Right on, ride on

Found via a Reddit link. I have not heard of Ian Hibell before, I think now I’m going to have to buy his book. His story sounds amazing; unfortunately it came to and unhappy ending as he was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver in Greece.

Ian took cycling to incredible places. It seems such a waste to have a unique person like that taken away - after everywhere that he travelled and all the challenges he overcame it was another human’s crime that he could not in the end avoid.

I wonder what accomplishments that driver thinks he would have taken away for having a faster car than another guy. How is that even impressive? And because of him a true adventurer rides no more.

Makes me sad and feel sick. RIP Ian.

On second thought: Ride on, Ian.

Two weekends ago Sunday I attempted a ~60 mile ride: go to and take roughings of all of the Museum of Science’s Community Solar System planet kiosks (including Pluto the Plutoid.)

I should have known something was up when the MoS updated  their website and no longer offered for download the “passport,” nor made available the pages detailing the Community Solar System project at all.

But that didn’t deter me! I downloaded that passport file weeks ago, and I had worked diligently on finding somewhat feasible biking routes (more on that in a bit.) I forged ahead - the ride would not be thwarted just because the new website doesn’t have the Community Solar System project listed anymore!

Well, here is what I started with: Pluto, at the platform of the Riverside T Stop, Green D Line.

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No problem.  I only took a couple of wrong turns to get to Newton, and recovered within a quarter of a mile on each. When I got there one of the T operators thought I was trying to bring my bike onto the train or lock it up on the platform, neither of which was the case and she smiled when I told here I was just there to take a roughing of the Pluto kiosk.

I continued, emboldened now to take a 20+ mile leg. Next stop was at the end of the longest trek of the day: Neptune at the Square One Mall in Saugus.

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But wait, there was no Neptune! The kiosk wasn’t there! The mall information desk people didn’t even know what I was talking about!

Well, that stunk.

My next stop was to be Jupiter at South Station (the planet order was chosen for convenience of the overall ride.) Two things about this next stretch…

1. US 99 is not a good biking road. It has a drawbridge which I got to see activated, but not worth the risk of riding that horribly trafficked road.
2. I didn’t make it to South Station. I stopped at the Museum of Science to inquire about the missing planet.

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After talking with someone at the MoS info desk I found out the program has been abandoned, at least two kiosks are missing and the one at the Square One Mall has been gone for a couple to a few years.

Well, after roughly 40+ miles I ended, a bit dejected, but not completely taxed of energy. I knew also that at least one or two of the places where planets were (or should be) wouldn’t be open to the public on a Sunday, and the passport I was filling out would not be honored.

I still felt pretty good about the ride, I may do portions of it again (minus US 99) and actually remember to take pictures next time. There were some really great areas, and some areas with hill after hill.

I can’t believe I haven’t heard about this before, it’s brilliant - a Bicycle Lift system in Norway.

I can sure think of a few places where something like this would have been appealing. In this video it looks like it might be coin-operated.

Thank you reddit for this one!

I woke up wicked early this morning and decided with all this spare time I’d take a joy-ride down the Charles on the Storrow Drive path. I’m just about all the way back when I hit the Cambridge Street hill where the merge with I-90 traffic is.

I loathe this merge-point. Cars and trucks coming off of I-90 are used to going 75-80 MPH and they don’t want to slow down for Allston city speed limits. This morning was particularly nasty because I’m not used to riding at this time and it’s rush hour. Well, rather than try and cut over to the right in front of a line of cars (usually it’s just one or two and I wait for a gap, which doesn’t take very long) I had to stick to the middle lane.

I don’t know if the truck came from the highway or elsewhere, but after the crest he passed me with only inches to the mirror.

This is the first time in a while I’ve been in a dangerous spot like this. He had an open lane to his left, there was no more traffic a little ahead and to my right but I didn’t want to be in that lane because it’s turn-only. I was where I needed to be, not overly into the lane but left of the line by about a foot.

Well, I can’t just let that go, can I? I mean, he’s driving dangerously - I’m out here busting ass and he zooms by in an unsafe manner. At the light at the Hess I caught up and called into the truck:

“Hey, you came pretty close to me back there, guys.” There were three burly men, goatees all among them, stacked with muscles like construction workers. Seasoned construction workers. Makes sense, the truck looked like a work truck, though I didn’t catch the label on the side.

“Get off the road!” This was the driver

I replied: “I’m where I should be, thank-you-very-much!”

“Get off the road!” Still the driver. The other two say nothing.

“I’m where I need to be!”

