You'd be wise to stay out of the way

This video of a massive icebreaker cruising into Helsinki in the 1920s stirred up all kinds of thoughts and feelings.

The first thought was, "What is wrong with those idiots? Give that thing some room!" How could the crowding spectators know that the ice would not crack laterally, dumping them into the frigid water? How could the ones skipping beneath the bow know that they would not slip or trip and go for an unplanned dive beneath that charging hull? The propellors would not be kind.

It must have been amazing to stand that close to the beast as it cut through the ice. But it's also the stuff of nightmares.

Whoever was conning the ship wasn't wasting a lot of concern on the people clustered in the vessel's path. That kind of mass is not going to stop or swerve sharply. It was up to the crushable, but highly mobile, people on the ice to keep themselves from being crushed. If one or more had failed to evade, no one would have blamed the icebreaker's skipper and crew.

To the non-riding majority, we who ride our bicycles on the street look like the idiots playing chicken with that icebreaker. Whether an onlooker is rooting for us to fail or hoping that we don't, when a rider gets crushed it seems inevitable, unavoidable, and entirely the responsibility of the small person who should have known better than to impede the great machine. The critical differences are lost in the glaring and deceptive similarities. And not all the similarities are deceptive.

Machines like big ships and railroad locomotives don't have the maneuverability and stopping power of even a large tractor-trailer. The people running around that icebreaker knew it would not accelerate sharply or swerve abruptly. They could calculate its speed and direction intuitively. The little people and the big ship's crew seem unconcerned about each other because they can be. The disparity of the relationship imparts its own stability, barring an unfortunate crack in the ice.

Elements of traffic on a street, road, or highway are closer in size and highly variable in speed, mass, and maneuverability. The aquatic analogy is demonstrated on any crowded lake on a summer weekend: swimmers, paddlers, sailboats, and motorized vessels in a range of sizes dart around like water bugs. The biggest vessels move ponderously compared to the smallest, but everything is more fluid, if you will.

This summer, a bicyclist was crushed by a tractor trailer in Conway. The driver left the scene. The story was misleadingly reported in all media. Initially, the cyclist was portrayed as avid and experienced. The vehicle was not described. The stark facts were that a cyclist was run down and it was hit-and-run. As details emerged, the rider emerged as somewhat less than meticulous in his riding tactics. The truck driver may not have been aware that his vehicle hit someone. A cyclist has to know something about the limitations faced by drivers of various-size vehicles and take the initiative to stay out of danger zones as much as possible.

When drivers talk about cyclists on the road, some of them display a blanket prejudice, while a handful of others display an undiscriminating concern. In between are all the ones who sound like someone trying to describe how they're not a racist, but... They have my sympathy, because cyclist behavior plays a huge role in safety. It will not protect you from someone who has decided you deserve to be killed just for being out there, but it will keep you whole in nearly every other circumstance. Riders who do dumb things provide talking points for the haters and huge anxiety for the compassionate.

Dumb things. On one level, it's dumb to be out there at all, just as it was dumb to run right up to a massive icebreaker charging ahead with its bow designed to crush whatever is in its path. Let's assume also that none of those people needed to be out there to use the ice for their own purposes as the ship came through. That's a critical factor.

When we're using the roads we all pay for, we all have a stake in the infrastructure and deserve benefits from it. These are your tax dollars at work. The methods we use to move greater numbers of people and volumes of cargo have led to the different size vehicles using the public right of way, but it is public, and putatively designed for the use of all.

Debate simmers, seethes, and occasionally rages about who should be included in "all." Money drives. It has a disproportionate voice in design discussions. Meanwhile, in the real world, people find very good reasons to use a bicycle or to walk from place to place. Intelligent life is not always displayed by complete embrace of the most elaborate technology. But money talks. Whether we're talking about preserving the environment that supports all life, caring for the sick, or creating safe walking and biking accommodations in our entire transportation network, if you can't show a monetary gain you will not get anywhere. Tell me again about intelligent life?

A rider in traffic, or on a road where traffic could occur, takes a calculated risk. Any traveler takes a risk, but the cyclist or pedestrian is particularly exposed to other people's judgment. On the other hand, we are particularly free to bend and break rules to improve traffic flow and enhance our safety. It's a thoughtful dance at all times. We are also able to bend and break rules selfishly in ways that unnecessarily antagonize other users, whether we're on the street or a separated path. Bicyclists are in the middle, between those on foot and those in motor vehicles. Did you have any idea that something as simple as riding a bike brought such responsibility with it?

Responsibility is optional. Everything in life is optional. You may choose to stop, rot, and die at any time. You may choose to be a flaming asshole and call it a blazing torch of liberty. Responsibility can be ducked. It can be chucked. It can be ignored. We could go out in a blaze of selfish anarchy. The universe doesn't care. Why should you?

That's a question you have to answer for yourself. Evolution will note the results.

A time to herd, a time to let 'em run

Even with a massive investment in road improvements, a lot of places in this country will still have narrow roads shared by all users. Terrain, geology and well-established land uses encroach on rights-of-way.

On my commute, Route 28 gets narrow and bendy as it comes into Wolfeboro. The token shoulder disappears. In theory, no motorist can safely pass a cyclist without putting themselves and oncoming traffic at risk.

As I developed my own theories about traffic management a couple of decades ago, I started taking a position further and further into the lane. When the law in New Hampshire made that formally legitimate I experimented with strict herding in that twisty section.

After a couple of seasons I abandoned that method. It made impatient motorists do hideously dangerous things and cranked up the flame under hotheads. Now I ride to the far right through there. It's as close to serene as it will ever be. Granted, I've had some big stuff breeze past my elbow. But when I herded I still had some big stuff go by my elbow, and they weren't breezing.

I would rather have a driver skinny past me, knowing that they don't want to waste time on an accident, than have them seething behind me, wanting more and more to kill me. In nearly every case, I get a bit more room when I let them slide. Because the road is twisty, they aren't screwing around with their phones or other distractions. I figure my odds are about as good as they're going to get.

Further in, where the road straightens and is further constrained by curbs, I move back out into the lane to inhibit stupid passing behavior. The pitch of the road allows me to maintain a speed around 20 mph -- faster when I'm fresher -- so I don't feel like I'm imposing quite so much. Mind you, 20 mph in a car feels wretchedly slow, but soon enough we get to a wide place where I can release the herd to run freely again -- as freely as anything gets to run in Wolfeboro in the summer, anyway. What really happens is that I let them go and then hop in behind them as we all tool along at a very bikeable pace, with them happily in front of the "slower" vehicle.

In a region of narrow, country roads, I ride nearer the right than the center most of the time. I want to be in the forward field of view, even for someone with windshield-induced tunnel vision, with a little wiggle room to the right to ease a squeeze. That one's tricky, though. One squeezer at or near the head of a line can open the space for a convoy to come through in a flying wedge. Even with a rear-view mirror you can't always tell how many vehicles are building up back there. You have to watch the road ahead more than the reflected view. You also have to make some psychological assessments before you open -- or close -- the gate.

The simpler method is to hold that right-of-center, left-of-right position tenaciously. If a driver really pushes the point, use your wiggle room and look for a place to slingshot as many followers around you as you can.

When you get swept aside you may have to slow down a lot. In congested areas with driveways, intersections and parked cars, if you can't stay out in the flow you have to go slowly enough to be ready for ambushes from the side. I hardly encounter urban congestion at all. Where I do, I can keep up with the motor vehicles well enough to stay in the lane. In Wolfe City it's only for a few blocks. In the height of summer's crowds, a bike rider needs to be ready to stop in an instant anyway, because the next bonehead could come from any direction, on two wheels, four wheels, or walking.

Musing about wheeled pedestrians

The wheeled pedestrian definition of a cyclist is as an exclusively recreational rider. I get the sense this is viewed with contempt and perhaps even alarm as the recreational cyclists generate all the negative effects suffered by bike riders, while the virtuous, hard-working non-cyclist riders toil in obscurity, waiting for the motoring public to see that there has never been anything to fear.

The term "wheeled pedestrian" must be a calculated contradiction to the concept of vehicular cyclist. But for me it conjures up uncomfortable visions of riders on sidewalks, threading among the real pedestrians like a motorcycle on a bike path. Can you imagine if frightened motorcyclists lobbied successfully to be allowed to ride on bike paths because they were afraid to mix it up with the other vehicle traffic on the street?

