It Must Be a Movement
This guy was stopped in front of me at a light on Interstate this afternoon:
When I asked if I could take his picture, this Obama enthusiast said I was the second person to ask that day. Damn rival bloggers. This is good news for the Illinois senator: if you’ve got Portland cyclists in your back pocket (as snug as, say, a U-lock?), you’re a movement.
When I Am Old, I Will Ride a Tricycle
Biking south on Broadway today (duh, it’s a one-way street– there’s no other direction to bike on Broadway), a large blue American-made sedan pulled across two lanes of traffic to get to parking spot three feet in front of me. I hit the brakes and hollered, but the car never hesitated, although it did stop right in the middle of the bike lane when the driver realized that the angle wasn’t going to work for parallel parking.
Breathing hard and pulling around the left side of the car, into the car lane, I waved my hands at the driver-side window, yelling, “Watch what you’re doing!” Once I was alongside the vehicle, I saw a tiny, parched old lady behind the wheel. Her wispy hair was dyed brown, with silver roots showing, and she had that funny old-lady lipstick, with all the creases from her wrinkles digging light pink furrows in her otherwise Elmo-red lips. She didn’t even look at me, and never saw me waving.
My first job out of college was working at a nonprofit transportation service for seniors, and in the course of researching all their propaganda I heard a lot of horror stories about old people driving. They scare me under the best of circumstances, and parallel parking across a bike lane in downtown Portland is not the best of circumstances.
I’ve seen a few old people around here riding what are basically giant tricycles– these were also very popular with developmentally disabled adults in Brunswick, Maine. I propose a bicycle life cycle that goes something like this:
tricycle ===> training wheels ===> bmx ===>
fixie ===> road bike ===> recumbent ===> tricycle
I hope I don’t get hit by an aging driver before I’m old enough to ride a trike again.
One Good Turn
I didn’t leave downtown until after 10 pm on Thursday evening. The night was clear, though, and there was little traffic, which made for a pleasant ride through downtown, up over the Bridge, and along Interstate. On the stretch of Greeley where the elevation begins, there was an old SUV pulled over onto the bikelane. As I got closer, I saw that it had stopped for another car, an aging Tercel, and that two men were standing outside their cars, talking worriedly. I checked my mirror and entered the deserted right lane of traffic to give them wide berth, but one of them looked over at me and made the international hand gesture for “Do you have a cell phone?” So I stopped.
The younger of the men asked if I knew the number for a tow company. I told him I didn’t have a car. After conferring, they decided to call their insurance company, so I stood there while they used my phone. They clearly weren’t from North Portland– they didn’t know what street they were on, and they gave the operator an address in Southeast. English wasn’t their first language, and I got the sense that the insurance company was giving them a hard time. Finally, however, they managed to set something up with a tow truck. They thanked me, and I pedaled off, liberal naivete intact: I had stopped to help to men on the side of the road late at night, and only good had come of it. The world is an okay place. Most people mean well.
Riding high on my good deed (because, really, it’s arduous to stand around while other people listen to Muzak on your phone), I went up Greeley and over onto Willamette, rounded the quiet curve of Mock’s Crest, and bore left at the University of Portland. After crossing the light at Portsmouth, I was in my homestretch, already thinking about whether Drew might have saved me any leftovers, when I heard the roar of a fast-approached engine behind me. A burly, shiny pickup truck zoomed past me on the left, and as it went by, I heard a chorus of young women shout out the open window at me, “Fuck the environment!”
As they pulled ahead, their high-pitched giggles poured out of the back window, and I saw a glimpse of platinum-blond hair through the tinted glass. Our nation’s future. I blew them a kiss.
Bike Rack Moment of Zen #2
A few weeks ago, my parents and sister came down to visit the Portland State campus. I gave them the full tour, pointing out the good food carts, listing off the best bathrooms, and showing them all of the places I habitually lock my bike, in order of preference. Of course, during the winter, covered bike parking is at a premium at PSU (the single most popular bike-commuting destination in the city). Generally, I favor the racks under the sky bridge between Cramer and Smith– not only does the sky bridge prevent my saddle from acting like a sponge in wet weather, but I trust that the Girl Scouts, UPS recruiters, and Street Roots vendors who peddle their wares in that spot will notice someone skulking around with bolt-cutters.
My second-favorite place to lock up, though, is at the top of the stairs in front of the PSU library. Not only is the area covered, but it’s usually guarded by hipsters with cigarettes, and they tend to scare off the ne’er-do-wells. Those bike racks are also protected by this cheering graffiti gods-eye:
I’m not particularly spiritual (although I like my uplifting neurochemical cocktails as much as the next person), but it can’t hurt.
Short-Shorts
As I was biking home up Greeley today, I found myself tangled up in a crowd of very fit, very young men wearing very little. Hopefully, it was the University of Portland cross-country team; otherwise, I was ogling high school boys in teeny tiny shorts. I was biking uphill, so I wasn’t going too much faster than the fleshy hoard, and every time I stopped at a light, they flooded around me on both sides. It wasn’t until we got to the flat terrain on Willamette that I managed, with some regret, to pull ahead.
Every once in a while, I get a startling reminder that I am incredibly, boringly straight.
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.
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.
Bike Mom
I’ve never been the kind of person who calls strangers “honey,” or the kind of person who calls anyone honey, for that matter (I may have been born in the South, but I didn’t stay long enough for it to take). Still, these last few weeks, every time I bike near someone riding without a helmet, I feel a strange, strong impulse to lean over, put a hand on their handlebars, and say, “Oh, honey, please wear a helmet.”
