Bike cops. traffic (f)laws?

I saw a pair or Norfolk Police Officers riding bicycles this evening on my way home from work. (Although I almost didn't see them) They were wearing their black uniforms, black helmets, had no headlights on and were riding down the sidewalk towards the intersection i was waiting for the traffic light at. I said hello to them, they didn't respond... I sometimes wonder what it's like to be a bike cop. I've never seen a bike cop with lights that i thought were bright enough, or with light colored clothing, or riding in the street for any more than a block or 2. I wonder if they know that they are supposed to be riding in the street with traffic? I wonder what they think when they see me? A guy with a bicycle tattooed on his leg, wearing an extremely bright vest and a white helmet. Riding a 30 year old bike, in the street, with traffic. Today i was on my 77 Raleigh Supercourse that I've built up as a fixed gear (with a front brake!!!). I wonder why bike cops aren't more friendly with me... Are they bike commuters themselves? Do they enjoy riding their bikes? Why don't they seem to know/obey the traffic laws regarding bicycles? Are they picked on by the officers who drive around in the police cruisers all day? In the same manner that I am harassed by motorists? When I was hit by a car a few years back, I was referred to on the accident report as a "pedestrian" by an officer who'd been on the street for a few weeks. The training officer wasn't concerned with the cyclist being loaded into the back of the ambulance enough to help his trainee fill out the accident report accurately and completely. Why? I don't understand how my life or bicycle riding police officer's or anyone else's life is marginalized when we choose to ride a bike on the roads instead of driving. Why aren't all the Norfolk police officers trained on laws regarding bicycles? An officer directing traffic exiting a baseball game at Harbor Park asked me and my girlfriend and the couple we rode to the game with, if our flashing headlights were legal? We kinda laughed, realizing that he really didn't know...

Punching cars? Predator/prey relationships. staying alive

     When is it okay to punch a car?

    This is a very interesting question, and depending on where you are viewing the punching from, it drastically changes the rightness or wrongness of this. First, we have to consider from an outside perspective, someone punching a car. What does this look like to other people on the road(or to pedestrians)? What would anyone on a bicycle accomplish by punching a car? Relief from pent up aggravation and aggression? Letting a driver who just did something really stupid and dangerous know that you are pissed and being pushed to react violently? At the end of the day, every verbal or physical expression of "roadrage" is almost guaranteed to be regretted (I don't mean by motorists, i mean cyclers. As I've seen some of the craziest shit happening/being thrown back and forth between motorists while operating their vehicles on public roads). Reflecting back on incidents has always made me question my reaction, and wonder how bad things could've gone if the motorist who cut me off, or passed really close, or yelled something stupid, had reacted as aggressively as I was reacting to their action? Things could go bad...really bad. There's always the concern of does the person you're yelling at as you straddle your bicycle with no protection AT ALL have a gun? Are they unstable? and/or just got fired from their job? wife just banged out their best friend? We live in a society of INSANE FUCKING PEOPLE who think that capitalism and industrial civilization is always going to protect them and humans as a species. People who feel invincible in their cars. Gun crazy people who think their sunday afternoon trip to the home improvement store should involve packing their 9mm. And alot of people who don't know/understand that bicycles are vehicles, and are meant to be ridden in the road with the other vehicles (that's what "SHARE THE ROAD" means) and that most states in this glorious country of ours have traffic laws specifically stating the rules of the road regarding bicycles.
A few stories and then my point:
    I ride up to the front of an intersection one day heading to work and i suddenly realize that the van that was at the front of the line of cars i passed to pull up to the front is around a foot from me on the left, I was startled and before i could get out a "WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" The driver started yelling at me. He said "Hey man! Are you one of those guys that thinks that people on bikes have the same rights as cars do?!?!" and I replied "No, I'm one of the people who KNOWS that bikes are vehicles and are meant to be in the road with other vehicles???" Him: "Well what the fuck gives you the right to roll up here past all these cars that are waiting for this light and come up in front of ME!?!?!?" Me: "The same law that allows cars to pass me in the lane back there. And because there's plenty of room." The guy started yelling and calling me a stupid asshole blah blah blah and the last thing i said I yelled: "SIR, PLEASE DON'T LET YOUR OWN IGNORANCE OF THE STATES TRAFFIC LAWS ANGER YOU! I HOPE YOU HAVE A GOOD DAY!" The light was already green at this point, the driver then almost ran me over as he started driving and i started riding through the left turn we were both waiting to make. You can't fix stupid.

