Somerville's finest

I just called up the Somerville (MA) police department to ask them if their ticket book included a way to ticket bicyclists (for riding on the sidewalk, specifically). All I needed to know was if the standard ticket book had a blank space to to write in any municipal violation number. The woman who answered the phone said that she had no idea and that no one else there could find out right now (and to call back tomorrow). This seemed odd, because you would think that a police department would have some sort of access to their own ticket books.

I haven't had a good bicycle story to bitch about in a while so I'll tell you what happened to David and myself yesterday on a trip out to the middle of nowhere Massachusetts. (We had to pick up a pile of his stuff from his previous home, and we were in a CAR!) While coming back into civilization on route 117, I think, we got behind a bicyclist. The road was a very narrow, one-lane-in-each-direction rural road with a very respectable speed limit of something like 30 mph. There was a ton of oncoming traffic and the road was windier than a tangled Slinky toy. So we were driving patiently behind the cyclist. After a whole 30 seconds, the moron motorist behind us laid on his horn. David ignored him. The guy laid on the horn again, and managed to get a few other morons behind him to join him in the choir, too. David again ignored him. Eventually, David did squeeze by the biker, when there was a bit more lane width to work with. And about two minutes later we all caught up to the traffic that had been ahead of us at a red light (is this the punchline to every stupid motorist trick?). The grumpy moron passed us on the right and sped ahead. Yay for him. He was lucky I wasn't driving. I told David that he was far too patient, as I would have slammed on the brakes and actually gotten out of the car to present the moron with the asshole of the year award...

Speaking of David (as you may have guessed, he's the man. That man, I mean.) we are now looking for a nice two bedroom (or a large one bedroom) in Somerville. If ya know of anything...

Coming down to earth for a visit

Talk about life being a blur. I was in Portland, Oregon for the Bicycle Leadership Conference last week. I had two, count 'em, two presentations. Both were low key, and I don't think I offended or completely bored anyone during them, so I'm taking that as a success. The conference was on the whole, ok. And I learned a thing or two, but the most useful aspect of the trip, advocacywise, was getting to experience the "bicycling nirvana" that Portland has been dubbed. I was a little shocked at some of the stuff I saw there - for all the nirvana, there were very few cyclists on the roads at all. Nothing like what I'm used to in the Boston area. Odly enough, I saw more cyclists NOT on the road than on the road - they seemed to flock to the public transportation "light rail" trains, and also seemed more intersted in using the sidewalks to get their bikes from one place to another. The few local cyclists I spoke with expressed doubt at the safety of the streets. And looking at the bizarre and incredibly prevalent substandard bike lanes that speckled the roads I'm not too surprised. (They seemed to have caught Cambridgitis, and had tons of 4 foot bike lanes scrunched up next to extremely narrow parking lanes and shared travel lanes, squeezing lots of vehicles into a very small space.) However, despite all the evidence against the nirvana notion, riding a bike was, in fact, absolutely wonderful compared to Boston. The key was the ability of motorists (and pedestrians) to actually OBEY THE LAW! People actually stopped at stop lights! People actually moved into another lane before passing me at a reasonable speed and distance! No one honked or yelled! Traffic honestly stopped BEFORE the crosswalks at intersections (I witnessed two motorists actually BACK UP when they accidentally stopped a bit into the crosswalk)! No one was in a hurry! People were nice!

I was thinking that Boston drivers should have a little exchance program with Oregon. We can send a few of our road ragers out for a little TLC and/or toughlove and straighten them out. What is it about Eastern Massachusetts that births such insanity on the streets? It can't be the cold, because Texas and Florida are just as bad, from what I've heard. And we've got one of the most extensive public transportation systems anywhere in the Americas (though Bogota, Columbia puts us to shame), so it's not like people don't have a choice. It is the fact that we're so frustrated at the rest of the country for being so insane that we just can't contain our anger any longer? (Nope, see Texas and Florida again.)

Anyway, the Portland trip was interesting and I mostly enjoyed myself. You can check out just a few of the photos I took out there by clicking here. They're pretty random, so if you're looking at them and think to yourself "what the heck was on her mind when she took this one", it's perfectly understandable. The transportation geek's mind works in mysterious ways. One note that I'll point out is that the pictures of the street art are some very poor documentation of some street reclaiming efforts a la David Engwicht's book of that same name (mentioned previously in my blog). I'm going to be getting more involved in this type of community building in the future I hope, and I even got a nice, supportive e-mail from the man himself the other day. You can also see more pictures and info about the street I saw in Portland at City Repair, the group who organized the street reclaiming.

Finally, before I hit the submit button and get back to the real work, I have to update everyone on my newfound lovelife. It's good, really really good. Like about as good as it can get. Like I'm really in need of finding a better term for "lifemate". Rich Mackin suggested sweetheart, and I liked it at first, but have decided that it's still not quite right. But it's better than most of the alternatives, e.g. husband, partner, lover, mate, boyfriend...