Wow I'm so sorry about that. I can't imagine what I was thinking.

Yesterday evening the Contraption Captain and I are at the long light whose name is El Camino and Sand Hill.  If you're thinking that all of my bicycle stories are on the way to work or the way home you'd be right.  I'm basically a commuter type of bicyclist.  For special hundred mile tour accounts through Big Sur you are going to need to go elsewhere, at least until I hit the lottery or similar.

At the traffic light is one of my favorite pedestrians, also on the way home from work.  He's this classic old-skool Palo Alto type.  Older guy.  Tall.  Slim. Intelligent.  Fit.  He works at USGS and commutes by foot.  We greeted each other and he said that we had just missed one of those fairly typical rush hour interactions where as he put it "two over-entitled cars fought it out."  So we joke about cars which is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel.

Then he told us of the following encounter.

He was in an underground parking garage, with his car.  He was waiting for a second car to pull out of a parking space so that he could park.  A big shiny black Mercedes pulled up behind him and became obviously agitated at having their way (briefly) blocked.  The parked car left and he parked his car and the woman in the black Mercedes rolled down her window and said...

"You inconvenienced me."

I don't know about the rest of you but I thought this explained so much about how people drive their cars and generally behave towards anything that slows them down.  I tried to think of a good response. Contraption Captain said that he applauded her honesty.

My supposed responses:

"Want me to come over there and inconvenience both headlights?"
"You've obviously mistaken me for one of your serfs."

the diversity is the message

Something I like about bicyclists is tat they come in lots of different flavors which means if you encounter a bicyclist you do not like, say a fashionista riding up the wrong side of the road or a roadie bullying pedestrians well..go ahead and pick another one off the bicycle tree.

just a few types of bicyclists:

mommy bicyclists on their way to yoga class with baby in a wee-rider
daddy bicyclists herding their children to softball games on the weekends
athlete bicyclists training for triathlons and road races
just you and me bicyclists on their way to work
college student hipster bicyclists who are totally self-conscious
migrant workers riding beat up bicycles into town
little kid bicyclists, totally unpredictable but also very cute
high school bicyclists more looking at each other than the road
unicyclists doing it with one wheel
tandem bicyclists, couples riding together
retired person cyclists on their way to the bookstore or out to visit friends
recumbists who have back problems and can't ride a diamond frame
Contraption Captains who can't figure out why anyone would voluntarily ride a diamond frame
people who build their own bicycles from spare parts
people who spend more on their bicycles than the sum national debt of Guatemala

So yesterday I bicycle home and meet up with the Contraption Captain and after successfully crossing El Camino Real (go us) we see this guy up ahead and since he is conveniently walking his bicycle we pull over to talk and check out his ride.  I asked if I could take his picture and he kindly said yes.  Nice guy, if you see this and want the picture removed, just email me.

Ever seen a cat take notice of a bird or mouse?  The cat doesn't immediately move but it's entire body becomes silently taut with focus and attention.  The ears shift fractionally forward.  The cat pours all of it's attention into looking at the bird.  That's the way the Contraption Captain looked at the wheels on this bicycle.

The tire were almost as big as car tires.  The bicycle itself set the guy back ~200 usd at WalMart although he's made a few upgrades since then.  Unfortunately he had a flat, but not caused by any special design issue, he had a screw embedded in the poor thing and was walking home for a repair.

Who needs a fun bicycle?

Everyone needs a fun bicycle.

The fun bicycle is the one you ride.

guess who we (kindof sorta) saw on the way in to work|school today. no really, guess. did you guess President Barack Obama?

It was raining this morning, a soft misty rain that might have been a feathery snowfall but everything outside was green and it never snows in our part of the bay area.  At the ordained time Contraption Captain, Rapunzel, and I rolled out down the driveway, turned right onto our street and then left onto the main drag that takes us to her school.

We could see something going on up ahead, a big array of police cars with whirling lights, some fire engines, and a group of people.  We got closer and could see that the people were shaking signs up and down.  Someone yelled "better hurry up or you'll miss it" but we rolled on at our usual pace until our progress was stopped by a police barricade.

As we waited a long row of giant black SUVs with lit headlights and black tinted windows rolled through the intersection escorted by police on motorcycles and in cars.  It was President Obama on his way to a fundraiser being held in the uber-wealthy town of Atherton.  The signs were anti Keystone XL pipeline and the people chanted "Hey, Barack, you talked the talk now walk the walk."

I think they also said that the oil should stay in the ground.  I felt the faint embarrassment that an introvert experiences when a group of people do a lot of shouting.  It was early morning and I wondered what it would be like to go to a boring fundraiser event and be screamed at from street corners.   By everyone everywhere all the time.  That's a lot of screaming, I guess it comes with the presidential territory.

