If This Were Art Redux

This morning, as I pedaled past the Women Making History in Portland mural and the graffiti that I mentioned in yesterday’s post (the blank wall sprayed with the words “if this were art, you’d be in a gallery right now”), I had a sudden stroke of brilliance. Given Portland’s status as America’s bicycle capital, shouldn’t we have a mural commemorating the city’s bike history, and some of the key figures who have made biking such a part of the region’s culture? I know that the Community Cycling Center has a beautiful mural celebrating bike transit, but it would be great to see something in North Portland highlighting the political will that has invested in, and continues to improve, the city’s bike infrastructure.

Of course, as Ben can attest after juicy, unrecognizable mess I made out of the pumpkin I tried to carve last night, my ability to execute an artistic vision is well below average. So this is really a project (like so many of the projects I come up with) for someone else. Still, the Albina/Mississippi MAX stop area could be a gallery, and what better to showcase with public art than bicycles, a mode of transit that crosses class and cultural lines all across the Portland? We could call it “Going Platinum.”

P.S. Willie, stop fucking with my search terms. “Liederhosen,” indeed.

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.

Another Great Poem from the Search Engine Terms

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“Adult video” “wet nylon” samples

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A Two-Line Poem from the Search Engine Terms

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i lost my britches on the railroad

Apparel Cop Far East

WordPress has a Blog Stats page that gives me all sorts of great statistical information regarding my readership, which I’ve begun obsessing over as my vacation wears on. One of these juicy data sets is a list of all of the search terms that have led viewers to my blog over the last two days. Sometimes, these lists read like cryptic and/or translated free verse. Here’s today’s:

oil up my bicycle
centralia used bicycles
outlaw bikers and police portland oregon
park tower portland man september 2007
apparel cop far east

This is probably the first day that the search term haiku hasn’t featured the words “nude” or “Collins Beach.” When I posted my little nude beach vignette here a few weeks ago, my daily numbers went through the roof. For a week or two there, almost every search term that brought readers to the site was somehow related to sand in the crack. It got to the point that I took the Creepy Collins Beach post down, because I felt it was attracting the wrong element to my blog. Somehow, though, Googling “nude beach” still kept bringing readers to wheeledpower, even when there was nothing here to see.

So, is this post just a thinly veiled attempt to up my viewership by tossing around titillating key words? Perhaps. But if you’re one of those perverts who’s only reading this because you were looking for nudie pics on the internet, don’t ever say that wheeledpower doesn’t deliver: