While reading this article on "The Importance of Social Justice in Cycling Policy," I found much with which I agree. The authors, John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, stress that no single change will miraculously bring about a great cycling environment in the United States. While their names might invite mocking comparison to mewl and puke, I mention this merely to knock the legs out from under any detractor who might think it was an overlooked gem of wit.
In any situation that could affect the expenditure of a large amount of money, one might reasonably sniff carefully to detect disinformation and propaganda. If the study authors had highlighted the massive effort, expense and complexity of instituting changes to infrastructure and education to improve cycling, I might wonder if it was faint praise by cycling opponents working undercover to discourage any attempt. Indeed, the zealous insistence that vehicular cycling techniques on existing roadways are the one true faith does more to discourage major participation in cycling than does a frank and full evaluation of problems involved and their potential solutions.
If the bike industry can bury a disinterested population under hundreds of bike models, surely we can entertain many valuable options to improve the conditions in which we ride.
In particular I appreciated Pucher and Buehler's reference to aging or elderly riders. I plan to be an elderly rider, and I don't plan on retiring obediently to some separate path to nowhere to toddle along in my dotage. Cycling can improve the quality of life for older people from both a physiological and an economic standpoint. I have stretched a modest income a long way by keeping my transportation and health care expenses low. The bicycle has been a crucial part of this.
I was still in my 30s when I began to wonder how I might fare as a transportation cyclist in old age. Since the only way to avoid old age is to die young, I want options, should I happen to survive.
Failure to provide better transportation options amounts to class warfare against people who can't afford to play the car game or who try to avoid it. Right now, many people in many parts of the world aspire to own cars and whiz around the way we do. It was a good few decades, from the end of World War II through the 1980s. Unquestionably, we are the victim of our own success with motor vehicles. Traffic and parking issues afflict every urban center and Sprawlopolis.
The people who can remember how it was before car ownership became almost a universal requirement don't tend to remember it as a good time. An 81-year-old man I know in Wolfeboro drives his car a few hundred yards to the grocery store and post office rather than be seen demeaning himself on the sidewalk. In the summer I regularly beat him to the store and back, whether I'm cycling or walking. But still he drives. What's more, he's been doing it since he was a lot younger. And he's a very well-preserved 81. He could easily walk on his errands. He's just embarrassed to do so.
This same octogenarian cycles happily on the rail trail in town, once he drives the mile to it from his house. If he felt safer on the roads he might consider riding more. And he is not alone in his trepidation. We fit out dozens of riders for the path. They use it even after they take one of the nasty spills for which the path is famous because of its poor design. The path has definitely sent more people to the hospital than car-bike crashes have contributed in the years since the path was built. It is still viewed as a safer, more desirable cycling venue than the street.
The path highlights the desire for cycling facilities protected from the perception of motorist harm and the need for those facilities to be truly well made.
Car-free downtown areas would help a lot. To accommodate this, cyclists and walkers would have to accept pedicabs, rickshaws and low-powered motorized transport for people who really can't get themselves around and those who obstinately refuse to. Traffic is traffic. People make mistakes or do boneheaded things. Things can and should be better. They will never be perfect. I hope the voices of reason prevail soon, so we can actually get moving. It starts with people repeating reasonable ideas and refusing to be drawn into shoving matches.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
What a Spaz!
Ibuprofen, my old friend --
I've come to chew on you again.
It's been four hours since my last two pills
that take the edge off this pain that kills.
And it hurts even worse than a swift kick in the balls,
or cycling falls...
leaving the sound of groaning
Thursday morning when I tried to put on my socks my back exploded in pain as a muscle spasm gripped it. I dropped to my knees, sobbing profanity, trying to breathe.
Within a minute or two I could move a little. I managed to evade my wife's notice as I made my way to my bike. Maybe I could ride my way out of this. Perhaps spinning the gear would ease the spasm and end this misery.
Then again, perhaps not. I crawled to work at about 14 miles per hour. Once I got on the bike the actual pedaling wasn't too bad. Getting off it was another matter. I could barely drag it into the shop. But what the hell. If I was going to be in miserable agony I might as well be at work. Who wants to waste a day off on that?
Every few minutes I had to sit down as the pain made me nauseous. Good times! I left my wife a phone message to tell her I was incapable of walking across town for a violin lesson. In return, she brought me pain killers and a cold pack to put on the knotted muscles.
