Last night’s ride home from work was a little more interesting than most. Generally I have easy rides as far as dealing with cars goes. I think I’ve only had one guy honk at me, and most people just pass me by with no issue.

But last night was a little different. I got in my first “discussion.”

I was riding along the road, and as a car passed me, the driver said, “Get on the %&$*# sidewalk!” He finished his sentence and sped away, very passive aggressive. But he sped away towards a red light, and so I began to weigh my options. I knew I would be passing him, so I had to decide if I would say anything, and what it would be if I decided too.

Well, I’m a road rage junkie, so of course I decided to say something. But in the genuine interest of bike/car relations, I knew it wouldn’t be anything too aggressive. The lane was a straight/right turn lane, which means I have to stay on the left side of the lane, rather than the right, so right turning cars can pass me and turn safely. This conveniently put me on the driver’s side of the man’s car. So I pulled up next to him, dismounted, and I said to him, “Sir, it’s illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk.” This is true. Georgia Law says anyone over 16 years of age needs to ride their bike on the road, and follow all traffic laws. Sidewalks are actually very dangerous for cyclists, since most motorist aren’t looking down the sidewalk for oncoming cyclists, they’re looking down the street for oncoming vehicles. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re at an intersection leaving a neighborhood, check and see if you’re in the crosswalk. It’s ok, I do it too.

Back to the subject at hand:
“Sir, it’s illegal for me to ride on the sidewalk.”

“I don’t give a %&*$#@!”

So at this point I realize I’m not dealing with someone who thinks I’m in the wrong. I’m dealing with someone who feels he owns the road, and it’s there just for him. Seeing as there is no way to use logic with people like this, I ended the conversation with “I’m sorry you feel that way.” I then pulled the rest of the way up to the stop line, and waited for the green light.

The light changes, the driver next to me lets me pass in front of him so as to return the the right side of the road (since it’s no longer a turn lane) and I continue on. A couple cars pass, and then the man comes up on we once again. This is one of the joys of passing traffic, if there’s a jerk, you may deal with him more than once. So the man pulls up beside me, but rather than speed passed like the rest, he does his best to get in the last word, but all I can make out is “on your tombstone.” I reply with “You have a good evening” multiple times in what was honestly a less than congenial voice. But as I’m saying this, I notice a person in his passenger seat. It was teenager, maybe 17 or so years old, I imagine his son. He was white as a ghost. He kept his head forward, avoiding eye contact with me. Poor kid. At this point, I wanted to say something about making his son proud, but again, I wanted to keep this as civil as possible and come out with a “bikes have the right” stance, not a “well you’re an a-hole” one.

So he finally speeds away, and the stretch of road ahead of us is long enough that he looses me. So I continue along, fairly bummed out, with this paranoid feeling that everyone on the road hates me.

I get into the left turn lane, and stop at the stop line waiting for the light to turn green. To my right, in the straight lane, a large white SUV pulls up beside me. “Are you turning left?” I’m already on edge, so I immediately think, “Oh great, here’s another one.” But looking at her, she’s smiling, so I disarm and reply, “Yes, thanks for asking!” Since, for the most part, riding a bike in traffic is like being in a mall full of mimes. No one communicates with each other. It’s almost surprising to hear a voice on the road. She then starts to kind of babble, saying something along the lines of “trying to help you out” and that she’s proud of me. The light turns green, we go our separate ways, and I can’t help but feel like it was a sign that not every car on the road is driven by a bike hater. It was a nice way to end the ride.

But thinking back, she did say something along the lines of “you’ll get all muscular.” Which, while odd anyways, also means she currently thinks I’m not muscular. Hurumph. What a jerk.

Filed under: cycling, social by tonybullard
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In response to my sister’s blog:

Filed under: family, video by tonybullard
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Last night on my way home, I had a pretty rough ride. My legs just weren’t really feeling the 5.5 miles home. Not sure if it was the long ride I took for lunch, or maybe they got too rested from driving to work on Wednesday, but this morning I woke up to that dull throb you get after a tough workout. This should be getting easier right?

So this morning I decided to drive into work. Not only were my legs quite tired, but being Friday, traffic was guaranteed to be lighter. I could probably get home 45 minutes earlier than usual. More time at home, more time with the kid…less effort. This seems to solve itself.

