Riding when it's hot, driving negligance, and getting flipped "the bird"

Dear People/person who invented the first concept cars, I hate you. Dear People/person who invented the first car cup holder, I hate you even more. Dear People/person who invented the first light up mirror on a car visor, I think i might hate you the most. Dear People/person who invented the system for an automobile to park itself, I was previously wrong about the person who invented the light up mirror in the visor, because I definitely hate YOU the most!!!

A quick must share story about my commute to work a couple days ago: I'm in the left most turn lane of 2 left turn lanes on St Pauls in Downtown Norfolk getting ready to turn to get on Waterside Dr to take the interstate ramp towards Virginia Beach. The light changes to green, I start driving/turning, I noticed the car in the other turn lane is kinda creepin over into my lane halfway through the turn, I slow down and watch the driver casually take the lane, no turn signal, no driver looking back with an urgent look to see if there was room, no abnormal acceleration to get out in front of my car to make sure they could get into the lane and not miss an exit or whatever. Nothing. Just this person not looking and swerving into the other turn lane negligently. If I'd accelerated at the same rate the other driver did, which i was til i got the weird stomach feeling of "THAT PERSON IS GOING TO HIT MY CAR!", the other car would've hit my car. The shitty thing is when I'm on my bicycles, I see this ALL THE TIME!!! Waiting at the front of a red light, almost halfway in the intersection being 6' 2" tall, I have a pretty nice view of the flow of cars and their lane positions. I see it at almost every major intersection. People always lazily cut into the inside lane next to them whether there are other drivers there or not, then the driver in the inside lane has to slow down or travel outside of the lane to the inside to avoid a collision. This is crazy. When I turn, I stay in the lane I'm traveling in! It got me thinking though... What if I stayed there? What if I held my lane position? Would they run into me? Would I be blamed for the accident? Would my insurance premium go up? Would it ruin my day? What if the other driver didn't have insurance? BUT?!?! What if they did and I called the police and went through the whole process and let's say my fender and door or my rear bumper got damaged. Would I somehow profit from the other driver's negligence? Probably.

The day after that happened, i rode my bicycle to work and got honked at then flicked off and had another driver do the pass then slam the brakes maneuver after realizing they weren't going to get in front of me in time to turn right in front of me (the right hook almost got me!!!!!). I hadn't been flipped the bird in a while. Does anybody still call it "the bird"? Am i old because I just called it that"? Oh well... So the driver honked as they passed, I turned around abruptly to see what was going on right behind me and saw the little pickup swerve around me without slowing down at all. Realizing this was the source of the offending honk, I put one hand up with a shrug of my shoulders to say "why are you honking at me?" and I got an aggressively extended middle finger. The classic "get the fuck out of my way you idiot" response that even on roads with slower (35mph) speed limits, some drivers still look at cyclers as something that shouldn't be in their way on the road. (THERE'S A SIDEWALK RIGHT THERE!!! I haven't heard that one in a while!) I don't get too worked up by drivers giving me the middle finger while I'm riding anymore. I don't remember the first time it happened but I'm sure I was furious. Eventually you almost expect it. I remember a time when i chased and caught up to a car at a red light that had a couple teenaged girls in it who had just yelled "GET ON THE FUCKING SIDEWALK!!!" and honked at me while passing. When I rolled up in front of that car and saw how young these people were, it was somehow MORE upsetting to me. I screamed at them, "DO YOU KNOW WHAT SHARE THE ROAD MEANS?!?!?! IT MEANS SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!!!" I scared them. I knew it. I saw the fear in their eyes as a man obviously older than they were and fuming with anger screamed at them while they sat in their four wheeled steel pod of "protection". I wasn't ashamed of my self reaction and in some ways I'm still not. Alot of people might never understand what that's like. But i hope those teenagers felt vulnerable in that car at that intersection and I hope they never yell ignorantly at cyclists again. Sometimes there's no reasoning that will teach people things. There's certainly no reasoning that's going to teach someone driving a car to not swerve around a cyclist while honking and immediately maneuver their vehicle to the extreme right side of the lane that the cyclist is traveling in to "cut them off". Someone that would do this can't be reasoned with. They feel invincible in their car. Most people do. Cars create what some perceive as an impenetrable force field of protection. Yelling at them while you're riding a 20ish pound metal bicycle in the same flow of traffic they are is only going to make things less safe for you. Yelling at the teenagers that I yelled at surely was not the safest thing but sometimes, it's just the right thing to do. That doesn't make sense. Let's move on.

