More Trouble at Interstate and Greeley
As I passed through Interstate and Greeley this afternoon, I saw that several orange and white reflective barriers were up along the left edge of the southbound bike lane, effectively blocking any vehicles from turning right across the path of cyclists coming down the hill. A big white Channel 8 news van was parked around the corner. I just figured that the City had already gotten started on some of the safety upgrades they’ve been discussing for that intersection, where a right-turning garbage truck killed a cyclist a few weeks ago.
When I got home, however, I saw that several people had ended up at this blog while searching for information on bike accidents at Interstate and Greeley today (that’s exactly how I found out about the fatal collision at that intersection a few weeks ago). I performed my own Google search, and sure enough, another cyclist was hit by a right-turning vehicle at that exact same spot this morning. Fortunately, it sounds like her injuries weren’t life-threatening, but the City has decided that enough is enough: by early afternoon, they’d set up the barricades I saw, to prevent any vehicles from turning right across the bike lane until they’ve made safety improvements at the intersection.
This is very scary. In class today, a friend told me that just a few hours after she and I had been talking about bike safety last week, her boyfriend, an experienced cyclist, had been hit out in Beaverton in yet another of these failure-to-yield, right-turn-across-the -bike-lane accidents. Fortunately, he was wearing a helmet, which she said got so badly battered that the doctors insisted on performing a CAT scan; aside from a badly scraped shoulder, though, he seems to be okay.
Two hours later, a student in another of my classes was talking about what he called the “car versus bike” debate. “Out where I live, way out east near 163rd,” he said, “they’re all saying, ‘Yeah. People are dying. We need to get those bikes off the road!’”
I really hope that’s not where this conversation is going in the Greater Portland area. Two tragedies seemed to galvanize the city into a commitment to infrastructure at some of the most dangerous intersections, and all the local print media did big stories about the dangers of cycling in “Bike City USA” (here’s the Mercury, here’s Willamette Week, and here’s the Oregonian online). With all this coverage, though, I’m worried about bike accident fatigue among drivers in the city– for those who aren’t committed to cycling as a green mode of transportation, a source of exercise, and a lifestyle, the simplist answer may indeed seem to be, “Get those bike off the road before anyone else gets killed.” If people perceive that “too much” money is being spent on safer infrastructure (even though an improvement like bike boxes would only cost about $200o per intersection), or that drivers are being “unduly” inconvenienced by concessions to cyclists (for instance, having to take the long way to Swan Island when they can’t make the right turn onto Greeley from Interstate), the tide may turn from sympathy to resentment.
I don’t have a solution or a proposal here– I just want to stay safe on the road, and see more investment in off-road options for commuters, like the North Portland Greenway. However, I know how easy it is for us to listen exclusively to our own echo-chambers in the media and on the web, only to be taken by surprise when it turns out that we’ve lost the majority (as you can see, I’m still suffering from PTSD after the 2004 presidential election).
I hope the woman hit at Interstate and Greeley heals quickly. I also hope that the city starts issuing citations for failure to yield! They have yet to give a ticket to any of these right-turners with tunnel vision.
Vote
For the last month, my morning bike route has been festooned with pleasantly alliterative signs, all white with black, all-caps stenciling:
STRIP MALLS OR STRAWBERRY FIELDS?
PUMPKINS OR PARKING LOTS?
CORNFIELDS OR CONCRETE?
LOVE OREGON?
YES ON 49
A few weeks ago, there was one lonely NO ON 49 sign, posted near the top of my evening climb up Greeley. After a few days, I saw that it had been pulled up from its curbside location and tossed into the blackberry brambles: we liberals are always such a class act.
Tomorrow is the last day for Oregonians to vote on Measure 49. I’ll spare you yet another rehash of the debate (here’s yes, here’s no, here’s Willamette Week, and here’s BikePortland.org); essentially, Oregon’s progressive anti-sprawl zoning laws were dealt a huge blow when Measure 37 passed in 2004, and Measure 49 is an effort to curb some of the most excessive development that Measure 37 has made possible.