This morning, as I was pedaling over the Broadway Bridge, I ended up behind a young woman who triggered these protective instincts. She was wearing a helmet, and she even had a red rear bike light, but the light was mounted on her seat post, and was almost entirely obscured by her bike rack. It wasn’t increasing her visibility in the early morning hours at all. I stayed behind her all the way to Burnside, where we both got caught at the stoplight, at which point I pulled up alongside her and said, “I’m sorry, it’s really none of my business, but I just wanted to let you know that your bike rack is blocking your bike light. You can’t really see it much from behind.”
I was immediately embarrassed that I’d said anything– I’ve definitely done my share of biking in less-than-safe equipment situations (for instance, riding around in the dark without any red rear light for the last three weeks), so I’m not one to talk. She just smiled, though, and said, “Thanks. That’s actually really good to know.”
I smiled back and said, “Sorry. With all those people getting hit lately, I’m starting to feel like a Bike Mom.”
My lesson for the day: it’s a good thing to talk to each other. It’s a good thing to look out for each other.
Interstate and Greeley Memorial Update
Fortunately, I accidentally left a few books I needed on campus on Thursday, so on Saturday, I had to bike downtown and back under the glorious fall sky. Traffic is so much more mellow on the weekend– I used to make that trip at 9 am every Saturday morning last year, when I was teaching downtown, and in some ways I’ve really missed it. This time, the PSU area was a little hectic because of the farmers’ market, but the buildings themselves were almost empty. When I got to my mailbox, I was delighted to find my Chinook Book, a collection of coupons for organic patchouli and nitrate-free hippie spit that many Portland-area nonprofits sell to raise funds (my co-worker has a kid at Trillium Charter School). This year’s Chinook Book has a 20%-off coupon for the Bike Gallery, which is five or six blocks from PSU (and also the workplace of the cyclist who was killed on Interstate and Greeley last week), so I headed over there to buy a new red light for my bike, and some lights for Ben, who’s taken to riding home in the dark after watching the (2007 World Series Champion) Red Sox on Kyle’s enormous HDTV (I decided I don’t want him to die during football season).
The mood at Bike Gallery was subdued. As I was paying, I said, “It’s been a rough week around here, huh?”
“Yeah,” the cashier said, looking down. “Yeah, it has.”
“I’m sorry for you guys,” I mumbled, which wasn’t the right thing, but I never know the right thing. Maybe there isn’t one.
On the ride home, I passed the growing memorial at Interstate and Greeley. The Ghost Bike is so covered in flowers, photos, candles, and other offerings that you can’t even see the frame or wheels from across the street anymore. The scrap-metal statue is still there, and on Saturday, there was a new addition: a life-size, extraordinarily detailed stencil portrait of a bike racer, spray-painted onto the ramp pylon at the intersection. It’s a startling work of art; although it’s only black paint and the gaps in between, the piece has depth and perspective, almost like a photo exposure on concrete. My digital camera is broken, but here’s a picture I pirated from the internets:
One of the many great things about Portland is the way that it responds to pain and fear with art (rather than, for example, riots– although riots have their uses, too). This is also a city of compulsive photographers: over the last week, I’ve passed this corner five times, and all but one of those times, there have been people taking pictures or film footage of the scene of the accident and the evolving memorial. In the Digital Age, I guess, we mourn through documentation.
Another Bike Death
I’ve been fuming all week over Monday’s fatal bike accident: an experienced cyclist was killed in a collision with a garbage truck turning right across the bike lane at Interstate and Greeley, an intersection I ride through twice a day, four or five days a week. Jonathon Maus at BikePortland.org has done great work covering the accident and its aftermath: the cyclist was a competitive racer and Bike Gallery employee; apparently, the driver of the truck has a distressingly long and varied record of traffic violations and other illegal activities. That’s the second person killed by a large truck while riding in a bike lane in the last three weeks.
I first heard about this accident while in the computer lab, fine-tuning my thesis proposal. Procrastinating, I decided to check my blog stats, and in the recent search terms, I saw that someone had found my site by searching “biker killed on interstate and greeley” (I write about those streets a lot, since they are part of my regular commute). I immediately ran the Google search myself, and sure enough, BikePortland had posted a breaking news story an hour earlier.
There have been a lot of accidents lately, which I chalked up to the return of the rain: decreased visibility, slick conditions, fewer daylight hours, drivers who have forgotten to watch for bikes beyond the range of the windshield wipers, and new cyclists who don’t have a lot of winter riding experience all add up to an increase in collisions. However, Monday was a beautiful, clear day, and this accident happened at 12:30 in the afternoon.
Biking home in the dark on Monday evening, the intersection of Interstate and Greeley was desolate and quiet. I pedaled past warily, half-afraid there would still be blood stains or pieces of bicycle on the road. I stopped at the crosswalk a few dozen feet from the corner where it happened and pushed the activation button once, then several times fast, eager to get over onto Greeley and away. Suddenly, the overhead street light winked out, plunging the intersection into darkness. As I stood there blinking, a whistle from the nearly trainyard began to howl, close. Finally, the walk sign lit up, and I rode over the MAX tracks, spooked out and doubly anxious about not having a red light on the back of my bike.
Over the last few days, I’ve watched the monument evolving on that corner. Within 24 hours there was a Ghost Bike on the scene, to which people have been adding flowers and other mementos. Last night, there was lit candle and a red bike light flickering on the sidewalk beneath the Ghost Bike, a lonely vigil in the dark. On Tuesday a statue of a cyclist made out of scrap metal, the kind you see on the roof of the River City bike shop on MLK, appeared on the corner as well, I hope permanently.
The titanium lining to all of this is that City Hall is convening emergency meetings to address some of the issues (such as failure-to-yield violations across bike lanes) raised by the accidents. Still, I wish bicycle safety didn’t require martyrs to get attention.
Please wear your helmets, and ride defensively.
