Still cleanly poor not filthy rich, and the Feed

There were no winners in TX for the PowerBall jackpot, so I’m still a starving writer. At least I have a well-lighted garret with cats to keep my feet warm. I really would have liked to have a chunk of that money though.

Up first:

'I stay safe in the city by assuming everyone is an idiot', says cyclist (63) – Independent.ie https://t.co/f5d0ipfwpm via @Indo_LIFE

— Cycling Top News (@CyclingTopNews) January 15, 2016

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Truer words were seldom said.

The Big Story today comes from Oz, where a motorcycle cop assaults a cyclist on his bike because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. Motorbike cop ‘pushed’ cyclist to the ground after he allegedly ran red light and Police officer pushed cyclist off his bike in Sydney’s CBD, witnesses say Listen to the witness report, the cyclist was riding with the light when the motorcycle cop rode up from behind at a very low throttle and just shoved him off the bike right in front of the witness. No siren, no verbal warning to stop, just “putt putt putt wham!” and the cyclist going “WTF!?!” If there was anything the cop said that happened it happened outside the view and earshot of the witnesses.

Infrastructure news from America’s Copenhagen. After years of planning and compromises, 20s Bikeway is poised for construction I don’t know why but it always feels like the compromises are on the cyclists’ side.

More on the same general subject from the same location. TriMet projects on Orange Line path at SE 8th should improve cycling If only there was some process where actual users of the infrastructure could see and comment on a project before it’s built so that dangerous or annoying mistakes could be caught and fixed without having to tear out the mistakes, saving $$. Something like maybe an advisory committee of cyclists and pedestrians? Or would that make too much sense?

Our Daily Ted, part 1. Morning Links: Alleged drunk hit-and-run driver faces charges, and Che Garcetti leads urban streets revolution

Part 2. Describe Your Ride: What riding a bike can teach us about driving a car

Still in CA. Norwalk Man on Bicycle Killed in Traffic Collision in Downey The directions of travel say the cyclist got more than halfway across the intersection before the wreck. That is a strong indicator of a stale green as shown in the Google Earth view of the intersection which had what looks like 4 lanes for the cyclist to cross and a high speed limit on the street he was crossing.

Some good news, a killer driver was found guilty of killing a cyclist. UPDATE: Man who killed cyclist found guilty of criminally negligent homicide Part of me wants to do a happy dance, part of me is still sad because the cyclist died needlessly.

News from GA as someone “mansplains” why cyclists can’t use a park to get away from cars. Reader responds to News Cycle column on proposed Forsyth bike ban

More on the MD cyclist stabbed to death. Three Arrested for Murder of Cyclist I’m still waiting to hear of a reason why they stabbed the cyclist. Theft? Settling a score? Gang initiation? Attack of the Stoopids?

More infrastructure news. Blaming Pedestrians While Absolving the Streets That Kill Them There are 3 unmarked and 1 marked crosswalk at that intersection, one street can’t be crossed at all according to the LEO report and one can only be crossed on one side because that’s the marked crosswalk.

Speaking of an attack of the Stoopids, here’s a very public one by a MO legislator. Missouri Lawmaker Wants to Require Tall Fluorescent Flags for Cyclists Fifteen feet tall to be precise, or 2’6″ feet taller than trucks are allowed without an oversize vehicle permit. Illegal under Federal laws, so on any road built with Federal Funds the flags would have to be removed and then reinstalled when back on the lettered county roads.

Here’s more on my least-favorite form of bicycle infrastructure. Study: Sharrows Don’t Make Streets Safer for Cycling Sharrows work well on traffic-calmed streets with little motor vehicle traffic. But then not doing anything also works well on traffic-calmed streets with little motor vehicle traffic. So why waste the money on useless paint?

More infrastructure news. Why bike lanes make people mad

Here’s a Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot moment from Jolly Olde. Hit-and-run driver stops to berate injured cyclist before driving off The driver apparently thought enforcing minor traffic infractions by assaulting the cyclist with his motor vehicle was perfectly reasonable.

WTF? part 2. Girl, 18, drank 5-and-a-half double vodkas before crashing car through roundabout No cyclists were harmed in the production of this link, though one did require a change of pants.

Back to Oz, two bikes go down in the same space. Cyclist treated for head injury after accident at The Spit, Mosman Sure they said the second cyclist went down aviding the first, but that just means the second didn’t have time to register that he would have gone down without the first cyclist to avoid. Regardless something made the first cyclist fall…

A wreck in Enn Zed. Car and cyclist collide The damages to the two vehicles involved look like the cyclist got hit after getting most of the way across the intersection and moving at a fair clip as the front wheel showed impact from the left and the front corner of the car showed impact but the main impact of the cyclist was in the center of the windshield. The intersection looks to have bike lanes on one street and a stop sign on the other.

