Wearing The Maillot Jaune On The Streets Of San Francisco

Long before he was Gordon Gekko, Michael Douglas was Inspector Steve Keller in The Streets of San Francisco.

I now realize that the chief reason why I liked the show so much during its run was that it looked "authentic".  At least it seemed that way to me at the time, before I had ever set foot in "The City Over The Rainbow".  Even in my adolescence, I could tell that the acting was mediocre and the writing was contrived or just plain silly. (NYPD Blue was much better on both counts.)  But it sure was fun to watch all of those chases with the bay and the bridge in the background.

I haven't been to SFO in a while, but from what I hear, it's changed a lot.  Whatever it's like now, I imagine few street scenes can match what's in this video called, appropriately enough, "The Streets of San Francisco".




The young dude in the maillot jaune--OK, yellow T-shirt--really got my attention!

Happy Solstice!

In my half of the world (Who owns the other half?;-), it's the first day of winter, a.k.a., the Winter Solstice.

For my dear readers in Australia and other places in the other half, it's your first day of summer.

Where I live, we'll have about nine hours of daylight today.  Now, some of you don't think its such a short day--and with good reason.  I know my readers in Scotland and Finland (I won't drop any names here!) aren't getting much daylight. This morning, on the public radio station, the weather reporter mentioned northern Finland, where--if I recall correctly--the sun rose after 11 am and set before 2 pm.

Does your Winter Solstice Ride look like this?

Some organizations have Winter Solstice rides.  I've never participated in one--at least with any organization.  Once in my youth, however, a few of my riding buddies and I went on a ride that began with sunrise and ended with sunset on Solstice Day.  We did a century (in miles)--which, especially in the condition we were in, wasn't that difficult, even with all of the stops for hot cocoa with peppermint schnapps.  With each successive stop, the ratio of schnapps to cocoa increased.  I think each of us brought schnapps.  One of us, I forget which, brought his in one of those TA flasks we all hope someone will put in our Christmas stockings.

Great for carrying Schnapps in your jersey pocket.  But I'm told that cognac goes even better in it.

I'm not going to do anything like that day, in part because I didn't wake up until well after sunrise.  But I'm going to sneak in a short ride between grading exams and papers. 

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.

Would The UCI Allow This In A Cyclo-Cross Race?

Early yesterday morning, we had one of those "blink-and-you'll-miss-it" snowstorms.  It dropped maybe a couple of inches on us before the temperature rose dramatically and turned the falling flakes to rain.

Still, it was a reminder that winter is indeed no longer in the future.  Last night, the temperature dropped even more precipitously (had to use that word!) than it rose the other day.  So, some of the snow that turned to puddles in the rain were frozen when I rode to work this morning.  Fortunately, none of them were in my path.

The snow, cold and ice got me to thinking about commuting this winter.  Last winter, we had one blizzard that dumped nearly two feet of snow on us, but otherwise a pretty mild season. Somehow I think that this season will be different.

So I want to be ready. 

Unfortunately, this "snow bike conversion kit" is no longer available.  Even if I'd never bought one (which I probably wouldn't), it's still nice to know that such a thing available.

It, however, begs the question of what exactly was converted, and to what.  It doesn't look like it began with a whole bicycle.  The wheel looks like it came from one, or could have been part of one.  And how is that thing powered?

The seller promised a "full or partial refund if the item is not as described".  That's reassuring, I guess. 

The Biko Bike Project

If you are a student in the University of Manchester (UK), you can rent a bike for one pound a week, with a 40 GBP deposit that's returned to you when you return the bike.

You have your choice of road bikes, mountain bikes or city bikes.   What they all have in common is their colour (it's in the UK, remember!) scheme:  The frame is yellow and the front fork is an Easter-egg purple.

These bikes are rented by the Biko Bikes Project, organized by members of UM's Student Action, the self-described "volunteering arm" of the UM Student Union.  They are involved in community-based volunteer projects that help, among others, the homeless and refugees, and in cleaning up the environment. (Manchester was one of the first cities changed by the Industrial Revolution.)  The Biko Bikes Project aims to promote "the best mode of transportation":  cycling.

The bikes are "rescued" by agreement with the university, having been abandoned in various places in and around the campus.  Then the bikes are stripped, painted an rebuilt by students who take the repair workshops the Project conducts.

In addition to bike repair, the Project also offers workshops in "bicycle confidence", in recognition that for many people, one of the greatest deterrents to cycling is the fear of traffic and other conditions they might encounter on a bicycle.  

The Project is named in honor of Steve Bantu Biko, who is considered one of the "martyrs" of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. 

Like Frantz Fanon, he studied medicine but developed an intense interest in black consciousness, which led him to the organizing activity that would get him banned from the university in which he was studying.  The protests he organized culminated in the Soweto Uprising of June 1976.



A little more than a year later, on 18 August 1977, he was arrested at a police roadblock in Port Elizabeth under the Terrorism Act No. 83 of 1967, enacted specifically as an attempt to thwart activists like Biko.  The arresting officers took him to a police station, where he was subjected to a 22-hour interrogation that included torture and beatings that sent him into a coma.  He suffered a major injury and was chained to a window grille for a day.

On 11 September, police officers loaded him--naked and manacled, and barely alive-- into the back of a Land Rover for an 1100 km (685 mile) drive to Pretoria, where there was a prison with hospital facilities.  He arrived the following day.  Not long after, he died.  The original report said he'd died of a long hunger strike, but an autopsy revealed, in addition to numerous abrasions and bruises, a brain hemorrhage from his massive head injuries.

Were he alive, Steve Biko would turn 70 years old today.  The students at the University of Manchester could hardly pick a better person to commemorate than a man who "they had to kill" at age 30 to "prolong Apartheid".

Who made that trenchant observation?  Somebody named Nelson Mandela.

Update (23 December 2016):  Timothy Loh of Biko Bikes says that, for budgetary reasons, the bikes are no longer painted.  They still, however, are affixed with the Biko decal.