OK that happened, now what? And the Feed

I was watching the caucuses last night on Twitter and was Not Impressed to say the least. The Clown Car Party tossed out a few more clowns, but seriously, there are a lot more to go and some of the biggest clowns are at the head of the polls. As for the other side, seriously did you decide who would get that precinct’s delegates based on a coin toss? And not once but six times?

BTW if any of my readers are DFW locals who would like to recommend a plumber we are having lots of plumbing issues here at Casa de El Poeta that have been just waiting for $$ to get fixed and now we have $$ to get them fixed. Deferred maintenance is about to be deferred no longer. And as an aside the TX groundhog had to wear shades and sunscreen, so we get 10 more weeks of “winter”. If “winter” stays like this with daytime highs in the low 70s F and nighttime lows in the high 40s, I could deal with another 10 weeks of this.

Let’s start with Our Daily Ted. Morning Links: Pendleton registration begins, Monrovia talks bike plan, and more doping news, motor & otherwise If the Marines insist on blocking bike access that means major construction for bike access on civilian non-military property. At this time the only other access is I5 which is sub-optimal because of the adjacent high-speed traffic and trash and debris pushed from the road by tires and air blasts from vehicles. The next closest road is dozens of miles to the east over a small mountain range.

Still in CA. Bicycle Enforcement Mind your Ps and Qs if you wind up in this area during this operation.

VT is working to reduce the dangers of repeat DUI. BILL WOULD REQUIRE INTERLOCK DEVICES FOR ALL DUI OFFENDERS

Addressing repeat DUI in WI. Getting Tough On Drunk Driving I can’t believe that a person can have more than 4 DUI and not be in prison, but under current WI law you have to have 4 DUI in a 5 year period and still not go to prison.

A strange case of karma working faster than the legal system in FL. Cape Coral man accused of killing cyclist dies in slip-and-fall If I’m reading this right he drowned in a puddle after slipping on a crosswalk. Or something similar to that. There was also a video with the article about a cyclist pulling driver and passenger from an overturned pickup truck. Karma restored.

Hit-and-run in KS. Cyclist injured in hit-and-run near Maple and Meridian Not much information aside from the wreck has happened and someone got seriously injured. They’re not even saying if the silver SUV was damaged by the wreck.

Infrastructure news from America’s Copenhagen. City responds to Steel Bridge homeless camp, Condo owners re-open Greenway path and Condo association releases ‘Call for Community Safety Plan and Dialogue’ This political hostage-taking of infrastructure over the homeless situation in Portland is low, but understandable for people directly faced with it.

Still more Portland infrastructure. Here’s what’s going on at North Williams and Killingsworth This looks like what’s called a “bulb-out” that’s used to reduce crossing times for pedestrians, but why put it on a quiet residential street?

An OH TV station gets on the “Wreck, not accident” bandwagon. COLUMN: There was nothing ‘accidental’ about deadly cyclist crash At least that’s what I think it’s about, since I’m not a subscriber to their service.

Another wounded veteran ride, this one off-road. Ride 2 Recovery launches fifth annual Las Vegas Mountain Bike Ride While there is a certain sense of accomplishment with a point-to-point road ride, for some with PTSD riding in traffic is too much like being back in a war zone (don’t ask me how I know).

You think riding in the US is risky, think about places where the rules of the road are merely a “suggestion”. The daily trials and tribulations of a cyclist (and his tribe) in Lima

You’re just sitting there waiting at a red light to make a legal turn, and some idiot passes you on the wrong side of the road… Video: Driver “swerves to avoid cyclist” – what do you think? …and you get blamed for “forcing” the driver to swerve. TANJ!

This stupid driver had better thank his lucky stars that he didn’t get an even longer sentence for killing a cyclist. Lorry driver loses appeal against jail sentence for killing cyclist Alan Neve in Holborn I hope he has to serve every last second of that 3½ years. He was driving without the specialized license required for the vehicle he was driving, and because he lacked the training and follow-on testing he ended up killing a man he should have been able to avoid.

“I saw a cyclist do something dangerous once”. Driver warns of cyclist ‘stupidity’ This is nothing more than anti-cyclist propaganda.

