Tag: Biking

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Vital Statistics

This article caught my eye on CNN the other day. The father and daughter in the article are “early risers”, which is now described as ASPS (Advanced Sleep Phase Syndrome). I looked it up on Wikipedia and soon found myself checking out other sleep disorders. I have had problems with sleep all my life and suspect that I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS). I also believe that my father had it and probably several of my siblings. DSPS sufferers are often called “night owls.” Sound familiar?

Before we had kids, I entertained the notion that it was Non-24 Hour Sleep Phase Syndrome and actually tried a sleep schedule that wasn’t based on a 24 hour clock. Unfortunately, that and my adverse job circumstances eventually led to clinical depression.

Bike odometer: 5818 miles
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: Paul wrote the melody for “Yesterday” after he awoke from a dream in which he heard it. The original lyrics were “Scrambled eggs, baby I really love your legs.”
Recent listening: De-Loused in the Comatorium, Coverville, Da Vinci’s Notebook
Recent viewing: Sportscenter, Suns vs. Clippers, The Late Show with David Letterman, Countdown with Keith Olbermann
Recent playing: Poker Room
Recently Accomplished: Cleaned and lubed my rusty bike chain while waiting for the Max
Imperative To Do: Start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail, truck maintenance
Cool link: Death By Caffeine: How much of your favorite caffeine drink does it take to kill you?

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Vital Statistics

  Remember me? Dynamite Magazine

Bike odometer: 5805 miles
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 9-11 by Noam Chomsky
McCartney Trivia: Nearly all Lennon/McCartney compositions can be described as verse/chorus/verse/chorus/”middle eight”/verse/chorus. John and Paul could not read music so they called all middle passages the “middle eight” regardless of the number of measures. The last verse was frequently just the first verse repeated to really drive it home and make it memorable.
Recent listening: Extraordinary Machine, Rid of Me, Avalon, De-Loused in the Comatorium, Frances the Mute
Recent viewing: Medium, Crime Scene Investigation, Sportscenter
Recently Accomplished: Sent in rebates, paid bills, mowed lawn, purchased new Quicken
Imperative To Do: Start taxes, retrieve Ryno mail, truck maintenance, bike maintenance
Cool link: The Covers Project

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Vital Statistics

Did anybody else see the ice dancing fallathon the other night. I totally dug it when the Italians faced off at center ice and just stared each other down for 20 seconds. She was pissed! Unfortunately, the Canadian couple had to withdraw because her injury was too severe. You can read all about it in this search of Google News for “ice dancing”.

Bike odometer: 5772 miles
Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
Recent listening: New Roman Times/Camper Van Beethoven, Still Feel Gone/Uncle Tupelo, Coverville, Ebert & Roeper, DrugMusic
Recent viewing: Olympics: men’s speed skating, ice dancing
Imperative To Do: Pinewood Derby: Sand and repaint, rebates
Cool link: Explanation of the Mac OS X “virus” reported in the news recently

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Vital Statistics

It has been wicked cold her since I got back from San Francisco. Last night, as I attempted to hurry home in order to make last-second dinner plans, I discovered that I had not dressed warm enough for the biting cold wind. The cold weather had caused some of the tracks on the Max line to freeze over which resulted in delays and cancellation of the entire Red Line for the night. That cut the number of trains that I could catch in half. I discovered this after watching two Yellow Line trains go by as I waited in the whipping wind at Pioneer Courthouse Square. A TriMet guy was walking around telling people the scoop and informed me that the Blue Line was delayed because it was “hung up” for some reason.

Crowded Japanese SubwayWhen the next Yellow Line train (which follows the same route as the Red and Blue lines for a time) arrived again, I hopped on to warm up. I stayed on as long as I could before hopping off at the last stop before the Yellow line veers north from the route the Blue and Red Lines follow. I stood there shivering in the cold wind for another 20 minutes or so before a Blue Line train rolled up. My hope started to fade when I saw that the train was completely packed (although not as much as the picture on the right). There was another train waiting at the stop behind it, but the headlights on the Max trains are so bright you can’t tell the color of the placard on the front until it’s almost upon you. Not wishing to spend another second in the freezing cold, I apologized and pushed my way onto the train.