For those of us who like the city to be the city, so we can live car-free, and the country to be the country, so we can go bike in it, there’s no real controversy. For those who own undeveloped property that they’d hoped would fund their retirements, and for development companies that have been jumping all over the loopholes in Measure 37 to build sprawling McMansion communities and big box stores, Measure 49 is, as the No on 49 folks like to say, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing.” To me, this is an issue of the greater interests of the community (and the planet) outweighing the potential profits that would fall to a few.
Right now, though, it’s not looking very good for us wolves. So vote already.
What I Did with My Extra Hour Today, Or, Yet Another Reason Why Bikes Are Awesome
I did not make very good use of this beautiful weekend, bikewise– I spent Friday inside reading for classes, and Saturday at Powell’s with my folks. So, in order to get some exercise in before the early sunset this evening, I decided to do something I never, ever even consider: I went running.
Now, I have never been much of a runner. When I was a little fat kid, my dad used to try and pay me to run laps around the “lake” behind our house, and as is often the case for me, sloth trumped greed: I never once made it around the lake. Even in my top physical condition in early high school, when I was playing varsity basketball (in Chile, being 5′10 1/2″ puts you on varsity no matter how badly you suck), I could never run more than two and half miles. I am a natural swimmer, so I have long considered myself Exhibit A for the Aquatic Ape Theory.
The last time I went running was in July, when I was teaching at a live-in program and had few options for burning off three all-you-can-eat buffets a day; even then, I only ran twice, two miles each time. Still, I knew I was in pretty good shape from biking 75-100 miles a week since classes started in mid-September, so I set out this afternoon with the goal of running for 45 minutes, which would be the longest I’d ever run by five minutes.
Long story short, I ended up running for an hour non-stop, the last fifth of a mile of which was uphill. And I could have done more! My breathing returned to normal in 20 seconds! My leg muscles weren’t even sore: the only thing that hurt were my hips and ankles, from the unaccustomed impact and the extra 15 pounds I’m carrying. I gmapped it when I got home, and I ran exactly five miles (okay, nobody said I was running super-fast). That’s a mile and half farther than I’ve ever run in my life.
The point is not that I’m awesome (although I am feeling pretty awesome at the moment). The point is that bike commuting made me, the quintessential sweat-averse, life-of-the-mind chubby girl, capable of running five miles without even putting on sneakers for two months. That’s what I call a solution to the obesity epidemic.
Tool User
As I attest on my About page, my interest in cycling is decidedly not technical. Many of the Obvious Bike Enthusiasts that I encounter around town are total gearheads: as soon as I mention bicycles, they start spewing numbers and specialist (as opposed to Specialist) brand names, and I have no idea what they’re talking about.
I am not a gear afficionado: the mountain bike with street tires that I commuted with for nearly two years was completely painted over, so I didn’t even know what make it was. Now that I have my sweet “new” bicycle, I’m pretty proud to be able to say, “a Miyata touring bike,” whenever anyone asks what I ride, although I haven’t memorized those numbers painted on the frame (and I’m not even 100% sure how to pronounce “Miyata”). I like biking because it feels good, and I like having a nice enough bike that it feels even better, but beyond that, I’m generally uninterested in, and ignorant about, the details.
Maybe all of that is beginning to change, however, because today I put some new fenders on my bike all by myself. I mean, I had to borrow Ben’s tools, and Andrew had to show me how to operate the socket set, but once I had that figured out, I just read the instructions and did it. Granted, this is the second time I’ve put that same model of fenders on a bicycle– last year, I installed some on my old bike, with a bit more help from Ben. Nonetheless: I used tools (in fact, I opened the socket set box upside down, spilling all fifty sockets, or whatever they’re called, so I had to go through them one by one and put them back in their little labeled compartments).
I also put a rearview mirror on my “new” bike (and by “I,” I mean “Ben”– I couldn’t figure out how to bend the little piece of metal just right). My bike is now a lean, mean, fendered, mirrored commuting machine. After all of that work, I was feeling so handy that I decided to hose the whole bike down with Simple Green and relube the chain.