My boss dragged my twisted carcass to my house after work. Friday I only left my house to get a massage.
Things are getting better. No disks seem to be involved. Massagiste says the likely trigger was the psoas muscle, a deeply-situated hip flexor. Stretching it as part of an overall campaign seems to be helping, along with fistfuls of my one-time favorite snack food, ibuprofen.
This is the problem with mindlessly cycling hard, day after day, with an aging body. Things like this sneak up on you. I used to be obsessive about stretching and supportive conditioning. Unfortunately, between work, domestic chores and transit time, I have to slice the remaining minutes pretty finely. The weights and stretching kept getting squeezed out. The stretching obviously has to squeeze back in.
I'll just cut back on work.
Pains like this are scary when they seem to come out of nowhere. I felt absolutely fine, with none of my usual warning twinges. It was a classic case. Pain like that makes you wonder if you'll ever move freely again. Prior to the Big Stiffie of rigor mortis, that is.
I've come to chew on you again.
It's been four hours since my last two pills
that take the edge off this pain that kills.
And it hurts even worse than a swift kick in the balls,
or cycling falls...
leaving the sound of groaning
Thursday morning when I tried to put on my socks my back exploded in pain as a muscle spasm gripped it. I dropped to my knees, sobbing profanity, trying to breathe.
Within a minute or two I could move a little. I managed to evade my wife's notice as I made my way to my bike. Maybe I could ride my way out of this. Perhaps spinning the gear would ease the spasm and end this misery.
Then again, perhaps not. I crawled to work at about 14 miles per hour. Once I got on the bike the actual pedaling wasn't too bad. Getting off it was another matter. I could barely drag it into the shop. But what the hell. If I was going to be in miserable agony I might as well be at work. Who wants to waste a day off on that?
Every few minutes I had to sit down as the pain made me nauseous. Good times! I left my wife a phone message to tell her I was incapable of walking across town for a violin lesson. In return, she brought me pain killers and a cold pack to put on the knotted muscles.
My boss dragged my twisted carcass to my house after work. Friday I only left my house to get a massage.
Things are getting better. No disks seem to be involved. Massagiste says the likely trigger was the psoas muscle, a deeply-situated hip flexor. Stretching it as part of an overall campaign seems to be helping, along with fistfuls of my one-time favorite snack food, ibuprofen.
This is the problem with mindlessly cycling hard, day after day, with an aging body. Things like this sneak up on you. I used to be obsessive about stretching and supportive conditioning. Unfortunately, between work, domestic chores and transit time, I have to slice the remaining minutes pretty finely. The weights and stretching kept getting squeezed out. The stretching obviously has to squeeze back in.
I'll just cut back on work.
Pains like this are scary when they seem to come out of nowhere. I felt absolutely fine, with none of my usual warning twinges. It was a classic case. Pain like that makes you wonder if you'll ever move freely again. Prior to the Big Stiffie of rigor mortis, that is.
Friday, June 12, 2009
The First Thing Dog Owners Always Say
I got bitten on the hand by an enormous St. Bernard last week but I didn't want to post about it until I had a chance to draw this.
At the Mercy of Experts
If we each take the time to do exhaustive research and independent experiments to determine for ourselves whether bike helmets really work, and we do not ride until we have made up our minds, a lot of cyclists will be kept off the road while they do their homework.
If, instead, we trust experts on one side or the other, we're really taking it more on faith. But faith is the one thing we are told to suspect. Read the studies and decide for yourself! It's as simple as [insert disputed topic here].
Let me know how it turns out.
If, instead, we trust experts on one side or the other, we're really taking it more on faith. But faith is the one thing we are told to suspect. Read the studies and decide for yourself! It's as simple as [insert disputed topic here].
Let me know how it turns out.
In Other News
A few years ago, when Lance Armstrong was at the height of his Tour de France monopoly, Dasani offered a cheesy little road bike as a promotion. Now this full-fendered commuter graces the produce department of my local grocery store. How cool is that?
Let Freedom (and your ears) Ring!
Ladies and germs, I am AGAINST MANDATORY HELMET LAWS. I am against them for the same reason I am against a number of other societal compulsions related to personal behavior.
I watch the actual scientific debate about helmets with interest. With equal interest do I view the squalling of the most ardent opponents of the brain bucket.
