Tag Archives: Fallen trees

The Feed looks a little weak today

I just opened the Feed folder and there are hardly any links in it (before filtering even!) or I should say there are hardly any reports (links are in the reports, I get up to 4 reports daily). There should be about 11 reports today but I only had 7 in the folder. So that means I don’t have as many reports to filter, which (probably) translates to not as many links. And now that I have finished the filtering I can tell you there were not as many links as is normal for a Monday. There were not as many reports as usual, and there were not as many links in each report as usual.

Up first is Gabrielle Giffords tackling a 40 mile ride on a recumbent trike after getting shot in the face during a mass shooting in AZ 4 years ago. Gabby Giffords riding 40-mile charity bike tour in Arizona and Gabrielle Giffords, rebounding from shooting, does 40-mile bike ride Go girl!

If I am struck by a motorist (heaven forbid), it’s not going to be because I didn’t have Volvo’s effing sparkly paint on my bike.Vehicular Violence and Victim Blaming I can back that up with saying that at least 5 out of the six times I was hit since 2000 had nothing to do with my being invisible and everything to do with them not driving like they had any sense.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Serious sentence for a serious crime, memorial for 9-year old victim, and blame drivers, not bikes

Still in CA. Irvine boy, 9, is struck and killed while riding his bicycle Nothing on the mode of this wreck even the location does not give any real clues about what happened.

Another link to the CA cyclist killed riding the only route in or out of his workplace. Deadly midnight bicycle ride on Vincent Thomas Bridge This is as much an indictment of auto-centric infrastructure as it is anything else.

How did they know this CA cyclist was intoxicated before the tox screen came back? Cyclist struck and killed in San Jose Making this statement was at best inflammatory.

This MO wreck blames a cyclist for having the right of way when he hit the weapon vehicle. Two injured in accident south of Carthage The wreck in question is in the second listing. Ignore the car running the stop sign and hitting a truck.

More on the NYC cyclist hit by a falling tree. Report: Contractor In Fatal Brooklyn Tree-Cutting Incident Didn’t Follow Basic Guidelines95 Sports Guy > The News reported that one of the two men on the crew was working as a flagman, tasked with waving people away from the danger zone, but it is not clear where he was or what he was doing when Liu rode up.> Literally, YOU HAD ONE JOB

This poor, poor GA driver just can’t handle bike lanes on Her Street! Keep bike lanes off Peachtree

More on the MD ride and Ghost Bike for a couple killed by a drunk driver while riding their tandem bike. Memorial ride and ceremony to honor cyclists killed near Chesapeake Beach and ‘Ghost bike’ honors couple killed while cycling

FloriDUH! killed another one in the most deadliest state in the US to walk or ride a bike. 69-year-old woman hit and killed while riding bicycle on S.R. 434 I don’t see the “hill” she lost control riding in the video.

Infrastructure news from OR. Unattainable but worthy

News from the Great White North. Cyclist, 2 pedestrians injured in separate incidents and Halifax pedestrians and cyclist injured in 3 separate collisions Notice who had the right of way at the intersection ? That’s right, the person riding the bicycle. And you can see the headlight on the handlebars in the picture… Damn all those blind drivers!

And I’m out of links.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

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Still treating new ankle scratches, and the Feed

My legs resemble a scratching post because baby kittens are going to scratch when they play, that’s the nature of the beast. I just get caught in the middle when they do, literally. One on one side and one on the other side of my leg, clawing and biting at each other and mostly getting what’s between them, which would be my leg. So I slather on the hand sanitizer to disinfect the scratches and wince, then carry on.

Among the other things I have going on besides this blog and kittens is getting a solar-powered light ready for camping. The light was originally equipped with a single 600 mAh ni-cad AA cell which was not cutting it for winter lighting with the circuit used to light a string of white LEDs, so I swapped out a 2000 mAh NiMH I have in my stash to see how well it works. I just did the install this afternoon so the test has only barely begun as I type this.

