Dull safety lecture

I got home last night and realized I didn't have a thing worth eating in the house. So I went ahead and changed clothes and rode the trainer for a half hour to get that out of the way. Then I jumped into the car and headed back into town to buy some dinner. It was dark out but not totally nighttime.

Heading up Hwy 86 and coming into the corner at New Hope Creek, I saw an oncoming minivan swerve into my lane. Oops. So I hit the brakes and eased over a bit myself to give them as much room as possible. I figured it was just another Minivan Moron yapping on his/her cellphone or fiddling with the radio.

After they went past, in the headlights of another oncoming vehicle, I saw what caused them to swerve - a cyclist. One wearing black tights and a dark cycling jacket. At least his helmet was a light color. The bicycle was a dark color, too. After I went past him and before the next oncoming car had blocked my view, I looked into the mirror and confirmed what I suspected - no blinkie light. And sure enough, that car had to swerve left to avoid the cyclist. It's was easy to see way - the drivers were dealing with the headlights of oncoming cars like mine. A cyclist wearing dark clothes wouldn't be seen until the last seconds.

I see this all the time in the Triangle. Cyclists in dangerous situations (semi-rural roads, narrow and curvy, considerable traffic, hazy or dark skies) wearing dark clothing and not using lights. I wonder if these people have a death wish or are just stupid.

Let's get the legal stuff out of the way first: if you are on a road at night in NC, you have to have a light. Since laws seem to have little effect on peoples' behavior, let's consider the other aspects of this question:

1. Lights are cheap, they don't weigh much, and are easy to attach to the bike. No mechanic needed. And unless you are training (as in, with a coach, on a team, with corporate sponsorship) you don't need to be sweating the 3 oz light anyway.

2. Wearing bright-colored clothing when out & about at night is one of those things I thought everyone learned in 3rd grade. I sure did. If you chance getting caught by sundown, one of the things that belongs in your cycling bag is a bright-colored nylon vest of the sort sold in cycling shops as a wind vest. If that's too expensive, the same article is available in running shops at half the price. You can even buy them in WalMart in the hunting section for $1.99 - I have one rolled up in my cycling bag. I doubt it weighs more than an ounce.

3. And if all of the above fails, blinkie lights are a necessity. Just get one. If you fear it being stolen, all of the quality light makers (Cat-eye, Nite-Eyez, etc) have models with quick-release mounts so you can remove the light and stick it in your pocket. I tend to turn mine on when I am riding in the late afternoon and dodging in and out of the shadows of trees. I've noticed that when I have the light on, cars notice me much sooner judging from the fact that I see them move over to pass sooner than if I don't have a light.

If my appeals to your self-preservation have no weight, think of this: people dislike being startled. And driving home after work, coming around a curve to find a nearly-invisible cyclist in your path so that you have to slam on brakes or swerve into the other lane certainly startles most drivers. And in that respect, you are no better than the jerks on bicycles who run stop signs or ride on sidewalks. You are just contributing to the ill-will toward cyclists that a lot of people seem to harbor.

Hobos and ex-cons

I went into the LBS yesterday to order a set of pedals for my sort-of cross bike. The day before I had noticed that someone had punched a hole through the laminate glass on the side door and had figured it was just some vandalism by the bums who populate downtown Chapel Hill, something that's becoming much too common. In fact, I had come to work yesterday to find a nice puddle of urine in front of our back entrance.

Asking about the door, I was told that at first the shop employees had thought it was vandalism too, since the door was still locked from the inside when they arrived that morning. They then noticed a small piece of glass on the keyboard of the register/computer. Perhaps it had been thrown the 10 or so feet by the impact? But they started looking around. The register had been opened and the counter searched, but everything on the sales counter had been carefully replaced. Then they discovered a missing $3,000 mountain bike. And a missing $3,500 mountain bike.

While I was standing there agog over the idea of a $3,500 mountain bike, the shop owner noted that he was happy they had overlooked the $6,000 mountain bike. That certainly raised my eyebrows.

So we agreed it had been a professional job: they punched a hole just big enough to reach through and unlock the door, but not enough to shatter the whole door and attract attention. They took what they wanted but left nothing disturbed, and locked the door on leaving. That way, should a patrolling cop check out the situation it would look like vandalism, not grand theft.

Kinda scarey to think that cycling has reached a point where professional thieves are marking targets at bike shops. I was accustomed to the idea of pros stealing bikes on campus - that's been happening since the early 70s, at least, and stealing anything on campus is pretty easy. But punching a hole in laminate glass on a door not 50 feet from a busy street (although on the side of the building) and lifting $6,000+ worth of bikes is pretty crazy. Pretty soon bike shop owners will have to secure their goods at night, similar to what jewelry and gun shop owners have to do.

Pause a moment - Walter Bowart

Walter Bowart, founder and publisher of the East Village Other, est mort.

