Sunset Park in Brooklyn, near the scene of today’s incident.

Came as close to dying today as ever. Biking to a musician’s place for an interview. In the lane, waiting to turn left. Oncoming van waiting to turn right. From behind the van, sports car comes at me full speed, wrong lane, about to hit me head on. If I hadn’t been over to the left of the lane to turn, I’d be dead. He was a moron, but also a good car handler, because he steered around me, missing me by 6-12 inches.

As you bike in Brooklyn from Park Slope to Sunset Park (where I now live), you go from fully separated bike lanes to painted bike lanes to sharrows to nothing (plus huge potholes/uneven paving). I’m sure this has nothing to do with the socioeconomic status of the communities along that route.

Speaking of biking in Brooklyn, here’s a video I made the other night:

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

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