Also on my plate is building a handrail for the porch steps at church, which consumed a major portion of my afternoon and evening getting the raw stock for building them. As it turns out the tax number for the church was not registered at the store in spite of several purchases for the church being made there. So when we go back for the stuff tomorrow we have to have the paper tax form with the notary stamp. Bleah!

Up first is a wreck with a tree in NYC. [UPDATE] Cyclist In Critical Condition After Tree Falls On Him In Red Hook and Deliveryman Critically Hurt By Falling Tree In Brooklyn also Workers Cutting Down Tree Critically Injure Cyclist, Local Says “They Didn’t Block Nothing” Cyclist had virtually no warning of the hazard other than a person in street clothes waving at him, without the required flag or cones.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Writer claims Vision Zero is anti-driver plot, new CA bike friendly cities, and Gabe Klein at UCLA Um, yeah Vision Zero is anti-driver, drivers have the things that kill people.

Oregon gets a statewide bike plan. First look at ODOT’s draft of a new biking and walking plan There were lots of “weasel words” in the document that essentially make it not do what they claim it will do.

NYC safe-streets advocates ask for more accurate reporting on wrecks. “Crash, Not Accident”: Hundreds March To Remember Those Killed By Drivers This narrative has been used here repeatedly. I still sometimes make that mistake here, but I’m getting better at it.

Another KY cyclist is ticketed for not using the trash and glass strewn bike lanes, and running red lights. Biking advocate: ‘I am not a scofflaw’ Two things, since there are no sensors in the bike lanes because their bike lanes are just paint where they think there is room to paint a bike lane a cyclist could wait all day for a light to change (especially if their beg buttons are like the ones here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell and just instruct the signal controller to activate the walk signal with the next signal cycle). The other thing is the bike lanes tend to get the trash and broken glass that cars push off to the sides, so I would tell cops that if they wouldn’t walk barefoot in the bike lane I wouldn’t ride a bike there.

Ghost Bike News from west Canuckistan. Daughter requests ghost-bike memorial for father

Cyclist hit from behind in Jolly Olde. ‘We are all devastated’: Tributes as young cyclist killed in crash with car

A little bit of justice for an injured cyclist. London cyclist severely injured in lorry crash wins compensation Quoting an Original Cast SNL skit now they “can buy some moss for her north side”. For those not old enough to remember that skit John Belushi played the cyclist in a coma for that one that doesn’t seem to be on YouTube.

They managed to find out who the unconscious cyclist in Oz was. Cyclist critically injured in Ballarat CBD

An Enn Zed competition cyclist falls off a mountain. Meggie Bichard’s injury prompts safety calls for Nelson mountainbike trails And cue all the bleching and moaning about tax-dodging cyclists in 5, 4, 3 HOONNNK! they jumped the gun.

And I think I’m out of links finally. I know it doesn’t look like many, but there was a long break in the middle to take care of that church project.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the tired

Waiting for Santa, and the Feed

One of my guilty pleasures every Christmas Eve is keeping an open tab at the Official NORAD Santa Tracker and watching the lower limb of the solar meridian cross the globe. This is where Santa operates every Christmas Eve, just ahead of this meridian. The “video evidence” is just cutesy, but the cities mentioned are like a rapid-fire geography quiz. And I like geography quizzes.

Up first another reminder of why I describe the locale for WoaB as the “Beautiful Suburbs of Hell”. Cyclists Say an Angry French Defense Contractor Punched Them; Cops Write Tickets and Along Turtle Creek early Saturday, cyclists say a driver attacked first with car, then with fist Yeah, like a guy on a bike is a threat to a driver inside a light armored vehicle…

A little Lifestyle from AL. Killed cyclist remembered As per the previous paragraph, the legal infrastructure was not sufficient when the driver got a ticket for driving on a suspended license and having MJ in the car but nothing for killing with his light armored vehicle. But the cyclist was buried today.