Two stops later it was still just as crowded when the driver announced that the train would be stopped for a bit to deal with a medical emergency. Since I was standing in the doorway, I got off to see what was going on. I found a girl in the back car had fainted and suspected it was because she was pregnant. Nevertheless, medical personnel were called and we had to wait until they arrived. I noticed that the train behind us was still behind us, which meant that it was another Blue Line train (i.e. it had not veered North). I asked the driver if I had enough time to run to the other train and she replied that I did.

So I raced down the block to find a Blue Line train that was not even half full. I sat in my favorite spot when I am without bike (middle of the car), and settled in to read my book. By now I knew I was horribly late to meet Tina at Gateway Transit Center but also completely unable to do anything about it. A few stops later, the driver came on to tell us there would be another delay. Evidently, a fight had broken out on the crowded train in front of us and they were waiting for the police to arrive. Everybody on my new train had a good laugh over that. The delay wasn’t long, though, and we made it to Gateway soon after that.

Current reading: Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now by Barry Miles
McCartney Trivia: Paul’s mother Mary (yes, that Mother Mary) died of breast cancer when he was 14. 42 years later, his wife Linda died of the same thing.
Recent listening: Coverville, Zoe’s Radio Show, DrugMusic
Recent viewing: Olympics: Snowboardcross, Short Track Skating, Curling, Speed Skating
Recent playing: Halo
Imperative To Do: Pinewood Derby: Sand and repaint, rebates

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Two Incidents

As I rounded the turn from Oak to Broadway this morning, I only had three blocks left to my morning commute. After the turn, I have to proceed slowly in my lowest gear so as not to beat the light at the next block. There is a bike lane on this stretch of Broadway and, in this block, it passes in front of a hotel. In between the bike lane and the curb is the hotel’s curbside parking. As I leisurely rolled up the slight hill, I was only slightly surprised when a gentleman in a Lincoln opened the driver’s door without first checking if the bike lane was clear. I had a full second to react and I steered away from the gentleman and his door. He was slightly surprised and offered no apologies. I looked in my rear view mirror after I passed and he did not even give me a second look.

Halfway through the next block, a large SUV had pulled halfway out of his parking spot and was occupying the bike lane waiting for his chance to blast into traffic. I noticed that I could not see his face in the side mirror so I knew he couldn’t see me. These situations are by far the most unnerving I face. It’s very difficult to feel safe if I can’t make eye contact with the driver. However, there was quite a bit of car traffic behind me so I felt pretty sure he wasn’t going to make a sudden move out of his spot and run me over. Just to be sure he realized I was in the bike lane, as I went by, I slapped his hood twice with my open and gloved hand. He responded immediately by honking his horn angrily and, shortly after, tearing out of his spot into traffic. He accelerated up the hill towards me, but I was already passing all the cars stopped at Alder. Alder is my stop and I stepped off my bike and walked up the sidewalk as he whizzed by, unable to turn in my direction since Alder is a one way going the wrong way.

Update: TheWashCycle has a good entry about the “door zone”.

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TriMet passenger vs. bicyclist

 

TriMet_rider.jpg 

A recently filed lawsuit and an article about it in the Oregonian has stirred up the bicyclists vs. motorists pot here in Portland. As described here, Randy Albright is suing TriMet for an incident that happened as he biked across the Hawthorne Bridge two years ago. The incident can be summarized as follows:

  1. Bus passes too close to biker
  2. Biker catches up to bus when it has to stop for traffic
  3. Biker proceeds to yell at bus driver who ignores him.
  4. Biker moves self and biker in front of stopped bus (in the road) and continues yelling.
  5. Angered passenger moves to front of bus.
  6. Bus driver opens door for passenger (against TriMet regulations when not at a bus stop).
  7. Passenger disembarks, beats the biker up and moves him on to the sidewalk.
  8. Passenger gets back on the bus.
  9. Driver closes the door and drives off.

