1/11/15

Rides 1/9: barely even icy

Friday was cold, but it was maybe 20 degrees less cold than it had been, and those were an important 20 degrees since it transformed the morning from barely bearable to cold, but almost pleasant. And while there was still ice, there was much less of it. DDOT threw down a lot of salt on the roads (maybe too much?) and it's my hope that by Monday, all of the ice from the last storm will be gone, leaving room for new ice. Such is winter.

My front wheel was making some kind of noise on Thursday and since I took no steps to examine why this was nor make any adjustments so as to mitigate it, it continued to make that noise. I think it has something to do with the brakes. Maybe I should do something about it. (It's unlikely that I will do this before about 5 minutes before I leave on Monday morning. I'm sure this harriedness will result in a thorough investigation that will doubtlessly give me the best shot at resolving whatever issue this might be.)

I can't remember too much about the specifics about either the ride in or ride home, but lately I've developed a pet peeve regarding how drivers pass me. It's not like I begrudge their passing- I get it, I'm pretty slow and maybe it'd be faster to pull around me. (Maybe it wouldn't, but that's a different story.) And most of the roads where this happens have two lanes in each direction, so it's really just a matter of moving out of the right one and into the left one and for the most part, this happens with little drama. But what gets me is when they aren't quite fully out of the right lane before the nose of their car comes into my peripheral vision. Like, would it be so hard to full move over before starting to pull around? Please? I guess I don't like it because it make me think about margins of error and how they really don't work in favor of someone on a bicycle. If you're in a car and you get it wrong by 6 inches and smash into a car, maybe you scrape some paint. But if you screw it up by 6 inches- if you think that maybe your car is located 6 inches away from where it actually is- and rather than another car, it's me on my bike- well, that's rather less forgiving for me than just some scraped paint. So, here's my unsolicited advice for drivers: treat cyclists as if they are lava. Would you be willing to drive within 6 inches of a deadly lava flow knowing that if you're wrong by 6 inches that your car would be consumed by said deadly lava flow? Would you be willing to risk it? Reinforce in your mind the vulnerability of bicyclists by treating them as if they are deadly lava flows. Or scorpions. Or lava-resistant scorpions floating within the deadly lava flow and instead of poision in their scorpion tails, it's even hotter, deadlier lava. Or whatever it is that gets you to give them enough room. It's not that hard. I promise.

No comments:

Post a Comment