Safe Bike Parking In The “Other” Portland

An important part of encouraging people to commute—or simply to ride—is to make the experience safe.

That means, among other things, creating practical, well-maintained bicycle infrastructure. Bike lanes—again, with the emphasis on practical and well-maintained—are part of such a system.  So are laws and policies (like the “Idaho stop”) that actually make sense rather than merely mimic motor vehicle or pedestrian codes.  Education, for the general public as well as cyclists, is also vital.

But an often-overlooked part of cycling safety is security for the bicycle itself.  I’ve known a few people who gave up on cycling after parking their wheels—sometimes in the “bike rooms” of their co-op buildings—and never seeing them again.

The Bicycle Coalition of Maine understands as much. That is why they are teaming with the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company to make valet bicycle parking available at 11 Thompson’s Point concerts in the “other” Portland.

I hope that this is a sign the idea is spreading.  When the Metropolitan Museum re-opened last year, I was as happy to see valet bike parking there as I was to see an extremely interesting exhibit of early Japanese art!

Roman Numerals=Postponement, Not Cancellation For RAGBRAI

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, many organized rides have been cancelled or postponed. They include everything from local charity rides to European classics, rides with long histories and others that began in the past decade.

Now, "postpone" is a more elastic term than "cancel."  That is why it's ludicrous to call the current Tokyo Olympiad the "2020 Olympics" or its official name, "Tokyo 2020."   That allows the Olympic Movement (In the immortal words of Harry Shearer, "The Olympics are a movement.  And we need one, every day!") to say, with a straight face, that the Games were "postponed" or merely rescheduled.

Such terms can be used more plausibly when the event is denoted, not with the year in which it's held, but with a Roman Numeral.  The Super Bowl, which has never been postponed or cancelled, follows this practice.  So, it turns out, does one of the largest and oldest organized bike tours in the United States.

Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride Across Iowa (Say that three times fast!), better known as RAGBRAI, began in 1973, when John Karras, a copy editor at the Des Moines Register (and avid cyclist) and Don Kaul, a columnist at the newspaper, decided to ride across the state and write accounts of it.  Don Benson, the newspaper's public relations director, coordinated the ride.  There wasn't much advance publicity, so it's remarkable that about 300 people turned out for the ride.  

From the RAGBRAI blog

 

Somewhere along the way, RAGBRAI followed the Super Bowl's practice of denoting its rides with Roman Numerals.  In a way, that makes sense, or at least for good publicity:  Instead of saying that the 2020 ride was cancelled, ride organizers could postpone the start RAGBRAI XLVIII until this past Sunday.

Perhaps some year I'll make my way to it.  In the meantime, I'm happy that something that could have just been a passing fancy of the 1970s North American Bike Boom has become enough of a tradition to be postponed, but not cancelled.

Cyclist Caught In Crossfire

 Last week, I wrote about a bicycling mishap few of us have experienced:  A man fell off his bike and onto an alligator that bit him.

Today, I am going to mention another cyclist whose ride ended in a way most of us wouldn’t anticipate.  Unfortunately, her life ended with that ride.

Tikiya Allen was riding her along Pingree Street on Detroit’s west side last Wednesday.  A red Ford Taurus with “distinctive rims and unique paint” roamed the area.

Shots rang from the Taurus’ window.  A 20-year old man in another car was struck. So was Ms. Allen.

He is expected to survive.  She, tragically, didn’t.

Police in the Motor City believe that she was caught in the crossfire between one or more of the three or four occupants in the Taurus and the man in the other car—or someone else. They are searching for that Taurus and its driver and passengers.

Such a senseless loss of life is always terrible.  What makes this killing all the worse is that the 18-year-old Allen was a nursing student at nearby Oakland University—at a time when nurses and other health care professionals are leaving the field because of burnout and trauma induced by working through the COVID-19 epidemic.

Her death makes me wonder how many more people have met, or could meet, similar fates, given the increasing amounts of gun violence during the pandemic.

A GoFundMe account has been set up to help her family.