Neither Snow Nor Rain Nor Wind...But Any Combination Of Those Things?

Now I'm really glad I went for a ride, however brief, yesterday.

According to the weather forecast, there's more on the way--snow, wind and cold.  In fact, absolute temperatures of near O degrees F, and wind-chill temperatures of -20F are predicted for the wee hours of tomorrow morning.  

I don't think it's been so cold in at least a couple of years.  That, in and of itself, wouldn't deter me from riding.  But with winds gusting to 60MPH (100 KPH)--at times blowing the snow horizontally--I don't feel much incentive to go out. In fact, I'm not sure I'd ride even if I had a mountain or fat-tire bike.

I'm such a sissy, right?

I Wooon't Park There!

I confess...I haven't done a lot of riding since my latest trek to Connecticut.  That was almost a month ago!

Since then, I commuted until the end of the semester and, last week, took a ride to the Rockaways with Bill.  But for much of the week before that--including Christmas Day--I was languishing with a virus frolicking inside me.

I am feeling better now.  I started to notice improvement after that ride with Bill, last Thursday--before a snowstorm.

Today I took another, shorter ride before--you guessed it!--another snowstorm that's coming our way tonight.  The coming snow squall, like the one we just had, shouldn't leave us with a lot of white stuff.  But the weatherfolk are promising lots of wind and colder temperatures.

So I felt I just needed to get out today.  I wasn't going to stop for anything--especially after seeing this:

Noooo parking.  No, I woooon't park.  And I won't ride sloooow.  At least, I'll try not to!

A Bicycle Beltway?

During his 2016 campaign for the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders said he's "not an inside-the-Beltway guy."

What he meant is that he isn't part of that insular world of government officials and members of the media in and around the nation's capital who concern themselves with matters that are of little or no importance to most Americans.  He was implying that he has a vision that includes the whole nation and world, and not merely the incestuous dysfunction that seems to rule the corridors of authority.

The "Beltway" is a highway--Interstate 495, to be exact--that encircles the city of Washington, DC and its suburbs in Maryland and Virginia.  In this sense, it is similar to Interstates 128 and 285, which enclose the cities of Boston and Atlanta, respectively, along with their immediate suburbs.  

One of the ironies of these "ring" highways--and those around other cities, such as the Boulevard Peripherique in Paris--is that they were designed to alleviate the traffic tie-ups in central cities, but now they are among the most congested roads in the world.

Well, now it looks like Washington's regional Transportation Planning Board is about to endorse a "Bicycle Beltway"  plan for the US capital.  Interestingly, it will include trails through the heart of the city that will connect the outer arcs of he 45-mile (80-kilometer) outer loop.  

Much of the network already exists.  The plan, if approved (as expected), calls for improvements to existing paths in the Maryland suburb of Bethesda, and building new trails in neighboring Silver Spring as well as in the Virginia suburbs of Arlington and the southeastern part of the city itself.  These new and improved paths will connect the already-existing lanes to form the proposed "Bicycle Beltway."

Now I have to wonder whether this plan, when completed, will spawn a new breed of "Inside the Beltway" cyclists.

Hello, 2018!

Happy New Year!

From Bicycle Utopia

The band plays on.  Let's hope 2018 is full of cheerful, vibrant tunes!

Another Stage Of The Journey

Another year is about to end.  Again!

I'm glad you've followed me on this journey through 2017--and the previous seven years of this blog.  I hope you'll travel with me into 2018.

Thank you!

Wonder wheel

I'm still a little bit under the weather.  But I'm getting better.  I even managed to go for a ride with Bill.

After the ride, at his apartment, he showed me his bike rack and we talked about the challenges of fitting multiple bikes in NYC dwellings.

Although it probably wouldn't fit into either of our apartments, I'd like this rack:

I hope you enjoy the last "Sunday funny" of this year!

In A City That Never Sleeps, Should Its Bike-Share Program Take A Rest?

One of Frank Sinatra's best-known recordings is his cover of the theme song from Martin Scorsese's "New York, New York".  One of the most famous lines in that song goes, "I want to wake up in a city that never sleeps."

Of course, The Big Apple was known as "The City That Never Sleeps" long before Sinatra recorded that song, or Scorsese made the movie.  Many things in this town operate 24/7.  One of them is the mass-transit system.  To my knowledge, Chicago is the only other US city where the trains and buses run 'round-the-clock.  Even such metropoli as Paris and London, where the buses operate at all hours, shut down their subway systems for a few hours every day.