I keep telling people that bike helmets have never prevented a single wreck. Want to ride a bike more safely? Permanent running lights may be better than helmets. I’m a big believer in lights on bicycles, to the point of giving lights to unlighted cyclists.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: US traffic deaths are down, while bike fatalities go up; more groups spread holiday bike cheer I keep saying that cars are getting safer but drivers are not, this data supports that contention.

Video from Oz shows a tree attacking a cyclist 🙂 Sydney cyclist hit by falling branch Three cyclists were hit by the branch, one injured.

Is a cross between an e-assist bicycle and a motorcycle the future of urban personal transportation? A Bare-Bones Electric Motorcycle for Green Urban Riding

And those were all the links I could find today.

Billed @€0.02, Opus

I just had a big fight, on Wreck-Free Sunday

Just to get things out in the open, Mrs. the Poet and I had a big fight, over the way my brain processes things now that I have brain damage.

The fight was over the way newspapers are placed on the table. I should mention that we subscribe to the paper on Wednesdays and Sundays, with additional papers at the discretion of advertisers. Mrs. the Poet was complaining she hadn’t finished reading Saturday’s paper when it was put in recycling. I told Mrs. the Poet that I didn’t even know we got a paper Saturday because every time I looked all I saw was Wednesday’s front page on the top of the pile. Mrs. the Poet said that I should just look through the pile if I wanted to see the current paper. My reply was if I don’t know there was a paper delivered that day how am I supposed to know to look through the pile for the new one? I mean for me this just makes common sense, put the newest paper on the top of the pile. There is even names for this, in computer terms it’s a LIFO stack, in physical terms it’s archeological filing. That way everyone knows when something new comes in because the top of the stack changes.

And this is stuff that would give problems to people who don’t have brain damage, and I have problems processing that I should deal with new data. I do the blog by following a set pattern of reading new messages in the Feed folder in my e-mail and filtering the links, then do the opening paragraph or sometimes two, then present the links with comments, then sometimes I have a closing paragraph. I have been using this format at least 5 days a week, down from 7, since shortly before this blog moved here in 2008. I had to change this format slightly when I was double-posting the blog to MySpace but after saying good-bye to them in January of 2009 the format and preparation has stayed pretty much the same since then. The only changes made has been dropping Sunday wrecks, then dropping Saturday posts completely after the RPG group moved start time up from 8PM (2000 hours) to gathering and setup at 1 (1300) and game at 2 (1400) which left no time to filter and post. But really I’m not dealing with anything “new” except the links, which aren’t “new” except for the information they contain. I do the same thing to the links every day, use the HTML for creating a link, copy and paste the URL in the proper place in the code, create the middle part of the link, then copy/paste the headline as the “title” of the link and close out the link tag. Add some cogent commentary and move to the next paragraph where I make a new link. If a bot could be taught to parse the headline from the code and text, and then make the cogent commentary I could be replaced with a few thousand lines of code, but the current State of the Art for AI hasn’t reached that point yet. When it does expect to see a new author for this blog, because I will pack it up and go on a long bike camping trip after I get my neck fixed.

And I almost forgot to mention for everyone to have a Happy Yule today.
Tree!

May your days (and tree) be bright!
More tree!

PSA, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

All alone with the crazy people, and the Feed

Mrs. the Poet is gone to NY to meddle visit with her family while I stay here in TX and keep the roommates from killing each other, or at least be on hand to hide the bodies if they do. So far everybody has fought with everybody else (except me) at least once, and in some cases they are on their second or third go-around. I really need to win the lottery so I can give them all a nice check or bag of $$, pat them on the head and wave bye-bye. Individually I manage to not do too badly interacting with them, but the homophobe just is not physically capable of interacting with either of the two transgenders without eventually going into blasphemy mode, and the transgenders’ sexual orientations are changing as they transition, so their relationship is getting a bit rocky as well. I can generally get along with just about anybody, but 2 of the 3 are starting to get on my nerves, and one got on my nerves a long time ago.

In better news I got some more parts for the Sprint T yesterday after I had already put the post to bed, a steering wheel and the brackets that attach the windshield frame to the body of the car.
parts!