Many times over the years in print columns and on line I have made the point that a bicyclist is NOT a pedestrian on wheels. A rider on the sidewalk demonstrates contempt for the people walking there. A rider going against the flow of vehicular traffic, as a pedestrian is required to do, shows contempt for the lawful road users and puts them all at risk. Ride at a walking pace if you like. It's great. But you're not a pedestrian. You're a bike rider. You're riding a bike. You might hop on it in a fashionable outfit that blends perfectly with everyone else's everyday clothes. You might stop frequently to run errands or simply to enjoy the space through which you are passing. But you rode a bike to get there. You are not a pedestrian. Maybe, just maybe, if you take the pedals off and scooter that thing along like a Laufmaschine you can lay partial claim to being a wheeled pedestrian. Even then you will be taking up more space among the actual pedestrians and inconveniencing them at least as much as they inconvenience you.

I like segregated bike routes as long as they go where I need to go. It's nice to get away from motor vehicles for a while. The Cotton Valley Trail is a multi use path that the rail car people think of as a rail line, the walkers think of as a walking path and the bicyclists call a bike path. You can see the territorial emanations from each kind of user when different user types meet. The rail cars are worse than motor vehicles on the road, because they can't deviate from their course. The bike riders have to ride responsibly around the pedestrians, though some riders seem to blast past as callously as heedless motorists blast past cyclists out in traffic. Not too many bike riders on the path would consider themselves wheeled pedestrians, and certainly the pedestrians would not acknowledge them as such.

You want to be a pedestrian? Walk.

I actually prefer to walk rather than ride a bike in some places. Even if the distance would go more quickly on a bike, other conditions might override mere speed and ease. Just as short trips in a car become a yank with starting, stopping, traffic and parking, so are some trips not worth doing by bike.

As for the garb, when I ride out to the nearest grocery store it's a seven-mile round trip. I finally got some regular clothing that fits well for that kind of ride, so I can show up looking pretty normal. I still haven't kicked the helmet habit, but once I hang that on the bike and walk into the store no one would know I'm a freak unless they took a close look at my Diadora touring shoes. Those are a model no longer made, with a nice stiff sole for pedaling, but no aggressive tread or wide rand to snag going in and out of toeclips. I have nothing against street clothes. When my commutes were short enough I wore whatever I was going to wear to work. When I refused to give up bike commuting no matter how far I ended up living from work, I had to adapt to a commute that was more of a bike ride.

I am a bicycle rider. I am not a wheeled pedestrian. I dress and ride appropriately for whatever conditions I need to face. I'm not averse to cutting across a lawn or through a field, down an alley or along a path. I'll even make a quick, stealthy connection on a short stretch of sidewalk (sshhhhh!). At all those times, if I'm on a bike I am a cyclist, with all the rights and responsibilities thereto appertaining.

Analysis of a right hook

Approaching my turn off of Route 16 on my way home one evening last week, a small silver sedan came up gradually on my left. I was pushing along at somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 miles per hour with a bit of help from the airflow of passing vehicles. The silver car drifted up beside me. As it pulled forward a bit more I saw the right turn signal. Sure enough, it got just past me and yanked into the turn onto Elm Street.

Because I was turning at Elm Street I simply turned in tight formation with them. I gave a laconic middle finger just because I was sure they had no idea things would work out so well, but I didn't thrust it up and out and wave it around. It was more of a grumble than a shout. Sometimes people I know do stupid things, and I don't always recognize them in their cars, so I didn't want to go full napalm on whoever this idiot was.

Thinking about it further, I wondered if it might have been a fellow cyclist I know, who knew that I was going to turn there and realized it was really the safest place to pass me for the next quarter mile. Truly, it was. After the turn, Elm Street makes a series of blind bends, so a truly judicious motorist would have to stay back for quite a while. The vast majority of drivers are not so patient.

Even if it wasn't a fellow cyclist making a calculated move, because there was no contact and no disruption to the traffic flow in any way it really was a perfect pass. If I had been proceeding straight in Route 16 I would have had to make a quick yank to the left to evade the corner of the turning car, but I wasn't, so I didn't. No harm, no foul is an overused expression, but it applies here. It reminded me of a basic principle of criterium riding: keep your skin thick and keep it on you. Don't be overly sensitive to the encroachments of others. Learn to require only a small comfort zone. Defend your zone, of course, but don't be a weenie.

Racing experience shaped my approach to commuting by bike. Riding knuckle to knuckle with aggressive young men who all think they're better riders, you develop a certain level of comfort in close quarters and somewhat quicker precise reactions than riders who have not put themselves under the pressure of riding in a competitive group. I did not race long or well, but I trained and raced enough to refine my normal irritability into a more coherent force.

As a young territorial male I had a quick middle finger for any motorist I felt was impinging on my space. It had more to do with principle than a sense of actual danger. I, personally, was indestructible, of course. If I remembered that traffic riding is a criterium I cared less when motor vehicles passed tightly. As long as they pass without contact, we're both fine.

If I sense that a motorist is passing tightly to make some kind of statement it pisses me off, but what can I do? I can control the lane to prevent a pass, but only if I get out there ahead of it. I have had motorists squeeze me because I was closing the lane to them. On the troublesome parts of my normal commuting route, drivers give me as as much -- or more -- room when I ride the white line as when I control the lane. The ones who are going to pass no matter what will drive oncoming traffic into the ditch and blame me anyway if I'm so far out in the lane that they "have to" play chicken with the other motorists to pass me without delay.

I ran the experiment for several seasons. I got right out there and took the lane where it was not technically safe to allow motorists to hammer through. Before and after the experimental period I have ridden to the far right in that section. Traffic has flowed better with me farther right, and the mood of motorists has been considerably better.

Farther in on the route I still take the lane on a straight section with a curb and storm drains to the right. When the traffic is heavy it inhibits pushy passing. When it's light the pushy passers have room to get by even when I'm out in the lane away from the storm drains. I defend my zone where I have to and cede the lane where I can.

Not everyone can ride this way. Older riders, particularly those who have taken up the bicycle late in life, lack the fitness base and saddle time to have the kind of automatic reflexes a rider gains from decades of experience. Even if an older rider was a strong athlete in another sport, such as running, the act of riding demands more than just strength. I know a guy who was on the US cross-country ski team in the 1980s and who is still a formidable competitor in age-group cross-country ski racing, who just can't get used to the traffic going by him when he goes out on a road ride. He built up an errand bike to ride on service calls around town for his business, so maybe he's developing more of a tolerance, but it's coming slowly compared to his extremely high fitness level overall.

Riders who do not have a lifelong fitness base face even more intimidation. Where developing culture and infrastructure support it, cyclists can take a lane or find a path with more social support for their developing interest and ability. Such amenities don't exist here where roads are shaped by equally unforgiving geology and economy. When I get angry at drivers it's more in the persona of one of these more timid riders than on my own behalf. I'm slowing down as I age, so I wonder when I might be driven off, but I also see that many people never start riding because they've already imagined how bad it must be. And I can't say it would improve things to throw a bunch of these wobblers out there in the meat grinder, forcing drivers to accommodate them without offering anything in return. More people could ride bikes than do, but someone is always going to have to drive. The system needs to work for everyone.

Money

Long before the recent news blip about Chicago's proposed bike tax I was already thinking about how America would react to a surge in transportation cycling. We would be monetized, of course.

The concept of cyclists as freeloaders is a major rallying point for the champions of motoring. You can explain about how taxation really works and the relative burden non-motorized users place on infrastructure until you run out of breath. A large percentage of the opponents of cycling simply will not believe you. Cyclists are parasites. Every improvement made for our benefit adds to our perceived debt.

I am willing to look at a full and honest audit to see whether cyclists are holding up their end. But a bicycle can be ridden in so many places and different ways that it would be hard to draw a firm line around the bicyclists who owe society and the ones who may safely and freely play in their designated areas where they don't bother the grownups.

Every form of mobility except bicycling and walking has a price tag attached to it. And, if you walk to the bus or the light rail, even if you don't get a seat you pay a fare. Wherever people gather you end up forking out to hang around. So, inevitably, bicyclists come under pressure to dig in the pocket lint for their contribution. The more successful we become, the more people will want a piece of the action. It's the American way.

