Happy (Christmas) Holidays (unless you're stuck in traffic)!

It's this season again when if you really have to go to the mall, better go there by bike. Otherwise, you are at risk of being stuck in heavy car traffic for a half an hour just to enter the parking lot, only to wait another hour to find a parking spot.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I think the best time to try to ride your bike in the city in exactly now - between Christmas and New Year's Day. Last night I was on my way to a liquor store to pick up some wine for the Christmas dinner when some dude in a pimpmobile yelled at me for slowing him down by roughly 3, maybe 4, seconds. I think he yelled "Move!", although I could swear that from the outside of his car it sounded a lot more like "I have a small d**k!".

Everyone seems rushing these days, especially right before Christmas, but drivers are always impatient. It's almost like once we sit behind the steering wheel, we stop to notice anyone else on the road. If you're on a bicycle - you lost. If you're a pedestrian - forget it. You may as well stay home, since crossing American streets is a sport for only the very patient and determined ones.

My mom, my sister, and her 4-month-old trying to cross a street in Chattanooga, TN.

Unsignalized crosswalks are a decades-long gaslight perpetrated by traffic engineers on America's pedestrians. pic.twitter.com/JKZQ4odWiX

— The Pumpkin Spice Must Flow (@WarrenJWells) December 18, 2019

Neighbors near Arkansas Ave. and Varnum Street have been asking to make the intersection safer and tonight I saw why. pic.twitter.com/K5SRvF8aB1

— Janeese Lewis George (@Janeese4DC) December 13, 2019

You may think, in the future we won't have this problem - autonomous cars will automatically stop for pedestrians at the crosswalks, but I wouldn't be so sure. Apparently, car companies now basically program their AVs to kill you. That is - to kill you if you're a pedestrian. They don't want to harm their clients - the drivers. Something tells me that if you take a self-driving car to your destination, dying in a crash due to software error should be a calculated risk you should be signing for. It was your choice to "drive" after all.

But that won't happen anytime soon. We will have to wait longer for all new cars to come with a massive door sticker "Driving kills". Which is why my idea for automated red light pop-up bollards at every intersection and crosswalk should be implemented ASAP.

Meanwhile, we could just start with banning cars on at least the most walkable streets in the city. After living in the Boston area for the last 15+ years, I still don't understand why neither Newbury St, nor Hanover St (to give just two examples) are not permanently closed for cars (any thru-traffic).

Or we could take the highways out of our cities...

But we won't, because as Michelle Wu said - barriers are almost entirely political:

My takeaways from today’s @GlobeSpotlight #SeeingRed:

🛑 We’re not imagining it. Traffic really is that bad

🚍 Our transpo system is in crisis but we know how to fix it! Even small shifts have a big impact

🕴The barriers are almost entirely POLITICALhttps://t.co/PRqhzazDwg

— Michelle Wu 吳弭 (@wutrain) November 20, 2019

It's true. We're not trying to push boundaries in some antimatter research here - we know what to do: solutions exist and good examples are plentiful. But until the leadership changes, we will stay stuck in traffic, wait for the bus that never comes and be yelled by an impatient pimp with an undersized wiener.

Twelve Days of Christmas

The Christmas season is upon us, which means that here we go again - it's time to play the same old Christmas songs that we all know and honestly have enough of. Not only we have to listen to the same oldies wherever we go this time of year, but also those songs often feel outdated and don't represent the true Christmas spirit of modern times. Which is why I decided to update the lyrics of one holiday classic. Sing with me!

On the twelve days of Christmas my bike ride gave to me,

Twelve drivers speeding,

Eleven drivers texting,

Ten cars idling,

Nine trucks passing

Way to close to me!

Eight near misses,

Seven drivers vicious,

Six blocked bike lanes,

Five delayed trains,

Four that smelled like pee!

Three trucks coal-rolling,

Two that ran on red,

One person dead,

And our Mayor in a SUV!

The unparalleled individual freedom

Watch out! The liberal media has launched a full-scale, thermonuclear War On Cars! They are coming for your freedoms with ideas like banning SUVs, building bike lanes, or even ending free parking in the city!
 

