When I saw this image in my Google browser, I thought it had something to do with Donald Trump's intention to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord Obama, along with the leaders of 194 nations, signed two years ago.
The smoke is thick enough. As I write, DT hasn't officially pulled away from the agreement, and some of his advisers--including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson--are going to make appeals in the hope of changing his mind. I can almost picture him, or someone else, using that image as part of his "pitch".
Alas, it is the opening frame of a video shown on an Arizona television news program, and posted to the AZ Central website. The story is terrible: A commercial truck collided with a bicycle. Now, that description is strange: I normally think of a collision as occurring between two people or things that are more or less equal in their ability to withstand the crash. That hardly brings to mind, at least for me, a truck hitting a bicycle.
According to the news report, two cyclists were involved, "but only one was struck by the vehicle, according to Gilbert police."
With reports like that, El Presidente has absolutely no reason to trouble himself with "fake news". Too many stories one reads or hears in the "news" media are so incomplete, so lacking in facts or context, or simply so ineptly or deviously expressed, that the "fake news" seems reliable, or at least predictable, for no other reason that you can dismiss it outright. Stories like the one I've just mentioned have to be filled in, teased out or in some other way worked through in order to make sense of them, let alone make an evaluation.
Oh--the woman hit by the truck was pronounced dead at the hospital and the other cyclist, also a woman, "required no medical attention."
OK, I don't want to seem like I'm nitpicking, but I want to know how two cyclists were involved if one bicycle was struck.
I will give the reporter(s) credit for this, though: The report mentions that both cyclists and the truck were traveling east on Ray Road in Gilbert, Arizona, when the truck driver made a right turn onto Val Vista Drive.
I wouldn't be surprised if the cyclists stopped for a red light and proceeded when the signal turned green. As I have mentioned in earlier posts, that is the easiest way to get struck by a motor vehicle, especially a truck or bus. The "Idaho stop" is much safer: When a cyclist proceeds against a red light through an intersection where there is no cross-traffic, he or she is much safer than he or she would be by following the signals, as the law requires in most places.
Going through an intersection when no cross-traffic is present allows the cyclist to get out ahead of traffic moving in the same direction--which makes it more likely that bus or truck driver behind you will see you.
However the truck came to collide with the cyclist, the image at the beginning of this post is not good news--whether or not The Orange One quits the Paris climate accord.
If you have recently seen someone who is
usually flushed, but sometimes pale, often with lips more or less drawn, and the beginnings of shadows under the eyes, and always an expression of weariniess
you might have been looking at me last week, when I was grading mountains of papers and exams. You also might have been looking at a White House Chief of Staff, or any number of people working in the current administration.
What causes the condition described above? Some esteemed doctors have claimed it is a result of:
over-exertion, the upright position on the wheel and the unconscious attempt to maintain one's balance tend to produce a weary and exhausted face.
So...What was the name of this condition?, you ask.
Here goes: Bicycle Face.
Believe it or not, sober, serious medical professionals actually claimed that riding would so distort your face--that is, if you are of the gender in which I now live. They didn't say anything about what cycling does to men's faces. Or, perhaps, it was OK for a man to look that way because it meant that he was exerting himself: something a woman was not supposed to do, or at least look as if she were doing.
That was back in 1895. Of course, the doctors who came up with the description of the symptoms and causes of the disease, uh, over-relied on anecdotal evidence, made it all up. Why? They, and other reactionary men, were afraid that if women rode too much (or at all, according to some men), they would lose their physical attractiveness and other feminine virtues in much the same way they believed too much education (or simply reading) would becloud their pretty little heads.
By the time women got the right to vote in the US, I don't think anybody was using the term "bicycle face" any more. Well, maybe some kid used it as a playground insult: Perhaps he or she thought some other kid's face looked like it was laced with spokes or had ears that stuck out like handlebars or something. Actually, I do recall hearing "bike face" in locker rooms: The "bike" in question, of course, didn't have two wheels.
(Wow! When I think of stuff like that, I realize how much the world--and I--have changed!)
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| Bicycle Face? |
Anyway, we all know that some people take the sting out of epithets and derogatory terms by "owning" them. I am thinking, of course, of the ways in which some African Americans (mostly the young) use the "n-word" or the way some in the LGBT community employ "queer" or gay men say "faggot". I myself would never use those terms, but I understand why some would feel empowered by uttering them.
Apparently, the owners of a new bicycle shop in Lexington, Kentucky are thinking like those young African-American and LGBT people. They have appropriated the name of a fabricated "condition" or "syndrome" for their enterprise. According to manager Jack Baugh, he and the owners want to make money. But they also want to "create a sense of community" and make their shop "a place where people will want to come and get to know other cyclists." That, he says, is one of the reasons why the repair shop has been placed in the center of the store, rather than in the bike, out the side or in a basement. "That helps open things up for people to hang out, because the shop is where conversations always take place," he explains.
Bicycle Face will soon have a bar for coffee and other beverages--something offered by just one other bike shop in Lexington. It will also have free wi-fi and a big garage door to let in sunlight--and will be the site of maintenance classes as well as the starting point of group rides.
Baugh and the shop's owners realize that it's easy for cyclists to buy equipment online. So, he says, Bicycle Face, has to be "more than a store." It must be "an experience" that "gives customers a reason to come in."
And, one assumes, they want to make "bicycle face" an expression of joy.
One thing about air shows: You don't have to be at the venue in which they're held in order to see them. You can see them for miles around.
I should have remembered that when I decided to head for Point Lookout yesterday. When I got there, I wondered why it was so crowded (well, at least in comparison to the way it usually is). Jones Beach, where the the Bethpage Air Show was held, is only the length of a football (soccer, I mean) field from the rocks at Point Lookout where I usually lunch and/or meditate in the middle of my ride. So, of course, the spectators at Point Lookout had as good a vantage point as the folks at Jones Beach or Bethpage.
In a way, that turned out just as well. I took Tosca--my Mercian fixed gear--along a sandy path to a more remote area of the beach. The tide was out, so there was a lot of beach. (In places like Jones Inlet, what's good for bathers or beach loungers is not good for boaters: The fact that the tide was out also meant that sandbars were exposed.) She didn't mind that I pushed her along the sand: I pedaled into the wind most of the way out there, so I was pushing pretty hard on the pedals.
Of course, that meant I had the wind at my back for most of my way back. Interestingly, even though there was a crowd at Point Lookout, I didn't see much traffic anywhere along my ride--not even along the strips of bars and restaurants in Long Beach and Rockaway Beach.
They were still watching the air show, I think, when I got home.