At the very least, your average helmet will blunt the impact of the average thrown beer bottle hurled by some redneck humorist with a better than average pitching arm.
I've never cycled outside the United States. Some places have been better than others. A lot depends on your goal for cycling. I don't like to do it as a destination activity -- something I go to do in a closed venue and then return home, usually by automobile. Other people will only do it that way. Every different cycling group perceives it in a different way.
Back in the 1990s I even remember a letter to a bicycle magazine, allegedly submitted by a mountain biker, promising to run road cyclists into the ditch if he saw any, because he believed mountain biking was the only form anyone should do. Here was a cyclist who believed roads are for cars, who threatened bodily harm to any Lycra faggot roadies who slowed him down on his hurtling journey to his favorite trail. Since these letters are as hard to verify as an anonymous blog comment, who knows if it was true. It got published.
This was right in line with what Brock Yates was saying at the time. Bikes are great. Keep them out of the way of progress.
Helmet choice depends on an individual rider's perception of the potential dangers of each riding venue. I guarantee that cycling in traffic in the United States significantly increases the chance you will have an openly hostile encounter. Just as military helmets wont stop a bullet or prevent a traumatic brain injury from an IED, so will a cycle helmet be of little use against the weapons leveled by road-raging motorists. But in the multi-variable environment of many streets, it might come in handy.
Motorists need not be hostile to be dangerous. They might simply be ignorant and impatient. You're running with a herd of nearly blind beasts with thick hides. Many of them have no thought for the little scampering things that insist on sharing the stampede trail with them. Others will swerve so far as to endanger their own kind, further increasing the anger of a few of them against the little scampering things. What are these little scampering things?! I want to stomp one!
Experienced cyclists using either official Effective techniques or whatever techniques they have individually developed will have far fewer accidents than cyclists that blunder around carelessly. On the other hand, maybe you just get the chop when your number comes up. Dance naked through live machine gun fire in the morning, slip and shatter your skull in the shower that night. We only think we know what we know.
I think, therefore I am mistaken?
If we all weren't already nuts, this would drive us crazy.
I watch the actual scientific debate about helmets with interest. With equal interest do I view the squalling of the most ardent opponents of the brain bucket.
At the very least, your average helmet will blunt the impact of the average thrown beer bottle hurled by some redneck humorist with a better than average pitching arm.
I've never cycled outside the United States. Some places have been better than others. A lot depends on your goal for cycling. I don't like to do it as a destination activity -- something I go to do in a closed venue and then return home, usually by automobile. Other people will only do it that way. Every different cycling group perceives it in a different way.
Back in the 1990s I even remember a letter to a bicycle magazine, allegedly submitted by a mountain biker, promising to run road cyclists into the ditch if he saw any, because he believed mountain biking was the only form anyone should do. Here was a cyclist who believed roads are for cars, who threatened bodily harm to any Lycra faggot roadies who slowed him down on his hurtling journey to his favorite trail. Since these letters are as hard to verify as an anonymous blog comment, who knows if it was true. It got published.
This was right in line with what Brock Yates was saying at the time. Bikes are great. Keep them out of the way of progress.
Helmet choice depends on an individual rider's perception of the potential dangers of each riding venue. I guarantee that cycling in traffic in the United States significantly increases the chance you will have an openly hostile encounter. Just as military helmets wont stop a bullet or prevent a traumatic brain injury from an IED, so will a cycle helmet be of little use against the weapons leveled by road-raging motorists. But in the multi-variable environment of many streets, it might come in handy.
Motorists need not be hostile to be dangerous. They might simply be ignorant and impatient. You're running with a herd of nearly blind beasts with thick hides. Many of them have no thought for the little scampering things that insist on sharing the stampede trail with them. Others will swerve so far as to endanger their own kind, further increasing the anger of a few of them against the little scampering things. What are these little scampering things?! I want to stomp one!
Experienced cyclists using either official Effective techniques or whatever techniques they have individually developed will have far fewer accidents than cyclists that blunder around carelessly. On the other hand, maybe you just get the chop when your number comes up. Dance naked through live machine gun fire in the morning, slip and shatter your skull in the shower that night. We only think we know what we know.
I think, therefore I am mistaken?
If we all weren't already nuts, this would drive us crazy.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)