Fix the D**m Roads!

Posted on December 23, 2023 by RiderWalker

Take a poll on local issues, very likely that at or near the top will be: “Fix the d**m roads.”

Great idea! Local lawmakers should respond to local needs.

Except that many “local” roads are funded in significant part by state money.

This is not an argument about whether state or local fuel and related taxes are too high, or not high enough. It’s about how complex, bureaucratic, multi-level issues are understood at the local level.

For example, in my town, some of the roughest streets are state highways for which a good chunk of repair funding will come from the state. But that also means that the repair timetable is driven by the state and its priorities.

Sure, my town could fix those crumbling state routes, the ones that run through town, right now… if my town wanted to pay 100% of the cost.

Which brings us back to that poll of local “needs.” I wonder what the results would be, if the pollster asked whether the town should pass up the state money and “fix the d**m roads” now… or take our turn, wait for the money, and stop complaining about the d**n roads.

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Win the Battle with Winter

Posted on November 17, 2023 by RiderWalker

To celebrate the impending arrival of winter, some tips on how to keep riding through the cold and wet.

After years of winter riding, I’ve found that the obstacles were as much emotional as physical, that if I invested more in personal infrastructure, I could handle the weather.

Starting from the Top
I have several helmet covers. Some riders wear a hat under their helmet, but cold rain and snow still get through. A helmet cover keeps both cold air and rain/snow off your head.

Around the Head
Cold air hitting my eyes and face made me feel vulnerable — one of those obstacles that’s both emotional and physical. Solutions: Wind-proof ear band, neoprene face mask, ski goggles. I wear these when the temp drops below 40 degrees F. In recent years, I almost always use a full-face helmet.

Bod Squad
GoreTex© or similar jacket. There are a lot of waterproof-breathable products out there. Real GoreTex© costs more, but I think it’s worth it for a jacket/parka. I bought an unlined shell and wear a fleece jacket when it’s near/below freezing.

Jacket Hint: If you can, try a jacket with snaps instead of “hook and loop” fabric, aka Velcro©. In garments, grabby-sticky fabric causes as many problems as it solves. It’ll wreck a tie or sweater.

40s or above, any glove will do. In the 30s, thin-ish gloves (i.e., a non-puffy glove) under windproof shell mittens. In the 20s, thin-ish gloves under insulated mittens. (Remember that compressing insulation reduces its effectiveness.) In the teens or below, gloves and insulated mittens with handwarmers. For a half-hour commute, I like the reusable “HotSnapz.” However, if you’re riding all day, the single-use chemical warmers used by hunters are better. I place the warmers above the hand, in between the gloves and the mitten.

Leg Up
Wind pants and rain pants. I use both, depending on the weather. I use regular nylon wind pants for dry weather below 40. The rain pants with a waterproof-breathable layer, such as GoreTex©, work very well, but the waterproof-breathable layer can abrade, and will wear out faster if used every day.

Pants Hint: Get full side zips; they’re much easier to get on and off.

Bottom line on pants: I tried and did not like long underwear. I wanted to arrive at work and immediately pull off the outer pants… not find a bathroom and undress to remove long underwear. The blood vessels in your legs are huge; block the wind and once legs get moving, they warm up quickly.

De Feet Defense
Boots. In snow, I use Tingley© rubber pull-ons, bought at a local farm supply store. If you are expeditioneering, go ahead and buy special winter boots. But with the pull-on boots, you keep your regular shoes.

Winter Bike: Lights, fenders, tires
LED lights and rechargeable batteries have gotten a lot better. And lights are essential/required by law, front and rear. If possible, I get lights powered by AA batteries, rather than AAA. I know that non-replaceable USB rechargeables are taking over. But I hate to have a device where the life of the device is determined by the life of the battery.

Light hint: Get lights that are hard to remove. That way, you won’t have to take them off when you park. When was the last time you had to remove your car headlights, to keep them being stolen? Can’t bikers also have nice things?

I bought plastic fenders for all of my commuter bikes. Winter, spring, summer, fall, fenders are essential.

