Driving Mr. Crazy

Too much has been said already about Mr. Cassidy's New Yorker article, which I will not link here, as I don't want to give him and the New Yorker any more page views. You don't need to read the article, to summarize, he is pissed at bike lanes for making it more difficult to park in front of his favorite restaurant when driving to dinner from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Many people responded, the best, as always, was BSNYC.

2 thoughts:

He "mispoke" and said 4th ave instead of 3rd ave. Fine, whatever. Except the one on 3rd ave is terrible anyway. If he so strongly objects to a 3 foot wide barely painted strip that everyone ignores, I don't wish to try to make him feel otherwise, but I would also point out that it's a block away from the road he thought he was driving on, 4th ave, which is like a freaking superhighway. Why not drive there? There to Atlantic and he's practically all the way to Manhattan without a single bike lane.

Lastly, speaking of Atlantic, I hope he was strongly opposed to Atlantic Yards, arena traffic is definitely going to make him miss his dinner reservation.

my new helmet

May actually fit my tiny pin of a head

crackdown

I suppose like every other cyclist with a blog out there, I feel compelled to weigh in on the recent NYPD crackdown on cyclists. So, here goes.....it's fucking retarded. That's all.

I hope we can start a dialogue to get the laws changed to accommodate cyclists on the road, not in terms of more bike lanes, but in terms of red lights. It's the elephant in the room. It's the go to argument for every jaywalker who has something against bikes, "they run red lights." We always will, and it's not inherently dangerous. I believe it is actually safer, no, check that, I am sure it is actually safer, and drivers, if they stopped to think for a second, should prefer this too. They really want us holding up traffic? We don't accelerate quite as quickly as they do.

Back to the crackdown. It's fucking idiotic. TIA.

holiday miracle

Today, an access a ride not only didn't do it's all to kill me, but avoided me when I did something stupid, stopped, and waved me on.

audience participation

Riding home from work down 2nd avenue, around 50th or so, I was in the far right (bus) lane, cabbie swerves sharply into my lane, I cut around him to the left, he starts coming back into the lane he just left. I yell 'yo' (seems to be what always comes out of my mouth) and he looks at me and keeps coming over, so i move over a little, traffic slows, I flip him off and keep going. Move back to the right, all of a sudden there is all this honking and he's yelling at me through the open window on the passenger side, over a woman sitting in the passenger seat looking all freaked out. Then he speeds off, I chase him, and am happy to see he gets stopped at the light. Pull up next to him, signal him to roll down the window and ask him what he's yelling at me about. He says "you were in my lane". I ask him which one, the one he pulled into without signaling, making me go around him, or the one he then tried to shove me out of? he says "you were in my lane". over and over, we do this, I stupidly become fixated on the no turn signal and asked him if it would kill him to signal. A woman on the corner listening says "maybe he's from South Carolina, " the guy next to her says "no, probably Ohio", somebody else says "or Pennsylvania". I think everyone thinks their home state has the worst drivers.

Olympics

olympic village, funded with federal funds on the condition that it would then be used as a federal prison.

just me and my bootie