The silver color of the wheel is because it is clear anodized aluminum at about 1/3 the weight of the same size steel wheel, and the other 2 parts are made from cast stainless steel, because that was the only metal that part was offered in. The vertical windshield posts are only offered in cast brass with or without chrome plating, so it’s not like there was any lighter alternative. And as I pointed out in an earlier post, the 30° layback of the posts I bought combined with windwings will lead to a relatively draft-free cockpit.

Up first, an OR rider discovers that sometimes the trees are your allies, and sometimes they are your enemies. Falling tree hits car, woman riding bike in downtown Portland More Cyclist struck by falling tree in downtown Portland From looking at the pictures, and not being any kind of horticulturist or anything but a half-trained structural engineer, it looks like something killed the root structure of the tree, because there is almost nothing attached to the tree below ground level.

Infrastructure! news from NYC. NYPD: 1,236 Pedestrians and Cyclists Injured, 14 Killed in September Vision Zero, or zero vision? That’s 13 dead pedestrians and one cyclist in just one average month…

Still in NYC… Treyger’s Texting-and-Biking Bill — a Big Distraction From Vision Zero Read the previous paragraph and see how many cyclists killed or injured someone while using a cell phone.

Some people can’t understand riding a bicycle in anything less than perfect weather, hence this drivel. Bike lanes in winter a waste of space Imagine banning cars in the winter because they take up too much space and people don’t know how to drive.

Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: SaMo approves bike share, SMPD targets bike & ped safety, and a blast from the BikinginLA past good links again today.

Why ride alone? Why cycle alone, when you can do it together? Well aside from the fact that I’m as likely to see another cyclist here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell going the same direction as I am as I am to see Bigfoot again (and he or she will probably be on a bicycle going the other direction).

Oz weighs in on the infrastructure question. Cycling injuries prompt calls for councils to boost road safety When an area with as small a population as NSW has an average of one cyclist hit hard enough to go to one particular hospital every other day on average, then you have an infrastructure problem. And as pointed out in the article, they have no real way of determining the safety of the built environment other than tracking ER admissions.

A bit of LifeStyle from PA. Memorial ride to honor bicycle enthusiast who was killed in hit-and-run And yes I know my feed is still rather heavy on the guts-and-gore I had with the old Feed, plus it takes way longer to filter out the chaff. But it still has less dead and injured cyclists than the old Feed.

A local UK bike ride raises money for bicycle charities after raising lots of money for the survivors of a drunk driver the first time. Charity bike ride in memory of Sheffield cyclist killed by drink driver set to return Isn’t that what I just said?

Last link, I’m not sure that this is a bicycle despite what the caption says. Watch this rocket-powered bike outrun a Ferrari F430 Scuderia Well it’s from Fox, and the bike does appear to have working pedals (and brakes!)

And that’s all the stuff that didn’t raise my BP or anything.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

Ramen on Bean Day, and the Feed

I have someplace to go this evening (as I’m writing this) and I will probably have to finish the post after I get back from my gig. I’m going to do data entry for a political phone bank this evening, since I’m crap as an operator since the wreck. I have zero improv skills since the wreck and I knew my public speaking skills were gone the first spoken word gig I had after the wreck. I was speaking like I had never been on stage in my life and had never had any training in how to use my voice. I had some slight improvement for a few years then things have been steadily deteriorating ever since. So I take my laptop and transcribe phone sheets into a database. This saves the callers considerable time and also allows people without laptops to call as quickly as they are able.

The ramen bit is I needed something that could be whipped up in a few minutes for Mrs. the Poet before I left and also be done when I needed to go, so I’m using ramen in the traditional Japanese way rather than the American way of “noodles in pot and 3 minutes later in stomach”. I’m adding leftover veggies and a couple of whipped eggs to the noodles to make the pack of ramen into a meal for two. It’s quick, it’s easy and it uses up leftovers. That makes it perfect for tonight.

