American River Bikeway

I call it the American River Bikeway in the way that someone might refer to the Capitol City Freeway or the Dan Ryan Expressway.  It's that sort of way.  Being a bike route, there are more opportunities for a pleasureable experience than on either of these other sorts of "way"--but it is certainly more of a "way" than a "path."  I imagine a bike path and I imagine a quaint, windy route through the woods which allows much leisure and is wholly unsuited to transportation.  This is a bikeway.  

My commute takes me from downtown Sacramento, near the Alkali Flat Light Rail Station, to my office near Fulton and Cottage Way (in the western portion of sprawlsville).  It is a little more than eight miles each way and I have several options as far as route.  The option I use most often is this bikeway. 

This route has no stops.

This route is fairly direct.

This route tends to be free of automobiles. 

Sometimes I have to dodge pedestrians on the downtown end of the route.  Other than that, it is a fairly open ride.  I start pedalling once I cross the River and can roll most of the way to work without touching my brakes.  When I get to Northrop Avenue, almost to the office, I am a little more than ten minutes' ride from my office on mostly residential streets. 

I could ride Fair Oaks Blvd to "J" Street or "H" Street.  Either route is slightly shorter.  On either route, though, I will undoubtedly stop and wait for a traffic light or be threatened by someone operating a motorized, four-wheeled weapon. 

Usually, I take the bikeway. 

I have had jobs where biking to work wasn't a good option.  The commute was a stressful part of the day--I've had situations where I spent an hour on the freeway each day before and after work.  No thanks, no more. 

This morning, during my forty-minute bike commute, I was able to stop for a moment of beauty and silence.

I have worked in some beautiful places.  Even driving to my office at the King Range, on California's Lost Coast, though, I was unable to relax during my commute.  The road was windy and dangerous--mostly dangerous because of unpredictable motorists. 

Someday I may be in a bike-on-bike collision.  If I can have that instead of the altercation with an automobile, I'll take it. 

I almost hit a deer on the bike trail yesterday... that would have been the second time for me. 

Pretty dark out there, eh?

So it's winter now.  I mean, the calendar says "winter" next week but if you look at the sky you can see winter.  Yesterday, riding home, I realized that I hadn't seen the sun in four days.  Good thing I've got weekends free.

There has been a lot of cyclist-talk about winter and darkness, lately (http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions) so I will dive into a little incident that I had this week. 

I was riding along the bike trail, night before last.  I was going a little fast, maybe--I was planning to meet up with a friend and wanted to get to my apartment first to eat a little supper.  It is dark out there in the middle of December.  I have a Planet Bike half-watt white light which illuminates the ground right in front of me--but no more.  That's mostly okay because I know the route pretty well, usually there's moonlight or just city-glow off of the clouds.  Maybe I should get a big, bright, portable sun like some of the other cyclists have... more than anything I dislike those because they blind me and ruin my night vision. 

So I'm riding along and I hear a squeal, ahead of me in the darkness.  Then there is a giggle.  Just as I'm touching my brakes, I notice two cyclists as I whiz past them.  They are on old cruisers with no lights at all.  Apparently they were riding two-abreast when I came around the corner and if one of them hadn't braked (the squeal I heard) and turned off of the bike trail there would have been a collision.

I have a lot of lights on my bike--mostly so that I am visible to others.  I have the white light that I mentioned earlier.  I wear one red flashy-light on the back of my helmet.  I have a silly-bright red Planet Bike tail-light on my seat post.  I have two spoke-lights on my wheels, also flashing red.  After this incident, I am planning to put another white light on my bike, maybe on my helmet. 

When I came around that corner, I didn't see them at all.  They could obviously see me, which is what saved us. 

I ride around a lot at night in Mid-Town Sacramento.  It's a grid of streets with lots of two-way stop-signs, a fair number of cyclists, and several one-way streets.  When I ride around Midtown, I don't worry too much about motorists.  What I worry about is the cyclist with no lights running the stop-sign, travelling the wrong way on a one-way street.  For this reason, I always look BOTH ways when I intersect a one-way street.  At some point, I just know it, I'm going to T-bone somebody and it's going to hurt. 

All I can do is keep looking! 

Can't we just all get along?

I was on my way home from work yesterday, cycling along a familiar stretch of road in Sacramento.  The last intersection before I get onto the bike trail is not really set up in a cyclist's favor.  In my direction of travel, there were two left-turn lanes and one narrow lane for traffic going either straight or to the right.  In order to get to the bike trail, I needed to go straight.  Unless one is heading to the bike trail or the wastewater treatment plant, there is little reason that one would go straight at this intersection.  Here I was, nevertheless.  I got there just as the light turned red, so I was sitting right behind the crosswalk, in the middle of the lane.  Ordinarily, I try to scootch over to the left-side of such a shared lane, but there really isn't any extra space here.  It is a narrow lane.  I believe that the CVC would call it "substandard width". 

After sitting there patiently for about thirty seconds, a car pulls up behind me.  It was a small car.  I looked over my right shoulder to see if its turn signal was on.  Nope.  If it was, I might have considered crowding the car next to me--the one in the nearest left-turn lane--to allow this compact to pass me.  No turn signal, though.

So I sat for a few more moments.  Behind me, I hear a shout.  "Get out of my way!"  I get hollered at from time to time, but this one seemed a little unusual.  Nobody was going anywhere, after all, and I double-checked--no turn signal.  He saw me look over my right shoulder.  "Get out of my way, let me turn!" 

So I looked a third time.  "Use your turn signal!" I responded. 

"What?!" was the driver's retort.

"Your turn signal!  Use your blinker!" I made a hand gesture suggesting a flashing light, opening-and-closing my right hand. 

