Whoever Is At Fault, Blame The Cyclist

I have no connection with Dartmouth College, much less with its (American) football team.  But reading about what happened to the squad's coach, Buddy Teevens, sent a chill up my spine--not only because of his potential spinal injury, but also because of another he suffered and, more specifically, how and where he incurred those injuries.

Buddy Teevens and his wife, Kristen

A month ago, he and his wife were enjoying an early-spring evening ride in Saint Augustine, Florida. They own a home nearby, and I have ridden there a number of times during visits with my parents.  

Route A-1A, the road that zigs and zags along Florida's Atlantic Coast, cuts through the "mainland" part of the city, crosses the bridge into the area beloved by tourists.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the road is heavily trafficked, as it offers everyone's idealized image of a "road trip" with ocean views--and, for much of its length, has only two lanes.

Also, because it's in Florida--specifically, Northern Florida, which is about as Southern, culturally, as Alabama or Georgia--that traffic includes more than its share of pickup trucks.  Now, I don't mean to pick on pickup truck drivers in particular, but I can understand how they, because of their vehicles' size and potential for speed, feel--especially with those wide marine vistas--that the road is theirs.  And, like SUVs, pickup trucks offer their drivers poor sight lines and even more "blind spots" than smaller vehicles. 

So, whether or not 40-year-old Jennifer Blong was drinking--police declined her offer to take a blood-alcohol test--she struck Mr. Teevens with the Ford F-150 she was driving at 50 MPH in a 35MPH zone.  The constables' report of the crash noted that he wasn't wearing a helmet and didn't have lights on his bike.  It also cited him for "failure to yield the right of way" as he crossed A1A.  

Blong claimed there was "nothing I could do" as Teevens "just kind of appeared in front of me" as he crossed, as the police allege, outside of a desginated crossing area.  

While I, as a longtime dedicated cyclist, can find fault with both Blong and Teevens, I am struck by the Florida Highway Patrol's inclination to place the blame on the Teevens, the cyclist, for the crash.  

That said, I am sad for him and his family because, as of yesterday, the incident had another terrible consequence:  Teeven's right leg was amputated.  And he has a long rehabilitation ahead of him, as a result of his spinal injury.

You Don't Have To Ride To The End Of This Tunnel To See The Light.

 As a cyclist, I have an interesting relationship with tunnels. (A Freudian would have a field day with that statement!)  I've ridden, probably, my share and some long underpasses that could just as well have been tunnels.  (I think of one in particular that dips as it goes under the Long Island Railroad trestle at 130th Street in Queens.)  I can't say I seek out those long, enclosed passages, but when I enter them, I experience a mild adrenaline rush: Even if I know what's on either end of it, I like to imagine that I'm going to emerge in a different world from the one where I entered.

That said, one of the most gratifying experiences I've had as a cyclist took me through a tunnel. I detoured from one Alpine road--closed, probably, by an avalanche--to another, only to come to a tunnel in which an electrical outage extinguished the lights.    

A driver in a Citroen waved to me.  He told me to ride ahead of him, in the wake of his headlights, and the drivers behind him would follow.  And they did!

I thought of that day when I came across this news item:  A three-kilometer (1.8 mile) tunnel through the base of  Lovstakken mountain Bergen, Norway has just opened in Bergen, Norway.

While that, in itself, may not seem so unusual--after all, the Norwegians, French, Italians, Japanese and other people who live in or by mountains have been building them for centuries---the purpose of the tunnel makes it a record-breaker.  

Photo by Ronny Turoy

The Norwegian under-pasage is the longest such structure built specifically for cyclists and pedestrians.  There are separate lanes for each, and motorized vehicles are verboten. (OK, I know that's a German word.  I don't know Norwegian!)

Perhaps the most unique and gratifying part of the tunnel, though, is that its designers seemed to do everything they could to make it seem less like a tunnel.  The walls are lined with art and other visual delights, and the cave is illuminated with different colors of light in different parts of the tunnel, which helps to give people who pedal, walk and run an idea of how far they've progressed through it.  And, in the middle of the tunnel there's a "sundial" in a place where the sun will never shine.  It's intended, in part, to further break up the monotony of the tunnel, which is completely straight (which is something I never could claim) except for slight bends at the entrance and exit. 

What Would They Have Seen?

In the Hollywood version of the immigrant's story, a poor young person emerges--his coat, but not his spirit, tattered--from the dark, dank steerage section of a ship to a deck, just as the sun breaks through clouds over the Statue of Liberty.

I can't help but to wonder how many actually had snow swirling around them, or were soaked in a downpour or struck by sleet, as they gazed out onto the harbor.  Or, perhaps, their first glimpse of Lady Liberty was shrouded in mist.

For a couple of days, we had an early taste of summer:  the temperature reached 33C (91F) in Central Park on Friday.  Then the clouds rolled in and and fog enveloped the city--especially the waterfront--late on Saturday and Sunday, interrupted by rain on Sunday morning.

I pedaled through a bunch of Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods, from my western Queens abode to East New York, and zig-zagged along the waterfront.  I stopped for a mini-picnic (some pistachios and Lindt's 85 percent dark chocolate) in Red Hook. 

I have ridden to the Hook a number of times and still can't get over the irony of my riding--or people from all over the city, and from outside it--to it for pleasure.  I mean, what would the relatives of mine who worked on the docks or the nearby factories have thought of people whose "Sunday best" are airbrushed, more expensive versions of the clothes my relatives wore to work. Or of the three young men munching on matching artisan chocolate-coated Key Lime ice cream pops as they sauntered along the pier.  Or, for that matter, of the fancy wedding taking place inside a warehouse turned into an "event space."

 

My relatives walked and took streetcars to those piers and never went anywhere near them after they clocked out, let alone on Sunday.  And, of course, the folks who arrived from further away--as my relatives or, at least, their parents--came by boat.  What would they have thought of someone like me arriving by bike--Tosca, my Mercian fixed-gear, to be exact--on her day off, just because she could?

Or, for that matter, that I am a she?  What could they have seen through the mist?