action figures sold separately

despite the successful events of mini-bike summer, the past week has not been a good one for cyclists in the county’s most bike-friendly town (as we’ve been named by the L.A.B. and bicycling magazine for several years running).

On the 21st, a 45 year old SE Portlander was killed while riding in a bike lane before dark, when a pickup driver hit him from behind and dragged his bike for nearly a mile. Then this past Wednesday around midnight, Lindsey Llaneza hit and killed two cyclists and severely wounded another. He was driving drunk and his license had been suspended for years. He’d been pulled over for DUI’s and other citations as recently as March, and yet, the cops and the courts saw no reason to make sure he wasn’t driving.

first, lemme just get this off my chest. don’t ever say any shit to me about bikes and cars needing to share the road. this kind of thing continues to happen, all the time, for many reasons, of course, but the chief reason is that the individuals who make our laws, and who define our culture and our political economy continue to prioritize the auto over all other methods transportation (not to mention peace, security, and a humane foreign policy agenda).

of course there have been many calls to push for Llaneza to be punished harshly. while i agree that he should be held accountable for his actions by the communities he has so deeply hurt, a prison sentence for him will do exactly nothing to deter other drivers from ignoring, neglecting, and hating cyclists. it’s not simply that i believe prisons are not the answer, indeed they are not. it’s also that bikes need to be asserted as a more important part of our cities than cars and trucks.

critical mass, of course, is a great way of making that happen. indymedia’s call for tonight’s mass asks us to come out to ensure this type of madness stops, and that we stop the cops from hassling the mass so much.

i didn’t go to the mass tonight. the indymedia call says that if we don’t come out, the cops have won. well, here’s the deal. i’m scared of the cops. by cops in 3 states, i’ve been beaten up, hospitalized, arrested, and harassed a great deal in the last 10 years. and tonight, as i read the news, and wound down from work, and considered going to critical mass, i realized i’m especially scared of the particular blend of my rage and the rage of the cops. i’m no good to any movement, and i can’t support any progressive issues if i’m locked up or injured.

so i’m taking a break from the big actions for now. we all need to recharge our batteries and take care not to burn out. instead, i’m doing some fund-raising work for the awesome new biking advocacy group, shift. and cleaning the garage and walking the dogs.

in his cool book The Immortal Class: Bike Messengers and the Cult of Human Power [publisher / review], Travis Hugh Culley lets the reader draft him through a tale of Chicago and amerimonster that is lush, searing, poingnant, and fascinating. he’s a teensy bit full of himself, but hey, he’s a pretty good writer and it’s hard to go wrong when you talk about how much bikes rule.

in one passage he refers to a study he read (no cite) on how bikes are the most energy efficient form of transportation possible. while i couldn’t find the exact study, i did find that the Exploratorium has this very cool resource on human power and biking, with a graph that shows biking to be the most efficient; and that the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives has this transportation energy fact sheet.

yay. just in time for (mini) / bikesummer!

and, very soon i’ll be posting info about STP and my efforts to raise a little dough for some good causes. yep. i’m going to ride 200 miles in 2 days. whoo hoo!

we’re back. after moving to a new server (biggerbetterfastermore - yay) we had innumerable problems converting the .db and .idx files used by this here moveable type to the correct version. well, ok, i could probably number them but that would be droll.

admin jello was a major help, and ben, creator of MT is my all-time hero for sticking through it, troubleshooting every combersome and confusing step, and finally giving me the sword with which we slew the rabid codebeast: perl -MDB_File -MData::Dumper -e ‘tie %db, “DB_File”, “author.db”, O_RDONLY, 0666, $DB_BTREE; print Dumper keys %db’ wow. take that!

so look forward to more wonderful posts from the e and a and others soon.

news flash: while it sounds like what’s happening on my arm and leg, since last week’s outbreak of poison oak (ug!), it’s actually an amazing website that is back online after a brief snafu of some sort: Nuclear Waste Route Maps. just plug in your address and see how close you are. grr.

and in other missing-site news, it was one of the coolest sites to exist, ever, in my book. it always had interesting links, from a progressive perspective, on all areas of medicine and health. maybe you saw it. nonharmful.com was down for many months. now it seems to have been taken over all together by the author’s work on endocrine research. as laudable as that may be, it’s such a shame to see one of the truly great blogs go down.

they must have smoked WAY too much or had their tastebuds seared off in some bizarre industrial accident. calling the food at angelica kitchen bland is like calling new york a “quaint little town”.

this one’s a bit more accurate. oh. and while you’re (not) in ny don’t forget to stop off at the STILL irrepressibly funny and good read, uffish thoughts.