Fortunately, we stay strong! A handful of our friends have already called those liberal brain-fart ideas what they really are - a focused social engineering campaign to "break the car culture", take us out of driver seats and put us all on... bicycles (the horror!). As Steve Milloy eloquently put it - "Cars have given Americans the unparalleled individual freedom and progressives hate it."

Cars have given Americans unparalleled individual freedom.

'Progressives' hate individual freedom.

So NYC plans to “break the car culture.”

Watch for NYC traffic to get even more nightmarish.https://t.co/3kx526dbDV

— Steve Milloy (@JunkScience) October 29, 2019

Jeff Jacoby from Boston Globe is also brutally honest (and correct!), calling it madness:

$1.7 billion — billion! — to "break the car culture" and force even more bicycles onto New York's busiest streets. Madness.https://t.co/Jx7PkCYaQp

— Jeff Jacoby (@Jeff_Jacoby) October 29, 2019

This must stop! We will fight back to keep America great and driving. Instead of wasting billions on silly two-wheeled toys for boys, we could add another lane to the always-congested highways. Our friends in Australia understand it well. Why is our government not following this example?

There's some good news for the hundreds of thousands of motorists who use the M1 every day. The State Government has finally announced progress on a second highway between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. https://t.co/VZ3A1cpmr5 @LauraDymock #qldtraffic #7NEWS pic.twitter.com/cdTbMzYa1Y

— 7NEWS Brisbane (@7NewsBrisbane) October 25, 2019

Interestingly, we have recently gained another, unexpected ally. To guarantee our unparalleled individual freedom to drive, the National Transportation Safety Board has agreed to recommend an introduction of mandatory helmet laws for all cyclists, all across the United States! 
 

At first you may think, what has it to do with my right to drive? Well, it does. You see, the NTSB may not admit it directly, but we can be quite sure they know (they are experts after all), what mandatory helmet laws did in countries such as Australia. Data shows that it's nearly guaranteed to lower the number of cyclists on roads by as much as 30%, after such laws are in place. And who wouldn't want a road with less of those pesky bicycles on it?

On the other hand, just look at the tragic disaster that happened in the Netherlands - a country that used to be a shining beacon of liberty in the 60's, until the Dutch decided to limit their unparalleled individual freedom to drive and put those stupid bike paths everywhere. Now no one wears a helmet there and bicycle are everywhere!

All this means we have to "shame cyclists into wearing helmets" and continue to fight for space for our freedom machines. Otherwise, this valuable space can soon be taken away from us.

Sincerely yours,

Concerned Motorist

West Vermont (S36O) - Day 2

The night was cold and at first I didn't want to leave my sleeping bag. But once I got up, I realized that I was actually warmer when packing up the tent than lying in the bag. This gave me some extra motivation to get going.

Once everything was packed up, I made a quick meal. Some instant oatmeal always works well for me. And since this was the first field test of my alcohol stove, I must say I was quite impressed. This thing is tiny and weighs little, boils a cup of water in about 4 minutes and is completely silent.
 

I left the campsite at 8:30am, which is quite late by my standards, and rode west, towards Poultney. This place used to be a college town but after closing of Green Mountain College earlier this year, it's probably a bit quieter right now.

Green Mountain College, Main Hall

I kept going west and soon I left Vermont, entering New York and the town of Whitehall. I noticed a small number of Shaker homesteads on both sides of Route 18. It's always nice seeing these people on road, riding their horse-drawn wagons. Unlike speeding drivers, they always wave their hands, saying hello. Somehow I feel that the slow way of traveling by bicycle is in some sense compatible with their slow way of life.

Whitehall, NY

From Whitehall, I made my way north to cross a small bridge and enter Vermont again. My goal was to ride several miles along Poultney River by means of Bay Rd. I discovered this place by accident while browsing Google Maps. It turns out that the full length of Bay Rd has a Street View available so you can take a look and see what it looks like.

The first (southern) section of Bay Rd was muddy but didn't look too bad.

And it looks great. Well, actually, it looked great... back in 2012. The one thing I didn't realize soon enough was that Street View was dated 2012 and apparently things have changed quite a bit in the next 7 years. The slow-moving Poultney River is still there, same with thousands of birds and widespread wetlands. What's gone though, is road's sandy surface, now replaced by mud and hundreds of flooded craters.