A week or so ago I almost got killed by an HRT bus, giving me another reason to hate our shitty public transit system in this area. When passing me, the driver got just the very nose of the bus by me and then immediately started coming back over to the right. He actually didn't just return to the center of the lane, he kept coming right til his right side tires were in the drainage runoff area on the edge of the road. When i realized the bus was coming over and was a foot or so from making contact with my handlebar, i grabbed both brake levers and cut to the right as hard as i could without running into the curb. My heart was racing and I was heated, I couldn't believe that this bus driver would've made such a negligent/dangerous mistake! I kept riding and further down the road I saw the same bus, as I passed the bus I stared in to get a good look at the driver and make sure that he saw me and saw my face. Then after a few more traffic lights the bus came up behind me again and the driver passed me again, DOING THE SAME THING AGAIN. ALMOST KILLING ME AGAIN. At this point i was shaking with fury and fear and a million other emotions. I avoided getting killed again and started angrily pedaling to try and catch the bus, fantasizing about what was about to happen when i caught up with the bus at a traffic light. I caught up to the bus. I pulled my bike up inches from the front right corner on the bus, knocked on the glass of the folding door and yelled at the driver that if he ran me out of the lane again we're going to have a problem. That he almost killed me and he just did it twice. To which he responded by laying on his horn, i guess telling me to get the fuck out of the way. Which was probably his attitude when he saw me in the road and then maybe tried to show me that i need to stay the fuck out of his way by running me out of the lane when he passed me. I was even more angry now. I pulled off to the side of the road and called HRT. The person who answered asked me the bus #, which in all this chaos I didn't get. I told him what time it was, what time the incident had happened, what direction we were heading, and what crossroads we were at. He didn't seem to care that I almost died, i don't think he apologized and he transferred me to a voicemail complaint line before I could finish asking for his name.

Sometimes letting that person get away with saying something really ignorant at a traffic light or letting that person cut you off without trying to catch up to them and yell at them, which in the end makes you look crazy as shit to anyone nearby, is the safest thing. I've had a ton of intersection arguments with motorists who were ignorant of the traffic laws regarding bicycle riders and only in maybe a few of them did I feel okay after I rode away.  The more you ride, the more stupid shit you're going to encounter. Private neighborhood security harassment, parks and rec cops "pulling you over" to tell you that it's dangerous to ride a bicycle in the road (do parks and rec cops not get trained on the same laws as regular cops?)I'll probably share both those stories in full at some point, there are lots of em. But having fun while riding should definitely be priority #1. Actually staying alive should be #1, enjoying it could be #2. Either way, if you're not enjoying it, then why do it?

The point: Bicycle commuting or bicycle riding in general puts you in a predator/prey relationship with motorists. Fortunately the predators aren't always trying to kill you. You can probably safely assume that they are never trying to kill you. But they certainly have the potential to. Sitting in traffic is nobody's idea of a good time, but being on a bike is alot more fun than being stuck in a car that isn't moving fast enough to get you home in time to watch your favorite TV show. In one second of misjudgement, one second of looking at a text message or a crying kid in the backseat, could be it. The only thing you can do is try to make yourself as visible as possible. Get the brightest lights with the most eye catching blinking pattern and WEAR A FUCKING HELMET!

bicycles: adventure equipment, not athletic equipment

I don't like the concept of the bicycle as a piece of athletic equipment. I like to go on adventures on bicycles if I find myself riding with no particular place to go. I feel like most adults who ride have lost that child-like sense of adventure when they are pedaling themselves down the street. I hope not, but I think this is true.

   I wish the majority of adults i see riding roadbikes weren't wearing spandex. I also wish i lived in a city/area where drivers wouldn't yell at me and tell me to "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDEWALK!" when I'm riding home from a crappy day at work.

