Lent

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Ash Wednesday. It was today. I saw one. As I'm wont to do during this season my mind wanders to days long passed. And today - because I'm thinking about Lent lots - I remembered this article. Biking as a Lenten practice - By Melissa Bixler

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Terribly sad news out of Champaign/Urbana, IL.

Meet: David and Cindy "have been married for 20+ years. Neither of them drive; she is blind. They live in those apartments and travel just about everywhere on that tandem."

Tragedy: "... were hit from behind last night. Cindy is gone. David is in critical condition and they’re not telling him."

Distracted Driving: "Police believe a driver who hit a couple Monday on a tandem bicycle, killing one, may have been distracted by reading a map."

What's Going On?

David: Michael wants to know what's going on. Marko, what's going on?
Marko: I don't know. What's going on, Paul?
Paul: Wait a minute. Who wants to know?
Dwayne: Michael wants to know.

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So much going on I'm having a tough time keeping track.

1. We put the key in and turned it. The 2011 Sioux Falls Bike to Work Day event started up. It's always the 3rd Friday of May. Come on out. Grab some celebratory food stuffs. Leave your car at home.

In an effort to get broader input for planning the day take a moment and PLEASE visit this Survey Monkey link. Answer our two question survey.

2. South Dakota Bicycle Coalition has put out it's first newsletter. It's true we're looking to actually pay someone to complete some administrative tasks. Really! Here's a link to a description of the help we're looking for.

We met a week ago in Mitchell to process the Bike Summit experience. One of the results of this meeting was the formation of some committees. I'm the board person pushing on the Bicycle & Pedestrian Education & Safety Initiatives.

Our friend Jim Books operator of Dakota Bike Tours will be a National Bike Summit panelist for "Creating a New Power Base – Organizing and Supporting the Bike Travel and Tourism Sector to Support Bike Advocacy." It is exciting to me to have a South Dakota cyclist representing at the summit.

3. Smart Cycling - I'll be teaching another section of Traffic Skills 101 April 28, 29 and 30 through School District's Community Education program. Here is a link to their information.

4. Falls Area Singletrack - Snakebite's Bike Swap is March 20. The poster is here.

Good. See you there.

Snakebite's Swap

It's happening again...

Holy Cow I'm Merging!

There's a spot on 41st St, right there by the busiest intersection in the state, where the sidewalk/pedestrian traffic merges with the right turn only lane on a 40,000 vehicle per day road.

Oh sure there's a myth worth of protection in that spot - a nice 5 inch wide white line painted from one sidewalk edge across to where the sidewalk continues after crossing a right turn only entrance and a right turn only exit from a Walgreen's parking lot.

I cannot believe nobody's died there.

It had to be this way. Without the pedestrian/motor vehicle merge there'd be no way to enter Walgreens by car, therefore there'd be no way to have a Walgreens.

I'm certain the traffic engineers did the best they could - but really, we must have a Walgreens and the Walgreens must be accessible by car.

Besides, people would be crazy to go to that place without 4,000 lbs of steel and glass for protection.

Sunday I arrived at that merge by bike.

By bike? On the sidewalk? DON'T ride on the sidewalk. That's a good way to get hit by right turning traffic. Ride in traffic. The safest place to be in that spot is behind the car in front and in front of the car behind. Where we can all see each other and smile. All friendly like.

Sunday I arrived at that merge by bike. I discovered an SUV turning right. I and the SUV may have gotten intimate - for just a moment.

Better hurry and get 41st a redesign. People would kill to get into Walgreens.

Crazy Kids

You get these youngsters on bikes and you never know what sort of danger they'll put themselves in.



I guess The Dad was pretty happy to be leaving work last Friday.

No, it isn't photoshopped.

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Looking for Valentine's Day content? Please check out Monday's Yehuda Moon.

Pugsley Took Me To Leaders

I took advantage of the beautific temperature today and headed out for a small adventure. I let the Pugsley decided where to take me and it soon became clear we'd be visiting Leaders Park.

By way of the I29 Pedestrian Bridge, Falls Park, DTSF, Caribou Coffee, and finally The Broken Chain - which isn't so much a venue but a state of drivetrain.

Leaders Park is the site of the singletrack build. Having not been there since October - and always holding a vision in my head of a dude standing over our bridges with a sledgehammer - I wondered how our bridges have been holding up.

I discovered bridge #1 still standing.



Bridge #2 was standing still.



Anybody seen my sunglasses? I swear I had them when I arrived at the park.

Gonna Need That

Snowblind

Women On Bikes: An Indicator Species: Celebratory Edition

January's South Dakota Bike Summit was remarkable for many reasons - but for me, one reason needs a little more mention - and today's just the right day.

Women. On bikes. Well, it was January so the few bikes that were there were very Pierre based. Follow me anyway...

First there's coalition VP Jessica - without whom there would have been no summit.

Friday night's social-ness was hosted by Amy, the other woman on the coalition board.

Of the three keynotes there was Ann Freiwald: Alta Planning & Design, Heather Brutz: Transportation for America and Ginny Sullivan: from Adventure Cycling.