Is there any chance we'll discuss the issues rationally, as cooperating adults? Not if our entire political history is any indication. But one can hope. Everything has a true cost. It needs to be fairly divided once we know what it is. Then we know what's reasonable and what's excessive.

Are group rides bad for cycling?

A lot of cyclists seem to enjoy riding in large groups for fun and to support good causes. It seems only benign. If one cyclists is a step in the right direction, a large number should be a huge leap that way, right?

Critical Mass took the concept much farther to demonstrate the numbers of cyclists and their power to take over the streets. CM is overtly political, so controversy arising from it is not surprising. But every large gathering of cyclists spawns complaints and conflicts.

I'm sure this has been exhaustively discussed by the Experts in Cycling. I was simply inspired by  a piece I read this morning about a petition in England to shut down a ride due to the objections of residents and businesses along the route. It reminded me of what a Gilford, NH, resident told me about how the residents along a certain stretch of road feel when they're penned up in their neighborhoods during the weekend of an annual triathlon. He actually found this picture amusing.

 He  said it's what he felt like doing during the time he lived in the area affected by the race.

Motorists might agree in theory that bicyclists have a right to use the roads, but they would all prefer if we could do it without actually seeming to be there at all. An individual cyclist can maneuver freely to try to manage the traffic flow as necessary, whereas a group of riders may have trouble getting drivers to pass in a timely fashion when it's safe. And those places of safety need to be longer and clearer to get motorists past a string of riders on a constricted road. Most of the time, riders and drivers take their chances and hope they get away with it.

When motorists gather in large numbers they create congestion as well. But "group drives" seem a lot less common than group rides. If it's an event like New Hampshire's Motorcycle Week, the sheer excess does lead to friction, frayed tempers and many accidents. But the motorized cycles can travel at traffic speed (when they're not blatantly exceeding it), so they increase volume and may cause decreased speeds, but only in places where any large number of vehicles would slow things down. The upper limit of the speed range requires no accommodation from other motorists. Bicyclists can't claim that. Our cruising speed only fits with motorist speeds where the motorists are held back by imposed limitations.

I like to imagine what popular perception of other sports would be like if they were conducted on the roadway. "Oh no! Another goddam football game! I won't get out of here until half time!" "Augh! I hate basketball! All those idiots dribbling frantically down the street, chasing a hoop hung off the back of a truck!" "Oh for ---! Not Centerline Tennis again!"

I know. It's absurd. But what other sport besides competitive cycling holds its official events out in the road? What began before the dawn of the motoring era as crazy challenges to human strength and endurance have evolved to the modern sport on roadways vastly more crowded with other people living their routine lives. Cycling fans love the spectacle. People who are not cycling fans have to wonder how the road to work, school and the grocery store became a sports arena.

Non-competitive rides can generate more congestion than races. They can also generate a lot of business along the route. What seems to happen a lot of the time is that the complainers complain, the defenders defend and the event goes on. So what's the harm?

Institutionally the harm might settle in the minds of decision makers who individually don't care for cyclists on the road. If enough of them collect in one place they may start to change the rules. In the general population, drivers who dislike cyclists will collect their grudges generated by frustrating encounters with groups and take it out on lone cyclists they see as targets of opportunity on unwitnessed stretches of highway.

Technically we have as much right to hold a group ride as the motorists do to hold a poker run, a rally, a scavenger hunt or just take out their favorite machines on a group joyride. Only the difference in horsepower calls our right into question. But it's a critical question. Not only must we continually explain ourselves to the lawmakers and regulators, we have to deal with the emotional issues of throttle-pushers who won't give us a fraction of a second to explain anything when they finally decide they've had enough.

If humans were truly a violent species there would be a lot fewer of us and I doubt anyone would travel on a two-wheeled vehicle of any kind. We would probably all drive real tanks on the rare occasions we left our fortress homes. I guess in some parts of the world it's more than a bit like that. But I like to think that the momentum is on the side of peaceful pedalers.

Ten Mile Limit

Ever since the invention of the bicycle it has been an imposition on everyone who does not ride one. Even before the Draisine grew pedals, rowdies were terrorizing pedestrians with drunken shenanigans and out-of-control downhills. Even though the human-powered two-wheeler has enjoyed periods of great popularity, non-riders during those times simply gritted their teeth all the harder.

People are constantly coming up with reasons a rider should not ride on any given day. Objections usually hinge on the amount of time the ride takes or the types of freight a rider can or will convey. One can count on riding a maximum of ten miles a day before your habit begins to impose on the non-riders or less dedicated riders in your life. A safer bet would be five miles.

With a five- to ten-mile range, this makes most urban cycling acceptable and virtuous. A short hop in street clothes to work or for shopping helps ease traffic and parking congestion and makes a compact settled area more pleasant. Start trying to rack up more distance than that and you quickly enter the realm of the self-centered freak. Sure, a lot of riders manage to accumulate major mileage, but it always comes at the cost of some strain on personal relationships. An accommodating supporting population of friends, family members and loved ones will adapt, but I guarantee that none of them would protest if the rider quit cycling and took up activities that kept him or her closer to hand.

The cellist and I adopted a dog last month. He's a cute little guy, 13 years old, with congestive heart failure, but he still enjoys life. But he has needs. The cellist has been really dedicated to serving them, unlike a kid who whines to get a dog and then can't be bothered to care for it, but when she can't I get the puppy dog eyes from her and the dog.

She's headed out of town for a couple of days. She asked if I could drive to work on a beautiful summer Saturday so the dog could come with me. I said, "no, my employers don't want a dog in the shop because of the liability." Then the boss says, "Scruffy would make a great shop dog."

The cyclist always ends up being the selfish bastard for actually wanting to ride. And if it wasn't this it would be something else. "You get home so late." "You look tired." "I worry about you in traffic." That's from the people who care about you. The objections of the non-riders are much more pointed and hostile. They all boil down to  "get the F### out of the way."

Short hops in congested areas where the bike has the advantage are not only a great example of bike superiority. They're the only completely defensible use of it. That does not mean I will be curtailing my longer rides. It just means I know I'm building up what society perceives as a debt to them for doing so.

The Illusion of Safety

Wolfeboro is like a micro-city. Especially in the summer its downtown area is a churning mass of impatient drivers, determined cyclists and a whole spectrum of pedestrians. Any route along the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee from the downtown area is likely to be crowded with business and pleasure traffic including tractor-trailers, contractors in various size trucks, more landscapers and property care crews than you can believe, boat trailers and cars.

Out in the countryside, some people drive in a more relaxed way, happy to be clear of either the bustle of the lake shore towns or the worse bustle of the places they normally live in the sprawl of Megalopolis. Others race around in the clear running room of uncrowded country roads. Many of those drivers are locals with schedules to keep and no great love of the seasonal hordes, in spite of the money the seasonal business brings to keep them alive here. Keep us alive, I should say, because I depend on it as well.

Many people tell me they wish they could drive less and ride more. When they tell me why they don't, safety may not head every list, but it's in the top five concerns, if not the top two.

Factions of cyclists disagree vigorously about what factors really enhance safety. Believers in separate but equal systems of cycling-only or mixed-use pathways hold that isolation from motor vehicles is the key. Vehicularists represent the opposite view, that cyclists need to be allowed, encouraged and perhaps left no alternative but to take a place in the traffic flow as it exists, asserting their right to pedal in a motor-dominated world. In between lie all shades and gradations mixing pure vehicularism and some level of faith in infrastructure. Lying outside the continuum of law-acknowledging pedalers are the anarchists who ride the shortest route or the most fun whether it's with traffic, against traffic, through red lights and stop signs, up and down sidewalks (and occasionally stairways), through parking lots, parks, alleys -- in short, anywhere they will fit. The anarchists believe that the bike has a natural right to go anywhere the rider can take it.