I asked the Contraption Captain, of the protesters, "how did they get here?"  He wasn't sure what I meant so I clarified.  "Did they bike here?"  I don't think they rode their bicycles out this morning with their signs.  I think some walked maybe and some biked but most drove their cars.  Why it matters.  If we do not want pipelines in our backyards, we have to look attentively at why the demand for the pipeline is there at all.  It's there because this country has an incredible appetite for petroleum products and a sad reluctance to slow down conveniences.

We were the only three bicyclists waiting in the soft rain for the President to pass so we could continue on to work and school.  We didn't say anything at all, we just stood there, but I found myself recalling the sign that Ellen Fletcher had mounted to her bicycle:  Bicycling.  A Quiet Statement Against Oil Wars.

I'm not smug and I don't have a high horse to get on, I drive to way too many sports events to start copping an attitude.  But I also don't think it's enough to shake a sign and then get in your car and drive away.

get yer war on

If you are older than dirt (I am older than dirt) you may remember the most fantastic on-line comic ever, Get Yer War On.  It's over now and I still miss it's awesomeness.  Reading it was like discovering that you had four more eyes on your head that worked but whose data you had been ignoring since you were three years old.  Go get some war on and then come right back because I want to talk about patriotism and how we wankers have let our respective countries (except Holland apparently) be overrun by baboons.  

Back?  Great.  I'm subscribed to a number of mailing lists and one of these is for area parents.  Fine.  Good.  Parents trade suggestions on where to find a nice ballet class, what summer camps do not suck blah blah blah.  And.  Certain totally favorite topics come up on a regular basis.  For example:

1.  What is the best preschool for a future Nobel winner?

2.  My kids spend all their time playing Cut The Rope on my iPad.  Is that ok?

3.  My child is a prodigy.  Should I apply to Stanford now or wait a year?

4.  My wife is pregnant and I have too much money.  What car should I buy?

5.  My kid can't walk and chew gum.  Is it too late to trade him in for a newer model?

Ok.  I made 2 up.  No one worries about iPad usage. 

Anyways the stars aligned and the timing was correct and the parents decided to have their bi-mobnthly discussion whose name is "What Car Do I Buy."  I know you guys are totally desperate for the answer so I'm going to tl;dr the experience since the parents can jaw about their favorite cars for hours, nay days, nay months.  And it is really boring to listen to them natter on about three rows of seats.

The results of which car do I get now that I have a baby fall into two groups:

Camp #1 says "get a minivan, the sliding doors are so fucking awesome you will cry with joy on rainy days although admittedly it rarely rains here."

Camp #2 says "only pussies drive minivans, get the biggest SUV you can afford.  That's the only way the world will know that your woman is getting satisfed every night by a [redacted] that is bigger than a baseball bat.    

Blah blah blah.  

I can't call it camp #3 (to be a camp you need to be more than one person) but on this occasion there was one dissenting opinion and his answer went like this:

"...my advice (as a parent) would be to get a Prius or an electric car, because you want your kids to grow up with a healthy planet."

Cue laughter from everyone else.

After the helpless mirth died down there was a short silence followed by a single response before the parents returned to "tastes great/less filling" aka SUV/minivan.  

Here's that one response:

"That's sooo UnAmerican.  You need a Suburban!!!  :)"

Yeah well fuck you.  Fuck you and the Suburban you rode in on.  Fuck your over-sized cars and your making fun of the one poor bastard who at least showed some vague cognition that taking a giant fuel dump and setting it on fire was a little sick.  And a special fuck you for calling the guy unAmerican.  How the fuck did we get to the point where being an American meant buying the biggest fattest oiliest car we could fucking afford?  I call bullshit on your so-called Americanism.  

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, concieved in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal."  

Equal, my friends.  Not Equality for those with the largest automobiles.  Equality for all of us.  

What tenets define your country?  How does your country imagine itself?  Americans may speak of their proud individualism.  They like to toss the word "freedom" around quite a lot.  They like to point to the American Revolution and say that they will not be ruled by a king, they will be ruled by someone they elect.  Americans like to say that anyone who works hard can come to this country and be a success.  

What do Americans NOT say when they lovingly define themeselves, possibly jerking off as they do so if they are in the privacy of their own homes.  They do not say "Being American is to be dependent on foreign oil.  I proudly encourage that dependency by buying the biggest most inefficient car I can find."  They do not say it because it is lame and embarrassing and the soul of un-American.

There is nothing more individual, more "take responsibility" more indepedent or more free than choosing a bicycle.  Screw the middle-east with it's absolutely disgusting and un-democratic politics and it's "we hate our women so much that we insist they go around wearing giant black bags despute the temperature being 110 degrees in the shade."  Screw them.  Screw the way they throw acid on the faces of women who turn down their puny sexual advances.  Screw their oil.  Definitely screw their oil.  Let them keep it and roll around in it.

