I can only take my best guess what the human species will need - aside from mass sterilization -- to enjoy life in *The Future*. I gave it my best shot, focusing on non-motorized recreation, because we were a recreation nation, for all our protestations of industrious work addiction. People worked hard to play hard. Buy a speedboat, a jet ski, an RV, a dirt bike. Get tickets to a professional sports event.
The alternative energy folks and the neo-agriculturalists offer lifestyle solutions that do not directly attack the motor mentality. You can kill cyclists on the road just as effectively with a hybrid or full electric vehicle, and still have a modest carbon footprint. Indeed, kill enough people with your electric vehicle and you will be carbon-negative, because you've reduced the population while avoiding your own fossil fuel use.
All motorized transportation and entertainment can be greened up. Electricity is the rage right now. It still has to be generated, but we'll get that tidied up, too. Try an electric speedboat!
I have a feeling that recreation may be at the top of a declining slope. In fact, it has probably started down it. I see fewer people at play at the theme park I think of as Wolfe Disney World. It's not just traffic in our store. The surges are shorter and smaller in every activity.
Even the annual herd migration known as Motorcycle Week seems to have been shrinking steadily. This year, most of the participants I saw made me think, "born to be wild...a looooong time ago." Now their tune is "Born to be Wide."
We could never have maintained the pace we set in the 1980s and '90s. I rode that wave, but it scared me then, because I knew it had to crash on the shore eventually. The lifestyle I envisioned when I was inexperienced enough to believe society's problems were not only soluble, but on the way to being solved, used pedal power extensively. Pedal to work. Pedal on errands. Pedal on vacation. A few years of it showed me how much nearly everyone else hated that idea, and hated people like me for being out there in the way. But maybe its time will come. More likely we'll go straight from the explosive end of the machine age right back into the stone age, but I'll be out there riding in any case.
I have a lot of trouble getting myself just to play. The commute serves multiple purposes: exercise, recreation of a sort, and cheap transportation. Meanwhile, my livelihood depends on other people recreating, since that makes up the vast majority of bike use, and all cross-country skiing.
Showing posts with label Motorcycle Week. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Motorcycle Week. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2016
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Jerks on Motorcycles
Laconia, New Hampshire, hosts an enormous motorcycle rally every June. Originally just a weekend, it was expanded to a full week in the mid 1990s to make room for more fun and frolic and extract more money from this enthusiastic demographic.
To the residents of the Lakes Region it's viewed as either a great time had by all or something akin to the invasion of the Mongol horde.
People ask me whether motorcycles bother me. For the most part I welcome them because many of the riders seem to understand what it's like to get around on a small, less-than-four-wheeled vehicle (some of them have trikes) that is often overlooked by the oblivious majority sealed behind glass. But every grouping of people includes jerks.
Because New Hampshire has some fantastic cycling roads and beautiful scenery, motorcyclists like to ride here during all the ice-free months, not just during the big week in June. For a while we had an epidemic of idiotic young men on Jap screamers. They liked to pass extremely loud and incredibly close. I learned to time a good spit to my left so that their unhelmeted face would pass through that air space at the precise instant the phlegm-bomb was hanging at the top of its arc to meet them. At the speed they were traveling they probably took it for just another large bug.
The screamer kids have almost completely disappeared. This could be because they have joined the ranks of the organ donors, had the bike repossessed, lost their license or simply had to give it up because they had another sort of accident that siphons their funds to pay child support rather than motorcycle support.
Another annoying subculture of motorcyclists believes that loud exhaust noise makes them safer. "Loud pipes save lives" proclaims the tee shirt or bumper sticker. Not true, my thundering friends. The noise makes most of us grit our teeth and hope you will be silenced immediately by any means necessary. And because the noise tends to spew out behind you rather than in front, it does nothing to alert drivers in your path. The way the noise echoes around, it's often hard to tell where it's coming from until the source of it actually arrives.
As a pedaler, I hear the pipes a-calling before the bike reaches me, but how much of a threat am I to the safety of the regal Harley? Yes, I could swerve and take the rider out in a probably suicidal moment of carelessness or bitter malice, but I don't think I am the threat the loud riders pretend to have in mind when they justify their breach of the peace.
I've learned to roll my eyes and flip a low bird at the motorcyclists who go by me pretending to pedal. But I can't suppress a seething rage at the ones who rip past my elbow, especially on really loud bikes, when they have room to move away from me or slow down. This weekend I had two of them in quick succession in a group of four or five. They were accelerating away from a stop, so they chose to reach the speed they were going when they blasted by me almost knee to knee. Forget hanging a clam in front of them. I wanted a grenade launcher.
Humans will do annoying things and believe stupid shit as long as there are humans. Indeed, the annoying behavior and stupid beliefs may be what finally ends our reign as top predators and global slobs. So the loud pipes idiots, screamer riders and sweaty jerks in tight shorts blocking traffic will continue to mingle with the the four-or-more-wheeled inmates of rolling sensory deprivation tanks, surviving mostly by luck, regardless of what you believe about your skill or divine favor. The way we race around on our little paved strips is really pretty crazy, but we evolved along with it, so it's "normal."
Have fun out there.
To the residents of the Lakes Region it's viewed as either a great time had by all or something akin to the invasion of the Mongol horde.