He shouted some explicative and gunned his engine several times.  I faced forward, choosing not to crowd into the left-turn lane on this fellow's account.  After all, his turn signal was still not flashing. 

He gunned his engine again and put it into first gear, roaring right up behind me.  Then he put it into neutral, returning to his original position, still gunning his engine. 

How am I supposed to respond to this?  I sat calmly, watching for the light to turn.   There were probably ten cars waiting to turn left--I had plenty of ready witnesses, should this guy decide to use his vehicle as a weapon. 

The light changed and we all went.  I went straight, the impatient shouter turned right (still gunning his engine, of course), and everyone else turned left. 

I am not clear as to how anyone benefitted from this situation.  If I had been on a motorcycle or in an automobile, me getting out of his way wouldn't have been even an option--and if I drove such a vehicle to work each day, I might have been sitting right there in my motorized rig waiting to go home, just as I was yesterday on my bike.  He gunned his engine and got his hackles up, burning a little extra petrol--which annoys me a little.  I'd rather he'd saved that money to fix his turn signal, if it truely didn't work. 

I certainly didn't benefit and neither did the cause of cyclists.  If I had cowered over onto the sidewalk or into the left-turn lane, I would have only encouraged his future similar behavior toward cyclists.  By doing what I did, I only angered him which probably leads to more aggressive behavior toward cyclists.  It is difficult for me to communicate with every such driver that, if they follow the rules and use their turn signals, I will go BEYOND what the law requires and give extra space.  They don't realize that by giving this extra space, I am endangering myself a bit and probably making the folks in the left-turn lane nervous. 

It's a no-win, but whos-it in the beat-up little compact probably feels slighted that I didn't allow him to get onto his destination twenty seconds sooner.  Gunning his engine, I wonder if he considered killing me over those twenty seconds? 

"There's no Fun in Safe"

Some dude hollered this at me last night when I was getting off of Amtrak.  I had just come into Sacramento Station from Oakland.  There were about thirty passengers--six of us had bicycles.  Two of us were walking our bikes among the crowd in the space between the trains.  The other folks rode their bikes among the pedestrians... one of them shouted that at those of us walking. 

We were SQUARES, obviously.

I walked my bike, commenting to the other cyclist that it wasn't about fun--it was about living with our neighbors, whether they have bikes or not. 

Despite walking my bike all the way to the road, I caught up with the guy riding his fixie along H Street.  I couldn't think of anything to say--I mean, what do you do?  So I didn't.  But what the hell? 

It was funny because I had just seen the Facebook page put together by some UCB freshmen who are trying to resist traffic laws.  These are students who have not yet learned to take responsibility for their own actions:  http://www.facebook.com/pages/BikeBusters/154749877901782

It struck a chord with me.  I just got rid of my car--I think more people should.  Just the same, I believe that cyclists can share the road with motorists.  The trick is to follow the rules.  The trick is to remember that they are people too. 

Even people we don't agree with are people that we have to share a planet with.

Bad weather on weekends mostly.

When I was a little kid, I believed that adults intentionally set it up so that it would rain on the weekend and be beautiful all week.  I was a pessimistic child.

Since then, I have learned to appreciate that bad weather is likely to get you wet no matter what day of the week.  I like having beautiful weekends--cool and sunny, not too breezy.  On the weekends, though, I can usually make an excuse to not go outdoors if a squall blows in.  On weekdays, I have certain obligations which put me on the Sac North Bikeway at quarter after seven each morning. 

The photograph above is of the Sac North Bikeway where it crosses the American River, utilizing the once-upon-a-time Sacramento Interurban commuter train's trestle near the Blue Diamond Almond plant.  It's a little foggy.  It has been most mornings this month.  The big rain storms have swept through on my days off for the most part, which is kinda nice. 

I have options.  I took light-rail and a bus (with my bike) on Monday morning.  It was drizzling lightly and I felt like I might be coming down with a cold.  No big deal.  The rail stop is two blocks away, the bus transfer is pretty painless most of the time, and the bus drops me off two blocks from work.  It takes a little more time than a bike ride but it's okay. 

I'm glad to have the option of taking transit, but the sun was out again this morning and I was on my bike. 

At my last job, I was out hiking most of the time--at least once a week I would have good reason to go out and walk some trail for work.  I got to see a lot of beautiful country in all the weather you can imagine--from blazing sun to sideways sleet.  I'm pretty happy to get a little dose of Mother Nature every day, sandwiching my hours in front of this computer with a half-hour on the saddle. 

Ain't life grand? 



More flats and broken spokes!

I have have had a lot of flats this fall.  This has been due to a combination of things.  I had a piece of rim-tape die on me, which caused two flats (I didn't see the broken bit when I fixed the flat).  Then I had a Presta valve break on me one morning, when I was in a hurry and topping off the tire pressure.  Then on Thursday, when I was riding in...

Bang!  Right through the Armadillo!  Note that the nail went in through the tread and came out through the side-wall, putting two holes into my tube and probably ruining that tire.  Armadillos can take a lot of abuse, but that was too much!  One friend suggested that I get a cow-catcher for the front of my bike. 

I have broken two spokes this month, too.  One of them, just yesterday morning.  If you work at a bike shop, you know to roll your eyes when I say, "I was just riding along when..."  Well.  That's the way it happened!  Sure, I'm a little heavier than the average rider, but I didn't do anything stupid!  So.  Broken spoke on a wheel that's less than five months old--back to the bike shop this week.  I expect it to be covered under warranty--it was when the first spoke broke, three weeks ago. 

Anyway.  This is why I keep three bicycles in my tiny studio apartment in Sacramento.  When I got up in the morning, I found a broken spoke.  So I topped off the rear tire of my back-up roadbike... but broke the Presta valve off.  I rode the mountain bike into work that morning.