What's your country made of?  What makes you proud about being Scottish, Australian, British, Ethiopian?  Is it your ability to make rainbows from shoe strings?  Is it your friendliness?  Is it your calm in the face of danger?  Whatever your particular flavor of patriotism, it probably does not include "we are so lazy that we drive to the corner liquor store preferably in the biggest fattest car available."  

So take it back.  Ride your bicycle.      

bicycle spring

Every spring the household bicycles begin sounding like arthritic Golden Retrievers.  They shuffle when they change gears.  They stumble at the starting line when the traffic light turns green.  They squeak like unenthusiastic field mice when called upon to corner.  Winters here are so mild as to barely earn the moniker winter but it does rain and we do ride a lot and by spring, just when the bicyclists begin to feel their oats the bicycles are feeling their age.  

A month or so back the Contraption Captain decided to investigate why his bicycle was softly saying "wibble-wibble-wibble-wibble."  Turns out the rear wheel was missing two spokes.  Fortunately the average bicycle has many many spokes, n +a_bunch and so for awhile he did nothing at all, a situation sure to cue horror from more attentive bicyclists.  I know people who spend time cleaning their bicycle after every ride and I totally salute those people in the same way I salute people who can fold their towels so that they line up perfectly in the linen closet and then they bundle each set of towels with an organic ribbon so it's ready to set out on a perfectly made guest room bed when company arrives.  Go those people!

But I am not one of them and neither is the Contraption Captain.  My bicycle gets ridden (mostly back and forth to work, but other errands as well) about four thousand miles each year.  I wear a chain out something like once every eighteen months.  My brakes wear down and need replacing and sometimes a cable gets used up.  Some of the wear could be minimized but not a lot and the happy news is that bicycles just don't need a lot of attention and most of the attention they do need can wait until the problems reach such a point that they are totally driving you up the wall with their wailings and grindings of gears and you break (brake) down and do some repairing or if you are me you look soulful until Contraption Captain does the repairing.  

The spokes and the wibbling and more worrying, the something Not Quite Right with the rear brakes worked on Contraption Captain until he took his bicycle out of commission a week back and Rapunzel, Pele and I crowded into the shop (technically a garage but we call it the shop because our car hasn't been indoors since...well...ever..) to stare at the Tour Easy which he had tied to the ceiling. 

What happened next:

1. replace 2 broken spokes, including trimming length and re-threading replacements
2. re-true the wheel
3. repack the wheel bearings
4. replace worn bearing surfaces on axle

Notably, what did not happen?  Correct.  The rear brake is still not totally okay where by "not okay" I mean "the brake does not stop the bike."  Fortunately the front brake works.  For now.  

How'd we manage while down a bicycle?  Mostly ok.  Pele had soccer training on Saturday and Sunday and I bicycled out to drop her off and collect her.  She's a not so little anymore workhorse who is happy to pedal to a practice because of the chance to get some additional cardio done.  Her bicycle is just visible to the left in this picture just as the front wheel of my bicycle is just visible to the right.

What is not visible?  The orange flag on a stick that I made Contraption Captain buy and mount to the back of Pele's bicycle.  The flag was the newest manifestation of my compulsive need to barricade my family from cars.  Pele now has two (two!  wtf, two?) rear view mirrors and one orange flag and a bicycle helmet.  I haven't started pricing out Kevlar vests just yet but I suppose it's on the horizon somewhere.  

Anyways.  Stay tuned to find out the answers to burning questions like:  Does Contraption Captain fix his rear brake?  Do I find a way to install a cow-catcher to the front of Pele's bicycle?  Do I surreptitiously add a klaxon to Rapunzel's bicycle?

Dirge Without Music

(warning.  unfunny and unhappy)

If you have been around and survived more than one rant you may recall that I completely lost my shit a month or so back when I came across a white child's bicycle chained up to mark the place where a pick-up truck killed a fourteen year old girl.  If you think that my selective memory took over and I have conveniently forgot about that child or her family you would be mistaken.  I think of her often.  I daydream of a special car-free route from her neighborhood to her school that would be named in her honor.  I think about fire-bombing that piece of shit corner where she was killed, also in her honor.

I am tormented because beneath my pissed off countenance lies a nearly endless pool of fondness for children and for bicyclists.  I am unhappy because I have my own fourteen year old who loves to bicycle and I sense that the day will come when she will be out there, as I am, and it can be dangerous out there but how can I deprive her of the feeling of being a falcon that takes flight with the most ordinary of circumstances, a bicycle?  I cannot deprive her.  