Last but definitely not least, I bought carbide studded snow tires. I rode for years without them, but in retrospect, I have no idea how I survived. More than anything, they have made it possible to ride through anything. Leave the tires on a set of wheels and change when needed. Or get a second bike just for snow-ice commuting. Good stuff isn’t cheap, but if you’re not paying for a car…

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A Day in the Park(ing)

Posted on November 17, 2023 by RiderWalker

We bicyclists like to portray ourselves as an oppressed class. Cars assault cyclists, trucks run them over, hooligans throw insults or worse — things that most motorists would not think of doing at another motorized vehicle driving by. Sadly, all that is true.

Compared to cars and trucks, bikes are less powerful, less armored, less stable… bikes are less-than motor vehicles on several dimensions of mobility.

But occupying a less-than status is not a license to kick down. The principle here is our collective responsibility to protect and support those with lower mobility. For cyclists, that means watching out for people who are less mobile, especially pedestrians and most especially, those who have difficulty walking.

Thankfully, in the past 30 years, the Americans with Disabilities Act has required businesses to put in more ramps, railings and other forms of assistance. I doubt anybody wants to go back to the good-ol days when people with trouble walking were limited in where they could go, and at worst were essentially trapped in their homes — could not go anywhere, unless someone carried them up and down stairs.

A major change has been in the addition of ramps and railings. Bt these new facilities were not put there to serve as our bike racks of convenience, for “however a short period of time” we’re going to be inside.

Hey, biker! That railing is not for our convenience. It’s for someone else’s survival in a challenging up-and-down world.

I know full well that there are multiple issues involved in vehicle parking, and I’ll take those up in the future. But for now, free-and-clear railings, unobstructed walkways — those are the areas we need to be protecting, not abusing.

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Stop the Not-Stopping Disaster!

Posted on September 3, 2023 by RiderWalker

Why do cyclists ignore stop signs?

The first and worst excuse is habit. We’ve gotten into this scofflaw habit, and it’s hard to change our ways. But change we must.

The second reason that cyclists ignore stop signs is the physics of riding — every stop/start takes more work. One of the famous resources on this topic is “Why Bicyclists Hate Stop Signs” by Joel Fajans and Melanie Curry of UC-Berkeley. They write: “For a car driver, a stop sign is a minor inconvenience… [but stop signs] make cyclists work much harder to maintain a reasonable [average] speed…”

Fajans and Curry compared two typical streets: a low-traffic residential street, and a high-traffic commercial street. The average low-traffic street has a stop sign every 500 feet, while the much busier street has lights that would stop a cyclist, on average, every 3,000 feet.

Fajans and Curry found that a cyclist could travel 30 percent faster on the busier street with the same level of exertion. Which means that cyclists, being of that near-universal class that wants to both have and eat its cake, will often choose the safer low-traffic street, and blow through the stop signs. And those who ride the high traffic street often blow through the traffic lights. Which is what you see every day in this town.

The third reason cyclists ignore stop signs is that they can, sometimes, do it safely. Cyclists are sitting a foot or so higher than drivers. As cyclists approach an intersection, they often have a better view of cross traffic than drivers.

Cyclists are also, generally, moving more slowly than drivers, and can adjust their speed through the intersection without crashing into cross traffic.

This is similar to our experience as pedestrians. Because our speed as walkers is relatively slow, we can easily see those approaching an sidewalk intersection. Almost unconsciously, we adjust our speed and position when sidewalks intersect, walking through without colliding with other pedestrians.

Walkers don’t stop because they don’t have to. Cyclists do the same thing, and you see it every day in this town.

Which is precisely what has given cyclists a well-deserved reputation as scofflaws. Cyclists are energy-conserving, eco-respecting, money-saving, fitness-enhancing… yes, yes, yes. But as long as cyclists are scofflaws on the street, they’ll get and deserve no respect.

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Happy(?) Trails

Posted on September 26, 2015 by RiderWalker

Recently rode, for the first time, “the first Rails to Trails Project in America, The Grandaddy of them all, The Elroy Sparta Trail…”

Initial reaction — quaint, quiet, safe, easy. Almost too easy, too straight, too flat — I get achy neck from holding my head in the same position for too long. The ride would tend toward monotony were it not for the delightful overgrown brush-forest scenery that makes it possible to ride all day without getting sunburned, and the very cool (52 degrees year round) tunnels.

Also, while we visited midweek and thus avoided crowds… the popular trail is deeply flawed, and was destined from the outset to be flawed.

