Clancy's north Idaho bike vacation

I consider Clancy to be a faithful friend, correspondent, and all-around bike nut. (In the very best sense!)

He and his brother recently rode the Coeur d'Alene Trail - a 70-plus mile former rail line that's been replaced with glass-smooth asphalt. It winds through forests, along lakes and rivers, almost from the Washington border to the Montana border.

Clancy's nicely detailed write-up, with lots of compelling photos, can be seen HERE.

I've commented before, HERE. For several years, I've dreamed of experiencing this trail over a 2 or 3-day period, with side trips to see little snips of Idaho history. Next summer, I'm going... even if I have to do it alone. (I work with some Venturer youths, and I try to interest them. And they are interested in the experience. But when I tell 'em they can't just hop on a bike one day and ride 40 or 50 miles without some training, suddenly other options become more attractive than training.)

More information about the Coeur d'Alene Trail, Route of the Hiawatha, etc., can be found HERE.

Forget Moab! (Or better yet, leave Moab to the unwashed masses. And North Idaho can be the "secret fishin' hole" for people who ride bikes instead of catchin' fish.)

Autumn wonderment

Every year, it surprises me.

It's almost as though after Labor Day the bikes get put away along with the fashionable summer attire. The bike storage room goes half-empty or more, even though this is absolutely and consistently the nicest time of the whole year to be cycling in the Boise area. (Lots of sunshine, lows in the 50s, highs in the 70s.)

More room on the infrastructure for those of us who know better, I guess.

Distracted Driving Summit '10

On September 21, a National Distracted Driving Summit was held in Washington, DC, chaired by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Is distracted driving a problem?

According to the NHTSA, almost 20% of all crashes involve some type of distraction. Nearly 6000 people died in crashes involving a distracted driver (2008), and more than half a million were injured.

The federal Distracted Driving Website categorizes distracted driving as one of more of:
Visual - taking your eyes off the road
Manual - taking your hands off the wheel
Cognitive - talking your mind off what you are doing

Any one of the three can have fatal consequences. And unfortunately and unfairly, it's not always the distracted driver who ends up with the consequences. Far too often, victims of distracted drivers were doing everything right... they were just in the wrong place and time, when a distracted driver victimized them.

The parents of Kassy Kerfoot, who live in Meridian, testified at the Summit.

Their daughter was 18 when she died. She was texting while driving, and swerved into the oncoming lanes, colliding with 2 other vehicles. Her parents are convinced that a law banning texting-while-driving would result in lives saved. And perhaps it would. But why does the government have to compel people to exercise some basic common sense?

My opinion:
- I'm in favor of laws banning texting-while-driving, and phoning-while-driving, for that matter. It would be wonderful if people could make those choices on their own, but apparently some folks assume that anything not illegal must be safe. (Sigh...)
- I wish more drivers would be cited for Inattentive Driving. Currently it seems to only be enforced in an accident situation, and when the error is egregious.
- As tragic as Kassy's accident was... how much more tragic it would've been, if she'd killed an innocent bystander! (And it's safe to assume that many of those 6000 fatalities and half-a-million injuries occured through no fault of the victims.)

Personally, I'm much more worried about getting plowed into by a distracted driver than by a drunk driver. (Although the results could be the same in either case.)

(Previous commentary - 2009 Distracted Driving Summit - HERE.)

More evidence...

... of the superiority of bicycles to cars.

The missus bashed the front end of her car last week. She says that as she pulled into a parking space, she made a mental note of an obstacle she might hit as she exited. But then she forgot. (Can you imagine?!!? I can't fault her; I've forgotten about a bike on top of the car and driven into a carport before!)

For one thing - I've never bashed my bike into something I didn't see, unless I was riding at night without a light, in which case I deserved what I got. (Oh - and the carport! Du-uuuh!)

My non-expert assessment is that it would cost $1000 if fixed by a body shop. (So in this day and age, a VERY minor accident!)