I haven't done anything very constructive to change the world since this death in the next town over, and this embarrasses me, but despite my silence I do not approve and I am not resigned.  Maybe you bicyclists will be interested to hear that it is said that this fourteen year old girl was at fault in the collision that killed her.   It's said that she should have slowed down, she should not have gone into the turn at the same time as the pick-up truck, side by side as if they were equals when we all know that they were not equals.  There is a lot in this article that is not said.

It is not said that we should change that corner so that only children bicycling to school can make a turn before reaching the traffic light.

It is not said that too many children have died, that we must ensure that this is the last fourteen year old to be killed and we should build a separate infrastructure for bicycles.

It is not said that every day people driving cars and trucks and sport utility vehicles do not slow down or show caution and care as they drive past their neighbors and their neighbor's children.

It is not said that we could do better.  That we must do better.

Instead, it is said that this fourteen year old girl, adored by her friends and family, missed by her community, is an acceptable casualty, that she made a mistake, that we agree that there is nothing to learn from this death.

Do you know software?  If you are running a program, and it behaves in an unexpected way, perhaps fails to log a change or display a result or maybe it shuts down altogether?  That's a bug.  You encounter a bug and you file a bug report and that report is picked up by the software engineers who support that product.  They look at the bug, they try and reproduce your results, they run the software in debug mode, and sometimes quickly and sometimes after a lot of time goes by they find the problem and they correct the code and submit a change list and verify the fix.  Then they mark the bug as fixed.  Sometimes they just cannot reproduce the bug and they mark the report "could not reproduce." Sometimes they discover that the problem was with the user and they respond to the user saying what was done wrong and they mark the bug "working as intended."

Is this death, our idea of "working as intended"  Really?  REALLY?

I do not approve.  I am not resigned.  I ask, "How many more children and parents and friends and sisters and brothers have to die before we agree that it is important for people to travel to work and to school in safety?

What I really wanted to say. Also, WAY TOO LOUD.

One reason I had to start writing here was because I lied (not just a little either, pretty much all the time) whenever people would talk to me about bicycling.  They'd say "I don't know how you can do it!" and I'd kindof simper prettily and smile and hate myself in the morning because what I really wanted to say to them was "if you got off your sorry ass once or twice a year you might be amazed at what you could do."  In keeping with that, there is this one thing I reliably hear that I have been routinely extra-nice about, because on an important quiet level I sympathized with the sentiment.

What I hear:  I'd like to ride my bicycle to work but I'm too scared to do so.

What I say:  Yeah well I get that.  Cars can be really scary.  Choosing a good route can make all the difference though, where are you coming from?

What is slowly dawning on me:  It's total horseshit.  They aren't scared at all.  They've never bicycled to work, they have no idea if it would be scary or not.  If they have any ideas on the topic they come from driving like a total bastard and scaring themselves.  

With this new understanding, what I would really like to say (but probably will never be drunk enough for it unfortunately):  "A coward dies a million deaths, a hero dies but once."  So wander off, Coward, and piss on someone else's parade.  You're tedious.

Yes the weather here has been lovely.  Thanks for asking.  Onward.

Probably three weeks back now it is Friday and I am happily pedaling my way home for the weekend.  I do not make the traffic light at Charleston and Amp and I pull up behind a very shiny black sports car.  It's a long light and I have time to consider the shiny car.  The label on the back says "Lamborghini."  Ok.  It's a Lamborghini.  Whatever, right?  Wrong, my friends.  Wrong.  A mid-sized sedan pulls up immediately to the right of the shiny car and windows are rolled down.  High pitched squealing emits from mid-sized sedan.  The softy-looking Laborghini driver responds by gunning the apparently massive fucking engine of his car which, if you will recall, I am immediately behind.  Me.  Not in a car.  With nothing in between me and what feels like about a billion decibels.  Do you know that expression "made my ears bleed"?  Turns out having your ears bleed is super unpleasant.  

The revving stops so that the two monkeys can return to assessing each other's genitalia,  I have time to look around and see a bunch of guys, also on their way home from work, all driving Nissan Leafs or Prii.  They look tense and unhappy but not deaf.*  To those guys I say "Don't look so worried.  No woman worth keeping is attracted to you because your car is loud.  Just saying.  It's like attracting a guy by stuffing toilet paper in your bra, eventually you'll be in bed and he's going to notice the difference.  

...and revenge is always there and always fresh and interesting.  The light turned green and the black car stomped on the gas and exploded out of the gate and I started pedaling.  Pedal-pedal.  As I biked across the 101 overpass I looked down and saw the usual bumper to bumper parking lot that is the 101 on Friday during rush hour.  And I saw that the Lamborghini hadn't even made it onto the highway.  He was stuck in traffic waiting to get onto the highway which when he finally arrived at would translate into more traffic.  

Buh-bye you worthless jerk.  Maybe if the traffic gets bad enough some floozy in a sedan will crawl in your window and show you a shallow time.