I can tell you why I had every bike accident I've had. Each has its own story and involves some level of error on my part. That's not to say that stuff doesn't just happen. A prime example is this video of a transportation cyclist being rear-ended on a multi-lane street in Pennsylvania, which I picked up from DFW Point-to-Point. It has a relatively happy ending because a bus driver and another motorist blocked the fleeing driver yards from the scene of the crime so that police could make the arrest. Someone commenting on the video mentioned the dangers of distracted driving, but it looks more like an intentional tag to me. The car that struck the cyclist passed the silver car that later blocked him behind the bus and then pulled into the lane behind the cyclist, made the hit and pulled out. How distracted do you have to be to overlook a massive city bus pulling around a cyclist ahead of you, even with a car between you? Thus, as the author of DFW Point-to-Point states, you can do everything right and still have a collision. This is true in a car or truck as well as on a bike. Driving home a couple of weeks ago I nearly got torpedoed by an idiot who blew through a stop sign without the slightest hesitation where Route 171 crosses Route 28 in Ossipee. If I had been winging through the intersection the way many people seem to consider acceptable, there would have been bloodshed.

People are completely willing to live with the illusion of safety as they drive, but sense massive danger all around when they think about riding a bike. Just as they think more lanes of asphalt will improve traffic flow or that airbags are an adequate substitute for avoiding a collision in the first place, many will believe that a bike lane or a separate path will provide the necessary margin to allow a cyclist a chance to survive in the maelstrom of vehicular flow. So why not give them as many of those illusions as possible, as long as the myths don't impede reality? We're talking about faith here: a belief in things unproven but comforting. People undertake massively dangerous and ill-advised campaigns when bolstered by faith, as well as some very nice and commendable efforts on behalf of fellow humans.

The trap is in the fine print. Any of these talismans must be funded. With that funding comes obligation. Legal guardians of cyclists' rights have to make sure that those obligations don't include coercion of non-believers. Cycling choice falls under the heading of free speech and expression of religion because belief is what ultimately gets a person to push off from the curb and wobble away.

Anything that encourages more people to ride bikes helps cycling. If a law discourages people who would have ridden vehicularly while emboldening a few sidepath and bike lane believers, it has not helped because it has not broadened participation. If people want to believe that paint on the road makes them safer and that belief gets them out on a bike, their presence puts more cyclists out in the public eye. As long as the free-range cyclist has the option to ignore the paint and do what really works, the bike-lane believer can have the painted refuge from which to observe and perhaps venture out as experience proves that the rider, not the paint, is what makes the difference. Meanwhile, some sort of tokens among the many traffic directives plastered on and around the roads put the concept that cycling is a legitimate activity right in front of drivers, lane mile after lane mile.

As a last resort we can just send them all a reverse-911 text message to remind them to glance through the windshield once in a while to be sure that no cyclists are harmed.

Before the Storm

The shop is closed tomorrow. I thought the sign on the door should say, "If you're reading this you are an idiot. Go home!" The management opted for something else.

Yesterday was stunningly beautiful. The sun shone down from a cloudless sky. The air was warm but not hot. The Chamber of Commerce had decreed Sidewalk Sale Days, so we had a couple of pop-up tents over some racks of clothes and a couple of tables of sandals and other odds and ends to whet the appetite of a surprising crowd of shoppers for so late in August.

One of our tent minders passed a few boring hours by counting cars passing on Main Street. He came up with an average of more than 560 per hour for about seven hours. He did not figure out how many might have been the same car over again. In terms of traffic volume it doesn't matter whether there are 560 different cars in every hour. If you're out there with them you still have to negotiate with 560 of them.

During my short stint out there I watched cyclists doing what they thought was right. A posse of about ten teenage girls rode on the sidewalk up the opposite side of the street, against the flow of vehicle traffic but separated from it. They were all duly helmeted, on bike shop bikes. The way they rode the sidewalk showed that they were familiar with it and completely comfortable, utterly unencumbered by any doubt or guilt. They rode into crosswalks at intersections at the same slow but steady pace they exhibited on the sidewalk itself. They obviously felt they were where they belonged.

A short time later a man in his fifties or early sixties rode by on a Rolling Rock beer promotional cruiser bike. It was really cool, with a top-tube tank and full fenders, a real 1950s - early '60's retro ride. He rode down the sidewalk in front of the shop, apparently oblivious to the critical commentary several of us exchanged as we watched him ride by. He passed again on the sidewalk on the other side of the street in just a couple of minutes.

I could not imagine any of these riders holding their own in the actual traffic flow. They just didn't have the temperament to take a place in the lane. I could imagine them as drivers encountering vehicular cyclists, wondering why any rider would subject themselves to the abuse, and why any rider would victimize the motoring public by getting out there IN THE WAY.

I've been watching raw video for the bike piece I've been working on. Despite my hope that I could enlist some other riders to take part, so far all the riding footage is of me. I look very efficient. In fact, I look fast. This is funny, because I don't feel fast, but I guess I only know that because I've been around riders who really are fast, so I know the difference. I do know that my view of the road is shaped by decades of riding and a period of racer-like training. I did race for a time. After a few seasons I decided I could put that energy to better use as a transportation cyclist. Transportation cycling is safer than racing and makes better use of resources than a recreational quest for ephemeral glory. I basically just wanted to be able to snack freely as well as saving money and having a lighter environmental impact. But over the years I became an efficient partner with my machine in ways many less experienced cyclists might view as beyond them. Or maybe a lot of them just don't think it's worth it. Who am I to choose their values? All I can do is share what I have learned with anyone who wants to know it.

Learning can be an endless process if you keep yourself open to it. So I watch other riders wherever I see them. I think some of them really do belong on the sidewalk. They'll never be up to the rigors of vehicular cycling. Of course that does make them the terrorists of the sidewalk the way motor vehicles are the terrorists of the roadway. Perhaps most of them will not consciously ride in a malicious fashion, enjoying their dominion over mere pedestrians, but they still beg the indulgence of the walkers for whom the sidewalk is constructed. Why should the pedestrians have to accommodate them any more than cyclists should have to step aside every time someone wants to shove a motor vehicle past them?

The bike industry is happy to sell anyone a bike. You want to hang it on your car rack and let it bake in the sun? You want to ride on the sidewalk? You want to dedicate yourself fully to mountain biking and run roadies into the ditch with your SUV when you see them? No problem. At least you bought a bike. Business is business. Advocating too forcefully for "correct" cycling would probably reduce bike sales. You're telling me I can't ride on the sidewalk? Fine, I quit. I'll get a Segway or an electric scooter. You can't order me to get out there and block traffic like some selfish idiot.

Another rider, a man in his 30s, rode his hybrid in the lane with traffic until he came to the corner. He cut deep inside to turn left, yanking his bike quickly across in front of some oncoming traffic to cut into the cross street on the wrong side of the road. If a car had been coming up to the stop sign it would have peened him. But there was no car and he was not peened and so he will recall that the maneuver worked. He was not close enough to the oncoming drivers on Main Street to make them slow down, swerve or honk. But does he think about how he rides? Does he critique his tactics, acknowledge his luck? Or does he just run like a squirrel until his luck runs out?

Today the clouds built up steadily in advance of Hurricane Irene, or whatever will be left of it by the time it gets here. People still came to shop. Since most of them come from places the hurricane is supposed to hit harder than us, they might as well stay here.

Spring Retraining

Life is war. Despite all protestations of peace and love, nothing reminds you that humans really don't like each other more than a simple bike ride during the early season.

After months of having the road to themselves, drivers have to get used to seeing cyclists again. We the cyclists have to reestablish our claim by using the road, while a certain number of the motorists try to discourage us from doing so.

This year, drivers of large pickup trucks seem to be trying to see how close they can brush a cyclist regardless of the rider's lane position. Few of them honk. No one has yelled. The offenders have passed with inches to spare when they had ample room to shift over, or have blasted through dangerous gaps at the risk of collision not only with the cyclist but with the oncoming motorists they have forced to the curb. It's not just me. Most of the cyclists I know have reported that behavior.

Every morning news broadcast brings reports of motor vehicle accidents causing injury or death to the motorists. Motorists are not a unified bloc set against cyclists. Driving behavior simply points out the pervasive selfishness of people that finds its expression on the road.

Not enough people want to ride bikes for transportation to make high-quality infrastructure engineering worth the money. If people felt safer from traffic, more of them would ride, but probably not in impressive numbers. I wish that was not true. I doubt the theory will ever be tested, because I doubt that this country or any significant portions thereof will ever make the investment to find out. So we're left with our imperfect system. Cyclists stitch together what routes they can and endure continuous harassment.