But then comes the guilt. The cyclist’s guilt.

I’ve spent the past 5 months saving money on gas. I’ve spent the past 5 months lessening traffic. Saving the environment. Getting in shape. Lots of ideas I had adopted to feel proud and motivate myself to continue. And now it backfires. Everyone around me notices that I’ve adopted a new attitude. The occasionally snarky “Oh, has the price of gas gone up? I hadn’t noticed” comment. (All in fun of course) I mean, you can’t help but separate yourself from the people inside the giant steel boxes around you. You’re already so separated as it is.

But all these reasons I had given myself to keep biking to work, and to pump myself up, are great reasons to hate myself on the occasion I drive myself to work. Don’t get me wrong, I never started biking out of guilt of CO2 emissions or anything, it was always just a nice addition.

So maybe this is a great lesson in humility. I’m no better than those folks in the cars around me. I just happen to be on my bike, they happen to be in their car. Sometimes I’m in my car, and I pass a cyclist. I always want them to just know that I’m “one of them.” I have a bike rack on my car, he probably gets it. He’s probably “down.” I bet he’s thinking to himself, “cruise on brother, I’ll excuse your current mode of transportation cause I’m sure you’d rather be biking.” Yep, that’s probably exactly what it is.

So hopefully this can serve as a lesson. I’m not saving the world. I’m not changing the world. I’m changing myself, and that’s great, for me. No one is in debt to me. I’m just a guy riding his bike. Well, not today, but you know…other days. Not the weekends either. But you know, when I do.

Filed under: cycling, social by tonybullard
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OK, just a little praise for a moment for the internet.

For those of you who know me, I’ve become increasingly more jaded about the US Government as time passes. The election season has only made it worse, and the candidates selected nearly strike complete hopelessness into my very heart. It’s nearly enough for me to just give up and ignore it all. But that’s hard to do when they’re making my money worth less every year.

So what’s a jaded young(ish) American to do? It would seem the executive branch is long since out of my effective range, so maybe I should look locally and start picking out potential presidents now. I mean, can I blame America for picking two awful candidates when the selection was so abysmal to begin within (except for that one guy who predicted this whole financial mess we’re in now 2 years ago)? I suppose not. So maybe I should start making sure the lower guys are worth my tax dollars, so eventually I can actually be proud of more than one presidential nominee. (Wouldn’t that be crazy? Imagine saying, “I don’t know who I want to be the presidential nominee, they’re all so effective!”)

But how does little old me figure out real, unbiased facts about his local government, and how his Representatives and Senators are working in Congress? I could watch the news, but I’d have to wade through hours of “pretty white girl kidnapped” stories only to hear two people not involved in Congress, talking about how one half of Congress is always wrong. That seems really effective.

Newspapers use to be known for carrying information, but now you never know who’s propaganda you’re reading. Which multinational corporation owns this newspaper? I can never keep track.

In comes the internet, bastion of honest, straight forward, succinct information. I’m sure you detect my sarcasm. But while the internet is chock full of idiotic rambling (present party excluded of course) the other thing it’s chock full of is data. And all those geeky developers love to figure out ways to wrangle it all in and dish it up as something usable. In comes three sites that I find nearly essential if you want to really get to knwo what’s going on around you.

First, is votesmart.org . This is a wonderful that compiles all sorts of information about current officials and those running for office. Voting records, biographies, positions on issues, ratings by Special Interest Groups, all sorts of stuff. it’s a really great way to get to know what a candidate stands for quickly and easily, and best of all, it’s uniform across most candidates (obviously, newcomers have less info).

A great companion site is ontheissues.org. It’s very similar to VoteSmart, but one feature it has that is very well executed is their issues list. They separate out key issues like abortion, civil rights, budgeting and economy, and they list out bullet points of actions and statements that paint the picture of where the candidate stands on the issue. I know what you’re thinking, bullet points can be useless without context. That’s why above the bullet points they link to a page of expanded information, giving context to each and every quote or vote, and when it comes to legislation votes, they explain the bill, and point out pro and con arguments about the bill. It’s an incredibly fast and easy way to get an idea of what the candidate has actually done, and it does it fairly, and with a balanced viewpoint.

