Bikes were made for the road and the road was made for bikes

 On a trip to the gas station today, the card reader on the pump malfunctioned, so I had to pay inside. As I returned to my vehicle, a pickup truck with a plow blade came barreling in from my left as if I did not exist. The station is having a price war with one down the road, so it's bustling with eager customers.

I'm sick today. I wouldn't have gone out at all, but this was the least frigid and nasty day for several days out in the forecast. I half turned my head toward the truck with a well-practiced "where the fck do you think you're going?" look. He kept pushing me, but at least slowed enough for me to get across to the gas island.

I thought about all of the decades I've spent facing down vehicles that could effortlessly kill me. I thought about how mountain biking and other segregated forms of cycling avoid the confrontation and life risk of traffic, except as you are driving to your "safe" place to ride.

Good luck getting motorists to recognize the role that bicycles played in the early engineering of both automobiles and airplanes, as well as the first public pressure to improve pavement, making today's highway vehicles possible at all, especially at highway speeds. The airplane thing is less of a stretch because of the Wright Brothers, but then those guys escaped from traffic by heading to the sky.

When I first mastered a two-wheeler at the dawn of the 1960s, that was the key to freedom for a kid in those days. All the way to the 1970s, motorists seemed more willing to go along, get along, but as both cyclist and motorist numbers rose, conflicts rose with them. By the mid 1970s, road hassles were common. In some places they were endemic. It's only gotten worse since then. This follows the paradox that increased bike usage almost always coincides with surges in population in an area, guaranteeing more hostility. There are more biking organizations today than in the 1970s and '80s, and overall more riders, though I don't know the breakdown regarding the percentage of road users. And yet we still have to deal with the careless and the malicious.

It extends to pedestrians as well. On social media I see posts from pedestrian advocacy groups reporting their own encounters, and sometimes deadly incidents with drivers.

Motorists are caught in the middle between themselves and the vulnerable road users. Who here is ready to admit that they have absolutely seethed when stuck behind someone who seems to be driving much slower than conditions warrant? I have as bad a tendency as anyone to rate my speed on the basis of the limits of stability and traction. More than once I have come out of an entrance ramp a little sideways, though definitely not in the last 30 years or more. When the road is open I drive fast, so I can drive slowly when I get to the congested parts. So I don't preach from a stance of superiority. Motorists, I am a sinner like yourselves. The difference is when I'm around vulnerable road users.

From the moment I started driving I sensed peer pressure to keep up the pace. Back before internet navigation services, if you had to find your way around an unfamiliar area, good luck with the locals. They all knew where they were going. Even in your own area, you would attract unwanted criticism. This was when road rage shootings happened a lot less often. There again: more than a hundred million fewer people in the country when I started driving. For social animals we really seem to piss each other off a lot.

As someone who was bullied for a few bad years in school, I developed a defensive offensiveness because I couldn't develop the kind of sense of humor that launches entertainment careers. I grew tall and broad shouldered enough to make most of the tough kids decide not to bother in high school. I wasn't tall by any means. Just tall enough. The idea of defended personal space translated readily to road riding in the 1970s and beyond. It's a shame that it has to be that way, and it's hardly a foolproof charm. It's just part of claiming the bicycle's ancestral territory.

Support your local pedestrian

 On my bike commutes I was seeing a moderately tall, bearded young man walking toward Wolfeboro along Route 28. Usually I would see him somewhere along the north slope between Route 171 and the crossroads at North Wolfeboro Road and Pork Hill Road, but it might be further north before 171 or a little further along, past North Wolfeboro. It took me a while to notice that he was walking all the way into the town of Wolfeboro and walking to various destinations while he was there. If he also walked back out the way he came in, he had to be logging well over 20 miles a day on foot.

I never saw him hitching a ride. He walked on the correct side, facing traffic. I can't recall if I ever saw him walking back northward toward Ossipee, but I might have forgotten it. Whether you see someone along a route depends entirely on your schedules. Our mornings coincided regularly. In bike season I might be starting toward home anywhere within a span of an hour or more. Going in was much more consistent.

The walker wasn't sauntering, but he wasn't speed-walking or jogging, either. When I would see him through the workshop windows, it was generally a couple of hours after I had arrived. The transportation pedestrian maintains a cruising pace, not a racing pace.

Because I hate driving, particularly with other drivers on the road, I have considered various ways to cover the distance to work in the seasons of darkness and frozen precipitation. The obvious first choice would be cross-country skiing. That depends on snow that will provide grip for the skis and smooth running. In New Hampshire, especially with the changing climate, ungroomed snow is often like soapy porcelain or wet concrete. And the skier would have to stay out of the travel lanes, probably outside of the plow drift.

Native Americans in New England invented the snowshoe, not the ski, because terrain and snow conditions here made the short, wide flotation more practical. I do not know if they experimented with some form of traction device lashed to the bottom of it, for the hard, refrozen conditions. However, when snowshoe hiking was the only way to get around, trails would get packed down to a smooth surface. The system worked for a few thousand years.

