Birthday

Today is my 27th birthday. Damn, right? 27 seems pretty old. But before I get to being all "what have I done with my life," let's put this into context: This is the fifth birthday that I've been sober, as I quit drinking when I was 22, right before my 23rd birthday (which sucked). I spent my 21st birthday going to the same bar I'd been to the night before with my roommate. No party. Because I was sort of a loser. 22nd birthday isn't memorable in any way. 23rd birthday was spent in a just-post-quitting-drinking fog. I was on probation and had violated my probation. I was sure that i was going to jail. I lived in Denver and didn't have any friends other than people I saw at the bars. I just sat at my house and was bummed out. I think my dad came up and took me out to dinner. My whole 23rd year and the preceeding 24th birthday kicked a fuckton of ass. I was back in Springsteen, sober, getting my shit together, and not a drunken or paralyzed-with-fear wreck. 25th bday was covered by Netanya, then my new friend in Fort Collins, now one of my very good friends. 26th birthday I was too busy studying for the final exams of a semester that i got straight As. And this bitthday is already so impossibly packed full of love and friends and plans (at 1:53pm) that I'm beside myself. I can't believe how good I have it in life compared to my 23rd birthday. So thanks a fucking shitload Fort Collins and all the friends I've met here. Thanks, family. Thanks, Alcoholics Anonymous. Thanks, all my other awesome as fuck friends on every awesome as fuck corner of this goddamned awesome as fuck planet. I don't fucking care how old I sound now. This birthday fucking rules!

Shit!

I'm moving to New York City on January 8th for three months. Then I'm going to Paris in April. I know. Rad, huh?
Meanwhile I have to graduate college and get out my grad school applications out to every school before I leave. I have to sell all this shit (including my beloved seizure bike, in all likelihood). I have to physically move all of my crap somewhere. And don't even get me STARTED on the "trying to make out with all these girls" thing. Horrible idea.

Here's a list of the important things that I have to do in the month of December:
Graduation Party
Where/when?
Invitations!
Doug Ide
Hegerts
Who else?
Who else?
Going Away Party
Invitations
DONE Talk to roommates/announce on bulletin board
DONE Stephen DJ?
Graduate School Applications
Transcripts
PPCC
Metro
CSU
Keep checking/expanding Excel spreadsheet
12-Pitt
15-Ohio State
15-Wisconson
everything else in early Jan
School!
Final draft Idaho Bike Law story
Another story for Literary journalism IS?!
5-Quiz Hist
9 – Presentation for Capstone
9 – Esse Essay
9 – Cuckoo’s Nest Essay
10-all docu worksheets due
11-all worksheets for Capstone due
10-docu worksheets due
17-Capstone Paper due
17-final draft fiction story
18-history essay
18-history test
18-Docu Final
!
Cap/Gown
Plane tickets:
New York – 1/08-3/25 or so
Paris – 3/28?-4/25?
Visa?
Passport current?

Stop Signs part 8 (the end)