But the further north I went, the worse it got, being completely flooded, edge-to-edge, in most places.

Essentially, the entire length of Bay Rd, running alongside the river, is a wet mud-bath. There are very few and very short rideable sections. Most of the road is either flooded edge-to-edge or extremely muddy. Not wanting to risk being stuck in the middle of a giant puddle, I decided against riding through the middle of all of it. I had to go around, but the only way around was through the bushes on either side of the road. Unfortunately, these bushes carry thousands of burs - the type of seeds that have hooks. Very quickly my socks, shorts and shirt were completely covered in burs. Not fun!

After a nearly 2-hour-long struggle, I finally go to the end of this mess and the intersection with Cogman Rd. From there, things were much better.

Next, I basically rode straight north, staying as close to Lake Champlain as possible. Things got a bit tricky once Stony Pond Rd turned into Singing Cedars Rd. Technically, these two are not connected and there is a "dead end" sign, warning you that you won't be able to drive through. But being on the bike I learned that "dead ends" can often be ignored.

And I was right. Once I ran out of the "regular" unpaved road, I found a narrow maintenance road through the forest, running under the old power line. It was in a surprisingly decent shape and let me connect with Singing Cedars Rd with ease.

At that point I realized that my breakfast was a long time ago and all that walking through bushes and mud made me very hungry. Fortunately, Buxton's Store in Orwell came to the rescue. Their sandwiches are yummy, although I had to wait much longer for one to be made for me, than it took me to actually eat it.

International Paper Company, as seen across the lake.

Things were going well. My belly was full, my bike was rolling well, shedding off dry mud at higher speed. Views over Lake Champlain and Vermont countryside were spectacular.

A good portion of my route turned out to run where Champlain Bikeway is, but don't be fooled. There is no dedicated bike path there - just a few signs marking it. You still have to share roads with cars.

 

 Lake Champlain Bridge to NY State.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I started my ride a bit late in the day for my standards, which combined with shorter days in late October meant I didn't have much available daylight left. I kept pedaling but decided to skip some places I originally planned on visiting, namely Fort Crown Point, just across the bridge in New York and the D.A.R. State Park nearby.

I arrived at my car just at sunset, around 6:15pm. From there, I still had a long, 3.5hrs drive back to Boston.

The whole mini tour was a great experience as for the first time I had a chance to try something like that late in the season. If only there was more daylight left in the day, you could keep going further and further.

West Vermont (S36O) - Day 1

After my last quick tour through New Hampshire I wanted to rest a little bit from constant climbing and go somewhere flat. So I picked Vermont - the state that is nearly completely covered by hills and mountains. Right...

Actually, I planned my trip through the flattest part of Vermont - the western parts of Addison and Rutland counties, which is a place where Green Mountains end and a wide valley of Poultney River and Lake Champlain begins. Still, as it turned out, some hills were unavoidable but it was nothing, compared to what you would normally find in the other parts of the state.

 

I started my tour at a Park & Ride in Waltham, just south of Vergennes, VT. It was a pretty long drive north from Boston so I started riding quite late, at 11:45am. The day was cloudy and I was a bit worried it would rain a lot, but the little rain I got on the way, stopped before I even got to Waltham.

 

It all started at Route 66. Not that famous one, though...

 

The weather in late October can be somewhat unpredictable, so that adds more complexity to planning of any longer bicycle ride. Despite a cloudy day, it wasn't actually that cold (53F or 12C) but I quickly found out that I either overheat on climbs or get cold from wind chill on descents. Seems like no matter what you do, it's never right.

 

I think I matched the environment quite well.

I sort of regretted that I didn't have time to make this ride happen a bit earlier in the season. Clearly, foliage was past its peak colors but there were still plenty of red, yellow and orange hues around.

Because it was only a quick, sub-36hrs trip, I didn't need to pack much, yet at the same time, colder weather required me to bring some extra clothes. I managed to fit everything in the handlebar bag and two fork-leg-mounted sacks. Also, for the first time, I packed a mini cooking set with alcohol stove. I figured that since the night is going to be cold, it would be nice to make a simple hot breakfast next morning.

I kept rolling through the countryside, passing by numerous farms on the way, counting different types of cows I encountered and photographing grain silos.

Farms. Farms everywhere...