Coincidence? Not fully. Planned? Not overtly. Good? Absolutely.

(Check out Ginny's review of our "Small But Mighty" summit on the Adventure Cycling blog.)

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Today. Sabbath. I'm getting some reading done and found my way to Esquire Magazine's profile of Janet Sadik-Kahn - New York City's Traffic Commissioner.

Curiously Janet was mentioned at our bike summit by a keynote - but only as whatshername in New York. Meet Janet Sadik-Kahn as she recreates public space in New York City - if it can happen there it can happen anywhere...

"In the most elementary terms, Sadik-Khan has plucked the city from under the chassis of the automobile and distributed it, Robin Hood — like, to runners and cyclists and mothers with strollers and large men with small dogs."

"Go find Sadik-Khan pedaling her Specialized Globe bike from her home in the West Village to her office downtown. Tell her you know, dammit, that traffic in midtown is worse. She will smile and say, Listen. If vehicles are going more slowly, then that's safer for everyone! She will say that vehicle-related injuries are down a tremendous 63 percent."

"Like Bible-thumpers and vegans, she has a million different figures memorized cold. She has them organized into trees. If you go this way, she will cut you off with this branch of reasoning. Head in that direction and she has a unique countering set of facts. Either way, it trickles down to the same end result. You have your tardy-to-work card, but she has just saved a few hundred lives. One argument is the clear winner, and it doesn't drive a Honda."

"But to anyone with a clear enough scent of human ambition, this is about more than New York. At the intersection of visionary and engineer you'll find the personal aspiration that is, often, what drives change like this. New York is a testing zone; Sadik-Khan is using it to show the world — the president — what the world city of the future could look like. "If you can do it here," she says with a smile, "you can do it anywhere."

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I'm off to find and read the new Rapid City Pedestrian & Bike Plan.

Ahhhh...Up The Temps

The Boys found their way outside today.

The Boy 8 built a snowman.



Then sent him for a ride.

KELO Thinks It's Cold Out!

Two of my favorite people ended up on the news last night. One for riding his bike in the cold. One for being an enabler.

Snakebite and The Owner keeping local cycling visible in early February.


Then there's the guy at the end. Please, just because he rides super-super-non-standard doesn't mean he deserves to be run over. At least he has a helmet on...

...his handlebars.

Sioux Falls MPO Multi-Use Trail Corridor Open Houses

Tuesday February 8 there are two open houses related to the multi-use path corridors that endeavour to connect Sioux Falls to Brandon, Harrisburg and Tea.

Harrisburg 4:30 to 6:00pm @ Harrisburg Community Library - presentation at 5:30pm

Brandon 7:00 to 8:00pm @ Brandon City Council Chambers - presentation at 7:15pm

The hard work of considering routing options and receiving community input has mostly been completed. This MPO report details the "most feasible" routes between the communities.

People who attend either open house ought to keep an ear open for approaches that Brandon, Harrisburg and Tea are taking to preserve the corridors until such a time when funding is available to build the facilities.

Why? I suspect that Sioux Falls will be slower to act on preserving the corridors than our neighbors. If this proves correct - pressure might be able to be successfully applied locally by pointing to the value of being good neighbors.

For me the big value of having these routes in place is not so I can ride my bicycle from home to Brandon. No. The big value of having these in place is, over the next 20 years as the land between these communities is urbanized, bicycle and pedestrian access to transportation will not be an afterthought. It will already exist.

When a Wal-Mart lands between here and Harrisburg they just might cater just a little bit to the bike route that already exists.

Atom: Increasing The Margins

Sometimes the blog posts write themselves. Other times the blog posts appear in my inbox already written.

I received the following reports today from The Out There:

Part I

Got up this morning...started my eggs and coffee...checked my digital thermometer...-12deg, wind unknown...

I continued the consumption of my eggs and coffee...got dressed...and departed approximately 6:50am...

I made it to roughly 10th / Cliff (my point of no return)...whether my bike was acting slow or I was acting slow, my conscience told me to turn around...

(He did.)

Part II



29" tall...2.1" wide...294 replacable studs...2lbs 10oz...pure ice / snow pack dominace...screw you 33rd and prairie...!

Part III

I think everybody should get e-mails like these. I think they'd ride more.

Tomorrow is going to be a beautiful day! Don't let it get away.

(I wrote this part myself.)

The MinusCar Is Dead…

Facing a third lifetime trip to the heart of the core of The MinusCar engine to see perhaps, if indeed the block is not cracked, I spent the holiday weekends working out some new wheels of the automotive variety.

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Imagine the misunderstandings of the sales people in dealing with a customer who is more interested in how the car will look parked in the garage or on Google Maps parked in the driveway than whether or not the glove box locks and which button makes the rear defrost work.

So I picked a dollar amount and in the end missed by $226.