And therein lies the problem with the Idaho Code. It’s also the problem with every other state’s laws. If everyone followed the law, everything would go fine. But people don’t.
I don’t.
I remember when I was a little kid, riding around the neighborhood on my red Huffy BMX with white, plastic wheel covers. I rode that thing from jump to jump all day during the summer. My mom used to tell me that I was supposed to ride on the sidewalk, then get off my bike and walk it across the street, but I didn’t care. I rode in the street, down alleys, hopped curbs from the sidewalk to the street, rode on whichever side of the street pleased me. The only rules for me were the limits of my Huffy’s white tires.
But I’m not a kid anymore. I realize that there are repercussions for my actions. And I understand that there are other people in the world other than me who are just as human as I am and have just as much right to the road.
Adult or child, riding a bike is still just as good an idea now as it ever was. Anyone can see that more and more people are taking to the streets on bicycles these days and this is a trend that’s unlikely to reverse given still-very-high gas prices, the increasing use of buzzwords like “green” and “sustainable” and America’s giant shift to the left this election. Bikes are hot right now. And they will get hotter. America will be increasingly confronted with the question of how to manage all these cyclists on the roads.
For my part, I’ve just been trying not to make things any worse. I still can’t force myself to stop at stop signs, but now I slow down and make damn sure that the coast is clear before I continue. I still run red lights if there’s no one around to see me, but I try not to make a show of it. I ride by the Idaho Code, essentially – and it works extremely well. I can still ride fast. I can still ride a purple track bike with no brakes and try to look like a badass. I just have to be considerate. And realize that people in cars are people too. They may not have figured out that they should be riding a bike and that they probably don’t have any good excuse to drive everywhere yet, but I’m not going to convince them by being a jackass. They have their reasons for driving and they deserve the same respect that anyone else on the road deserves.
As for the Idaho Code, I don’t think that legislators are ready for it yet. It sounds sort of extreme at this point. But as “traffic” becomes more and more comprised of bicycles, states will be increasingly compelled to reconsider their “traffic laws.”
Personally, I’m convinced. I’ve run 5,840 stop signs in the last year and I haven’t died or gotten a ticket once. If anything, riding by Idaho’s code has made me safer and more responsible. The law might tell me that I should behave like a car, but my common sense tells me that I when I pull up to an intersection in the middle of the night and no one is around, I might as well just roll right on through.

Stop Signs Part 7

Meanwhile, cyclists in Idaho seem comfortable enough with their Code.
“It’s been the same ever since I moved here,” said Dave Seasons, manager of Ken’s Bicycles in Boise. “Since at least ’93. And I’ve never had an instance with traffic.”
Idaho Code 49-746, which permitted cyclists to run stop signs, passed in 1982. The red light law went into effect in 2005.
“In retrospect the stop sign law is not a bad law,” Mark McNeese, State Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator of the Idaho Transportation Department said. “It certainly makes riding a bike more enjoyable. Overcoming inertia takes a lot of energy from a cyclist.”
The Idaho Code isn’t perfect. Both Seasons and McNeese said that they get the impression that most drivers have no idea that cyclists are allowed to run stop signs and red lights. This might create resentment among drivers and a sense that cyclists are reckless, but McNeese doesn't think it makes cycling any more dangerous.
"I can assure you that cyclists understand very well the repercussions of motor-vehicle/bicycle collisions and are not 'blatantly' inviting disaster."
George Knight, a cycling advocate and philosophy professor at Boise State University (agrees that cyclists can make their own decisions.)
"In a way it seems kind of goofy to not give [cyclists] exceptions to laws not created for [them]. At signalized intersections, I'd rather just get the heck out of there. The whole thing is just putting MY safety in MY hands."
But Knight acknowledges that cyclists take liberties with Idaho's Code.
"You do see people just blasting through. Then someone 200 yards away sees that and draws whatever conclusions they draw. And a lot of time they think that cyclists don't stop at stop signs at all."
Then drivers get mad. Or they get skittish and sit at stop signs waiting for cyclists to blast through and nobody goes anywhere. Or cyclists start to get used to cars letting them go ahead and become emboldened to the point of not stopping at intersections with or without traffic until one day someone runs a stop sign and gets run over.
"If people always acted according to the letter of the law," Knight said, "everything would go fine..."