 

Twin towers of Vermont.

Finally, I arrived in East Poultney, quickly resupplied at the local store and headed to Analog Cycles, where I arranged earlier to stay for the night. I covered 60mi (95km) on day 1, which normally wouldn't be that much, but since I started late, I arrived at my campsite after sunset. Considering shorter days in late October, I think the next time I would rather pick a shorter route and start from a Park & Ride location closer to my final destination.

General Store, East Poultney, VT.

I admit, I have never camped out that late in the season. I expected air temperature to drop rapidly at night so I had to apply all common sense to survive. That included:

1. putting all clothes on, including the woolen hat,
2. placing all leftover clothes inside the sleeping bag to keep them warm through the night,
3. doing the same with phone and all batteries to protect them from cold.

It worked. I survived and all electronics made it as well, even though temperature at 7am was only 30F (-1C). However, the next time I would seriously have to consider a better sleeping bag. The one I had was technically rated to 35F but let's just say it was barely adequate at 30F. Certainly, I wasn't cozy warm during the morning hours.

Continue to Day 2.

Summer time in the fall - Upper Charles River Trail and Milford/Hopkinton area

What is your favorite month of the year and why is it October?

Living in Boston, I quickly learned to appreciate the two months in the year when it's absolutely mandatory to spend as much time outdoors as possible. In fact, I even question why would anyone take time off in July, when it's clearly better to stay in the climate-controlled office. It's not July but September and October that are the ones to enjoy.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with weather in Boston (or on East Coast in general), it typically looks like this:

• January, February - freezing down to -2F (-20C) or lower, lots of snow
• March - freezing at night/morning, melting in the day = ice everywhere
• April, May - warmer but tons of pollen in the air
• June, July - hot and very humid, frequent heavy thunderstorms
• August - still too hot and humid
• September, October - warm, dry, little rain, just perfect
• November, December - chilly and rainy, gets dark quickly

To use this rare, good weather, I managed to sneak out last Sunday on a ride around Milton/Hopkinton area. I started in Ashland and quickly merged with the Upper Charles River Rail Trail in Holliston, which I have never visited before. The trail is nice but it's so perfectly graded that it could be easily crossed on a road bike with skinny tires. At least it's unpaved, so it has that "close-to-nature" feeling.

 

The trail ended in Milford where I soon entered town forest, which turned out to be the test ground for local MTB riders. I did a wide loop around this area and soon crossed I-495 to find my way to the Peppercorn Hill Conservation Area.

The next section was running under a high-voltage power line. These places are typically pretty rough to ride. Sometimes you may find a truck load of chunky gravel or a very overgrown footpath. The trail I found was clearly used by ATVs and had deep tire tracks cut into the mud. These tracks were well covered with tall grass so I often had no idea where my front wheel was going. I had to proceed slowly, not wanting to fly over the bars.

On top of that I discovered multiple warning signs to watch for bees, wasps or hornets...

... and moments later I discovered a large hive, size of a watermelon.

Soon enough, I reached Upton State Forest and then Whitehall Reservoir. There is narrow path around the reservoir, which I thought would be a good unpaved trail to ride. Unfortunately, it turned out to be full of roots and generally inaccessible for bicycles.

From there I had to make my way to Hopkinton State Park and Ashland State Park. Both are nice, but more appropriate for beachgoers or Sunday grill parties than bike riding.

That's about it. How was your Sunday?

Keep riding or die trying

Summer is over, cooler days are here and at least for me, it's the most enjoyable time of the year to spend outside and ride bike. Unfortunately, my usual day job is keeping me very busy and my kids are back in school. All this means I had little time recently to get back to my regular blog posts.

 
Anyway, just recently I read a report that "cyclist fatalities have gone up 25 percent across the U.S. since 2010". And "75 percent of these cyclist deaths occur in urban areas", with New York City leading this grim statistics. The major cause of these fatalities are crashes with motor vehicles and that's not surprising since U.S. cities are the "car-friendly death traps".

You would hope that in such case our Departments of Transportation and urban planners would join forces to build a better, safer cycling infrastructure. Unfortunately, after decades of neglect and catering mainly to motorists, there's very little chance for that.

