[Crickey7]

@Bicyclebug 92418 wrote:

“it isn’t a contest. Just enjoy the ride.” – Seth Vidal

This might not end well. You progress only up to a point through commuting. Any trainer would tell you that commuting riding is not good for training. I’m no expert, but you need to do periods of very high intensity riding, and periods of almost painfully slow riding. You need to do cross training. In short, you need to really work at it.

Or you could enjoy the purely subjective feeling of going fast. That’s why I removed the speedometer from my commuter. I don’t want to feel like I’m going fast, only to look at the device and discover it’s a perfectly humdrum speed.

[Crickey7]

I’ve always considered wheelbuilding to be a mysterious art, done with pentagrams, mummified monkey paws and the ghost of Orville Wright.

[Crickey7]

@KLizotte 92007 wrote:

DCV’s looks loose too!

After a bee got caught in it and stung me on the temple.

[Crickey7]

@jnva 91285 wrote:

The only thing worse than riding into a headwind is riding into a headwind and getting stung in the mouth by a bee.

I got stung on the head by a bee on the CCT just last week. I do recall seeing a car that looked like Courtland Milloy’s with a beehive stiching out of it right before . . .

[Crickey7]

@dplasters 91279 wrote:

Holy headwind Batman!

So that I can go home in the other direction.

[Crickey7]

The randonneurs, road racers and messengers have a something like a culture. There is a culture than is loosely organized around bikes in the Bike Party set, Tweed Rides and similar sets. Long distance commuters might be mistake for having a culture, since their mindsets and approaches to the role of bikes fit into a fairly narrow spectrum. I’d say they are too atomistic to truly be a culture.

[Crickey7]

Faster rider coming up on the trail behind me this a.m. called to pass me and another rider right as I rang my bell and moved over to pass the frontmost rider. He seemed to feel I should have yielded to him. I thought I had the right of way, since (a) he signalled pretty late–essentially right as he came up, (b) a rider coming up on two riders should anticipate one may be about to pass the other, (c) if both signal at the same time, rearmost rider yields to riders in front, rather than slower rider yields to faster. And get a flipping bell–calls are next to useless.

[Crickey7]

The Cannondale Bad Boy and Quick lines manage to marry front suspension, durability and light weight. I have 37,000 miles on my Bad Boy, and the fork has held up fine. For rear shock dampening, there are several durable, light and effective carbon seatposts on the market in the last couple of years.

[Crickey7]

@lordofthemark 84846 wrote:

Do you advocate turning all existing yield signs into stop signs? Do you propose placing traffic signals everywhere there is now a stop sign? The discretion granted cyclists under the Idaho law is the same discretion all road users have at other locations (IE the discretion to stop then proceed is what we have at stop signs, and the discretion to stop or not is what we have at yield signs.)

No. Yield signs are placed in accordance with transportation engineering standards where the conflicts are already minimal. No change is necessary. Stop signs are there to establish an orderly and logical way to resolve potential conflicts at low-volume intersection. Again, no change is necessary. The discretion the Idaho Stop seeks to establish is that of low volume, or extremely low volume, intersection at every intersection regardless of volume.

I don’t trust drivers with that kind of discretion. And I see no reason why it should be different for cyclists. Yes, I’m aware of the two self-serving justifications, one being that cyclists are more capable of discerning risk because they are not in a closed vehicle. That’s a load, frankly. And the other, that since bikes are self-powered, it’s harder to stop and start as often. That’s true, but it really has no bearing on a safety issue.

[Crickey7]

@mstone 84840 wrote:

I see the jaywalking laws, as currently implemented, as a travesty. I also didn’t say that all laws were implemented with death as a standard, only pointed out the historical context that led to traffic control devices. I completely agree that people shouldn’t scare other people. But, obviously, the current scheme isn’t preventing the behavior you are concerned about. So I suggest that we modify the current scheme to allow safe cyclist behavior while also cracking down on actual unsafe behavior. I’d also support promoting courteous behavior above and beyond merely safe behavior. But I think it’s really important to keep these things in perspective. Bemoaning an Idaho stop law because it increases the danger to pedestrians is patently absurd when the risk of a pedestrian being killed by a cyclist is near zero while cars run over pedestrians in crosswalks and on sidewalks literally every day.

I lack faith in people’s innate ability or desire to be courteous. And certainly the history of past efforts to get the cycling community to behave better have not been crowned with success. Laws will be broken, but at least they set a universally understood baseline that better encourage complying behavior.

[Crickey7]

We have jaywalking laws, and jaywalkers don’t kill anyone. So that’s clearly not the standard.

And really, I see the behavior first hand. It’s not safe. It’s not okay to make peopel jump back for fear of being run over. It’s not acceptable to force road users who have the right of way to yield it, or hit the cyclist. It’s not okay to have all other users act hesitantly because they cannot predict what a cyclist will do.

Road rules promote predictability. That’s a good thing. The Idaho Stop promotes unpredictability.

[Crickey7]

I think the Idaho Stop is a bad idea. Once you introduce the idea that individual users of the roads are entitled to decide whether or not to obey traffic control devices based on subjective evaluations of safety, you introduce a few problems. People are going to vary widely in their evaluation of whether or not it’s safe. Right now, all the “scofflaw cyclists” who manage to frighten the cr*p out of pedestrians and cars absolutely believe they’re being safe, even when the videotape shows they’re not, in many cases. While traffic controls devices lose some efficiency because there is no discretion, at least they create the necessary preconditions for safety.

It doesn’t matter, though. At a matter of sheer political influence, the prospects of passing a law that motorists will see as rewarding noxious behavior, when even a dooring bill could not be passed last year in Virginia, have to be regarded as quite poor. Our efforts woudl be better spent on more fruitful endeavors.

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