While we New Yorkers take pride in a subway system that never sleeps, not many of us use it between one and five a.m.--the hours when, as it happens, the Paris Metro trains don't run.  Of course, most of the people who use it during those hours work night shifts and, as often as not, don't make a lot of money.  (Many of them are immigrants.)  Still, I can understand why the folks who run this system and the city question the wisdom of running subways all night:  A train costs as much to operate from three to four a.m. as it does from six to seven p.m, but carries far fewer passengers.  

Those nearly-empty subway cars in the wee hours are one reason why the newest Regional Plan, released last month, suggests that the 24/7 subway system should become 24/3, with the trains running at all hours on weekends, when ridership is greatest.  Another reason why such a scheme is being proposed is that it would make it easier to do much-needed maintenance and, in some cases, rebuilding.  That is what happens in Paris, London and other cities that shut down their trains in the pre-dawn hours.

So...How does the question of whether mass transit systems should run 24/7 relate to a bike-share program in Port Huron, Michigan?

Well, that town is shutting down its bike-share program for a few weeks.  One reason is that, "We've seen a dramatic drop-off" in usage "since the second week in October,"  according to Dave McElroy.  The general manager and finance director of Blue Water Area Transit, which runs the program, says that the bikes will be stowed away in early January and brought back around the first week of March.

Statue of young Thomas Edison in front of the Blue Water Bridge, Port Huron, Michigan

Why have fewer people used the bikes since October?  The same reason why fewer people, in general, ride bikes in places like Port Huron:  the days get shorter, the weather turns colder, and snow soon follows.  Climatic conditions are another reason why the bikes are being stored:  In most bike share programs, the bikes are outdoors most, if not all, of the time.  That leaves them vulnerable to the ravages of snow, sleet, rain and other elements.

And, I would imagine, shutting down the program would allow the program's employees or volunteers the time to inspect, maintain and repair bikes.

So...I now wonder whether other cities where bike ridership is seasonal might consider following Port Huron's example in shutting down their bike share programs for a few weeks during the winter.  

But...If we were to do that here in New York, would we still be a "city that never sleeps"?

When It's Gone In Tucson: You Have A 3 Percent Chance

I feel like somebody broke my leg.

Tucson, Arizona resident Leif Abrell voiced what many of us felt when a bicycle was stolen from us.  He lost his custom-made mountain bike in the wee hours of 28 September.  Like most bike-theft victims, he didn't see that his trusty steed was gone until it was too late:  A noise woke him and he noticed the door to his carport was open.  He checked to see whether anything valuable was missing, but in his groggy state, it didn't occur to him to look in the dining room of his midtown home.  When he did, he saw that his treasured bike was missing.  And he found a much-inferior bike deserted on the side of the street next to his house.

The rest of his story is also all-too-familiar to those of us who've had our wheels whisked away:  He reported his loss to the police.  While he "didn't have high hopes" for recovering his bike, he clung to "some hopes that something would happen," he recounted.  Alas, "nothing really happened," he said.

I learned of Abrell's ordeal from an article on Tucson.com.  According to that same article, 1200 bike thefts have been reported to police in "The Old Pueblo".  Only about three percent of those cases ended in arrests of suspected thieves and, worse, there's really how many stolen bikes are returned to their rightful owners.  As in most cities, the police don't track that.

Perhaps most disheartening of all, 63 percent of this year's bike theft cases were marked as "cleared", meaning they reached some sort of conclusion. Why is that disheartening?  Well, most of those cases were closed because there wasn't enough evidence to continue an investigation.  

Everything I've mentioned confirms something known to most of us who have had bikes stole:  Once it's gone, you'll probably never see it again.

Chris Hawkins, a Tucson police spokesman, echoed a common refrain in explaining why it's so difficult to track stolen bicycles:  In most places, "bicycles don't need to be registered like vehicles."  And, he says, bicycle owners rarely record serial numbers, which can be entered into databases for access by owners of second-hand shops and other establishments where stolen bikes might end up. 

The lack of such records, Hawkins says, is one reason why, even when bikes are retrieved by cops and find their way to the evidence room, they are seldom re-united with their owners.  

While Hawkins makes good points, the cynic in me (I am a New Yorker, after all) wonders whether some police departments would actively pursue bike a bike theft even if they had serial numbers and other records.  While some officers, like some people in other professions and jobs, simply don't care, others are simply overwhelmed by competing priorities and directives. 

