as Blue. And this was not confined to the intersection chicanes either. There were several sections that required drastic slowing even from my usual tortoise-like cruise speeds to negotiate, because they were so tight, and others because there was so much debris in the path. And the final indignity? When you got to the end of the trail, there was a stop sign, and that’s it. There was no indication as to the name of the street you were being dumped on, without local knowledge you were basically up the proverbial unsanitary tributary without visible means of locomotion, or a map.

Up first, more from SF in the “OMG! A Pedestrian was hit by a Bicycle!” flood of media diarrhea after the recent wreck. Pedestrian safety: Leaders need new attitudes I find this quote telling: “This week, for the second time in less than nine months, a senior pedestrian in a crosswalk in the city was struck by a cyclist and sent to the hospital.” Two injury wrecks in almost 9 months. One fatal, one that injured the cyclist as bad as the pedestrian, and in the mean time there were 10-15 pedestrians killed by motor vehicles, and hundreds more crippled for life. That never makes the news. And there was a bus that ran over a pedestrian then left the scene. Muni Still Hasn’t Confirmed Responsibility for Hit-and-Run Accident in SOMA because it is so much worse to get hit by a bicycle than a bus, NOT!

A wreck in MO. Vehicle hits bike rider on Warren Barrett Drive Not much information and some of it contradictory, like if the injured person was a cyclist or a pedestrian. The article switches from cyclist to pedestrian to bike rider all in 3 paragraphs. It was like reading parts of 3 different wreck reports.

A heinous wreck in IN. Hit-and-run hurts boy, 6 The weapon vehicle was following a Harley, which means the vision of the driver of the 6YO cyclist was not impaired or impeded by the leading vehicle. If you are in the area and see a grey/silver Sunfire or Cavalier with front damage and red or blue paint transfer in the damaged area shoot out the tires and radiator, and hold the driver at gunpoint call 911. A comment left with the article states the victim had a bone protruding from his leg after the wreck. I don’t think there is anyone on this planet that wants this driver jailed more than I do. There was an unconfirmed report the driver was using a hand-held communication device at the time of the wreck.

LifeStyle as a bike mechanic needs help after getting hit by a motor vehicle. Donations sought for injured mechanic I must have missed seeing that wreck in the Feed, because I couldn’t find any reference to it between then and now in any of my posts.

And more LifeStyle in the Spokane area of Eastern WA. 2012 Bicycling Events: Expanded list Looks like a lot of fun stuff to do there.

And wonder of wonders, after all the non-bicycle links have been filtered out, that’s all I have to post today.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

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