  1. Too narrow. Best practices advise 10 to 12 to 14-feet wide. But, and remember this was a point of celebration, this is an old rail bed. And it’s single track (if it were double track, it would not have so quickly reached economic non-viability). Which means the trail never was anywhere near 14-feet wide, which is the recommendation for a high-use, mixed-use trail. When you meet oncoming cyclists or walkers… everybody has to go single file.
  2. It never will be expanded. The Elroy Sparta Trail is still celebrated as the first, etc, etc… which means that it’s perceived as good enough — when it was created and still today.
  3. It’s not sufficiently maintained. Whatever use is made of the (very nominal $4/day) trail fee… it should be used to clear leaves. In forested areas, the original crushed limestone path is layered with decayed vegetable matter — smooth and surely slippery when wet.
  4. The reason it’s not maintained is that it’s segregated from Wisconsin’s excellent road system. Instead of having a place at the table when transportation appropriations are served… bicyclists are sent off to eat with the children… because, you know, bikes are toys. Even the Amish horse and buggy folks are taken seriously as road users. Bicyclists are not — in Illinois, cyclists are prohibited from wearing the “slow moving vehicle” triangle. Because, you know, bikes aren’t real vehicles.

All these Catch 22s add up. It’s good that “we” made use of abandoned rail beds. It’s bad because that limited the design to whatever was good enough for trains. It’s good that the trails are (physically) separate from the road system. It’s bad that the trails are (fiscally) separate from the road system.

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‘Bike’ Boulevard. Not.

Posted on July 5, 2014 by RiderWalker

The worst thing a bicycling advocate can do is to advocate for bicycles. In this town, there just aren’t enough bicycles. You have to build your advocacy on something that most people actually care about. Such as safer, quieter neighborhoods.

Instead of proposing a “bike boulevard,” — specifically involving a 20 mph speed limit with low-cost traffic-calming measures — advocate for a safer, quieter, sharable street. Better yet, call it a school zone. Do it for the children.

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“In the Limo”

Posted on July 4, 2014 by RiderWalker

The Cadillac Escalade “Fame” commercial https://youtu.be/-E_84YVEB88 is the very definition of Freudian slip

Fame, what you like is in the limo
Fame, what you get is no tomorrow
Fame, what you need you have to borrow

The obvious concept is that the Escalade is an indulgence. But the repressed train of thought is that this feeling of indulgence, arrogance applies to more than just those who’d like to have a $70,000 Escalade. It literally applies to all drivers.

Only in 20th-century America have all classes except the most desperately poor been able to afford an everyday mode of transportation that until now was available only to royalty — to be carried about, protected from the elements, powered by something other than the passenger.

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Fall 2013 Bike Retail Inventory

Posted on September 1, 2013 by RiderWalker

Finally… there are more bicycles (7) than kayaks (6) in the weekly edition of the local sporting goods (i.e., bike retail) shop in our town. At least weapons — guns (20) and crossbows (6) — are outnumbered by athletic shoes.

None of the bikes is what you would call a commuter, equipped with lights, fenders… the sort of stuff that someone would have, if they were using a bike to get somewhere, rather than riding in a circle… the sort of stuff that comes standard on cars.

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Seasonal Bike Inventory, Spring 2013 Edition

Posted on May 5, 2013 by RiderWalker

What’s the health of the local bike economy? Still struggling, according to my occasional inventory of bikes vs other stuff, in the weekly newspaper ad by the sporting goods store in town.

The latest numbers, from the first week in May, 2013: Kayaks/canoes = 29; Guns = 22; Bikes = 16.

I could count golf clubs or softball bats, but why bother? Clearly bikes are occasional recreational devices, not essential, low-cost, personal transportation solutions. But with all the rain we’ve had, perhaps a kayak is more useful than a bike for getting around.

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NoWhere Are The Bikes

Posted on September 2, 2012 by RiderWalker

An update on bicycle retailing:

The Sunday, September 1 advertisement from local sporting goods store still features more kayaks than adult bicycles. Both numbers — 6 kayaks and 3 bicycles — are down from my earlier survey of these two items in May. That must mean the seasons are ending for both these “vehicles.” Fewer people biking to work, fewer people kayaking to work.

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