Reaction to someone putting an electric motor in the seat tube of a bike during a cyclocross competition. Mechanical doping: The social media response

This is causing my creative juices to flow. Now THAT’S a spin cycle! Exercise bike washes your dirty laundry as you pedal Put a recumbent type seat above the drum, use a 1:2 ratio for the drum during wash then switch to a really high ratio to spin the drum during the wring portion of the cycle (that would still be a heavy sprint) and I could see this as a way to put some base and interval training in. The wash/rinse cycles would be the easy part, a warm-up/recovery for the power unit. The bad thing is washing generally ends with the spin cycle.

And I’m outta links again, and I have to get up early tomorrow to go pay more bills.

Billed @$0.02, Opus

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I feel like that guy in the Dunkin’ Donuts ad meeting himself leaving work as he’s going to work, and the Feed

It was a late night again last night as related in the previous post. And I stumbled out of bed this morning and fired up the computer to boot while I got coffee and morning meds and had a serious case of deja vu because how many years have I been doing this? I know that I started my first bike blog back in 2006 just randomly talking about rides I had done and building bikes, back in Spring of 2006 sometime, got on the reporting and later analysis of bike wrecks near the end of that year, went daily in 2007, got dumped by my blogging host in 2008 so I had to move to WP in November of 2008. So regular posting since 2006 and as close as I could manage to daily since early 2007, that is eight years of nearly every day sitting at a computer and pounding on the keyboard producing words. Speaking of “pounding” on keyboards, I managed to kill about 7 or so in those eight years counting the ones that were attached to computers that died. I’m particularly worried about the one in the laptop because I keep getting random letters from the opposite side of the keyboard showing up while I’m typing, usually vowel swaps, “e” for “o”, “a” for “u” and every so often a random “q”, or “e” thrown in for good measure at the end of a word. Y’all don’t see that because I proofread using both machine and human proofing. But having to go through a post and find all that stuff is just really aggravating.

Up first is a death about a half day’s ride east of WoaB World HQ in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell. Benefit account established for bicyclist killed on Old Jacksonville Highway Another driver using the “Get Out Of Jail Free” card for drivers “I couldn’t see him”.

And death is a common thread along with protest in these links from the UK. Vigil and Die In That’s my FB invitation to yet another UK protest, you UK readers might want to be there. Also Vivienne Westwood leads tributes to fashion buyer killed when bike hit lorry That was about the same wreck as the protest I was invited to. Another one Vigil to be held for cyclist killed in city centre collision month after his death also Cyclists stage ‘die in’ protest in memory of bike rider killed in collision with truck and Vigil for Manchester cyclist killed in car crash

After all the mess over the weekend this is a good respite for Ted in Our Daily Ted. Bike share unexpectedly opens in DTLA

Someone is starting to get the message in MD about how deadly motor vehicles are. Deadly Crashes Between Cars And Md. Cyclists Happening At Alarming Rate The comments were “interesting” to say the least. More Bishop’s charges in cyclist’s death prompt lawmakers to consider fining drunk-drivers Fines? How about vehicle forfeiture? Don’t we take the weapon away from someone who gets drunk and shoots up a town? Driving drunk is exactly the same thing as shooting up a town while drunk if you don’t hit anything. If you hit something then it’s different…

Budget cuts are fine, but you have to leave some things alone. 2014 in Clark County saw dramatic jump in fatal crashes After the traffic enforcement took the brunt of budget cutting the year previous whodathunkit that suddenly they see a huge jump in wrecks and especially fatal wrecks.

A little infrastructure news from the Windy City. Are Divvy Riders Safer Than Other Cyclists? Data Says Yes I say there are many things involved here. Bike share bikes are built to a different style than most road or mountain bikes which are designed for racing or styled after bikes designed for racing. Bike share are based on Dutch city bikes so the rider is more upright which makes for a slower bike, and also for a rider with a better view of the road. Also there is the as-yet unexamined demographics of bike-share vs. “just bikes”.

Another jurisdiction discovers that reducing traffic policing has serious negative effects. Safety fear as figures show a rise in number of cycling injuries

A little admonition on infrastructure from Enn Zed. Editorial: Cyclists must be safe too Typical driver’s comments in the comments section.

I’m not so sure how much of this satire article is actual satire. Self-righteous road use causes accidents The opening paragraph about the attempted murder of a cyclist…

And just because I like the link. Electric Motorcycle Gangs: You’ll Never Hear Them Coming

And now I’m out of links and things to say that are bike-related.

Bille @€0.02, Opus the Poet