 

don't ever play the "you go, no, you go" game

In many areas of life we find ourselves playing what i call the "you go, No, YOU GO" game. It's when you're grocery shopping and you come down an aisle with a cart and someone else is coming down the same aisle from the opposite direction with their cart and only one of you can fit, so you both wait, in a feeble attempt to be nice, them realize the other person is also waiting, then you both tell the other person to go ahead, then you usually move at the same time. It happens all the time. When walking toward someone and then realizing your path and their path are going to collide in a few more steps, you both stop and step to the side at the same time, then sometimes step back at the same time and sometimes they offer to dance or you'd offer to dance, which in my opinion is the only polite way to verbally acknowledge this situation. Anyway, that's what I call the "you go, No, YOU GO" game. In traffic situations it usually gets more dangerous than in the supermarket, which in a worse case scenario, you may bump a shopping cart, but I'm pretty sure no one would get that hurt from this. I get put in the game by drivers all the time while riding my bicycle. I would say 80% of the time, they are trying to be nice and let the cyclist go ahead first to help out, but more often than not when I'm in this situation, the motorist is fucking up the flow of traffic and then urging me to pull out in front of them. For example if I'm approaching a stop sign and a motorist pulls up to the intersection and they don't have a stop sign (or even a yield sign sometimes!), they will stop and wave for me to go first. This is the most common example of the game. But i have the stop sign and they don't. So i always stop, as this is the intended flow of traffic through the intersection and is how it SHOULD flow. Sometimes I will stop, put a foot down and cross my arms to really hammer down that I AM NOT GOING TO RIDE THROUGH THE INTERSECTION. Which seems to be the ultimate checkmate of a game of "you go, No, YOU GO" so far. I've also had motorists on several occasions make a left turn in front of me while I'm going straight through an intersection with the right of way and then they almost hit me, slam their brakes, stop in the middle of the intersection with cars now approaching from behind me and then urge me to go ahead of them. UH.... not only no, but FUCK NO! This is the worst time to play the game, because the driver is now probably frantic and shaken cause they just tried to haul ass through an intersection to beat the oncoming traffic and then almost hit a cyclist they SOMEHOW didn't see, and they aren't going to be thinking calmly and clearly. Everytime this has happened to me, I have stopped, put my feet on the ground and taken both hands off my handlebars to make sure that the driver understands I AM NOT GOING TO GO! YOU GO! But the moral of the story here is that you should never play the "you go, No, YOU GO" game on a bicycle, EVER!!!!! It's way too dangerous. And if you lose, you may lose big, cause getting hit by a car isn't going to make anybody's day any better.

    Having said all that, this is my theory on 4way stop signs: 4way stop means BIKES GO! I'll explain. I'm not saying that cyclers should blast through stop signs with no regard for the flow of traffic or approaching cars whatsoever. What I'm saying is that when I approach a 4way stop sign and there's a car approaching from one of the other angles, I will typically watch the driver very carefully and not stop at all. This may sound crazy to alot of people, but it alleviates all confusion of who goes first and thus avoids the "you go, No, YOU GO" game. Which I think I've beaten this point to death, but is best avoided at all costs! I would always suggest that you be prepared to stop like your life depends on it, as it very well may if the driver doesn't see you and/or doesn't stop, but look at the driver and ride through the stop sign. 99.999999% of the time, the driver will come to the stop and you'll cruise through just fine. Every once in a while you'll see that the driver is not going to stop and you'll have to slam on your brakes and swerve to the side to avoid catastrophe, but it's pretty rare, at least in residential areas in Norfolk.

ride slow and often

   Alot of people ride their bikes really fast all the time. I'm not one of those people. Keeping in mind that "fast" is relative, and to someone who hasn't ridden a bike in years, I might ride "fast", my point is that riding a bicycle should always be fun. If it's not fun, then something is wrong. I got into riding bicycles for utilitarian reasons, to get from point A to point B without driving. But then started to realize that you experience the world around you alot more when traveling by bicycle instead of by automobile. You smell things that drivers don't smell, you hear things they don't hear, and you certainly see things they don't see. I love when a gaggle of geese fly over me when I'm riding to work, i usually try to look up and watch them as much as I can while still paying just enough attention to my lane position to not swing out into the middle of the lane. I usually hear their honking noises first(the geese, not the cars), then i start looking around and catch them just as they fly over. I also say hello or good morning to 12-20ish people everyday that i ride my bike to work (although sometimes i ride by another cycler and they don't even look over and smile...). Nobody speaks to random people at bus stops or strangers walking down a sidewalk while they're driving. That would be weird. It makes you feel good to smile and say hello to people waiting for the bus in the morning and have them smile back. Makes you feel more connected to the world outside. The changing seasons bring with them different smells. The smell of rain in the summertime is something that i learned to appreciate again in my late 20's from riding, just like when i was a kid and the rain wouldn't drive me inside like it does to most of us now that we're adults. Whether it's a 5 mile commute or a 20 mile recreational ride, i think the more we ride our bikes the more we will feel our connection with the world we're living on, the cities we're living in and the people, trees, and animals living around us.