Stop Sign Part 6

The League of American Bicyclists, one of the largest nonprofit cycling advocacy and education groups in the nation, is conflicted about the Idaho Code.
“We don’t have a formal position on it,” Executive Director Andy Clarke said. “And recent discussions about coming up with one identified a wide divergence of views from the political to the philosophical that seem tough to reconcile at the moment.”
Education Director Preston Tyree heads up a team of 20 “coaches” who instruct the League instructors across the country. When the League tried to develop a position on the Idaho Code, they went to the coaches for input.
“Out of those 20,” Tyree said, “it came down pretty much even on ‘it’s a great idea’/’it’s a terrible idea.’”
Tyree has his own take on the Code.
"Cyclists have the same rights and should act and be treated as vehicles. If we somehow make them different from cars, we're gonna have a problem.”
Separate laws for cyclists would probably aggravate some drivers, Tryee said, which might very well create the type of tension that could lead to more dangerous conditions for cyclists.
Well, they can suck it up, one might say, cyclists are different from cars. They’re certainly less dangerous. Why not just let them do what they do anyway?
“While bicyclists and drivers of motor vehicles have different equipment,” Tyree said, “they are on the same roads and should act the same to be predictable.”
Cyclists fall under the same traffic laws in every state other than Idaho for a reason, Tyree said. “It’s the safest way to operate.”
“You can quote me as saying this: I’m very uncomfortable with the Idaho law.”

Stop Signs Part 5

The day after that, I met with Fort Collins Bike Director Dave “DK” Kemp to get his take on the Idaho Code.
“Did you hear about the latest cycling accident?” he asked me.
“No. What happened?”
Two days before, on the same day that I’d been stopping at stop signs for recreation, cyclist Thomas Baxendale ran a stop sign, crossing Stuart on Remington. Darrell Keller - maybe because he was driving into the sun, maybe because the stop sign was slightly obscured by a tree - ran his stop sign on Stuart at the exact same time. Baxendale was hit by Keller’s Ford Expedition and dragged 100 feet down Stuart before Keller could stop. He was in the hospital in serious condition, miraculously alive, when I heard about it.
This was just an example of the danger of the Idaho Code, DK said.
“There are all of these factors, you know. Maybe someone's drunk. Maybe someone's unaware or oblivious because they've got something on their mind. There are all these variables, then you bring it all together and everyone’s moving.”
Thomas Baxendale is 26 years old, my age. And I’d run the same stop sign that Baxendale ran more than once. The view to the left is obscured by a tree. But it’s a four way stop. If there’s a car coming, they’ll stop.
I’m sure that Darrell Keller didn’t mean to run that stop sign. But this illustrates DK’s point. A cyclist can’t always count on a driver to do what he’s supposed to do. Riding a bike on city streets can be dangerous.

Stop Signs Part 4

I still think that the Idaho Code makes sense, though. And where I think the Code might be a lot more applicable is the town I live in: Fort Collins, Colorado.
Fort Collins is a smallish college town with bike lanes on practically every street. It's flat. On the side streets of Old Town there are almost as many cyclists as cars. And normally I can run practically every stop sign without worrying about imminent death. So why stop?
Seriously. Why stop? I couldn’t really say. So, as a sort of fact-finding mission, I decided to ride according to the letter of the current law for a day in Fort Collins. I’d signal all turns, fully stop at all stop signs, wait at all red lights, ride on the right side of the road, not flip people off, not spit on cars that turn into the bike lane and almost kill me, not cut corners or take weird, questionably-legal shortcuts through sidewalks and parking lots. Generally, I’d be a courteous, responsible, law-abiding cyclist.
I hopped on my bike on a weekday morning, took off East from my house down Magnolia as I do every morning and ran the first three stop signs I encountered, forgetting my vow. Shit. Force of habit.
Once I got the hang of it, obeying the law was easy, if a little unnatural. I waited at a red light at Mulberry and Remington and watched a guy across the street pull up, look both ways and ride across the empty street toward me. I felt a little uneasy when another cyclist came up behind me, wondering, I imagined, why the hell I was still sitting there. The light mercifully turned green and I accelerated away quickly to compensate.
To sensationalize my frustration, I rode down West Myrtle with its quiet blocks punctuated by stop signs – stop signs there more because of orthodoxy than anything else, as far as I could tell. It was sort of pleasant riding this way, to be honest. I soon stopped bothering to accelerate my single 46x16 gear up to spinning pace and instead just lazily turned the pedals down the block, stopped at the end, put my foot down, looked both ways and rolled down the next stretch, smiling at the trees.
I stopped at 22 stop signs the day of my experiment. I could have run 16 of them under Idaho’s Code while 6 were contested and I would have had to stop anyway. I could have run two of the seven red lights that I stopped at.
Normally I would have run all of the uncontested stop signs and red lights. And I don’t have a car so I ride every day. Let’s say that this is an average day. That means that I probably run 5,840 stop signs and 730 red lights in Fort Collins every year – all of them totally legal under Idaho’s code. This may not be completely accurate, but the bottom line is that even though it’s illegal, I run a lot of stop signs and red lights. And I’m not alone.
I sat at the intersection of Laurel and Peterson, a four-way stop with good visibility for an hour between 4:30 and 5:30 pm the next day to see what other cyclists do at stop signs in Fort Collins. 42 cyclists came through the intersection while I was watching. Only two stopped. They both had contested intersections, so they would have had to stop in Idaho anyway. Many of the other cyclists rode through contested intersections without stopping, usually by timing their entry and riding through when they had a space, just like the riders in San Francisco, just like me. But most of the cyclists had uncontested intersections and they just rolled through without a care. A roadie in spandex coasted up, looking back and forth, and then pushed through with a couple of stout strokes. A studious-looking foreign exchange student continued her slow pace, looking left and right the entire way through. A gentleman wearing a tie and a helmet rode through upright and fearless on his comfort bike. An older Cheech Marin lookalike cruised through on a low rider bike with flames. An entire neighborhood glided home, united only by their aloof dismissal of the red signs that tell cars to stop.