I disassembled stuff and determined what was broken. I pounded on the backside of the plastic "bumper replica" and turned the large dent into a tiny dimple. (Sweeet!) I called the salvage yard; they have a similar vehicle if I'm willing to pull the parts. So - I'm hoping I can get away with $200 or less, plus maybe 3 hours of labor. (The parts will travel home via BOB trailer.)

A huge percentage of car parts are strictly cosmetic. By comparison, essentially everything on a bike is functional. Since I'm a "function over form" type of guy... bikes are beautiful!!

New driver's license!

My hair is brown!

(I've asked my granddaughter what color my hair is - she says "I don't know." I don't recognize it on the floor on haircut day; I s'pose it's half brown and half gray. But the driver's license lady renewed it as "brown.")

Yep - on Friday I got my new driver's license. I actually have a Commerical Driver's License. Pretty good for a bike rider, huh? A neghbor lady up the street once said to me, "I saw you driving - I didn't realize you knew how to drive!"

You fill out the form. You take a vision test. You pay your money. You get your photo snapped, and walk out with new plastic.

To me, it's a little sobering that there is absolutely no test - either written or actual - of driving skills. Yeah, that would complicate things, and goes against my general "small government" philosophy. But at the same time, if you want the privilege of piloting a 4000-pound steel missile around on public roads, shouldn't you have demonstrable ability?

Do the Amish ride bikes?

That question just occurred to me.

Jay Leno recently joked that according to the Census Bureau, the Amish religion has grown by 10% in just 2 years.

"Those aren't Amish! Those are just people who had their power shut off and their cars repossessed!"

It put me to wonderin'.

The Amish shun electricity and internal combustion, and 'most everything high-tech. I can't help but wonder what their sentiment is toward bicycles. Do they own and ride bikes? (Perhaps just single-speed bikes with coaster brakes and balloon tires.)

"Pedaling Revolution"

Jeff Mapes is a political journalist for The Oregonian. He is also a transportation cyclist, and has written a book, Pedaling Revolution, "How Cyclists Are Changing American Cities."

He is speaking in Boise on Thursday evening, September 16. (At the Linen Building, five bucks.) Might be interesting. (I just heard about it on BSU radio this morning.)

The book sounds interesting; I've reserved a copy at the library.

The online synopsis: In a world of growing traffic congestion, expensive oil, and threats of cataclysmic climate change, a grassroots movement is carving out a niche for bicycles on the streets of urban cityscapes. In Pedaling Revolution, Jeff Mapes explores the growing urban bike culture that is changing the look and feel of cities across the U.S. He rides with bike advocates who are taming the streets of New York City, joins the street circus that is Critical Mass in San Francisco, and gets inspired by the everyday folk pedaling in Amsterdam, the nirvana of American bike activists. Mapes, a seasoned political journalist and long-time bike commuter, explores the growth of bicycle advocacy while covering such issues as the environmental, safety, and health aspects of bicycling for short urban trips. His rich cast of characters includes Noah Budnick, a young bicycle advocate in New York who almost died in a crash near the Brooklyn Bridge, and Congressman James Oberstar (D-MN), who took to bicycling in his fifties and helped unleash a new flood of federal money for bikeways. Chapters set in Chicago and Portland show how bicycling has became a political act, with seemingly dozens of subcultures, and how cyclists, with the encouragement of local officials, are seizing streets back from motorists. Pedaling Revolution is essential reading for the approximately one million people who regularly ride their bike to work or on errands, for anyone engaged in transportation, urban planning, sustainability, and public health—and for drivers trying to understand why they’re seeing so many cyclists. All will be interested in how urban bike activists are creating the future of how we travel and live in twenty-first-century cities.

As a cyclist in Boise, Idaho, I s'pose I'm sympathetic to the notion of transportation cycling as "political statement." It's a political thing in several urban settings across the Fruited Plain. Personally, I've never felt like I was making a "political" statement when I ride. But I like to think I'm making an economic statement and perhaps a "lifestyle" statement.

(Ironically, the book is listed at Amazon.com under "Outdoor Recreation.")