That was before cars and snowplows. In our modern world, a transportation snowshoe hiker is rare to nonexistent. I have not seen the summer pedestrian pushing into darkness and snow.

On snowshoes, the pedestrian would not be able to maintain more than about 3 miles per hour at best. Skis glide, but snowshoes give nothing away. Plod, plod, plod, you have to take every step. Along the highway, a walker might consider bare-booting it on the pavement when no vehicles were passing, hopping out of the way as necessary. On the stretches with a guardrail, that would require vaulting over the rail and whatever plow-piled snow was in the way. You wouldn't want to chew up the snowshoes on the pavement. Good luck leaping over the guardrail with them on your feet, too. Because a commuting pedestrian is on the road with commuting drivers, traffic will be heavy, requiring frequent leaps out of the way. Or you square your shoulders and forge ahead, leaving it to drivers to do the right thing.

A skier wouldn't be able to match bike pace. Skiing is generally faster than walking, but even on the downhills you won't hit the speeds that a bike can reach. Uphill skiing speeds are totally comparable to walking. So the trip to work and back would take much longer than a bike commute.

Winter rain screws everything up. Especially now, when torrential rains have become more frequent, crossing ten or fifteen miles without a vehicle, along routes designed for vehicles, would take many dangerous hours. Warmer than average temperatures are still much colder than your body temperature. Wetness saps your heat. You can dress for it, but things still have to go smoothly for you to arrive at a safe, warm destination where you can strip off your wet clothes. Arriving at work, that can be awkward. If you have no place to dry the clothes you wore to hike to work, you'll be putting on that clammy mess to head home.

On my particular route, there is a path option for the last three miles into town. The Cotton Valley Trail follows the old rail line, so it is basically straight and level. But you have to survive to get there. Homebound it only covers the first three miles, leaving you to navigate the highway after that. The trail is used by snow machines, bikes, dog walkers, skiers, and the rail car drivers who have demanded that the rails remain in place. They don't specifically clear the rails for winter use, but if the snow and ice cover is low enough I suppose one of them might give it a try. So, depending on surface conditions and time of day (or night) you might be completely alone or in the middle of a bustling winter scene like Currier and Ives only with more dog poop and attitude.

If I lived close enough to work I would definitely walk most of the time. I lived for nine years without using a car to get to my various jobs in the Annapolis area. Only when I moved to a place with snowier roads and a much longer commute did I get a car and start acting somewhat normal for at least part of the year. I like my spot here, so I can't reduce or alter my commuting route to make human-powered methods work safely for the entire year. Maybe if civilization collapses before the climate does I'll be able to ski the abandoned roads to get to work. Someone will have to start making wooden skis for the winter travelers, while we nurse along the simple bikes that survived from the 20th Century and the first few years of the 21st for the summer travelers.

Like all post-apocalyptic fantasies, that one glosses over the violence and destruction that would precede it. We'll never just flip a switch to the post-apocalyptic utopia. Then again, with consensus, we could flip the switch without the apocalypse. Add a human-powered travel corridor to all travel ways. Not everyone can do without a motor vehicle, but the ones who could do it would be more likely to try it if they had a guaranteed route.

The best thing about a snow-based winter system is that you don't have to pay to plow it down to a bare surface. Grooming snow requires machinery and skilled drivers, but it still takes less time and brute force than pushing snow out of the way. Along my route, a human-powered commuter or transportation cyclist could revert to the regular road when snow season ended. The side path would not have to be maintained for summer use. Most likely, the majority of users would like it year-round. That's a fine option. But a ski and walking path could have somewhat steeper climbs, requiring less massive re-grading to establish the route.

Here I am, planning the practicalities of something that isn't going to happen. I did want to be a fiction writer...

Throwing our bodies in front of the machines...

 Two women ran side by side along the edge of Mill Street on this sunny morning in meteorological spring. They were facing traffic, as they should when no other infrastructure is provided, but there is a sidewalk on the other side of that street. I expected them to divert into a parking lot entrance a few yards ahead of them, because that's what pedestrians on that side of Mill Street usually do. Instead, they continued to run up the traffic lane itself, toward the intersection with Main Street, a corner that motorists regularly round as if they're being filmed in a chase scene. It may be a driver yanking a quick left from Main Street southbound or snapping a quick right just past the last parked car on Main Street northbound.

Most motorists are unaware of how fast they're actually going in their machines designed to isolate them from the wind of their passage and the roughness of the pavement. Locked into the flow, we all have a tendency to focus on stopping only where we had already planned to, or wherever circumstances force us to. Drivers scan constantly for objects the same size as their vehicles, or larger.

The runners would have had to pass a retaining wall that gives them nowhere to go except right up the lane past a small building to get to the little section of parking lot beyond. And that section of parking lot is used as the entry to the bigger parking lot behind that small building, by drivers careening off of Main Street. With piles of snow crowding the roadway at that corner, the runners would not be able to walk across the worn dirt and trampled grass for a few yards to get to the sidewalk along Main Street, as they could do in the summer. This would bring them right up to the corner of Main Street itself. I couldn't see them once they passed the lower end of the little building, but I knew what their options were.

