Turn, Turn, Turn (And We're Not Talking About The Byrds)!

Until recently, I believed most bike lanes were designed by people who don't ride bicycles.  You may think I'm cynical, but I've ridden on too many lanes that ended abruptly ("bike lanes to nowhere"), had poor sight lines, let cyclists out into the middle of major intersections or were, for various other reasons, simply not any safer than the streets they paralleled.

Now I'm starting to wonder whether lane designers are acting under orders to reduce the population of cyclists.  I guess, for them, that's the easiest way to appease motorists upset that we're "taking the road away from" them.  

I mean, what other reason is there for this?



Had the bike lane continued in a straight line, or simply ended at that intersection, it would be safer for anyone who has to turn left from that intersection.  Instead, a cyclist riding through that loop has to make two sharp left turns almost within meters of each other in order to go where one left turn would have taken him or her.

And studies have shown that left turns are significantly more dangerous than right turns for motorists.  (That is the reason why, for example, all United Parcel Service delivery routes are planned so that the drivers make only right turns.)  What sort of diabolical mind would force cyclists to make two such turns in succession?

This strange piece of transportation "planning" was inflicted on the cyclists of Nottingham.  I thought planners in England knew better.  Oh, well.

Saturday Night And Sunday Morning

Look carefully at this photo:

What do you see in the bottom right corner?

If you said, "bottom bracket spindles", you:  a.) have a great eye, b.) have the right app handy, c.) spend too much time looking at bike blogs or d.) have seen Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.

That seminal British New Wave film basically put Albert Finney on the map.  In SNaSM, his second film, he plays Arthur Seaton, whom we meet at work in the film's very first scene.  Where, exactly, does he work?  We know it's a bicycle factory, and we learn it's in Nottingham.  Let's see...If it were an American film and it said he worked in a bicycle factory in Chicago, we would probably assume--rightly--it was the Schwinn plant.  Likewise, our hunch that he works in the old Raleigh factory proves to be correct.

Now, as much as many of us would like to work in the bicycle industry, working in a bicycle factory is really just as boring and repetitive as working in any other kind of factory.  And so it is for Arthur, in spite of the good wage and esteem of his colleagues he earns.  

The tedium of working the lathe and his humdrum life lead him to spend his free time in pubs, where he meets Brenda, the wife of a co-worker.  He gets falling-down drunk, she takes him home and they have breakfast before her husband returns from a weekend at the races.

If I were to spend my time giving advice about everyday living instead of teaching academic skills, one of the first things I'd tell young people is that they should never, ever get into bed with anyone they meet while drinking.  It never ends well.  It doesn't for Arthur, either.  You can guess what happened. And later he confesses everything to Doreen, a young unmarried girl he meets during another night at the pub.  

Oh, if you're not interested in looking at the inner workings of the Raleigh factory or a working-class pub, you can enjoy the adorable Shirley Anne Field, who plays Doreen.