Stop Signs Part 3

I'm exaggerating San Francisco's freneticness.  I got around ok and more or less observed the Idaho Code for a day or so.  To tell you the truth, it went fairly well.  When I was following the code, I was one of the safer and more cordial cyclists on the road.  But with so much traffic, my chances of pulling a fast one at an intersection in San Francisco were slimmer than I'd have liked.

Stop Signs continued

I heard about Idaho's code before a recent trip to San Francisco, where the Bay Area Metropolitan Transportation Commission is considering similar laws for California.  So I thought I'd test "the code" in action.  I'd ride around San Francisco operating as if stop signs were yield signs and red lights were stop signs.  If I could make it out without getting killed or pulled over, I figured, then Idaho's Code would be proven right.  Plus, to be honest, I'll pretty much take any opportunity I can concoct to break the law in the name of "research."

There are a lot of stop signs in San Francisco.  The trouble was finding stop signs that I could run according to Idaho's Code.  I set out from the Panhandle toward the Marina on my friend Brandon's bling Cyclops track bike that not only doesn't have brakes but isn't even drilled for brakes.  I'm used to riding a brakeless fixed gear bike, but the combination of hilly terrain and an unfamiliar handlebar setup had me hoping I wouldn't have to stop very often.  But the first stop sign I came to had a car approaching so I hopped the back wheel a few times and hauled the thing to a stop with my legs.  I waited my turn and continued to the next stop sign where the EXACT same thing happened.  I lucked out at a lot of stop signs, looked both ways and breezed through, but by the time I got to Japantown and its heavier traffic and stop lights, I was getting closer and closer to abandoning the whole experiment.  Every red light I came to there was traffic.  There was NEVER a chance to run one.  I quickly started renegotiating the particulars of Idaho's Code with myself.

"Well, I guess I don't really have to wait until there's no traffic.  I just have to yield the right of way." Or, "OK, well, yeah, there's a car coming to this stop sign.  But if I speed up and beat him through, I'm not putting anyone out."

I started darting across heavily trafficked streets whenever there was a gap.  I started edging my way into intersections to get cars to hesitate so I could cut ahead of them.  Mostly though, I just sat at red lights and waited - because I had to.  There were so many cars in San Francisco during the daytime that Idaho's Code was usually mute.  Either wait at a red light or die.

Should Cyclists Be Able To Run Red Lights and Stop Signs?