The MinusCar II Lives…

But this is not the end of the story. As part of the process the car spent the afternoon with The Engine Whisperer and he was able to identify an ever so slight sound emitting from the engine that ought to be fixed because “surely you can find a Pontiac that doesn’t make that sound.” Sure enough, tilting one’s head just so to the left revealed the sound of an unbalanced washing machine two doors down on the other side of the street during the dog days of summer while the neighborhood kids play a humid game of kick the can.

Shhhh…can you hear it? It’s ok. I can wait. Fix it. I’m used to going long periods of time without a car.

But this is not the end of the story. I could describe the exact details of how it transpired that I possessed the car for three weeks without actually paying for it. Or how it transpired that the title of said car was surrendered to me without me actually paying for it. Or about how I was half way across the state and they called to ask if maybe, perhaps, I was ready yet to pay for it.

But I'm not sure those details are appropriate to share. I'm not even going to name the dealer.

Besides, yesterday I wrote the final chapter to make the car mine. I turned this…



Into this…



This is the end of the story. NOW it’s mine.

Throwing My Postcard...

...into the ring.



(even if I can't spell Almanzo 100.)

I'm Not Saying...I'm Just Saying

Today's high: 24. Today's bike miles: 24. Today's night riding, plenty. It's a good day. Rode east to the bike trail open house. Good turnout. Solid public meeting. It's nice to be able to ask questions.

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I'm not saying that it's because of all the mornings I trample through their snow, bike in tow, while they look at the crazy biker dude through their windows.

I'm not saying that it's because yesterday I stopped and took a photo of the place where in the mornings I trample through their snow, bike in tow, while they look at the crazy biker dude through their windows.

I'm just saying that yesterday I stopped and took a photo:



And today I stopped and took a photo:



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I do appreciate The City Public Parking Division's effort to enforce the sidewalk shoveling ordinance. It is a pedestrian and bike issue to not have cleared sidewalks. If you listen closely you might be able to hear the murmur, "nobody walks there so why should I clear it?"

I think it's possible the additional sensitivity to snowy sidewalks produced by an enforcement body's press release, coupled with a user stopping to take a picture, is enough to spur some action.

Or maybe it's just the existence of the law itself (snicker).

Open House: 2011 Bike Trail Closures

Almost half of the bike trail will be closed this summer. Some parts for very long periods of time. There's going to be an open house Wednesday to discuss it.

January 26 from 5:00 to 6:30 at Morningside Community Center. There will be a presentation at 5:30pm.

Closures:

The downtown greenway project is very exciting to me. Making the riverfront accessible on the east side. In a world that lacks public space - we're getting a little addition.

The sewer system upgrade will mean less poo. After dumping copious amounts in the river last summer The City is ambitiously deciding to fix the problem all at once. From downtown to the lift station the trail will be closed. A very long distance for a very long time. Any complainers get a bucket of poo specially delivered.

Finally the flood control project. Can we just get this done already? Please.

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Frustrated and afraid that this will leave only roads to ride on?

April 28, 29 & 30. Traffic Skills 101 will be available for adults through the school district.

How Do You Get Anything Done?

After I dropped the rental car off this morning I was without a car for awhile. Facing an unproductive day without a car I decided I'd just do the best I could.

I worked a full day. I could go into details but I'd rather just suggest I'm working on the death panels and leave it at that.

I managed lunch with The Owner. I made him pay for my free burrito. Ancho Chile w/ chicken. Black beans. Cheese and sour cream? Duh.

I shopped at two stores for some ear protection for The Boy 8. He's headed to monster trucks this weekend. Yay, indoor motor sports! I couldn't decide what form of protection is best without The Google so I stopped looking. I did however get him a personal carbon monoxide detector. I decided to forgo the upgrade to the one with the snooze button.

I went to the gym. Sort of. I walked 5 miles. I count this as a trip to the gym because it's more than just walking. Much of my time was spent on 41st Street. With it's 300 driveways in 2 miles and 30,000 cars a day there's a significant amount of mental concentration necessary. Add an iPod to the mix for sensory deprivation bonus points. It's like exercise only without the membership fee.

It's not all fun and games though. I do have parental responsibilities. I picked up The Boy 8 from piano lessons. I got my quality time in right after that as we walked to the bus stop squashing snow chunks and break dancing on the ice. 40 minutes of nothing to do but just be. Seems pretty decent to me.



Urban-ness.

We rode the bus to The Engine Whisperer's place (more on him later) and picked up The Outback. It's been done since Friday - but seriously, I'd rather walk.

Implementation

The MinusCar Project's plan for regional bike/ped transportation. Anybody want to help implement? Can't win if you don't play.

Today. With Pictures!

After yesterday's post, which I'm sure some are STILL wading through, I thought I'd go for something shorter, but with a little over 3,000 words.

I woke up with a choice to make (it's a rental, I loooove it, it has Sirius tuned to Electric Area because that's how I roll in a Dodge Charger)...



I made my choice...



Next time someone complains about scraping car windows - tell 'em you simply blink and the windows are clear.

When work was done the weather looked something like this...



So I stopped at Pomegranate Market to get some frozen confection...



...to put under my coat to help me stay warm.