It looks like a hit-and-run in South Texas is today’s leadoff story. Driver kills cyclist then flees the scene in Harlingen Scene pictures show this as a hit-from-behind on the right side of the bike lane (making assumptions from what appears to be a puddle of blood next to the curb) which means the driver of the weapon vehicle left his lane and went almost to the curb to hit a brightly lighted cyclist. This means the cyclist was riding extra legal as in as legal as possible and also means that protocols are moot for this case, the driver would have just killed the cyclist further from the road had he bailed any further to the side than he already was. Dutch infrastructure standards would be to put the person that approved this design in jail because of the inevitability of exactly this occurrence. This was a highway with speed limits much too high for a simple bike lane to be safe. Without a barrier this wreck was inevitable, the infrastructure here is simple appeasement. Ask Neville Chamberlain how well appeasement works. Dutch quality infrastructure to prevent.

A little to the north of that a cyclist discovers that when you’re carrying drugs you need to not ride salmon. SAPD: Several drugs found on cyclist riding on Broadway St. Or at least just obey LEO when instructed to ride with traffic instead of dropping the bike and running away on foot.

Sometimes it seems like everything is out to get us, even the trees. Cyclist struck by falling tree, critically injured in Winnetka and this later link Chicago actress Molly Glynn dies after being struck by falling tree The duo was riding in the forest when a strong pop-up T-storm broke nearby and the outflow from the storm on the ground toppled trees. This is in the Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot, Interrogative category or an act of [$DEITY] depending on your religious self-identification.

Still in the Chicagoland area we get a SWCC fatality. Bicyclist killed at Bridgeport intersection Note the narrative, the cyclist was unconscious a the scene and died after being transported and the driver of the weapon vehicle was operating without a license, but they still believed him when he claimed the cyclist was the one running a red light. Get the infrastructure “up to Dutch” and the driver of the weapon vehicle may have found cycling so convenient that he would not have been driving, saving two lives.

A bike-on-bike wreck in MA. Somerville Bicyclist Killed In Medford Collision With Motorcycle As of this posting with neither participant able to talk to LEO and very little evidence was left at the scene so I have no idea what to do with the built environment to avoid this wreck but since 90% of the wrecks I cover would be eliminated by Dutch quality infrastructure I’m going to go with that to prevent.

I’m not sure if this wreck was in MA or VT, but a kid paying more attention to his cell phone than where his Weapon of mass destruction was going managed to hit a cyclist from behind riding 3 feet away from the actual road. Cycling: Recent incidents a reminder of perils of riding Also a MTB cyclist pranged it a good one the same week. This is another one of “those wrecks” that human cyclists can’t evade because they are already at the limits of their escape route, and only a barrier or massive amounts of distance will prevent a similar wreck, or developing technology that causes a car to come to a complete stop if a cell phone is used in the car. Something that makes the phone catch fire if the car is in motion and the phone is in use? That might be a little safer than stopping the car while trying to call police because someone is trying to carjack you, then you can throw the flaming phone at the carjacker.

“Final” word on a CA wreck. No charges filed from Irvine cyclist killed in Newport Beach If the narrative is correct this wreck appears to be a cyclist that left-crossed himself, which is tragic but not the fault of the driver.

A SWSS wreck in CA results in a deceased cyclist. COLLISION KILLS 60-YEAR-OLD CYCLIST IN CHULA VISTA Hit from behind protocols to avoid or reduce damages, and infrastructure will prevent a similar wreck by removing the ability of the motor vehicle to get within striking distance of any cyclists.

Another CA wreck as reported by Ted Rogers. 61-year old bike rider killed in Huntington Beach; second cycling death in the city in just five days The wreck is known to have been in an intersection, and that’s about all they know as of this posting.

The initial criminal charges for a hit-from-behind wreck in ND. Man who struck deaf, blind Norwegian cyclist cited There were two people on that bike, the blind cyclist was just the stoker. And I’m thinking he wasn’t the only blind man on the road that day, knowhutimean?