I don't stop at stop signs on my bike.  I ride up to them, slow down, look both ways to make sure nobody's coming, then I hit the gas.  Sometimes there are cars coming and I time it from a few hundred feet out so that I can blast the intersection before or after or between them.  Sometimes I slow down and track stand when there's a line, and wait my turn - but I'll be damned if I put my foot down.  At night when I can see the cars by thier headlights, I don't slow down at all.  I ride full speed at the intersection on the left side of the road, then I cut sharply right going in so that if there IS a car coming, I can swerve right onto the street I'm crossing.  Then I lean hard left and S-curve my way through the intersection, laughing at the night and trying not to lean so far that I clip my pedal on the street on my foxed gear.

I know I'm an asshole.  I'm not helping "the cause" by pissing off drivers and endangering myself.  But I just don;t see why I should stop.  Nobody stops on a bike.  I have perfect 360-degree visibility.  I'm incredibly maneuverable.  I don't move as fast as cars.  And, most importantly, if I fuck up, I can't kill anyone but myself.  Honestly, it seems like cyclists should have some special legal distinction from cars that allows them to run stop signs as long as they slow down and look both ways first.

As it turns out, just such a law does exist - in Idaho.  Title 49-720, section 1, of the Idaho code states that a cyclist approaching a stop sign must slow down and yield the right of way to any traffic.  But, in the event that a road is clear, the cyclist "may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection without stopping."  And it goes further in section 2 to add that a cyclist, after stopping at a red light and yielding the right of way to any traffic, "may proceed through the steady red light with caution."

So cyclists can run stop signs - as long as they're careful.  And they can even run red lights as long as the coast is clear.  Fantastic!  It seemed like a no-brainer.  But, I was to later find out, maybe there's a reason for all these lame-ass laws in every other state.

Wld u cntnue rdg?

I'm Leaving Fort Collins in Two Months and Two Days

I'm leaving Fort Collins in two months and two days.  And I don't even really know where I'm going.  It's pretty harsh to leave a week and a half after graduation, but wtf else would I do?  I've been complaining about this place ever since I got here.  Now I'm gonna leave with a degree in my hands.  Mission accomplished, right?

Well, the thing is that I have all these heavy feelings and stuff.  I have friends here - friends that I feel like I'm close to being, like, really uberbro with, but I got to school all the time and ride my bike around by myself and shit.  I really wish that I could just have a crowd of fawners lamenting every day closer to when I move - holding out their arms, but none of us can stop it.

Anyway, what bums me out the most, of course, is the fear that I'll never get to make out with all the girls that I have crushes on before I leave.  I've sort of given up on the idea of having any kind of "relationship."  But can't I just make out with everyone before I leave?

Too bad I have all this school to do while I'm supposed to be throwing awkward hail Mary passes to all the ladies that I love, in my casual way.

Marvin Gaye

I need to just start writing things in this blog, no matter how dissatisfied I am with them.  I just need copy, I guess, until I have enough posts that it seems like I have a blog.  So, here's what I felt like writing about today: Marvin Gaye.

What's Going On is one of those albums that's always cited by music critics as one of the best albums of all time or the most important soul album ever or the record that changed Motown or etc.  Well, it took me until today to understand how good it is.  Even though it sounds like the soundtrack to driving some sexy lady around downtown Chicago in a 1970s Cadillac, this album is about HEAVY SHIT, man.  I'll let you read all about it yourself, but I think that you should listen to Mercy, Mercy Me while reading the lyrics.  It's like the most powerful Christian-environmentalist soul lament that I've ever heard.  Please listen to it.  It's like taking a globalization class from a gospel singer-sage who sort of also feels like the loving black father you never had.

That's all.  I have to go to sleep.  It'll all be ok, I guess.  But shit, man.  Heavy.

Heavy Times

These are heavy times we live in, man.  I'll be going into that and a lot more in future posts.  Mostly I just had been thinking of starting a blog and then I accidentally did and here it is.

Heavy!

-David