“Get off the road!” I realize I’m not going to win his mind or heart in an argument, he’s limiting himself to simple, impulsive barking.

Whatever. I move on and take a right onto North Harvard. So does he. Masshole zooms me again shouting “Get off the road” one last time.

But I got his license plate.

Well, I have his license plate, what the hell do I do with it now? I’d like to track down the company he works for and file a complaint with them - I’m not a fan of slogging a case through the courts.

Any suggestions?

Whatever your sentiments on Critical Mass are, this is just despicable.

Update: here is a little bit more information via BoingBoing. The cyclist was arrested and charged with attempted assault and resisting arrest. Wtf?!

Update 20080729

The police officer has been stripped of his badge and gun. He was just out of the Police Academy, third generation officer, and did not seem to file an accurate report of the event based on the video that was anonymously posted.

Here are three pieces found recently in the Boston Globe. Tip o’ the hat to Shane Jordan being mentioned and quoted in the second link.

Look Ma, no car!

Only one question remains for many area commuters: Is it possible to bike to work and get there alive? Boston has a horrible reputation on the national bicycling scene and for three good reasons: lousy roads, bad drivers, and car-centric civic attitudes.

Re-cycling effort

Getting on a bike for the first time since she was 16 years old, 42-year-old Priscilla Power rode 5 miles to her Wakefield office as part of her company’s “Bike to Work Day” last month. Though she remembered how to pedal, the inexperienced biker detoured through a Dunkin’ Donuts’ parking lot to avoid a busy intersection.

10 tips for cycling commuters

In Cambridge alone, the number of people bicycling has risen 70 percent, according to this recent story.

Looks like somebody in D.C. hit a pedestrian while driving and took off. A nearby bicycle commuter witnessed and obliged himself to catch up and halt the offending car and stopped them. As it turns out, the driver was Bob Novak.

A quote Mr. Novak made previous to this incident:

Novak explained to the paper: “He was crossing on the red light. I really hate jaywalkers. I despise them. Since I don’t run the country, all I can do is yell at ‘em. The other option is to run ‘em over, but as a compassionate conservative, I would never do that.”

Thank you David Bono for being an upstanding citizen and model cyclist in our country’s most political city.

Update 20080729

Bob Novak is in a Boston hospital after recently falling ill on Cape Cod and being diagnosed with having a brain tumor.

Quite a bit to catch up on….

A story about a new initiative in Portland, ME offering free bike sharing called White Bike. After reading about this I went up there to try the system out, I’ll have a write-up about that separately.

Digg.com pointed me to an article at EcoWorldly briefly talking about Bicycle modification and Bicycling in general in Peru. The author says he has bicycled in Boston, which gives him an angle to safety issues of bicycling in a city, and his views on that in parts of Peru.

Make sent me to a page about a bicycle modified to blow bubbles with seeds in them while being pedaled.

Lifehacker brings up some GloGloves, gloves that have decent reflective tape designs. The article also points out that you can get some of your own tape for self-modification if you’re not into shelling out the $18 for the GloGloves.

Make with another item about Rock the Bike’s live music performances on the back of a bike.

The last links are also from Make, about a Metrocard-covered bike over at BikeHacks.

So, I went on an early-summer trip to Italy for a couple of weeks. That happened a while ago now and I haven’t written anything since before leaving.

It’s taken me a while to get back into the various rhythms, and, well, the weather’s been more or less quite good so I’ve been riding a good deal! Riding > writing.

I’m working on a ride for personal enjoyment, it will be my longest single ride to date. In the Boston area is a scaled down model of the solar system (including Pluto as a planet,) called the Community Solar System. It’s centered around the Sun at the Museum of Science and spans out to as far as Newton. The distances for all of the kiosks with the planets is scaled so that walking speed is the equivalent of light speed when factored up. It’s a really neat idea, and I like it.

So far I’ve come up with a general map, starting from Pluto and working my way back into the city. There are a few more inner-system planets I’ll hit before some outer-system ones, just to keep the ride to something more sensible.

If the ride goes well for me I’ll do it again and invite others to join, but as there are some questionable navigation legs and since I’m not very familiar with the area very much, and since I’ve never lead a ride before, I hesitate to include anyone else in my crazy schemes as of yet.

So, hopefully the weather will be excellent this weekend, because since I’ve started working on this ride I’ve lost sleep thinking about it. I can’t say why I like the idea so much, I’m just a geek I guess.

[edit] Looks like fortune was not in my favor. Saturday was in the 90’s and today is sketchy. On top of that I’ve become inflicted with a summer cold (of all things!) so I’ve been more out of commission than usual.