dissent

silence

monkey bike

wayfinding

cylin

no car lunch

FAST Movie Night @ Monk's Thursday

Bike To Work Day Friday!

Waka Waka: Tagged

I've complained before - and I'm complaining again - we need some better graffiti artists in this town. This topic remains at the front of my mind because of the frequency I ride by this stunning piece of creativity.



Sorry about the crappy cell phone photo. I didn't have much time to linger and get the shot setup just right. I gotta assume the creative courageous mind that put this down on pavement in a high trafficked area is capable of all sorts of mayhem.

Could it be that this is so bad a tag that nobody has any energy to report it?

BUT WAIT. There might be a new kid in town! Perhaps an arrow to a summer of better tags.



It's no banksy but there is more than one color, some motion lines AND a cultural icon from my childhood. That makes this a relative mona lisa.



I got a little red in there. Spring allergies have sprung so we stayed home longer to medicate and needed The Time Machine to get to the middle school band performance in a timely manner.

Unable to walk.

Weekend Bike Events: So Much To Do So Little Time

This weekend is shaping up to be HUGE for people who ride bikes in Sioux Falls. Or maybe just me. Meh.

Saturday The Boy 13 and I are slated to sweep the 10K Avera Race Against Breast Cancer. Once upon a time - January - I was thinking I'd run the 5K race. HAHAHAHA!!! This seems more fun. We get t-shirts too! I wear my PINK PROUDLY.

While I'm doing that I won't be attending the first Falls Area Singletrack Leaders Park digging session of 2011. That's from 9 to 12.

Saturday is also the Falls Area Bicyclist's Spring Kickoff Ride and meeting. This is in Tea. I'm trying to get on their agenda to tell them about Adventure Cycling's US Bike Route System fundraising push. Build It. Bike It. Be a Part of It. Mr Bite's heading up South Dakota's Routes and the South Dakota Bicycle Coalition is working to help raise funds.

Speaking of that, if you've got $10 charitable dollars to donation - and you want to be on my fund raising team - do it - here.

After that I'll head of to The City's Bike Rodeo. I've got designs on getting involved in teaching kids safe bike riding - so I'm volunteering for the whole time to see what goes down.

While I'm doing that I won't be attending the second Falls Area Singletrack Leaders Park digging session of 2011. That's from 2 to 5.

Saturday night I'm going to the Storm indoor football game with The Family. That's got nothing to do with bicycles.

Sunday I'll be attending the third Falls Area Singletrack Leaders Park digging session of 2011. That's from 1 to 4.

There done. Oh, except I rode my bike today. Happy bike month!

Commercials

First: the 2011 Sioux Falls Bike To Work Day commercial is in the can.



Script/Casting: Mr Bite
Camera/Production: Brad Dumke
Morgan Freeman-like Voice: Bill Murphy

Second:



Third: In a bizarre progression of internet research I stumbled upon Sprawling From Grace, Driven To Madness on the day it released to the public. I watched. It's good. Plenty of James Howard Kunstler. A little bit of Jan Gehl. Oh, and Michael Dukakis.



The MinusCar Stamp of approval.

Ahhh Spring...

...when young men, seemingly happy that the snow is gone, ride around in cars with the windows down, proudly calling out to random road users that the melted snow has revealed the sidewalk!

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Honey? Can you go pick up a few groceries for us?



You mean you're sending me out to ride my bike? Ok!

We also need gas for the mower. Ok!

There I was pulling in to the gas station loaded with groceries, smiling as I imagined that once I added 1.5 gallons of gasoline to my collection of vinegar, baking soda and oreos that I'd be a very big two wheeled disaster in waiting.

My well humored stupor shattered. Deep from within the rolling box of glass and steel came the prideful arrogance of a man who finally and successfully could name the 4ft wide strip of concrete that often parallels roadways.

SIDEWALK! Right there! Said the voice through his cagehole.

As I came to a stop I invited the gentleman over for a polite conversation. He wasn't interested, however he did switch his concern from sidewalks to my apparent intent to pump gas.

You can't get gas, you're on a bicycle!



...or maybe you're an idiot.

This is one of those times it would be most excellent to engage someone in the tired argument that people who ride bicycles don't pay gas taxes.

Today is the only day

Today is the only day in my lifetime that Easter and my birthday are on the same day. Happy Easter.

Garbage & Futility

First:

FAST's: The Second Annual Earth Day Leaders Park Garbage Pickup
Saturday, April 23, 1pm
Details.

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Second:

After a post like yesterday's and a weekend like last weekend I like to take a breath and remember that mostly it's all futile. Read all about it in Ecclesiastes, or at The Little Blog in the Big Woods: Pushing On Icebergs:

My metaphor here is that huge societal problems are very much like icebergs. They are huge; massive, with tremendous momentum and inertia. Walk up to an iceberg (standing on anything you can) and push on it, as hard as you can. You will not see ANY response from the iceberg; it's just too massive for you to affect, you and all your force are infinitesimally small in comparison to the berg.