Sometimes I think one has the best hope of getting a stolen bike back if a shop owner or mechanic recognizes it--or if its owner encounters it on the street.

Driving Drunk + Hitting Cyclist = 28 Days

Woman Sentenced to Jail for OWI After Hitting Teen on Bicycle

Although I wasn't happy to hear about another cyclist hit by a car, I was somewhat heartened, if only for a moment, when I read "Woman Sentenced".  Too often, motorists who hit and injure, or even kill, cyclists get off scot-free--or don't get much more than the proverbial "slap on the wrist."

Unfortunately, the latter was actually the case for the woman in the headline.  Yes, she is going to jail--for 28 days.  Now, if she had been like the driver who stayed at the scene after smacking into a 14-year-old Guatemalan boy in Brooklyn last month, I might have thought the sentence too harsh.  But there are other, shall we say, mitigating circumstances.

Those circumstances include the fact that she left the scene--and that she was intoxicated.  But, oh, no, this isn't an isolated incident in her resume:  This is her third drunk driving arrest.

Karen Nugent

Karen Nugent probably knew that she was facing serious time--say, five years, which is what the law allows for someone with her record in Michigan, where she smacked into that teenager.  So she pleaded guilty and got a deal:  The charges were reduced to a second-offense Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) and not stopping at the scene of an accident.  

I don't know whether I am more upset at Ms. Nugent--or the judge in Benzie County who made the deal with her.

Women Cycling For The Environment--In India

Teaching a Women's Studies course during the past semester got me to thinking about the ways in which feminism--however you define it--is tinged with some of the cultural biases feminists have tried to fight.  I have to admit that I brought some of those attitudes and assumptions into my own thinking about gender equality and the ways in which I define myself as a feminist.

I noticed at least one of those unconscious biases while reading one of the best-researched, and most impassioned, papers I read this semester. It was, among other things, an argument that a universal single-payer health care system is the only kind that can help to erase some of the inequalities between men's and women's health care.

The student who wrote the paper hails from Burkina Faso and came to class in a hijab. She expressed her belief that there was nothing incompatible between her religion, Islam, and her wish to bring about gender equality. Another student, who made a slide-show about female infanticide in her native country (Pakistan) as well as other countries like China, expressed a similar belief.

I have to admit that sometimes I still think that the most forward-thinking people when it comes to women's rights are in secular Western democracies. And I admit that I prefer, and probably always will prefer, living in one.

But I must say that some of the most interesting things--including bike rides--undertaken by women have been, lately, in countries where we are supposedly more "oppressed."  One such nation is India.  Now, know some very strong, intelligent and independent Indian women.  And they are some of the most educated women to be found anywhere.  Still, I rarely see one on a bicycle, at least here in New York, or the United States.

That is why I was so impressed to read about a group of 13 cyclists, 10 of whom are women, on a ride through western India.  They left Pune last week and plan ton cover 1500 kilometers (about 1000 miles) in 16 days before they end up in Kanniyakumari on 3 January.  Along the way, they will pass through a number of cities containing some of the most sacred Hindu and other religious monuments, as well as any number of World Heritage sites--not to mention some beautiful mountain, river and sea coast vistas.

Cyclists in Pune, just before they embarked on their ride.

They are riding, in part, to bring attention to some of those natural and man-made wonders.  Why?  Well, India is one of the world's fastest-growing economies:  According to a report I heard this morning on BBC World News, India will leapfrog England and France (ironically, the countries that colonized it) to become the world's fifth-largest economy in 2018.  All of that development means more motorized traffic, cell towers, factories and mines--which mean, of course, more pollution.  Indian cities have some of the world's worst air quality, and, since wind does not stop at a city line, the smog and other pollution are spreading and threatening some of the world's most awe-inspiring sights, not to mention the health of humans and other living beings.

One of the things I learned in the research I did for the class is that in India and other developing countries, women are leading, or at least are giving much of the momentum, to environmental movements.  Of course, part of my own cultural arrogance led me to believe that such nations "don't care about the environment", seduced as they are by their newly-created wealth.  In addition to being disabused of such notions, I have learned that concern for the environment has been spurred, in India, China and other places, by feminists.  They see--to a degree that almost no one, male or female, in the Western world can--that environmental issues are women's issues. And children's issues.  And that men will be better off if women and children are.

And the bicycle is, if you will, a vehicle for delivering such equality--just as Susan B. Anthony said it was more than a century ago.