The driver did not report the assault to the proper authorities and the biker ended up in the emergency room where he got stitches for his split lip. TriMet released a video of the incident. Relevant excerpts of the video are used in the graphic below to show what happened.
bike_incident.jpg
 

The Big O also did a follow-up story a few days later that described reader reactions to the original story. The anti-bike and pro-violence sentiment of many of the readers is absolutely sickening to me.

Local and national biking blogs picked up on the story and published commentary. Here’s a few:

The Oregonian also had a few letters to the editor:

As one would expect from reasonable people, most are not pleased with Mr. Albright but most are even more outraged by the actions of the passenger and the TriMet driver. Mr. Albright’s suit is against TriMet but it’s important to note that the driver died some time after the incident in an unrelated boating accident. The passenger is still “in the wind” and there is a movement afoot to locate him, but the statute of limitations on assault will run out for Mr. Albright next month.

Sources-
http://sideeffectsofxarelto.org/xarelto-lawsuits/

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Right turners

Bicyclist in Portland are blessed with an abundance of bicycle lanes on our city streets. Bike lanes, however, come with their own set of problems. One of these is the right turning motorist.

The right turning motorist (RTM) often does not appear to be aware or considerate of the bike lane. Thus, the RTM does not check the bike lane before executing his right turn. The most careless will turn right into you even when you are directly in view (i.e. adjacent or in front of their hood), but that doesn’t happen often. The more common occurrence is the driver who executes the turn just as you are passing him. This is often called the “right hook”.

This morning I was riding downhill on Lloyd Blvd towards Grand Avenue. Almost everytime I take this route, I get caught by the very long traffic light at Grand because Grand has more traffic than Lloyd. Also, once it turns green, the light changes to red rather quickly.

As I rounded the curve and the light came into view, the light changed to green. Not wanting to miss the light and have to wait through a full cycle, I accelerated down the hill as fast as I could. Cars filled both lanes and were stacked up about 8 deep. As I approached each car, I checked for their right turn signal as well as the subtle drift to the left that often presages the right turn. Several cars drifted into the bike lane, but I forgave them because there is a curve there. As I neared the intersection, the light was still green and the car beside also started to drift into the bike lane. Just as I got up to her rear door, the turn signal came on about a half second after she started the right turn. Normally I would give the trunk a slap to let her know I was there, but this time I only had time to slam on the brakes and yell, “HEY!” She did turn around and I shook my fist at her as I whizzed through the intersection, still mindful of the light.

Just another day as a bike commuter.

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Vital Statistics

The road home tonight was wet. Very wet. It was pouring when I rolled my bike out of the office and into the brightly lit darkness of downtown Portland. I raced the seven blocks down Stark Street to the Max Station on Front where I waited and hoped for the Blue Line. Red Line to Airport. Damn. Instead of a five minute downhill ride, I was looking at twenty minutes possibly against some vicious east wind out of the Gorge.

Thankfully, the wind was out of the south but the rain pummeled me the whole way home. When I cut across the Fred Meyer parking lot, there was a water puddle so large that it had waves rippling through it. At that moment I looked up at the sky to see that each drop of rain was clearly visible in the street lights of the parking lot. Torrential.

I stripped down to my shorts when I got home and everything went in the wash and then the dryer. Warm, dry clothes feel so good after a good soaking.

Bike odometer: 5653 miles
Current reading: Just A Geek by Wil Wheaton
Recent listening: New Roman Times/Camper Van Beethoven, Coverville, Blame The Vain/Dwight Yoakam, Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone
Recent viewing: The Colbert Report, CSI: Miami, Countdown with Keith Olberman
Recent playing: Falling Sand Game
Most Important To Do: Call DirecTV to get satellite dish fixed