For me, one of the great things about going to kollidge was visiting the periodical room of Joyner Library every Tuesday evening. There, in a pile awaiting me courtesy of my aunt the librarian, were the recently arrived editions of the EVO, the Village Voice, the Great Speckled Bird, the Berkeley Barb, the Rat, and the Oracle. I'd prop up with a Coke and a pack of nabs, and read until the room closed at 11.

If you had grown up in the rural South, you were vaguely aware that things were going on elsewhere. The occasional story on Huntley & Brinkley, cover pieces in Life magazine, listening to WABC out of NYC late at night after the local stations had gone off the air - in the age of Teh Intratubes it's almost hard to imagine the work that was involved in gathering news other than the farm report on WITN, Channel 7. I had seen the papers before, usually being sold out of the back of a van in the parking lots of concert venues. Having them delivered and gathered - for free - was a luxury beyond belief and the start of my absolute devotion to a free and unfettered press.

But noble sentiments aside, the papers were also vastly entertaining: concert reviews in a snarky tone unknown to Ralph Gleason of Rolling Stone (as slavish to the almighty dollar then as now); political ranting from the likes of Abbie Hoffman, Paul Krassner, and Eldridge Cleaver; photography and artwork from R. Crumb, Annie Leibovitz, Art Speigleman - usually involving naked people; and first-person accounts of random events like the Levitation of the Pentagon.

And the ads were entertaining as well: head shops, "art" movie houses, psychedelic clothing stores, whole food eateries. These were usually beautifully drawn and reproduced. Imagine my surprise at finding out last year that a prominent gallery in San Francisco was mounting an exhibit of the ads done by Rick Griffin. Plus a cartoon page featuring The Fabulous Furry Freak Bros, Fritz the Cat, Hungry Chuck Biscuits, and other malcontents.

The back pages were my introduction to the swamp of human desire. From the ads for strip clubs and dance joints to the personals column with topic headers like "other scenes," they were revelatory. It was one things to see the all-black-clad dominatrix in an R. Crumb strip, it was another to see a photo of one in an ad for the Kitty Kat Klub. Or Tom Wolfe's eye-injuring illustration of Carol Doda. It was no secret that the papers survived on the sex ads. When the Barb famously declared they would no longer run them in the late 70s (because they were degrading to women) the paper lasted less than a year. The fellow who had been managing the sex ads for the paper set up a separate publication to carry the ads and remained in business until 2005, when free internet ads killed it.

So for a while the likes of Bowart kept us informed and entertained (Bowart most famously suggesting to a Congressional committee that they drop LSD if they wanted to understand Today's Yoof, a suggestion usually attributed to Hoffman or Jerry Rubin) and, mostly, vanished off the stage when the Age of Hippie passed. Bowart's last job was editing a lifestyle magazine in Palm Springs that catered to the celebrity/golf set.

Not a great idea

The bike I'm building as a sort-of cross bike (essentially a road bike with wider, softer tires) wasn't ready Sunday (I bone-headedly picked up the wrong derailer adapter at the LBS) so I set out on a long route on my usual ride. Clear skies and an air temp of 70 degrees - that's what I like about the South.

About 10 miles in, I threw caution to the wind and started down a gravel road that runs through some very pretty horse-farm country. The whole reason for building the sort-of cross bike is to be able to use these roads, which are hard-pan clay with crusher-run granite gravel.

For the first couple of miles it was OK - just learn to keep the speed down as the gravel really is like small ball bearings. Then I ran into a section that was badly potholed. After dodging around those I found myself on a really long climb that revealed a new distraction - trying to stand while on gravel is like trying to balance on a pole that's on rollerskates. The hard, narrow road tires kept slipping sideways, and the rear wheel spun on every downstroke as it had no traction. I gave up and eventually dismounted, walking the last 100 yards up the hill. A small defeat, but better than crying over scratched paint if I had laid the bike down. The last couple of miles on gravel were relatively easy after that.

When I again hit pavement, it was smooth sailing. Not only was the asphalt a welcome change but I had turned so I had a tailwind.

It's not the heat

Darkness is the biggest enemy for riding in winter. If I lived in a town with lighted streets, I'd probably feel comfortable riding at night. But out in a rural area where many of the roads are apparently used as (high-speed) connector routes, I'd rather skip it.

And around this time of year, you have to deal with an extreme lack of time. The horridays are just one thing after another. So I'll ride the trainer again tonight but I'm going to hold the weatherman to his promise of a fair weekend. I can deal with the cold as long as the sun is out.

I heard this morning that Paris is the most bike-friendly town in Europe. I'd always heard that was Amsterdam so it might be worth looking into.

N.B. - usually the LBS is having a sale about now. For some reason, not a single shop in the Triangle is having a sale on parts and such. I need a few odds and ends and would like to pick up a few things on the cheap, being an economical bastard.