Wed. May 17, 2006

I got back on my bicycle a few days ago, and I’ve been practicing riding around town. I need exercise, and I need an alternative to riding to work in my un-air-conditioned, oil-leaking car.

The experience has convinced me of what I already surmised. This is not a bicycle-friendly community. Lately the city has spent a great deal of money on fancy signs that say, “A Bicycle Friendly Community.” They have also painted white stripes along the side of several major roads (though not the one I live on) about 12 inches from the curb. These are referred to in visitor brochures as bike lanes. Locals refer to them by the humorous designation “bowling alleys.” Probably the most appropriate decorations placed by the city are the graphics of flat bicycles stenciled on the bowling alleys. I presume that these mark the last-known locations of people who were foolish enough to actually ride their bikes there. Or perhaps they are just warning signs indicating what you are likely to look like if you spend any time in that space. Just to make the experience more fun, the street sweepers (you know, the trucks with huge brushes underneath that crawl along at 5 mph during morning rush hour) sweep all the debris from the road into the bike lanes. This is actually handy as it prevents bike riders like me from traveling at a speed any faster than an excited slug, at which we might endanger ourselves, since we have to negotiate an inch of sand, gravel, glass, and pavement chunks.

If you want to go anywhere useful on your bike, such as downtown, or to work or school on campus, you can have even more fun. Most of the roads in town don’t even pretend to have bike lanes. If they do, they taper off at every intersection, so to fit in them you have to get thinner and thinner as you approach the intersection, and then dwindle away to nothing. Sort of a 15 second Atkins diet. In a fit of concern for pedestrians, the city several years ago ordained that you can’t ride your bike on sidewalks. Short of outfitting with rockets to become airborne, then, there is no way to avoid riding in the narrow streets surrounded by Tahoes and Blazers driven by inexperienced, late-to-class student drivers.

The solution taken by most riders (myself included now) is to, in fact, ride on the sidewalks and take the chance of mowing down an innocent pedestrian or two. Now that I’ve had some practice riding, my favorite thing is to swerve threateningly and yell obnoxiously as I pass a pedestrian “hey- get a bike or walk in the bowling alley!” You should see the looks of terror on the faces of those elementary school kids.

What? OK dear, yes, I know. Two of the little blue pills...I’ll be right there.