Most drivers pass a cyclist at what they think is the safest distance they can manage without slowing down. A traffic herding cyclist can force them to slow down and plan a little better, but most of them will still take chances around a cyclist that they would not take around a slow-moving motorized vehicle. Size matters. So does the perception of speed. A motorist knows that a cyclist probably will never catch them to retaliate for any aggression on the open road or a fairly fast-flowing street.

Whenever possible I release the following vehicles if they have not already pushed past. Unfortunately, certain sections of road do not offer this opportunity soon enough to satisfy an aggressive driver. Most drivers don't appreciate that a cyclist is working hard to get them through a bottleneck at 20 miles per hour when 30 miles per hour already feels creepingly slow to them.

One stressful section of my morning route runs parallel to the notorious rail trail in Wolfe City. Unfortunately, that trail is clotted with pedestrians and cyclists at almost any daylight hour during the milder seasons. The clumps of strolling humanity can bring a rider nearly to a stop. Riders meeting from opposite directions have to fit past each other with inches of clearance between their handlebars. Overtaking a slower cyclist is similarly tricky. Then when a rider wants to rejoin the street flow it means ratcheting up to full combat readiness instantly. The sight of cyclists in the cross walk also reinforces the stereotype in motorists' minds that cyclists belong on a segregated play path.

My evening route winds out through a different set of streets and roads to avoid the uphill grind through the stressful, curb-lined canyon of Center Street. That does not mean it's vastly better, only somewhat better. The route still grinds up a grade, slowing my speed relative to traffic. The road is narrow enough to require gate-keeping. Impatient drivers get pushy. Some display obvious anger with horn or words while others satisfy themselves by passing with a noisy downshift and abrupt swerves.

As I age, regular exercise is more and more vital to maintain vitality. As I negotiate the shaky economy and my own questionable life choices, I can really use the money I save by riding instead of driving most of the time. However, the human race being what it is, I have to fight just as hard as ever for benefits I thought anyone would be glad to join me in claiming. Most people don't see the sense of it. They just see an obstinate jerk who could drive like a normal person if he wanted to. Who would want to be that guy?

Forget the rules

People who ride their bikes against traffic make me wish I had a grenade launcher. This is just one of several reasons I don't have a grenade launcher, regardless of my Second Amendment rights.

Blame my short index fingers: I have an anger problem. In the course of a single day I drop enough F-bombs to level a small city. Catastrophes leave me unmoved, but petty annoyances hot wire my brain. Sparks fly.

Wednesday morning, when I rode up Main Street to work I met a gray-haired woman on her hybrid riding against traffic. I never know exactly what to do with those people. If I go to the right to shove them into oncoming traffic, I'm closer to parked cars or the debris field in the gutter. I might not want to go farther to the left at that moment. Even if I do, I hate to enable the wrong-way rider.

This morning we had a clear sight line for quite a distance, so I sat up, hands off the bars, and pointed, first at her, then at the proper side of the street, several times.

She just laughed at me and rode by.

"Ha ha ha, ya dumb b#&*^!!" I said in a loud conversational tone. It was a tone appropriate to conversation at, say, a rock concert. Glancing back I thought I saw her swing over to the proper side of the street. I turned my attention back to my own course.

It only occurred to me later that I might know this person. I still don't know for sure, but I did see her riding back to the coffee shop. I reflected glumly on my short fuse and blunt language.

In town traffic I ride in the lane anyway. The wrong-way cyclist is therefore no more trouble for me than for a motorist. The rider will pass my right elbow, no doubt oblivious to my sneer of contempt.

Out on the busy highway it's more of a problem. I have run a wrong-way cyclist into the ditch because I could not shoulder into traffic in the only available lane and I wasn't going to take the ditch myself. Fortunately there WAS a ditch. It would have been much uglier in one of the sections hemmed in by guard rails. The offender, a regular commuter who rides my route in the opposite direction, has not ridden against traffic again, at least not around me.

At the end of the day, riding out Route 28, I heard a strange engine behind me. It turned out to be a fat man on a large ATV. Riding an ATV on the highway is illegal enough. Then he whipped it across the highway and started heading down the throat of oncoming cars. I started cheering, laughing and applauding that display of sheer selfishness and brass balls. The fat man turned his bald head to see where that noise was coming from. Meanwhile, cars flashed their lights and slowed sharply as he turned into his driveway.

I had a revelation in that moment. Who cares which side of the road you ride on? Everyone has a moral obligation to watch out for people doing stupid things. Enough people get away with stupid things to make all the whining and preaching about "proper" behavior seem a little ridiculous. What's the big deal? Any driver who knows what they're doing will see you no matter what direction you're coming from.

Road rage mostly stems from our deceived expectation that other people will do "the right thing" in a given situation. Many of our operating rules are based on the principle of taking turns. It's my turn. It's your turn. Hey! Don't cut in on my turn! Don't take that! It's MINE! You get to go AFTER me! I'm telling!!

If we dump the rules, everyone has to watch out. If you come into an intersection with no idea who will do what, you bet you'll pay attention.

During the transition period, traditionalists will righteously kill other road users. After the initial bloodbath, things will settle down to a new norm.

You're already free to act as if the rules do not exist. Even if you ride legally, if a motorist kills you they will probably face no charges at all. Bicyclists are tolerated at best, never welcomed, as part of the traffic mix. There's an automatic assumption that anyone who ventures out there without massive horsepower and armor plating is simply asking for inevitable catastrophe. When the worst happens it is simply nature's cruel justice. Soft little animals get crushed by larger, harder ones.

Soft little animals proliferated by exploiting niches the large ones could not. They did it by breeding in large numbers to offset large losses. They survive by agility and by appearing in any number of ways unappetizing.

Coincidentally, I finally started reading Traffic by Tom Vanderbilt today. It addresses questions I had been pondering for years. For instance, I wondered if there was buggy rage and competitive driving when conveyances were horse-drawn. The answer is yes. Humans on wheels have always had a tendency to turn into jerks. That includes past and present bicyclists. I knew from other reading that draisine (Laufmaschine) riders had engaged in antics worthy of any rowdy crowd on a weekend night, annoying people with reckless operation. People have many different temperaments, but nearly everyone has been some kind of a jerk at some time while operating a vehicle. I guarantee I have. I've barely started the book. It's fascinating.

Passing Strange

Acting as a border collie for holiday traffic yesterday I had a sudden realization. In certain terrain, trying to pass a cyclist is like trying to get by that driver on the highway whose speed fluctuates from 45 to 60 to 48 to 75 to 53 to 56 to 47 to 68...

Cyclists take what terrain gives them. We labor up the grades at 8 or 10 miles per hour, only to jet up to 30 or faster as soon as we pass the crest. Often we have to control overtaking traffic near the crest so that drivers with poor judgment don't pull out unwisely into the oncoming traffic they can't see on the other side of the hill or cram themselves dangerously close to us. If the road looks clear after the hill crest, we pull aside to let them by. At the same time, we're accelerating like the annoying jerk on the highway who only speeds up when being overtaken.

The speed range of a relatively fit cyclist can therefore be very confusing and inconvenient for a motorist. Perhaps one reason the sedate plodders get less harassment than the speedy, agile riders is that the slower riders act more like a cyclist "should."

No single riding style guarantees safety. The cyclist in the gutter is more likely to be crushed by turning trucks, for instance, whether riding slow or fast. The slow cyclist off to the side can get sideswiped by a large vehicle pushing past.

The vast majority of motorists believe they're doing a cyclist a favor just by not killing him or her. Ask most drivers and I bet you'll find they believe that they're indulging the strange compulsions of a bunch of eccentrics by letting cyclists use the roads. We're starting to hear increasingly elaborate lip service to the idea of bicycling as a legitimate part of the transportation and recreational travel mix, but it doesn't run very deep with many people yet. It does not have the penetration that personal watercraft, ATV, motorcycle, auto, truck, cigarette and alcohol advertising have. More people will choke down a Bloomin' Onion than would be caught dead trying to ride a bicycle in traffic. In fact, caught dead is how they assume it will end for all those crazy two-wheelers. It's only a matter of time.

