Personal Advantages and Bicycling: How I Really Started Riding
A few weeks ago I had the wonderful opportunity to give the luncheon keynote address at a conference on Equity and Health in Transportation, put on by the Seattle-King County Public Health District and held in Tacoma. This came at a good time, as it let me express some ideas that have been crystallizing in [...]
Your “Right” to Speedy Travel Doesn’t Exist
Originally I planned to write this post as the second part of my response to Bike Shop Girl’s piece We Are the Problem. One of the underlying assumptions in her post that I take issue with is the idea that if it weren’t for bikes traffic would flow merrily along with no bumps or wrinkles. [...]
When I Get Older: Why I Believe in a Multimodal System and Complete Streets
I’ve been dealing for over a decade with issues created as my parents aged, including transportation problems. My mother, who’s 90, has vascular dementia that has worsened over the past 12 years and my father is now showing signs of some type of dementia as well. One of the early triggers for recognizing my mom’s [...]
How to Be a Good Guy/Gal on the Street
This post that you should share with all your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, and personal conversation in (gasp!) real life was inspired by several influences. I’m modeling very directly on the first post so a shout-out to Anna North at Jezebel for providing inspiration and an outline to follow. Herewith, my source material, which [...]
Consider Adoption–of a Bike Lane, That Is
Now that our itty-bitty bit of snow has melted, the bike lanes are left with the detritus of road sand, leaf piles some of your neighbors pushed into the lane last fall, and all the rest of the things that accumulate over the winter. On my way home I occasionally have to take the vehicle [...]
Unmindful Biking by Yours Truly
At times I try to approach biking as a genuine mindfulness meditation. The immersion of self into the experience feels really wonderful when I get there. At times, though, I’m immersed in something more like dumb-ass-ness. Herewith, three stories of times I was not 100% mindful on the bike (all of which took place some time ago [...]
Mindful Driving, Mindful Biking, and “Accidents”–Part II
This post is Part II, continuing yesterday’s diatribe meditation on use of the word “accident” to describe a preventable negative interaction between a driver and a cyclist or pedestrian. The conversations I often have after someone on a bike is hit tend to circle around the premise that riding a bike is an inherently risky choice of transportation. [...]
Mindful Driving, Mindful Biking, and “Accidents”–Part I
This post has its origins in my brush with fate this week, and before that in fall 2010, when two things happened within a few days of each other: Arleigh Jenkins AKA Bike Shop Girl (a blogger whose work I read) was hit by a car, then Matthew Hardie, a young rider in Spokane, was hit. He spent [...]
It Pays to Pay Attention
Back in the saddle again after almost a week in New York City, where people on bikes share streets with New York cabbies and millions of people, and what happens? Tuesday morning I have possibly my closest call ever with a moving vehicle, reinforcing yet again the importance of mindfulness for safe riding. The scenario: [...]
Just Like Riding a Bike—Or Not
When someone describes something you learn once and never forget, that person often says, “It’s just like riding a bike!” Meaning you can just get on and pedal away and muscle memory will do the rest. That’s kind of funny, when you think about it: a bike analogy used routinely every day, probably by hundreds [...]
Be a Green Dot on a Bike, Part II–The Hard Part
I gave you my “I’m a happy green dot on a bike spreading friendliness!” story in my previous post. This is the rest of the story about why it mattered to me enough to write about it. I didn’t get the deeper training in the Green Dot approach to violence prevention; I just have the [...]