   It's hot outside right now. and really humid. My ride to work the other day when i got honked at and flicked off was the hottest ride I've been on this year so far and I was thinking that day that I should blog about smart riding habits when it's 100 degrees outside. So here we go: DRINK WATER!!! Don't even go out for a 5 mile quick ride without water. When i go out for recreational bicycle adventures, I usually have an idea of how far or how much time I'm intending on being out, but it usually doesn't end up being what I intended. I usually end up going a little further or cutting my ride short and hanging out in a park watching squirrels for an hour (still outside, still needing water when it's this hot!). I also don't like to expose more skin than necessary when riding. I wear shorts, usually 2 pairs, my bike shorts (specialized bg comp, which I'd highly recommend to anyone!!!)  and my Rivendell MUSA shorts over the bikeshorts. Some think I'm crazy, but I don't wear short sleeve shirts when I bike commute in the summer. I try to keep my arms protected from the sun as much as I can. I wear moisture wicking long sleeve shirts with my screaming yellow vest over it. I'm intending on acquiring a seersucker shirt or one of those outdoorsy hiking/camping patagonia shirts that has a decent sun protection rating soon. I've been wearing the moisture wicking athletic long sleeve shirts for a few years now and still by the end of summer my arms are always super tan which brings me to: ALWAYS WEAR SUNSCREEN!!!!! AND PUT IT ON YOUR FACE!!! Ask any 65-70 year old what their dermatologist tells them about protecting their skin from the sun, my Dad wears specialty shirts and hats from a company that only makes sun protection clothing. After going through cancer treatment for his throat cancer 9 years ago, his body has taken a beating, but he's also had minor procedures to remove cancerous tissue from his face in little spots a couple times, so have several other older folks that are near and dear to my heart. We have to be smart about these things now so later on we can enjoy our lives! And people who are are now in their late 60's and early 70's had a more intact ozone layer, blocking out more of the harmful uv rays than we do now. So... we need to be even more careful to protect ourselves! Don't push yourself too hard when it's uncomfortably hot outside, be proud that you're riding your bike, but don't be a rockstar about it, when you work hard, you get hot, when the air around you is already hot, you're going to be alot hotter and there's not much relief when your water bottles get warm and you're sweating like OJ Simpson trying on a crusty glove (90's reference +50 points!). Be smart. I've learned this the hard way. I used to get headaches alot in the summer time. Then I did some research and found out about "overexertion head aches", i still don't 100% understand what caused them, but i kept riding and stopped pushing myself as hard, drank more water, started wearing a cycling cap to keep the sun out of my eyes (less squinting!) and now I don't get them anymore. I never thought I'd be comfortable riding when it's 90+ degrees outside, but you can be. You're going to be soaked in sweat, probably almost immediately after you start riding. You need to keep up with how much you're sweating, don't chug a bottle of water as soon as you start sweating but be conscious of how you feel. Is your mouth getting dry? Take a sip of water. Don't wait to start drinking your water til it's too late. If you start feeling super shitty, it's too late. Pull over, find some shade, drink some water and dump some on your head too. When commuting, give yourself some extra time when it's hot outside. I like to get to work and stop outside and relax for a minute, let my heart rate come down a little, instead of rushing into the cold air conditioned building soaked in sweat and roasting. I try to convince myself that maybe some of the sweat will evaporate when i do this too, the math of it makes sense, but i probably still look like a sweaty monster when i walk through the store after a 95 degree bike commute. Oh well.

I really planned on this being a short post, it never turns out that way. Welp, until next time, WEAR YOUR GOD DAMN SUNSCREEN AND DRINK WATER!!! and when you drive, don't cut that inside lane short when you turn, or the guy in the red civic with really faded paint might let you hit him. He'd rather be riding a bike than driving that car anyway.

Speed limits. Horn honking. Moving from point A to B slower and safer.