If motorists suddenly started killing large numbers of cyclists in sideswipe crashes, do you think there would be A) an immediate call for massive driver education and safer road design or 2) an immediate call to ban cycling on most roadways? In my darkest imagination I think about how sufficiently ruthless drivers could work toward their vision of a better world by taking out cyclists in "tragic but unavoidable" crashes that would be viewed as criminally negligent behavior if one participant had not been pedaling a bike.

The cellist decided to make this past weekend a car-free one. She didn't drive a car from Thursday until Sunday evening. She remarked that at every stop, as she put on her helmet and gloves to ride to her next destination, people would tell her, "Now you be careful out there." It's a thing we say to each other, but bicyclists hear it a lot. But our own caution can only preserve us from so much. We depend on other people's caution as much as our own.

On Independence Day I was pondering this interdependence. Drivers depend on their machines and their fuel supply. Cyclists depend on motorists' compassion and judgment. I savored the paradoxical relationship between the principle of utterly unfettered individual liberty and the revolutionary admonition to "Join or Die." You're either with us or against us. If you want to live in the land of the free, conform to our standard of how a free person acts. These things are best contemplated from the seat of a bicycle, where thought-induced wobbles put only yourself at risk. You can accelerate with your racing mind or pause in astonishment or swoop exuberantly into a turn, observing local hazards, of course.

Legality Meets Reality

Construction has stopped until June 21 on Route 28. I have that long to work out a construction zone action plan.

Technically, the traffic control people should hold the lane open for me as they would for any other vehicle. On certain sections this is not a problem. If the grade runs in my favor I can get to the end of a short enough zone to beat the sign holder with an itchy hand. If I am a few feet away they have always held up a second or two so I could get through. So far, anyway. If I fall behind that, they release the traffic on me. I'm left to figure out what to do.

One time I had to stop in about two feet of space next to a guardrail and chuck my bike over it as I leaped to follow. Now that I know a cyclist is disposable in these situations I make sure I don't get wedged in like that.

I understand the traffic controllers' problem. Motorists bottled up behind a barrier turn quickly into an angry mob. They'll put up with the wait as long as they see what looks like a fair and sensible system. Make them wait as much as minutes after the last motor vehicle for some sweaty idiot pushing pedals to wobble through and they'll blow a gasket.

Part of the problem is that the sign reading "Slow" only means "Relatively Slow." Ripping through the chute, drafting a large vehicle, I regularly register a speed in the 40s. If I was a construction worker I wouldn't feel really safe with cars and trucks roaring past the emergent cleft of my buttocks at 40+ miles per hour, but I guess it's better than the typical 65 that most drivers try to maintain on the 55 mile-per-hour roads around here. Many of them try to maintain it on all the roads around here. Going 42 through a narrow lane between cones feels crawlingly slow.

Even if the motorists go 25, which really feels like creeping to them, I will get dropped fairly quickly. I'm a tired old man on a heavy bike. On a light bike I would still be a tired old man.

During this recent construction I've only caught a large enough draft to get me through it once in four or five commutes on days they were working. Clearly I can't depend on that. And that's a dangerous option. I have to ride tight to the tailgate of my pacer. I will have to do a mix of alternate routes, riding in the actual construction area and maybe some short bushwhacks through the tick-infested grass on the other side of the guard rail, depending on what happens where.

We become cyclists because we are willing to take care of ourselves. This is just more of that.

A Critical Mass of Three

Co-mechanic George has been riding my morning commute with me on days we both work. That's been weird enough, maneuvering two people through traffic when I have spent so many years riding solo. George is a grownup, fully capable of looking out for himself, but he doesn't have my decades of traffic interaction and inch by inch familiarity with my inbound route.

When coaching a student rider in traffic, you can't always provide timely instructions. A situation can burst into existence, demanding reflex reaction. In that case the lead rider should just do what needs to be done and break it down later in the classroom session.

Every rider needs to remember that his or her personal condition guides many choices whether you are conscious of it or not. General principles may apply, but personal execution depends on strength and temperament. But incompatible traffic styles are incompatible traffic styles. If you find that you can't adapt to a rider you are with, you need to open up the formation so that each of your styles will work separately.

George and I have been doing fine. He's a little less aggressive than I am, but we make it through the tight spots anyway. He's getting more assertive.

This morning we were joined by a third rider, Jim, who will be riding around Lake Winnipesaukee with George on Sunday. I had suggested they ride together at least once before they get themselves stuck on the other side of the lake and discover they can't function as a strong unit in the inescapable tight sections of the route.

Jim rides a lighter, tighter bike than George and I use for the commute. He was also unencumbered by things like lunch and clothing, because he was not riding as a commuter. We had to pay attention to keep our group together on the open road.

For my short stretch of traffic, the last two or three miles in town, I tend to push my anaerobic threshold when I'm herding vehicles in the narrow roads and streets. That's my style. I'm uncomfortable doing it another way. The psychology of my particular population of drivers seems to respond to a high energy level better than a low one. I get shoved aside if I slow down too much. And there's nowhere to be shoved. If I really don't feel up to cracking the whip on them, I make sure I'm somewhere else entirely, on a roundabout route of quieter roads or on the separate path. The most fun part of that path happens to bypass the most hectic section of busy road. It has other disadvantages, so I usually opt to herd the big beasts instead of surrendering the road to them more or less permanently. I'm not ready to give up yet.

Because George does not maintain my pace in traffic, I put him out front so I could cover the lane from the back of the line. Jim rode close on George's wheel. Three riders made a more substantial plug in the lane than a single rider does. We had no choice but to ride as a unit. We aren't blocking traffic. We are traffic.

The vehicular powers that be cooperated by putting a couple of construction zones in our path. Those slowed the cars so that we could easily maintain a place in line. George was even tempted to slide by on the right until I said, "Just be careful in the death hole, George." He rejoined us as we ambled along at the speed of the impeded autos. When the flow accelerated, we accelerated safely and smoothly with it.

Some riders routinely pass right or left to flow through slower vehicular traffic. I don't remember exactly when I stopped doing it, or at least doing it so much. It stopped seeming like a good idea. If I do want to move faster than the larger vehicles, I don't do it as fast as I can possibly go. I don't find it worth the risk. Your results may vary.

Working with occasionally high traffic volumes in narrow New England roads I can't take the lane as a blanket policy. Nor can I give way as a blanket policy. On my familiar routes I know exactly where I need to prevent anyone passing me and where I can scrape a few of them off with a quick fade to the right. The drivers seem to appreciate the rationality and fairness. Give them a chance to go away before they're completely steamed and most of them will take it rather than waste time hassling you. Sit on their face just because you can and you will get bitten in the ass. Hug the gutter all the time and you will get fed a storm drain. So you have to observe and assess the situation all the time.

Sight reading an unfamiliar route you can still learn to spot useful features and traffic patterns similar to what you find on your familiar routes. The game changes as the road changes. Narrow road strategies don't work on wider roads and vice versa. Other riders change it, too. There isn't necessarily safety in numbers unless you ride in the center of a large enough group to absorb a vehicular impact before it reaches you. Short of that you have to be agile and adaptable.

Splitting Hairs and Cleaving Flesh

A couple of decades ago I was in an accident: the passenger in a car stopped in traffic popped a door open just as I arrived beside the vehicle on my way by. The edge of the door was driven into my leg deeply enough to require stitches in the muscle as well as the skin.

The police arrived within minutes. The officer was sympathetic and provided a complete report that gave me solid footing with the car owner's insurance company. The claim was opened immediately. I got sewed up and used up more than my share of Novocaine (I'm a Novocaine hog, all right?). The bike got inspected and repaired (I had not yet been sucked back into the quicksand of the bike business). Eventually I wanted to settle the claim. I hate leaving loose ends dangling.

I had consulted an attorney who suggested a dollar figure going in. The actual settlement doesn't matter. Suffice to say it wasn't a lottery win by any means. What interests me even after all these years was the way the claim adjuster approached it.

"We've determined that we were about 75 percent responsible here, but that you were about 25 percent responsible," he said. "You stated you were in a marked bike lane, but it had actually ended before the point where you were struck." He added a few more items that The Company considered contributing factors I could have controlled. We went back and forth a bit. Short of getting into court with them, all I could do was hit a few volleys with him and take what I squeezed out of his employers. It paid for the emergency room, the bike repairs and a little extra. I wasn't really comfortable with the whole damages thing, so I didn't really go on the attack. I also hadn't thought a huge amount about a bicyclist's place on the road. I just rode, tried to stay out of the meat grinder and fought my skirmishes on the street.

