Meep, meep! That's how I feel sometimes on my bike...small, sorta fast and almost invisible, even in my dayglo super reflective long sleeve shirt. I had six shirts on this morning. A record in my book, even from my coldest days on the bike before. I had forgotten to take off my work shirt before putting on my cycling clothes, then added my dayglo at the end for the hell of it. Poor work shirt...it was pretty sweaty when I arrived. Oh, and even in this shirt pictured here...which I really wear on the bike, people still have the damnedest time seeing me. I find that amazing.
So this day was a bad one for bikers in Boise, with another biker being hit out on State street in the Lake Harbor area. I looked for this bike/car crash on the Idaho Statesman, KTVB.com, KIVITV.com find no mention of it. I searched those sites for the accident that happened a few weeks ago at McMillan/Five Mile and find no mention of that either. I did find a story I missed about a cyclist being killed out in the far west part of Chinden back in August. Is anyone keeping a tally of these incidents? I did see where the founder of Penthouse mag died. Who gives a shit about that? Why can't we hear about what is happening to our peds and our riders?
It was a hairy day on the bike today and I feel like driving tomorrow. I had a nice encounter with a very new black Range Rover with a woman behind the wheel that doesn't understand how to use her rear view mirrors. Thank God I am looking for her. A white VW Jetta ran the red light at the four way ped cross at 8th/Bannock tonight. I heard him coming...being on the bike does this to your ears. Daren and I witnessed a high speed turn on a red light, just to get to another red light. Luckily no peds were stepping off the curb, no bikes were crossing. It was dark...they were lucky. I also had a very young cyclist cut me off...she's lucky I wasn't a car or she would have been run over.
I have a comment for my old pal from Craig's List: It turns out that there are plenty of "anus-faces" driving cars. I'm witnessing lack of use of turn signals, lack of headlights, broken taillights, failure to yield, excessive speed, running red lights, rolling through stops. Now, when I look at that list I see that I can do everything on that list with the exception of excessive speed.Turns out we are all anus faces if we don't follow the damn rules. Everybody, get a clue. Car driver, use your head and use your turn signal. I've been working on my intuition, but as of yet, I still have no clue what you are going to do. Also, when you wait for me to cross or yield to me near a crosswalk, I do appreciate that, but please do not do that. It pisses the drivers off behind you and I am prepared to wait until I can safely cross.
As usual, I'm posting pissed. I read the October 2010 National Geographic today about the Gulf spill. I'm sickened by our addiction to oil and petroleum products. Yes, I realize my tires, plastic parts, grease on my moving parts, etc, etc are from those products...but we've got to do something. When we have little straws all over the Gulf and in multiple places around the world, we look like hungry pigs sucking our planet dry. Can we each do one thing to reduce our need, our greed, our lust for oil? Name something you can do and do it. I challenge you.
Rain is on its way...we're running out of the last best days of this beautiful fall. Remember to slow down on these dark and dreary days, watch for bikes, motorcycles, kids going to school, peds and the purely clueless. They will appreciate it.
Until we ride again, Ciao!
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