A couple days ago i was driving to work in the morning, getting on the interstate and a driver in the lane next to me started coming over into the lane I was driving in. No turn signal, no blindspot check, no attention paid to the flow of traffic in the lane the driver was moving into, just the front of my 95 Civic and the driver's side of their suv almost trying to occupy the same space. I noticed the suv creeping over the lane line & started slowing down immediately and then very abruptly got on my brakes to avoid the collision, and for the first time in longer than I can remember... I honked my horn. Not a little 1/4 second honk to say "HEY!" I pushed my little horn button on my steering wheel and held it for 5ish seconds letting the little almost cute beep sound that civic horns make ring out long enough to say "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!!!!!" and maybe "hey! dumbass! YOU ALMOST JUST RAN INTO ME!!!" I didn't extend a middle finger to the other driver or drive aggressively after this incident happened, i did look at the driver when i passed to give them the you-are-an-idiot-face and i just kept driving.

   If i were on my bike, i would've been dead. Or would've yelled really loud and grabbed my brake levers as hard as i could and maybe avoided the collision. Of course on the bicycle I wouldn't have been traveling 60ish mph either, so this situation and the time to react to it would've been much different. Which brings me to something I'd like to rant about briefly:

Do faster speed limits really help traffic congestion problems?

I don't think fast speed limits are an answer to anything. While riding my bicycle at 15ish to 18ish miles per hour on the busier parts of Virginia Beach Blvd, i see the same cars for mile stretches of my commute. Because although they are traveling faster than I am on my bicycle, they are not getting further down the road faster than I am. Which is thought provoking to me! Why is this? I do get a little jump start here and there on a red light (yes, I'll admit it here and elsewhere, sometimes I'll blow through a light if i can clearly see that there are NO CARS COMING FROM ANY DIRECTION), and as i approach the back of a line of cars stopped at a red light I pass them on the right until I get to the front to wait or until they start moving and I safely tuck back into the line as it gets moving again. But I'm still not moving fast. So this tells me that maybe the faster speed limit isn't helping, all it's doing is allowing cars to accelerate to a faster speed before stopping at the next light. What's the point?!?!?! If you're moving faster, you can certainly get through the intersection faster, and you might make it through the intersection before the yellow light changes to red, but is this really helping the congestion? I'll completely remove the obvious problem that there are TOO MANY FUCKING PEOPLE in this world and TOO MANY PEOPLE DRIVING on the roads, and just focus on the current situation of moving the people that ARE traveling on the roads. So... what do we do? Lower speed limits. Make traffic lights respond to traffic sensors instead of timers (I've sat for minutes at red lights in downtown Norfolk TOO MANY TIMES AT 4AM WITH NO OTHER CARS IN SIGHT!!!) and plan traffic infrastructures with safety in mind, not just "How can we move the most cars beyond this point in the least amount of time?" I'm by no means, an engineer, but i do like to crunch numbers and some might say I think outside the box, but the current traffic systems don't seem to be working towards more safety, less fatalities, and more bicycles and pedestrians moving around in populated areas and shopping areas. It seems to me that if the traffic on Virginia Beach Blvd or Lynnhaven Rd or Rosemont Rd or were moving slower, there wouldn't be a need for as many traffic lights. Maybe replace a couple with stop signs as the slower traffic would be easier to merge into, and drivers would still get where they're going in the same amount of time with less accidents and less traffic fatalities because the slower your vehicle (car, van, motorcycle, HRT bus or BICYCLE) is traveling the more time you have to react to the everyday unpredictable happenings on the road ahead of you (like a cycler traveling in the lane you're traveling in, or a cop who has someone pulled over in the lane you're traveling in, or a car that died in the roadway). How many times have you been driving or riding a bike or on a bus or whatever and seen a traffic accident and then 100 feet further down the interstate or road, you see another one? How do you think THAT happened?!?!?! Someone was looking at the wreckage on the side of the road and didn't pay enough attention to the traffic and then didn't have enough time to react to the happenings on the road ahead and BAMMMM!!!!!!! ANOTHER ACCIDENT! I know the insurance companies love it, cause they can now raise your rates because there are more accidents in the zip code and/or city that your vehicle is garaged/parked in, but it sucks for everyone else on the road!!! My point is that no matter what's going on up ahead, you can always react to it better with more time, how do you create more time? YOU SLOW THE FUCK DOWN!!! I've had conversations about speed limits with quite a few friends and I've heard lots of different ideas, some people feel like i do, others think there shouldn't be ANY speed limits because the government shouldn't dictate to us how fast or how slow we can travel. I get it. I don't want the government telling me how to "live" either, but as human animals we live in "communities" usually referred to as "cities" or "counties" and on a larger scale "states" and "nation states" and for the common good of these communities, there needs to be some basic rules so people don't fuck things up for everyone else. And traffic rules are a very basic thing to keep order and maintain the common good of our "communities" on all of these levels. For bicycles to be able to travel safely on any road, there needs to be speed limits. For people to be able to safely walk anywhere in an area that cars are moving, there needs to be speed limits. For drivers to share the roads with other drivers safely, there needs to be speed limits. To make all of these methods of travel on our roads safer, they should be slower.

eating. riding more. blogging more.