---

Find a good place to set your feet. Dig in. And push. Don't quit. And don't waste your time yelling at the jackasses to come help- they won't, and the yelling just encourages them. Just keep pushing. And watch and see- somebody from the crowd will come and start pushing too- right beside you.

Futile. Really. But not hopeless. More fun than not.

On Rapid City, I Have A Crush

This weekend I took my Traffic Skills 101 teaching skills west to Rapid City. South Dakota Bicycle Coalition member Mike Bender hosted. Jim Books and I did a few very interesting and fun things.

Friday noon we furnished lunch for some VIP's. While we had them with their mouths full of food we entreated them to core vehicular cycling principles. We began with South Dakota law, moved to Rapid City ordinance and finished up with lane positioning and the principle that a cyclist will control the lane until they deem it safe to share the lane.

It was a truly amazing group of people. Two highlights. First was the young scofflaw bike shop mechanic's question - "you're saying if I ride from a sidewalk through a crosswalk and I get hit by a car it might be my fault?" Yes, yes we are. Second was the Chief of Police, with three other officers and a city councilman present, giving a beautiful monologue about pedestrians and bicyclists having a role in creating a community worth living in that a livable community advocate would really appreciate.

Friday evening and Saturday we went through the full 9 hours of Traffic Skills 101. I had a great time. I am truly hopeful and excited about Rapid City's future. I'll put the 30-something's in that class up against any of the cycling hipsters I know in Minneapolis.

It's gonna be tough for anybody to beat the councilman who advertised his campaign by riding around town on an Atlantis pulling his signs with a BOB Trailer. And his wife also in the class, with her Rambouillet.

Also Friday, we did a walking tour of the landscape improvements being built on 6th(?) Street as well as South Dakota's only (I think) cycle track. It's very fun and interesting to be given a tour of facilities by a person on the design team.

I <3 Rapid City.

Traffic Skills

I-29 Exit 77 (41st Street) Crossroad Corridor Study

What is the purpose of the study? - "The I-29 Exit 77 Crossroad Corridor Study will be a guidebook for roadway and access improvements over the next 5 to 20 years for 41st Street, Louise Avenue, and the I-29/41st Street interchange."

"The primary transportation related considerations will be roadway capacity safety, and access. Other considerations include pedestrians, transit, and aesthetics." (I swear the presentaton "considerations" slide included bicycles.

Public commentary welcome until 4/26.

What's good for pedestrians and cyclers is good for safety, access, transit and aesthetics.

The official project site.

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Yeah, yeah, I know.

41st Street Open House

First and importantly: tomorrow at 5pm at JFK Elementary there is an open house to gather input on re-creating 41st Street from Valley View Road to Kiwanis Ave. Decisions made in these planning stages will be with us for 40 years.

Anybody who's ever said or thought that there ought to be bike lanes on 41st Street must go to this open house. I'm looking at you former Senator Jerstad.

Perhaps someone will get really crazy at the open house and point out that this section of 41st Street is one of those places that James Howard Kunstler calls "not worth caring about." The reason Krispy Creme, or Timberlodge or Senior Weiner can't survive here - where 40,000 vehicles pass each day - is because it's a place where nobody wants to be.

I'm gonna ask that a Complete Street be built.

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Yep, I drove today. Got the call, my Flux Capacitor had arrived and was installed. The MinusCar II was ready to roll. Again.

So I used it to get more errand running done. I also attended The City's Bike Committee Meeting and retrieved The Boy 9 from the steely grip of the Piano Teacher.

Saturday

Not much biking going on here today. It was a ret and wainy Saturday.

The graph shows a bunch of time spent in a car with other people. I think we did pretty good though. We got haircuts and breakfast and bread and groceries and bike tubes and groceries and gas and retrieved something from The MinusCar II at the service garage and groceries and SDBC mail and FAST mail. All in one trip.



I did manage a little bike ride. The Wife wanted a Coke. I'm nothing if I'm not receptive to The Wife's need for a Coke. So I grabbed The Boy 13 for a trip down the road. We noodled around a bit on the way.

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I spent a significant about of time today on the phone preparing for my Traffic Skills 101 class in Rapid City. Should be a good time. I enjoy working with the other League Cycling Instructor in the state.

Part of that trip will include some time with a few Rapid City officials. We'll brief them about what we're teaching citizens about riding bicycles in their city. Should be a good time - especially since I'm fresh off my local meetings a couple weeks ago - and especially since they're in the public feedback stage of their first bike plan. A plan that may rely a bit heavily on relatively dangerous sidepath facilities and not enough on less dangerous roadway improvement.

I also spent some significant time sourcing proofs that cycling on sidewalks is more dangerous than riding as a vehicle in the roadway.

Bob Mionske's Bicycling and the Law has been coming up a lot in my policy related conversations. I haven't read it cover to cover but reference-wise it's been indispensable. The MinusCar Project seal of approval on this one.

Remember, Sioux Falls Traffic Skills 101 through Community Education is April 28, 29 & 30.