The claim adjuster's gambit illustrates what happens when real life gets pushed through the square screen of legalities. Once you have a law you have specific wording that can usually be interpreted in a variety of ways depending on the bias of the reader. You have unintended consequences, gray areas and forgotten circumstances that require amendment to the law.

Another time, a March afternoon rapidly turning to evening, I was stopped by an Anne Arundel County police officer as I hammered along General's Highway, riding a fine spring tailwind toward home. I was racing dusk on this early-season outing. I did not have time to argue with a misinformed police officer. But there he was.

"Hey! You can't be out here!" he said.

"I'm allowed on any road with a speed limit of 50 miles per hour or less," I said.

"Yeah, but not on a route," he said. By that I guessed he meant a numbered state highway. He was wrong, but we were burnin' daylight.

"What am I supposed to do?" I asked.

"Get over on the shoulder," he said.

"I'm not required to ride over there if it is of lower quality than the travel lane," I said. I indicated the loose gravel, potholes, broken glass and dropped mufflers we could see within the next hundred yards.

"You just get over there," he said.

"Okay," I said, with a grin I hoped wasn't overdone. I edged over to the debris field and wobbled along until he was a dot in the distance. Then I merged with traffic and resumed drafting it at a pleasant wind-assisted 25 the rest of the way back to town. After that I never rode without my copy of Maryland Highway Law as it Relates to Biking, and I never got stopped again.

For the most part I try to ride in a way that drivers don't remember. They need to notice me as they go by, but then I want them to forget me. It's too much to hope they'll be favorably impressed by my speed or skill.

No doubt some of them are annoyed when I need to cover the lane to keep someone from passing unsafely. When I do that I try to make big moves that make my purpose obvious. As soon as I can let them pass, I will. I never have the luxury of a four-lane road up here. If I tried any left-tire-track antics I would end up grated through the grille of a log truck. I have shut the gate firmly in the face of some very large vehicles and have dealt with long seconds of aching fear when I have failed to control one of them, but I don't stay out in their face as a mere power play.

I've drawn the analogy to running with the bulls, lion taming and riding a criterium. But all the mechanics address the real-world, person to person physical and psychological interactions of the car-bike relationship. Legalities exist in the background. More and more drivers and cyclists are aware of laws that let cyclists take the lane or require drivers to leave a minimum passing clearance. These merely codify behaviors that traffic-herding cyclists have been trying to stimulate all along.

Infrastructure changes bring up more complex issues. Taxpayers who invest in lanes and side paths want cyclists to disappear into them. Legislators who fear the wrath of voters will at least consider sacrificing those pesky cyclists to keep the motorized majority checking off the right name on the ballot. Advocacy never ends.

Many people consider cyclists in the same category with whitewater paddlers, rock and ice climbers, skydivers and other fools who expose themselves to unnecessary risks for dubious gains. If we're too poor to have cars, it's because we're lazy sods who won't get better jobs. If we CAN afford cars, WHY AREN'T WE USING THEM?!?!

The owner of the local ambulance company told me years ago he didn't know why he hadn't had me as a customer yet. He said it was only a matter of time. He felt I had put myself at voluntary risk that must inevitably lead to injury. Cars are big and hard. Cyclists are small and squishy. If you choose the wrong side of that equation, don't be surprised by what you get. We have trouble being viewed as normal because we don't act normal. Whether what we do should become normal is another question entirely. Right now, as the laws are being framed and enforced we are still a minority and a factionalized one at that.

Ah, Spring! Love is in the Air!

First let me say that I hope Tony Kornheiser crashes his car as he unsuccessfully swerves toward a cyclist he's trying to run off the road. Then I hope he's arrested for assault.

Has human willingness to use force on each other really made us a better species, or just the biggest assholes on the planet?

If the ability to hurt someone is the sole qualification for taking a place on the road, every cyclist should carry a sledgehammer and a gun. There! Now you qualify. It doesn't have to be a big hammer. A four-pound, short handled hammer will do. And handgun choices abound.

You do not have to use these items any more than every driver of a potentially lethal weapon ever actually uses it. All you need to earn respect is the POTENTIAL to end someone's life abruptly. What you lack in acceleration you make up for in muzzle velocity. I can't sprint you down, but my bullet can!

This is absurd. But then humans invented absurdity. If a paradox exists, but no living species has the ability to perceive it, does it really exist? We think the so-called lower animals are oblivious to the irony of human arrogance, but maybe they're constantly rolling their eyes when we're not looking. Let's face it, for millennia we've taken our satisfaction in killing them and each other as a poor substitute for really understanding what's going on. And we're still doing it. If someone pisses you off, threaten them with violence. Kill them if you think you can get away with it. Take pride in something you had nothing to do with, like your skin pigment or the arbitrary political region in which you were born.

I believe the tide of history trends a different way, but it moves slowly. I can't tell you if things will get worse before they get better. I just have a sense that people are slowly coming to realize that getting along is more efficient than constant confrontation. I hope that full acceptance of that does not lie on the other side of a global orgy of violence as the last of the confrontationists go after the nearest target in an outburst of uncontainable frustration. We think of war as a conflict between defined large entities, but it could as easily be a broad conflagration of simultaneous small fires.

It probably won't happen today. The weather is supposed to be beautiful. Time to ride to work.

Hopefully only a temporary feature

Citizen Rider has joined the other cycling bloggers providing a link for interested parties to Chip In for ChipSeal, as Rantwick has said. The link goes to a PayPal account set up to collect funds for the legal defense expenses of Reed Bates, a cyclist in Texas being singled out for extraordinary enforcement attention because he is exercising his right to take the lane to enhance his safety while cycling on the public roadway we all pay for with our taxes.

I hope this feature will only have to be up a short while. I hope such efforts will not be needed again. I don't like to link any monetary appeal to this blog because I want it to be about ideas, free and clear. But sometimes you have to pledge at least some portion of your life, your fortune and your sacred honor in support of the cause of freedom.

Quite simply (and completely unfortunately),the debate over cycling on the roadway will determine how this nation defines that roadway. Is it a speedway? A race track for survival of the swiftest? Or is it the descendant of aboriginal paths, the link by which everyone gets from place to place by the means they deem appropriate?

I believe some Americans are afraid of cycling. Not only are they themselves afraid to ride, they are afraid to see a lot of other people ride, because they fear it will make us a backward nation. What has happened in other nations as soon as their economic status rises? They quit pedaling and get something motorized.

Cycling carries various stigmas, of backwardness, poverty or incurable quaintness. It's all very well for Denmark or the Netherlands to promote cycling. They're cute little countries, not backward, but not to be taken seriously in a world of Superpowers, past and present.

Cycling is fine for Europe. Let them put up with riding clubs and stage races that choke the roads. Whoever gives a crap in America can watch video of that BS on the Internet or some obscure cable channel. Just don't go turning Anytown, USA in Bay-Jing, buddy. Or try to make us like some cuckoo-clock little toy country in Yoo-rup. We drive CARS. BIG CARS with BIG ENGINES for a BIG COUNTRY.

The patriots of motorization are right about one thing. Transportation cycling can really help someone of lesser means enjoy a higher standard of living because they are not enslaved by the expenses of a motor vehicle. So maybe if you let the lowlife ride bikes everywhere, everyone will lose their ambition. We will become a nation of pedaling slackers and fall even further behind the rest of the world we claim still to dominate.

In truth, many transportation cyclists also keep motor vehicles around for the times when they are more appropriate. I don't mind having and using a car. It is more convenient than sharing one. I get to maintain it as I see fit. It's there when I need it. But, by using a bicycle a great deal for transportation I save buckets of money on motor vehicle expenses. As fuel prices inevitably climb, I am grateful to be able to use less of it. As the auto industry and the motoring mindset continue to pump more vehicles onto the road, they and I are both glad that I am saving them one more parking space. That should be another motto of the cycling revolution, alongside One Less Car: One More Parking Space.

Motorists should be strewing rose petals in our path. One More Parking Space. 1500 More Gallons of Gasoline for You to Waste. By reducing petroleum demand, we force the oil companies to LOWER PRICES.

Pound that message in the media. It will get through eventually.