Their trajectory didn't end with a screech and a thump. One reason that people continue to do risky things is that they usually get away with it. In my observation, most drivers are aware enough to avoid hitting anyone. But are they happy about it?

Whether drivers are happy to see us doesn't matter unless you encounter the one who is finally having a bad enough day to engage in assault. You can't know who that is. So, if you want to use the roads you have to put yourself out there.

My first thought was that these women were idiots to place themselves at risk like that. But then I considered the challenge of creating traffic systems that accommodate all users. Unless a jurisdiction has the space and the budget to separate all users, we're going to mix. In Wolfeboro, not every street has a sidewalk. People walk where they can, because otherwise they would have to deal with congestion and parking for short hops in the village, which is already crowded with vehicular traffic. And, especially in the summer, the dinky sidewalks are so crowded that pedestrians spill over into the streets, or cross wherever they happen to be.

Pedestrians and bike riders are mobile traffic calmers. We aren't made of concrete. We aren't crash-absorbing barrels, although we will burst on impact, splattering liquid all over the place, if an inattentive motorist plows into us. Drivers know this, too. Most of them don't want to be grossed out like that. So our mere presence serves to remind them to be more alert. Our presence in larger numbers creates friction in their flow, automatically slowing them. Our bodies in front of them confront them with humanity.

The women did not get hit, but they did remind drivers that we exist. Every non-motorized road user reminds drivers and transportation planners that people do something besides drive. I would not have taken the route that they did, nor would I have advised them to do it. And I don't think they did it to make a statement. I think they were pretty oblivious. That makes it an even more powerful demonstration that walkers and pedalers need to figure in planning and in the perceptions of drivers. If no one is seen out there, the people who make the plans don't perceive a need. Drivers happily forget how to act around us. If you hang back and wait for the perfect facility, you will wait a long time. So we throw our bodies in front of the machines.

With Daylight Relocating Time starting this weekend, all I will need is some base miles and halfway decent weather to start the bike commuting season. This used to involve a distinct period of retraining motorists. For some reason, for about the past decade, drivers have seemed to adapt more readily, with less hostility than they used to. That can change at any time, though. No rider on the road can ever assume that the troubles are over. Just be grateful for times when they seem to be suspended. No doubt around here the transition is eased by people like those two women, who just go for it, and by the handful of riders who take every opportunity throughout the winter to grab a quick spin. We owe them reinforcements, these defenders of the people's right to self-propulsion. Not every struggle for freedom fills the news with flames and mass casualties, mobilizing national governments. Your own world is right here for you to shape.

For Whom the Bell Dings

On the noisy streets, a bicycle bell is just about useless. An air horn and a flamethrower would be good. But on multi-use paths a bicycle bell is apparently an important social convention.

I have ridden sections of the local trail for years, announcing myself to pedestrians simply by speaking to them, or with the routine noises of tires on crushed stone. At my job, I hate being summoned by a bell. It seems so peremptory and condescending. You ring for the servants. You don't ring for a respected professional or craftsperson. I thought people might prefer the human touch. Funny that: I'm not very fond of talking to strangers. And I'm not trying to strike up a  conversation when I make a human sound to warn them of my presence.

The response was almost always faintly or overtly hostile.

So I finally got a bell. I don't like little dingy bells, or cheesy, staccato ringers. Even the one I settled on was ultimately just good enough. I'd prefer something with a deep enough tone that it is more felt than heard, but it would probably have to be made of bronze and weigh a thousand pounds. That's the gong I want at home, too. I want some enormous temple gong that groans out an earth-trembling tone that makes the villagers in the next valley lift their heads.

On the bike, I have something that goes "ding!"

Of Lezyne's offerings, this one had the lowest tone. The least highest, I should say. And it sustains fairly nicely, though not as nicely as the one a customer came in with last week. He said he needed it to ride on a path in Canada, where they are required equipment. His bell had no brand markings at all. Its tone was higher than I want, but it sustains forever. It launched me on the hunt for something with a deeper voice, and similar duration. And by the way, it needs to fit on my already crowded handlebar.

The Lezyne attaches with elastic bands, so I can transfer it from bike to bike easily. As shown here, it is riding on top of a Planet Bike Beamer that I use as a front blinky and supplemental short-range light. It'll do for now.

On the first evening commute with it, I came up behind two people. When I got close enough to figure I could ring and pass in a smooth, concise maneuver, I gave it a ding. The pedestrians leaped aside and stood almost at attention. No dirty looks. No snide or snarly comments. Wow.

A little further out, on a causeway with water on either side, I had the opportunity to ding again. The walkers practically threw themselves into the lake, again without visible irritation.

Talk about conditioning. Ding! Leap! The results have been roughly the same on each ride since the first.

Oncoming pedestrians still look like they consider me a nuisance and an affront. I have not yet tried dinging at them to see if it transforms them abruptly into obedient robots. I don't want power to corrupt me.