I realize this is all kind of pathetic: I’m falling into some gender stereotypes in ways that make me deeply ashamed. Still, I’m actually embracing opposite gender roles from the ones with which I was raised. My mom was the mechanic in my family, working on the cars, building the shelves, and fixing the computer. On the other hand, the last time I ever got spanked (1993) was when I made the mistake of bothering my father while he was trying (futilely) to reprogram the VCR.
This mechanical stuff is just another way that my bike is helping me grow as a person. I used to be completely unathletic: now I have quads the size of hams. I used to dislike getting dirty: now I always have chain oil under my fingernails. I used to be terrible with directions: now I have a mental map of this city that rivals Google. Biking has allowed me to join the elite ranks of the highest orders of primates: I am a tool user! I’m evolving!
Shadow of Myself
As I was unlocking my bike to go home yesterday afternoon, I had a very pleasant conversation with another cyclist who was doing the same.
“Can you believe this?” he said. “Biking in the sun in November? I grew up here, and I can remember it snowing at this time of year.”
“Well, there is an upside to global warming,” I said.
We’ve had a two weeks now of almost unbroken dry, sunny weather. Sometimes it’s a little chilly and windy, but that’s a small price to pay to have dry socks all day. The return of the sun and the delayed end of daylight savings time this year has led to a not-very-interesting phenomenon that still delights me in the late afternoon along the southernmost stretches of Mock’s Crest: as I bike, I can see my own shadow, cast long and lean along the asphalt to the east of me.
My “new” bike has beautiful lines– the curving handlebars, the oversized wheels, the slender thread of cables. With my helmeted head, low-slung messenger bag, and rolled up pantlegs, we cut an iconic image on the pavement. The sidelong rays of the setting sun capture a perfect profile silhouette, plus a little extra height that makes me look thinner. I can see the fluid circular motion of my pumping legs, the seamless integration of woman and machine (although, if I don’t check my narcissistic self-hypnosis, I’m likely to integrate myself and my machine into the back of the VW bus that’s always parked on that stretch of Willamette).
If identity is performance, that shadow shows me myself playing the role of cyclist in a very satisfying way. One of the fascinating things about bike culture in Portland is the variety of rider identities, and the degree to which we feel compelled to display that identity to each other, and to those Outsiders who don’t ride (I found this blog post on indie-fixie-messenger identity very entertaining, mostly because I’m hopelessly attracted to these guys, as well).
As a former Future World Famous Anthropologist (that’s how I signed yearbooks my senior year of high school), I’ve been developing elaborate theories about the degree to which urbanism makes it impossible for us to actually get to know (and make ourselves known to) most of the people we share space with every day. This means that we often feel compelled to develop elaborate visual cues to communicate whatever we think is most important about ourselves, and the groups to which we feel we belong, to the strangers around us. There’s a touching urgency to create community (and, in this city, an interesting desire to demonstrate political positioning) in that impulse, and also tremendous room for conflict over perceptions of authenticity (i.e. accusations of “poserism,” as one of my high school students used to put it).
Because seemingly endless years of studying post-structuralism have trained me to break down and analyze identity signifiers, I tend to feel reluctant to participate in the fashion indicators of cycling, even as I feel self-conscious satisfaction walking around campus with chain oil on my clothes and my helmet hanging off the strap of my messenger bag. I guess I’ve been in Portland long enough now that I’m starting to buy into the need to signal to strangers.
Ultimately, though, one of the great privileges of being a bike commuter in this town is the easy sense of affiliation with strangers, like that guy I chatted with about the weather yesterday. We went on to discuss the best northbound routes through downtown from PSU, and the perils of kids on skateboards along the Esplanade, before going our separate ways. That community, which is a big part of the “signified” that corresponds to the pleasing signifier of my bike shadow, is real and important. The desire to belong is a basic cross-cultural human need, and I’m happy when I feel like I belong to the fellowship of the chain ring in Portland.