The resilience of the human body is an amazing thing to me. I'm getting back into the swing of riding almost everyday after only riding to work once a week for a few weeks in a row, due to weather issues and work schedules and social events and blah blah blah.... ( read : "i don't really have a good excuse for not riding...i just chose to drive because I like to sleep alot sometimes") and I was really surprised at how quickly i started to gain a little pudgyness in the old spare time area. I like muffin-top as much as the next little-bit-out-of-shape guy who likes to wear shirts that are a smidge too small for him, but when the shirt doesn't reach down to the belt area in the front, you got to get back to riding, or eating less or something! I love to eat though. and sometimes that's an issue too. I love food. I'm vegan, but i love eating. I love chinese food and I know I shouldn't eat the whole container they give you with the whole separate carton of white rice, but... I LOVE CHINESE FOOD!!! It tastes good and i don't want to stop eating it once I start! So I usually eat the whole thing. This could be related to addiction problems and I won't get into that here. But I love to eat. I love burritos, I love pizza, i love veggie dogs, i love french fries, i love pasta, i love avocado, i love pickles, i love peanut butter and banana sandwiches. Yep. But it was never an issue when i was riding 130-160ish miles a week. But now that I'm not putting in 12 hours or more or low impact cardio (cycling) per week, the eating is catching up with me. And my thighs just went from being about as ripped as I'd ever hoped they could be, to still big but a little flabby on the inside ( to use technical language). Yep our bodies are resilient.
    So lately I've been getting back into commuting more and I've been really enjoying long recreational rides on my days off which is something I wasn't really that into when I didn't have a car. Because I rode so much from point A to point B, I didn't really want to just go ride for fun. It feels good to start riding with nothing but time on your hands and no specific place to be and just ride for a couple hours. It also feels good to ride to the Virginia Beach oceanfront and hang out for a half hour and eat a sandwich at your girlfriend's work  and then ride back home. Riding has always been therapeutic for me but these days the recreational rides are more therapeutic than ever. A friend once told me that riding a fixed gear is supposed to be "zen like", I think only this week I realized that I agree with this. When he told me that, my reaction was more along the lines of : "no it's not because you have to pay attention or you'll stop pedaling and WRECK!", but now that it feels second nature to ride fixed and just let my legs spin with the crank rotation when I'm cruising, it DOES feel zen-like! I don't have to think about pedaling anymore, I just do. The bike wants to keep going and this makes it easier to pedal on a flat straight surface because the crank keeps spinning because the bike keeps moving and you just keep helping it spin. Unlike a freewheeled bike that you must constantly apply force to keep the bike moving, the fixed gear bike's drive train, once moving, wants to keep moving. I like riding fixed more than I ever thought I would. After crashing my fixed gear 1977 Raleigh Supercourse the VERY FIRST TIME i rode it home from Norfolk Bicycle Works, it took me awhile to actually get comfortable with riding this way. I kept forgetting that you can't stop pedaling, and I'd catch myself locking my legs up in a certain position after I get up to a certain speed, where I'd normally cruise on a bike with a freewheel/freehub and the crank would drag my legs around with it forcing me to keep pedaling and PAY ATTENTION!!! Anyone who loves bikes and hasn't ridden a fixed gear should have at least one fixed gear bicycle. I may have 2 soon!
    Anywho........ So I feel like I've been failing at this blog lately since I haven't been posting as often as I'd like to, but i haven't had much to rant about or discuss since I've been driving to work so much more. But it's spring time, I should be riding more and should have plenty of blog material!!!

