Are they really safer? Mikael Colville-Andersen gives a TED talk on the subject:
(You can read the text of the poem and see a video poem by another poet at jasoncrane.org.)
Photos from my ride around Albany yesterday:
There was a tornado watch yesterday, and the winds were crazy. I actually went backward on my bike at one point in a ridiculous gust of wind.
In other news, I rode up the State Street hill without shifting out of my middle chain ring, so that was cool.
I wrote a lot of poetry during my recent trip to Chattanooga, Tennessee. One of the poems was inspired by meeting bicycle adventurer Joe “Metal Cowboy” Kurmaskie, and reading his first book, Metal Cowboy: Ten Years Further Down the Road Less Pedaled
With Joe Kurmaskie in Chattanooga, TN. Photo by Lois Chaplin.
Idaho
for Joe Kurmaskie
on this rainy Idaho morning
I give you a name
I tap your destiny
with my white cane
have you reckoned
a thousand miles much?
have you packed a bag
and left all else behind?
with the legs as the only engine
you can hear what is there to hear
the whispering of spirits on the roadside
singing the world into being
Don’t Ride In The Door Prize Zone,
a haiku by everyday bicycle commuter Ethan Georgi
riding along and
A DOOR FLIES OPEN OH NO!
no door prize for me
The door prize zone is the area three feet to the left of cars parked on the right. When a car door opens, it opens into this space and it can kill you. I am not kidding. You might be thinking, oh, I can just swerve around it. If you do that, you are swerving into the traffic on your left. This is why I don’t ride in the door prize zone.
I do tend to call out “Door!” when I see one open.
Seconds after taking this photo to celebrate the new bike “sharrows” on New Scotland Ave. in Albany, NY, I was honked at and called a “cracker” by two young black women in an SUV. “Cracker”? Is this 1972?
There are also new sharrows on the part of Delaware Ave that is inside the city limits.
Built by the fine folks at Troy Bike Rescue.
My parents were in Hawaii last week and my mom snapped this shot of an Xtracycle with a parking ticket:
Click to engorge
…when you’ll leave the house empty-handed and come back with a free bookshelf. I saw this on the side of the road on my way back from the post office. I had just run out of space for my poetry books, so it was a serendipitous find.
(Part 2 of an occasional series. Here’s the first installment.)
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| From The Packet Boat (my Xtracycle) |
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| From The Packet Boat (my Xtracycle) |
