Hooray, another weekend roundup!
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Here’s a roundup of the things I liked that I saw this week. I hope everyone had a happy, healthy, and safe Thanksgiving

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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.

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.

Someone made a turn signal jacket, from Make. Doesn’t look like it would hold up to wet weather, and for anyone carrying a bag this option is pretty much moot.

An Instructable on using bike tubes to store batteries – water proof, from Make. Also, more uses for spent inner tubes.

A recumbent-powered structure in the shape of a guitar. I love how he dresses up as a devil when riding it.

Design Within Reach founder Steve Forbes has a piece on bike accessories as found in places like Copenhagen and Amsterdam, via BoingBoing.

Do we have any bike lanes as short as this one? Found via Digg.

I admit, I failed this (though I counted correctly.) This is a very good demonstration of the limits of human awareness. Thanks Boston Biker for finding and posting this, I ‘borrow’ it shamelessly!

I missed posting last weekend, so I’ve got more for this weekend!

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The Art of Cycling (A Guide to Bicycling in 21st-Century America) is a new title (and ever-so-slight revision) of The Art of Urban Cycling (Lessons from the Street), by Robert Hurst.

I originally purchased and read Urban about a year ago as I started getting more involved and interested in bicycling and bike safety. Urban is no longer printed, but all of the content (with one or two more pages worth of revisited material) is available as The Art of Cycling, sans Urban in the title.
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