Turning right to turn left, roads to avoid in Virginia Beach

Traffic flows like a river. When there are a lot of cars or bikes or motorcycles/scooters in the river, it forces cyclers to stick to the right edge of the roadway, to be predictable, to move faster (maybe not everyone does this, but my friend Mary has mentioned that she tries to ride faster in traffic to "keep up" as well, even if the traffic is going way faster than you can ride on a bicycle, so at least one other person does this) and sometimes to not try to get over 3 or 4 lanes to turn left because there is too much traffic flowing in the current to allow you to do this, which isn't a bad thing. Sometimes, in fact I'll say usually the safer thing to do is to turn right out of the fast paced rushing wild river you're moving in to a quiet barely moving kiddy pool where you can easily make a U-turn and then go straight through the intersection you were trying to turn left at. This seems like common sense to me. But I've seen people stop their bikes on the side on Virginia Beach Blvd (SPEED LIMIT 45, TRAFFIC MOVING 50ish) and wait for the traffic to clear before they proceed to the left to turn, and people who casually cruise out into the middle lanes where it's clear and let a couple cars pass and then continue to the left. I've seen so much dumb shit and so many bad decisions made by other cyclists that it could fill an encyclopedia. But I'm not sure what some of these folks don't understand about this equation: you, human (130ish-200ish lb sack of water, organs and some bones) on a bike (steel tubes and a couple sharp parts) + car/truck/bus (3000-????? lbs of steel) moving at a rate of 50 miles per hour, momentarily occupying the same physically space = your bones crushing, your bike turning into a twisted pile of steel (or aluminum) + you probably dying. My point: do the safe thing! Don't blast through red lights like you've got an invincible force field around your bike, not everyone is PAYING ATTENTION TO YOU!!! Wait the extra 20 seconds til the intersection is clear instead of blasting through it like you've gotta find a toilet in t-minus 20 seconds or you're going to shit your pants. Turn right to turn left when traffic is crazy and you're not going to get that break in it. And something I have done for a while now that I didn't used to think about when I first started commuting (among many other things!) : when I'm rolling by stopped cars heading toward the front of a red light, I will stop and stay behind a dump truck or semi truck or work van with mirrors extending out 3 feet from the sides of it, or any unusually wide vehicle, because when we get rolling, they will have to pass me. I don't want a dump truck to pass me in traffic any more than this needs to happen, or that van with the mirrors or a semi truck. If you can avoid potentially dangerous situations, DO IT! Don't be a jackass, don't try to prove anything to motorists, it will never work. It's all in your head, and it makes you ride carelessly.


On to the next thing:

I don't ever want to ride on these roads in Virginia Beach:

Great Neck Road : Bike lane, really? So... if you paint lines on the wider-than-normal SIDEWALK, it makes it a "bike lane"??? No Virginia Beach, this is still a sidewalk. It's still as dangerous to ride on as a sidewalk as there are intersections every 20 feet that cyclists have no right-of-way at because there are painted stop signs on the "bikelane" for the cyclist to stop, it still has short rectangular sections that make for a not-so-smooth ride like a sidewalk, and it's obvious to most... IT'S A FUCKING SIDEWALK!!!!! And Great Neck Road is dangerous, definitely don't ride in the street, traffic is speeding, and not really looking for cyclists.

Rosemont Road: Speed limit is 35 for most of it, i guess i'm referring to the area of rosemont between virginia beach blvd and lynnhaven road, which is a pretty decent stretch of road. There's a legit bike path past lynnhaven on rosemont that goes all the way to dam neck road, which is really nice. But the other part of rosemont is super SHITTY! interstate on ramp and off ramp, not so wide lanes. drivers don't give a shit about you, don't ride on rosemont!!!

Indian River Road: Everytime i ride to Virginia Beach and i go down Campostella over the bridge and all that, when I get to the part of Indian River where the interstate on and off ramps are, I say to myself that I'm never going to do this ride again. And then I do it again, and i say to myself again "I'M NEVER GOING TO RIDE DOWN INDIAN RIVER AGAIN!!!!" and i haven't in a while, it's a dangerous fuckin road! Those on and off ramps are possibly the most dangerous place I've ridden a bike. Maybe not, which leads me to the ABSOLUTE LAST PLACE ANYONE SHOULD EVER THINK OF RIDING A BIKE IN VIRGINIA BEACH!!!!!!!! ..........................

Independence near Best Buy: You are an idiot if you find yourself riding on Independence over in this area!!! This is the most dangerous place a cyclist could ride a bike in Virginia Beach. Trying to navigate through the on and off ramps here is suicidal. And trying to ride through the underpass heading North on independence around here should also be considered suicidal. DON'T DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!