Finally, a site Teresa pointed me to today, govtrack.us. This one steps away from potential candidate territory and focuses on who’s in office, and what they’re doing. The best part about it is that you can setup daily emails to let you know everything that will happen in Congress that day, everything that has happened, etc. It’s essentially taking the thousands of bills introduced each session and making it manageable for someone who doesn’t get paid to know this stuff.

So this post is a lot longer than I wanted, but I hear way to often groups telling people to “get informed” but never telling people how. I can only hope that others may stumble across this info and finally be able to manage a normal daily life while still feeling like they know what their tax dollars are going towards.

EDIT: This is what happens when I get too excited and post too early. I just noticed on govtrack.us that for each bill that’s posted, they include the cost to individuals. So you look up the act and it says “Cost: $3 per American over the 2009-2013 period.” That’s just plain awesome.

Filed under: internet culture, politics by tonybullard
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OK, I’ll admit, the wreck I was in this morning may not have been “epic” but it was certainly on par with a stunt sequence featuring Jason Statham.

I was biking to work this morning in a drizzly rain. The downside of this is that a drizzly rain in the morning is so refreshing when you’re on your bike that you kinda forget the increased risk.

So I turn into the Mt. Pisgah Church parking lot, taking a short cut I take every morning, at a brisk pace, and start to make the turn across the smooth pavement. It doesn’t take long before I start to skid. I’m basically drifting, like all those cool kids in their racing movies, only I’m not doing it on purpose, and no scantily clad group of women will run up to me afterwords and kiss me while looking at my competitor with a condescending expression.

I don’t mean to brag, but I am astoundingly composed while skidding across the parking lot at 18 miles per hour. The entire time I’m gauging whether it feels like my tires will regrip the road, and where my center of gravity is. So I decide my best bet is to get the soft, supple flesh of my body away from the hard, cold steel of my bike, while keeping my feet under me.

My plan is to jump away from my bike, back and to the left (back and to the left, back and to the left) and land on my feet. Problem is, physics seems to take issue with an object trying to push itself off another object that currently has no force keeping it stationary. In other words “jumping”off a skidding bike really just become “pushing” a skidding bike to the ground, with you tumbling down after.

But this is where the Jason Statham Transporter 4 scene comes in. The bike falls onto it’s side, and continues to slide across the black pavement. I then “place” myself on top of the bike, and I ride it like a magic carpet until it comes to a halt. It’s unfortunate that I can’t put into words just how awesome this maneuver looked. Because of this I have decided to depict a dramatic re-enactment of the slide/ride.

Re-enactment

Dramatic re-enactment

Downside to all this is that the school bus of kids that apparently thought it was awesome to see a cyclist riding on the roads has managed to drive off out of site before all this happened. But in the spirt of the dramatic re-enactment photo I’ll play out the scene as if they had stuck around.

*Bike comes skidding to a halt*
*Bus erupts into adoring applause*
*waving* “Thanks kids! Remember to drink your milk and stay in school!”
* Mayor hands me giant scissors and I cut a ribbon*
*Scantily clad group of women run up and kiss my while scowling at my competitor*

So you know, just another day of commuting by bike.

Filed under: cycling by tonybullard
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yeah, I know this is like, 3 weeks late, but you know what? I’m a busy man, so leave me alone.

I’ll warn you, this will be very long, as it is fairly detailed. It covers each day separately, and plays out much like the horrible slide show you never want to get stuck watching. So if you want, you can just scroll through and look at the pretty pictures. There’s a video at the end that I promise is not horrifyingly boring. It includes bears. Does that reel you in? If not, then you should just leave now.
(more…)

Filed under: cycling, family, photography, travel by tonybullard
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Last night I met Teresa and Noah at California Pizza Kitchen for a Le Leche League benefit night thing, where 20% of the check went to LLL. I imagine the employees there loved it, as it turned a fairly nice restaurant into a Chuck E Cheese for the night.

Anyway, I bike there from the MARTA station, so I had my helmet with me. Noah decided he would entertain the entire restaurant by showing them all how adorable he is with a helmet on.

No, those are some fancy photoshop filters to make them look like oil paintings, it’s just my crappy camera on my phone.

Filed under: cycling, family, photography by tonybullard
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