A Brave and Willing Advocate

On Rantwick's blog today he posted about the adventures of a cyclist in Texas who writes under the name Chipseal. Chipseal has also commented here on Citizen Rider.

It seems Mr. Seal has been getting arrested for cycling in a legal fashion on Texas roadways. The law allows cyclist behavior, such as taking the lane, that many motorists find unusual and disturbing. Chipseal has reported his arrests and trips to jail as his odyssey through the Texas courts gets underway.

Controversial figures who call attention to the need for various social changes often suffer for it. They get nailed to crosses, lynched, beaten, attacked by police dogs, blasted with fire hoses, assassinated on Memphis hotel balconies and libeled in the foulest terms by opponents of their point of view. I only skimmed the comments, so I didn't see any of the really homicidal trash talk that can crop up in the comment thread about traffic cycling, but give it time.

Because cycling in the industrialized, motorized, civilized lands is always a political act, whether you intend it or not, every cyclist is at some risk representing their people. By going one step further, challenging the logic of the motorized social norm, Chipseal becomes both a beacon and a target. You can be talking all kinds of sense about something that seems entirely benign and you will find someone who stands firmly against you. In between, everyone else will sort out on the continuum from full support to full opposition.

It's risky enough riding in a bold, assertive fashion. While a cyclist doing so is safer from a visibility standpoint, it also excites the mad dog looking for something to bite. It forces people to consider the issue who might have just squeezed by with a feeling akin to sympathy. In raising consciousness you also raise debate. When feelings rise, propaganda has more effect. First you get 'em running. Then you get 'em running the way you want them to. Threaten "normal" people's complacency and you could face a backlash orchestrated by those who profit heavily from the norm.

Chipseal goes armed with a sunny attitude and an extensive knowledge of Texas vehicle law. He has put up with a couple of overnight jail stays so far. Aside from the actual arrests he seems to have gotten along pretty well with law enforcement authorities. We will have to wait to find out if this becomes a rallying point for the beginning of a Golden Age of Texas cycling, a small isolated incident in which Chipseal prevails quietly in court and goes back to riding in the style of his choice or takes a swerve into the weeds in some way.

Insoluble Conflict

Israelis and Palestinians will live together in perfect harmony long before motorists and bicyclists figure out how to coexist to their mutual satisfaction.

Road sharing is often a classic example of ten pounds of shit in a five pound bag.  When one user group feels it has to give up more than another, resentment builds to the point of an explosion.

Daily the cycling blogosphere and cyclists on social networks share anecdotes and news stories about motorist aggression toward cyclists.  The rants run their course.  Everyone goes about their business until the next one.

Some riding areas are better than others.  Some riders seem to have better luck.  Occasionally, the riding climate improves in an area formerly more hostile.  Then word comes in from a cyclist dealing with daily abuse that would make half of us quit and the other half buy firearms.

People are resilient.  I'm impressed by the riders who cope with abuse by turning the other cheek or giving soft answers.  I always wish I had a flame thrower or a grenade launcher when some pathetic coward in a motor vehicle acts aggressively.

I understand why bicyclists interfere with motorists so much.   We're the wrong size, the wrong speed, even if we're acting like vehicles.  We require motorists to be patient much more than they require it of us. Think of it: unless a motorist is being a jerk, we don't have to accommodate them nearly as much as they accommodate us.  They have to watch how they open doors when they're parallel parked.  They have to slow down, swing wide, wait to pass.  Yes, they have massive horsepower at their disposal, but that just makes it harder.  It's tricky to maneuver the average highway hawg at slow speeds among small, sometimes wobbly other vehicles.

A skilled, strong cyclist can flow pretty well with a lot of urban traffic.  I can bolt out of a track stand at a stoplight faster than most motorists can get out of the hole.  But I'm getting older and my track stand isn't bombproof.  A cyclist with a foot down often doesn't take off as easily as a motorcyclist with a foot down.

All this is made worse by the modern human love of black-and-white conflicts fueled by catchy slogans and intractable philosophies.  The decades since the 1970s have only seen the sides grow more polarized, the rhetoric more inflammatory.  In the 1970s we mostly believed, naively, that the general public would see the fun and logic of what we were doing and join in.  Almost 40 years later, we have at least as many drivers as ever making war on the cyclists they see.

We have to make the case over and over: why should motorists share the road?  Forget what's "right."  People all over the world have to fight ridiculously bloody battles to get to do what should be theirs by right.  Our goal is to make our case without one more ridiculously bloody war.

It's a time-honored human tradition to try to make an adversary pay for his point of view with his blood.  It's supposed to test the depth of your commitment.  The problem is that we don't threaten the motorists.  Unless we start an armed bicyclist insurgency, we just have to take it and take it and take it.  Like passive resisters everywhere, we prove our resolve by our willingness to take casualties until the other side stops out of sheer guilt.  Believe what you will about Gandhi and the American civil rights movement, those tactics only get you so far.  Throw down a black person in front of a mob of white supremacists today or tomorrow and you will not see a twitch of conscience from among them.  They are only prevented from heinous programs of ethnic cleansing by the threat of force against them.  The negatives of human nature are as deeply - or more deeply - entrenched than the learned behaviors of fairness and ethics. Civilization is maintained as much by threat of force and appeals to self interest as it is by any attempt at moral education.

Motorists generally have nothing to fear from cyclists.  That includes any consequences for injuring us.  It's a credit to the general motorist conscience and perhaps to a mistaken perception that they might get into trouble that more of them don't just rub us out.

A general sense of fairness probably encourages cooperative motorists, even if they are not cyclists themselves.  Willingness to accommodate can be eroded by other stressors.  The more solid benefits we can show the non-cyclist to support their willingness to live and let live, the more likely cyclists are to live.

If no replacement for fossil fuel comes along, cycling will rise by default.  If renewable, affordable energy keeps some sort of motor vehicle within reach of the general public, cyclists will continue to battle hostility and indifference from the vast majority who feel they have better ways to expend their energy. Cars get you there faster, much of the time. You don't arrive all sweaty or covered with precipitation.  You can thoughtlessly throw your junk in the car and drive to your destination, sitting in a comfy chair with an entertainment system.  It takes less thought, less planning, less effort.  Only a few weirdos want to do things the hard way.

While we try to win more motorists over to the notion of muscle-powered transportation and recreation, we have to show them why it's a better idea to put up with us than try to get rid of us.

Depressing news from Iowa

"Shared roadways are no longer safe or practical in today's society." So says a group in Iowa seeking to have bicycles banned from most of their state's highways. A group that calls itself the "Citizens for Safety Coalition of Iowa" is circulating a petition to get an initiative on the ballot for 2010 that would make cycling on "farm to market" routes illegal. Given the distribution of farms and markets in Iowa, that effectively ends much road cycling. Get on the bike path!

This news comes on the heels of the move by Jefferson County, Colorado, commissioners, to push through state legislation giving Colorado counties power to ban cycling from any roads they choose.

This is how transportation cycling ends, if we let it. One battlefield at a time, motorists push us back, push us back, waaay back.

If you're not a resident of the state in question, you can't do much to affect legislators there. If you can't vote them out of office, they don't give a shit what you have to say. It's obvious they have a thing against cyclists. Cyclists who can't possibly grab them by the political balls will rate no attention at all. You have to be ready to fight the war when it comes to you, or prevent it by continuous lobbying before the fact.

It always comes down to money. Many of the opponents of road cycling will not believe that they are persecuting low-income citizens. Many low-income citizens dutifully enslave themselves to motor vehicles and try to live like "normal" people. But if road cycling is outlawed, only outlaws will cycle on the road. Some of those desperadoes are bound to be decent, striving workers facing one more hurdle in their battle to make ends meet. I count myself among their number. I do all right, but a lot of that depends on being able to keep my transportation expenses in check.

Then there are the health advantages cycling bans will take from us. Those of us willing to be as active as our natural physiology requires deserve to be able to integrate physical activity into the practical workings of our lives.

Perhaps the opponents of cycling would like to see a big clot of motor vehicles blocking their favorite highway. Forget Critical Mass with bikes. Get out there in cars, the way they want us to, and drive like little old ladies. Get around us NOW, bitches!

I think I need to take a break and get some decent food into me. I can't think about moto-centric bigots for a while.