E-assist bike news. Electric Bike Revolution Spinning Profits for Dutch Companies

How do you feel about going for a ride with Bono? Bono giving fans the chance to go bike riding with him in New York

Last link, do you need to ride more or… 10 Things Sex and Cycling Have in Common Do you get enough… bicycling?

Billed @$0.02, Opus

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Ugh, Monday again? and the Feed

I used to like Garfield, back in the ’80s and early ’90s, but one thing I still like is the Monday hate from a cat that doesn’t do anything all week or during the weekend, but somehow still hates Monday. The irony could be used to build a bridge… My reasons for disliking Mondays are more concrete. If I don’t write about bikes on Saturday or Sunday then the links accumulate for 3 days and I have a monster to deal with come Monday. But as the alternative was never getting time away from injured or dead people who got that way on a bike, having a heavy workload on Monday beats a padded cell 7 days a week.

Up first because the computer is locking up and giving me fits and I need to clean out some links, Part 1 of Our Daily Ted. San Diego cyclist killed by distracted driver; fourth SoCal bicycling fatality in just the last four days This has been a rough stretch again for Ted.

And Daily Ted Part 2. Morning Links: Bike lane riding in the Biking Black Hole; Caltrans looks at active trans; hero cop saves a cyclist OK I thought I had a lot of links on Mondays…

As mentioned in today’s Daily Ted, there were some terrorist attacks on cyclists in the UK this weekend. Cyclist knocked down by ‘cut-throat’ wire stung up on bike path by twisted thugs Several thin wires set a various heights along a bike path by a golf course with injured cyclists finding most of them before LEO cleaned out the rest. And Cyclist crashes as tacks sprinkled on Velothon Wales route – but others praise local support Looking at the comments there were several cyclists injured after getting tires punctured by tacks, but only one “officially” injured. And for the UK commentariat here in TX something like this would be attempted murder if there was a possibility that someone could die because of it.

NYPD has a law that protects pedestrians and to a lesser extent cyclists, but they aren’t enforcing it. Tragic city bike accidents test new Right of Way law — as traffic incidents result in mixed legal recourse A big part of the problem is only 31 officers in all of NYC are allowed to issue those tickets for “failure to yield” that come with the big fines, and they are only called to the scene when someone dies or is likely to die, or is “seriously Injured”. Apparently getting one’s leg turned into hamburger doesn’t count as “seriously”.

And what if the US had nationalized health care that went all the way down to the guy in the ambulance? We would get stuff like this. The moment a cyclist bleeding to death was saved – by a balloon fed through her leg: Woman, 24, undergoes emergency procedure after paramedics decide she would not survive journey to hospital They can do this because there was a surgeon on the team that went in the ambulance. Here in the US that doesn’t happen. And so people die who don’t need to, because profits.

Considering all the technology used to catch speeders, and the fact that so many tech geeks ride regularly, this was practically predestined to happen. Police use ultrasonic device to make sure drivers stay 3 feet from cyclists Personally I would like to see gigawatt laser cannons used to keep drivers away from cyclists (get too close and lose the front of the car), but until that happens, tickets backed by video recording the illegal pass as measured with ultrasound will have to do.

This one hurts a little. Funeral set for Montevallo woman hit and killed while riding bicycle Cyclist killed in a hit-and-run after either getting robbed or escaping getting robbed and trying to get to a safe(r) place.

This one brought a tear to my eye, too. Hundreds of bicyclists ride to promote safety and honor teen killed, another injured This was in MS, not known as a particularly bike friendly state.

It shouldn’t take a dead cop to get moving on keeping cyclists safe, in fact nobody should have to die to get movement on keeping cyclists safe. Officials discuss bicycle ordinances and safety tips in light of Joplin police officer recently injured in bicycle crash Sorry, injured cop, not dead cop. And I noticed that all of the laws discussed were restrictive on cyclists, with none saying anything about not hitting cyclists or that there are more cases where the cyclist has the right to the entire lane than not.

More on the MA cyclist shot and killed. Surveillance video captured slaying of boy on bike, DA says Sorry about the auto-playing video.

They caught a hit-and-run driver in the Great White North after he turned himself in. Keswick man charged in fatal Yorkville hit and run Apparently he cleaned himself and the car up before turning himself in so that he couldn’t be charged with anything except the hit-and-run. Except now they can add “obstructing justice” or whatever they call it in Ontario.