"The future is four wheels, cyclists be damned", writes Jacob Bacharach in his The Outline article. Our cities were basically designed for cars, we prioritize cars and any other mode of transport than driving isn't simply taken seriously, being considered eccentric, at best.

As such, cars became something more than just 4 wheels that take us to destinations:

"The car is a very specifically American symbol of freedom, but like so many instruments and symbols of American freedom, it is a tool of domination and control. A car is a missile and a castle, a self-propelled, multi-ton fortress, hermetically sealed against the intrusions of weather, environment, and, of course, other people. Drivers view the world through the lenses of speed and convenience — most of the anger at cyclists, in my experience, is at having to drive at something resembling a normal urban speed limit because there’s a bike in front of them — but also through the lens of ownership. Streets belong to cars. The rest of us are interlopers, invaders, invasive species."

All this has a sad consequence of treating nearly 40,000 deaths on U.S. roads annually as collateral damage - just a price we need to pay for this "freedom". Almost like, in similar fashion, many agree that deaths in mass shootings are an acceptable price to pay for freedom to own guns.

Of course, there are voices of reason (Michelle Wu from Boston City Council deserves a honorable mention here), coming from people who want to change this tragic status quo. But too often, these voices are silenced by a very loud NIMBY opposition - people who seem to enjoy protesting anything that could cause them a minor inconvenience, in order to make sure life of others won't get any better.

Reading about such situations really makes me think thank God, cars didn't exist when the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution. Because if driving and free parking were a right, the way owning a firearm is, this country would be completely screwed.
 

I still have a glimmer of hope though and I hope the tone America's car problem is often reported would change. Unfortunately, blaming the victim and not even mentioning the driver is now the default. We had an example of this recently, when ABC7NY reported the "accident" in which 10-year old Enzo Farachio was killed in Brooklyn/NYC. Apparently, in NYC cars already drive themselves:

 

On top of that, the initial reporting stated that “police believe Farachio was looking at his phone and did not see the vehicle coming”, implying that it was boy's responsibility to avoid the crash, even though at that time he was standing on the sidewalk, where cars should certainly never drive.

Still, our car culture is so deeply-rooted that when a cyclist kills a pedestrian, we see articles like this one from New York Post:

The author mentions that since 2011 7 pedestrians have been killed by cyclists in NYC and presents this as a major issue, conveniently not mentioning that in the same time frame there were thousands of people killed by drivers. But I guess since "accidents happen", being killed by a driver is something perfectly normal and totally acceptable in this country.

 

I know that some of you may think that many of these cyclists are scofflaws, running red lights, not paying attention and were simply asking for it. However, even when a cyclist obeys the law, he/she may still end up dead because some idiot driver decides to drive way too fast - an example of which we got recently in yet another Brooklyn crash.

Sometimes I seriously think that the sooner we transition to autonomous vehicles the better. Even though AVs certainly won't solve all problems, they may help at least reducing number of these fatal crashes. And you would be able to legally sleep in your car when driving, unlike this guy in Massachusetts.

 

What is truly frustrating that whenever a cyclist dies in America, we keep rejecting proven solutions from European countries and get the same stupid ideas again and again. Case in point - New York City is going into a pointless debate over mandatory cycling helmets.

I honestly don't doubt that Dr. Herrera is an expert in head trauma, but he clearly knows nothing about cycling in the city, transportation and helmets in general. He keeps repeating the same wrong statements, just like those who think they know what they are talking about.
 
Apparently, as the video states, 54% of cyclists killed in 2017 were not wearing helmets and pictures of their crushed bikes were "so awful". This immediately makes me wonder - how many of those cyclists would live if they were wearing a helmet? I suspect not many, since even the best helmet won't save you from being flattened by a heavy SUV.

When asked if mandatory helmets would lead to decreased participation in cycling, Dr. Herrera simply said "I don't think it's the case at all", ignoring all the data we have showing that that's precisely the result and repeating the same, debunked claim that helmets save lives with 80% efficiency.

I wonder if Dr. Herrera is ever going to visit Denmark, Holland or even Germany. He may get into a deep culture shock, being surprised that nearly nobody wears a helmet, yet people don't drop like flies.

It's almost like there's something else that can be done to make our streets safer. Something that doesn't include large, heavy, metal boxes speeding around.