LEO are hunting the weapon vehicle in this hit-and-run in AK. Troopers looking for driver in hit-run collision; 1 cyclist seriously injured The narrative reads that the weapon vehicle went off the road to hit 2 cyclists riding on the shoulder. This speaks of pre-meditation to me, or just general Dumbassery. Neither scenario leaves cyclists with much if any options to avoid the wreck considering they were already off the road on the shoulder so that leaves Dutch quality segregated infrastructure and presumed liability legal infrastructure to protect cyclists from drivers like this.

Tragedy in the Great White North as a rider on a charity ride gets hit. Ride the Rideau cyclist hit, killed by truck and Mother of two killed in Ride the Rideau cycling event Nothing about the mode, just the cyclist was hit by/with a dump or garbage truck while on the course raising money to fight cancer. I assume they do charity rides in the Netherlands, too, so get the infrastructure “up to Dutch” to prevent.

Cyclists in Scotland are in danger. Cyclist dies after Aberdeen crash and North Anderson Drive closed northbound after cyclist seriously injured in smash What I could see in the pictures was a hit-from-behind wreck, which means the pictures will probably be taken down shortly to comply with UK media laws. So, protocols to avoid or reduce damages, and get the infrastructure “up to Dutch” to prevent.

Another low-information wreck from Oz. Crash cyclist seriously injured The scant description of the wreck as a “two car crash” makes me think that this might not have been a wreck that a human cyclist could avoid.

Infrastructure! argument from about 80 miles east of WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Readers take sides on bicycles on public roadways

Infrastructure argument in far West Canuckistan. Cyclists, pedestrians collide on Vancouver’s mean streets You know when infrastructure is properly designed for everybody there are no “mean streets”. Just sayin’, yannow?

Lifestyle in Seattle. Maj. Margaret Witt reflects on fallen cyclist’s legal legacy and Hundreds gather in Seattle to honor cyclist killed by truck No, no, no. The cyclist was killed by a dumbass politician, the truck was just the murder weapon. Remember, this project would have been completed a year ago if some dumbass hadn’t delayed it to score political points. That person should be in jail now.

Lifestyle in NV. Cyclists memorialize rider with ‘3 Feet for Pete’ ride

Lifestyle in NC. Friend talks about Greensboro man killed while riding bicycle

And what does the future hold for the lowly bicycle? FUTURE BIKE: TECHNOLOGY

And those were all the links that didn’t make me want to kill someone with my bare hands gave me fits or giggles.

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

The roads are covered in sheets of ice and people who don’t know how to drive on ice on a Wreck-free Sunday

Three days after the storm they’re still towing away wrecks here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell, mainly because the weather pattern of get cold enough to freeze then be above freezing the next day we usually get didn’t happen and people insist on trying to get where they are going at the same speed in the same amount of time as when the roads are clear. This bodes ill for using bike facilities that share space with Texas’ drivers in any weather, because if they don’t care about wrecking their cars just because the weather turned bad how much consideration do you think they will give to fragile human beings sharing the roads with them protected by only a strip of paint?

It has been brought to my attention that there are some LEO here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell who understand bicycles and are trying to spread that knowledge around. Adults are already entrenched in their thinking that bicycles are toys for the most part (see the Gigi Story page) so they are working on the kids to make a difference. Garland ISD middle-schoolers attend bicycle repair after-school program You gotta get them while they are young.

The outdoor racing season has ended, and the indoor season has yet to get started, so there is almost nothing on the tube for me to watch. Last night there was the awards banquet on Fox Sports 2 for the Sprint Cup series, which was a bore (lets face it these guys are not that multi-talented). So for the time being I have to watch races on YouTube. On my laptop…

Mrs. the Poet is aggravating me about “doing something” about the trees, so to preserve family harmony I’m going to cut this short and get dressed for outdoor labor and run the extension cord to the chainsaw and cut up the fallen trees from the yard.

And as I was composing the previous paragraph I got a text from church that because the daymelt will freeze as soon as the sun goes down making for even worse driving conditions than already exist, evening service is canceled. So I have all day to cut apart the downed tree limbs.

PSA, Opus