People ask me whether motorcycles bother me. For the most part I welcome them because many of the riders seem to understand what it's like to get around on a small, less-than-four-wheeled vehicle (some of them have trikes) that is often overlooked by the oblivious majority sealed behind glass. But every grouping of people includes jerks.
Because New Hampshire has some fantastic cycling roads and beautiful scenery, motorcyclists like to ride here during all the ice-free months, not just during the big week in June. For a while we had an epidemic of idiotic young men on Jap screamers. They liked to pass extremely loud and incredibly close. I learned to time a good spit to my left so that their unhelmeted face would pass through that air space at the precise instant the phlegm-bomb was hanging at the top of its arc to meet them. At the speed they were traveling they probably took it for just another large bug.
The screamer kids have almost completely disappeared. This could be because they have joined the ranks of the organ donors, had the bike repossessed, lost their license or simply had to give it up because they had another sort of accident that siphons their funds to pay child support rather than motorcycle support.
Another annoying subculture of motorcyclists believes that loud exhaust noise makes them safer. "Loud pipes save lives" proclaims the tee shirt or bumper sticker. Not true, my thundering friends. The noise makes most of us grit our teeth and hope you will be silenced immediately by any means necessary. And because the noise tends to spew out behind you rather than in front, it does nothing to alert drivers in your path. The way the noise echoes around, it's often hard to tell where it's coming from until the source of it actually arrives.
As a pedaler, I hear the pipes a-calling before the bike reaches me, but how much of a threat am I to the safety of the regal Harley? Yes, I could swerve and take the rider out in a probably suicidal moment of carelessness or bitter malice, but I don't think I am the threat the loud riders pretend to have in mind when they justify their breach of the peace.
I've learned to roll my eyes and flip a low bird at the motorcyclists who go by me pretending to pedal. But I can't suppress a seething rage at the ones who rip past my elbow, especially on really loud bikes, when they have room to move away from me or slow down. This weekend I had two of them in quick succession in a group of four or five. They were accelerating away from a stop, so they chose to reach the speed they were going when they blasted by me almost knee to knee. Forget hanging a clam in front of them. I wanted a grenade launcher.
Humans will do annoying things and believe stupid shit as long as there are humans. Indeed, the annoying behavior and stupid beliefs may be what finally ends our reign as top predators and global slobs. So the loud pipes idiots, screamer riders and sweaty jerks in tight shorts blocking traffic will continue to mingle with the the four-or-more-wheeled inmates of rolling sensory deprivation tanks, surviving mostly by luck, regardless of what you believe about your skill or divine favor. The way we race around on our little paved strips is really pretty crazy, but we evolved along with it, so it's "normal."
Have fun out there.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Motorcycle Week
This is a great week to be on two wheels. It's Motorcycle Week in New Hampshire.
Thousands of motorcyclists converge on Central New Hampshire. The vast majority of them are very good around bicyclists, even if some of them poke a little fun by pretending to pedal as they go by. You're a riot, asshole. I flip those morons off subtly, with the middle digit casually draped over the handlebars, but it's all in fun.
In the past couple of years some of them have seemed more aggressive. Last year the weather was horrible, so I blame their irritability on that. Also, the ones who ride rice rockets with nasty screechy engines tend more often to be complete male appendages of reproduction. And some of the ones set up like road racers like to whiz by kind of close. I guess they haven't really thought about what would happen to them if we tangled.
The invasion of the two-wheeled horde keeps the four-wheeled population pretty well boxed in. There are always a number of fatal accidents. In the ones involving cars and trucks, the cars and trucks always win. Others just involve motorcycles, high speed and chemical impairment. Generally when the motorcyclists ride in groups they rule the road. It's the loners that get picked off.
If it went on longer than a week it might get really tiresome. As it is, I witness the herds moving through with a sense of wonder. At night I can hear big groups miles away. It's much less disturbing than the noise of a single ATV living near me. They come. They roam around. They leave.
It used to be just a weekend. It used to be a lot rougher and dirtier. It can still get rowdy. But it's entertaining.
Thousands of motorcyclists converge on Central New Hampshire. The vast majority of them are very good around bicyclists, even if some of them poke a little fun by pretending to pedal as they go by. You're a riot, asshole. I flip those morons off subtly, with the middle digit casually draped over the handlebars, but it's all in fun.
In the past couple of years some of them have seemed more aggressive. Last year the weather was horrible, so I blame their irritability on that. Also, the ones who ride rice rockets with nasty screechy engines tend more often to be complete male appendages of reproduction. And some of the ones set up like road racers like to whiz by kind of close. I guess they haven't really thought about what would happen to them if we tangled.
The invasion of the two-wheeled horde keeps the four-wheeled population pretty well boxed in. There are always a number of fatal accidents. In the ones involving cars and trucks, the cars and trucks always win. Others just involve motorcycles, high speed and chemical impairment. Generally when the motorcyclists ride in groups they rule the road. It's the loners that get picked off.
If it went on longer than a week it might get really tiresome. As it is, I witness the herds moving through with a sense of wonder. At night I can hear big groups miles away. It's much less disturbing than the noise of a single ATV living near me. They come. They roam around. They leave.
It used to be just a weekend. It used to be a lot rougher and dirtier. It can still get rowdy. But it's entertaining.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)