   If fear that fenders and/or a basket (or at least a rack) on a bicycle might slow you down, then you might be missing the point. or maybe you need more than one bike......


   We need to slow down. Most cyclists also need to slow down. Look around and take in the world around us. Breathe it in. This is our life. We shouldn't rush through it.

   Politics, don't mind if i do: This blog is certainly going to be all over the place, and by "all over the place",  i mean it's going to pull alot of topics toward bicycling and my life and turn into a bunch of random rants about how i think this world/society/country/state/city(Norfolk) could be a better place, but mostly in regards to bicycling/bicycle commuting... Anywho, where was i? politics...


    It is my belief that if our government wanted to do something to help our environment have the slightest chance of survival as "we" slash and burn our way through wilderness in the name of human progress, or if the powers that be really cared about the health of the citizens and the diminishing supply of oil that we need to create medical supplies and all the other plastic shit in our lives, that they would take a very cold, rational look at bicycle paths/lanes/infrastructure as an alternative to constant highway repair, lane painting, traffic signal fixing, stop sign replacing, guard rail repairing system that is currently failing us. The solution to the "traffic problem" isn't to try to move more cars faster, it's to get less cars on the roads. More cars means more road maintenance and all the above stuff. More cars means more space needed for them to park on. More cars means more emissions (or if we could all afford to buy electric cars or cared enough to, it would still mean more road maintenance, as electric cars still weigh alot when compared to bicycles and would still damage the roadways). So, where does this leave us? We need safe bikeways. We need to teach bicycle safety in public schools and teach children about the financial and environmental benefits of riding instead of driving, even to young teenagers, who will be lured into the idea of the independence of that first car. The amount of money that would be saved on the upkeep of roads if the majority of 5 miles or less trips were by bicycles instead of cars would free up so much money that it would open up a world of options for how to make a new safer traffic system for cyclers. We could even just designate the right lane of all existing roads to be bikes-only and build flyover exits for the cars to turn right when the speed limits are 45 or higher. I guess in this dream world i live in, the speed limits would all be lower as well, so the flyover exits may not even be necessary. Well for now, I'll keep dreaming.........

I think the world would be better if we all rode bikes.

but not road bikes. I remember when i first saw my Rampar R1027 10 speed at the salvation army thrift store. I knew very little about bicycles, & hadn't had one since a spur of the moment purchase of a bmx bike when i was 19 or 20,which i sold to a friend within a year of acquiring it. But I was excited about having an old 10 speed to ride to work instead of driving. It didn't matter that it was 35ish pounds (which is pretty heavy for a road bike!), it didn't matter that i didn't know how to work on bikes or that i didn't have any friends to ride bikes with. I was going to start riding this bike to work. And that really sums up my transition to bicycle commuting(I'll babble on more at a later date I'm sure). I rode over 6000 miles last year and probably only did 20 recreational rides. I still have that bike, it's my commuter bike right now. The one that get's beaten up, rained on, and seen traveling up and down Virginia Beach Blvd almost daily. Through trial and error i eventually learned what i could fix and what i should let the bike shop fix on that bike & I developed a great relationship with the bike mechanic at a nearby bike shop in Virginia Beach who was always excited to work on my "old" bike. This was way before i understood that lugged steel bikes just aren't made anymore (except by custom builders and people like Rivendell) and way before i was riding between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. I definitely didn't know i was at a transitional period in life that would have as profound an influence on my life(/outlook on life) as much as me becoming vegan.

   So i really don't know how this blog is going to be structured as far as subject matter, it will certainly be a "cycling blog" but I'm not a competitive cyclist. I'm a bicycle commuter and an environmentalist, who really loves bicycles as vehicles and as vehicles for change and as art! Because there's few man made things in this world as beautiful as an elegantly lugged steel bicycle frame! So...... There will be rants, more rants, maybe some advice for novice bicycle mechanics and commuters and stuff.

first blog......

So a friend suggested i create a cycling blog, so i just did. I will try my hardest to update this everyday, but i make no promises. If i ran for president i would also operate on a "no promises" policy. Are things gonna change? maybe. Maybe not....