I’m not seeing anything con in this pro and con article on bike trails except that maybe they don’t have enough of them. Let’s Talk About It, Trail Systems

First of many infrastructure articles from roundabout Jolly Olde. Cyclists Demand National Lorry Safety Crackdown When a single mode of travel killed roughly 40% of cyclists last year and 100% of cyclists this year it is a pretty safe assumption that there is something fundamentally wrong with that mode of transport as it pertains to bicycles.

Still on that subject but from another sort of Anglophone country. Campaign to warn cyclists of lorry blind spots There’s your problem, drivers can’t see out of the cabs of trucks well enough to not hit cyclists sharing the streets in the city. Or the pedestrians in the crosswalk either…

A possible solution to the urban chaos. Dublin City Council Poised to Ban Cars in City Center

While we are still doing UK news. WATCH: Chester Triathlon pays tribute to cyclist killed in road accident Yep, I got a little misty on that one, too.

You know the guy was liked by everybody except the killer when they name a bike club after you when you die in a wreck. New bike club set up in memory of cyclist

And from Oz by way of Road.CC in the UK, an idiot. NSW roads minister wants to CLOSE segregated bike lane in Sydney Really, close a bike lane that carries more people than the whole road next to it? You are an idiot.

And on that note I’m out of links, which means I’m also out of idiots. Hurray!

Billed @€0.02, Opus the Poet

The Greenville Ave St.Patrick’s Day Parade was not a Fun Time, and other stuff on Wreck-Free Sunday

Yesterday was a painful experience for me going to the local Big Parade. Getting there was not that bad except that the new shoes have not been modified to compensate for the hunk I lost out of my left leg back in ’01, so I was working on MOABackaches by the time I walked to the bus stop, but that eased off when I got on the bus and transferred to the train and the other train. Sitting with my pelvis level really takes the strain off my back. So the pain is just because I have to keep the muscles contracted on the side of my back opposite that leg which after a while restricts blood flow and causes all kinds of other problems that combine to result in a quiet stream of mutter expletives until I can sit or lie down and take the strain off. When I take anti-inflammatory drugs the pain is lessened, having the lift in the shoe for the short leg does a heck of a lot more to reduce the pain, both together is the best thing I have found so far.

Anyway, I got to the parade site about 90 minutes early because you really need to get there early to have a place to stand where you can see the parade. Remember the twinges I was getting on the way there? By the time the parade made it to our spot those “twinges” had progressed to feeling that the short leg was on fire and someone was pounding on my foot with a sledgehammer (that was on fire). I’m not looking for sympathy here, just telling it like it is. But I was not the only person having a bad parade.

Yes, that cooler just fell completely apart apparently from a structural defect combined with a heavy load of drinks and ice. Talk about a bummer.

And speaking of pictures, the pictures I took Friday night of the people picketing my church finally showed in my in box this morning, what took you?

Seriously, you guys didn’t have anything better to do on a Friday night?

I was watching the Sprint Cup race from Phoenix while I was doing this post, and Happy Harvick won again, putting him way out in front of the standings for the Chase for the Cup. There were a lot of cars that crashed out because they cooked the right rear tire tread right off the tire which causes the car to spin and then crash into the wall, including Dale Jr. and Jimmy Johnson. There was a lot of close racing except for the lead, because Harvick basically ran off and hid from the rest of the field except for green flag pit stops…

Now I’m watching the recording I made earlier of the FIA Formula E race in Miami, an all-electric racing series in its first year. Basically everybody is learning how to race EV with spec cars so they can really go at it over the next 5 years when they will be on spec chassis and tires with free within limits powertrains and batteries. Then we will see some tactical racing because the ridiculous car change “pit stop” will be eliminated supposedly in the fifth season and drivers will be required to complete the race on a single charge without recharge/replacing the battery. So basically at this point the winner of the race counts, but not really because this is all a series to learn how to race EV as a team, which I think they could learn from talking to electric RC racers, but hey, NIH (Not Invented Here) exists as an acronym for a reason.

I joined a new RP Group that will stick to D&D 3.5. This group will lean a lot more heavily on RP than on combat so when I built my character (on a 32 point buy system) I maxed out Charisma and dumped my Strength. I will start playing on the 28th because two members of the group have a church obligation next Saturday the 21st. Incidentally the “nice” people who were at the church in that group picture above promised to come back for the Sumerian ritual this Saturday. Considering the people doing the ritual are not the most tolerant people in the world when ritual is interrupted, I do not see good things in the future for the picketers. 😛

This is going to be interesting. Tune in for the report next Sunday, and stay here for regular posting Monday through Friday.

PSA, Opus the Poet