Just a few quick notes to start the week before I either A) go out for the ride I’d planned, or B) succumb to the heat and follow the dog’s example by going back to sleep.
Right now, I’d say it could go either way.
……..
Evidently, the county is taking their new commitment to bike-friendliness seriously, as shown by the beefed-up bike plan recently adopted by county supervisors.
A recent ride through the Marina revealed that commitment is about to make its way onto the pavement, if it hasn’t already.
Riders who take the beachfront Marvin Bruade bike path, aka South Bay and Santa Monica bike paths, through Marina del Rey have long been frustrated by the condition of the bikeway through the County-owned lands.
As if the cracked and crumbling, tree-root upraised conditions of the off-road pathway weren’t bad enough, riders have had to deal with the on-road portion on Fiji Way leading from where the off-road pathway ends to where it connects with the Ballona Creek bike path — including a painted prohibition against side-by-side riding that’s unsupported by anything in state law.
And with a nearby sheriff station to ensure compliance, if they happened to have too much time on their hands.
But it looks like things are in the process of changing.
Initial markings have appeared on the pavement sketching the outlines of an apparent road diet on Fiji Way, reducing the over-wide traffic lanes that encouraged speeding by the few car that actually use that street, and installing bike lanes for the hundreds, if not thousands, of cyclists who ride the street every hour on sunny days.
It’s hard to tell yet, but it looks the road could be cut from four lanes to two in places, with bike lanes more than wide enough to be ridden two-abreast, and placed safely against the curb in a no parking zone. And definitely reduced at the turnaround, where riders have had to contend with lost tourists and right-turning locals for far too long.
You can see the markings for that section in the short video below.
But however it turns out, it looks like a big improvement is on its way soon.
……..
Cyclist/attorney Dj Wheels reports that Earl Cox has been convicted of simple assault in the Angeles Crest road rage case in which he was charged with yelling at three separate groups of riders, and deliberately swerving at two of them — all because he thought they were being rude by riding in the roadway and felt a need to teach them some manners. However, Cox was acquitted on the more serious charge of assault with a deadly weapon for using his car as a weapon. Sentencing is set for September 12th in Burbank; I wonder if he’ll get more time than Patrick Roraff got for actually killing Jorge Alvarado.
The Orange County Bicycle Coalition sends word that police are on the lookout for a high-end bike thief suspected of riding off with a pair of Colnagos from SoCal dealers.
An Iowa driver ran a stop sign, swerved and hit a cyclist, then backed up, got out of his car and threw the rider’s broken bike at him before punching and kicking him. Only after he evidently felt he had sufficiently assaulted the victim — by car, bike, fist and foot — did he flee the scene. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
Sam Ollinger of the must-read Bike SD sends word of a tragic man-bites-dog twist in the seemingly endless reports of bike collisions, as a car overturns after striking and slightly injuring a cyclist, killing the driver. I’m grateful the cyclist survived relatively intact, but sad that anyone has to die on our streets.
Improvements are underway on Jefferson Blvd in Culver City at the notorious stretch where an allegedly drunk and/or distracted Christine Dahab plowed into a group of late night riders, injuring 13 — some severely. The road will now include five-foot wide door-zone bike lanes from Duquesne Ave to Higuera Street, as well as bike parking and improved access to the Baldwin Hills Scenic Overlook. Thanks to Dan Mick for the link.
Finally, I’m booked in the morning, but anyone who can get to Van Nuys Tuesday morning should consider attending an L.A. Planning Department hearing on the proposed expansion of Universal Studios. As you may be aware, Universal is planning a dramatic expansion of their theme park property, including a left coast version of their popular Harry Potter park in Orlando FL. The problem is, the company has consistently blocked expansion of the L.A River bike path along their property while proposing a crazy-quilt alternative virtually guaranteed to keep cyclists away. As far as I’m concerned, alternate routes are great in that biking-infrastructure-starved part of town, But they’ll have to build their park over my dead body unless they agree to extend the bike path along the river as a condition of approval — and pay for it, for that matter, just for being such jerks about it. The meeting takes place in the Council Chambers at Van Nuys City Hall starting at 9:30 am.
And yes, you can quote me on that.
So in your video the writing on the road is to be understood as saying “this opulence does not mean you can take more then one lane, enjoy the wide path but one at a time only please?”
I think after watching so much magic in the olympic video’s I’m spoiled but you might consider at least putting some voiceover’s on your documentary footage when you clip it prior to posting it here.
I actually like the facebook feature where it lets you choose which momentn to use as a thumbnail for oany video you upload there and think that a still from this video with the ‘star wars’ painted commandments or just the eseential frame of which would help.
Really neat though to see a video where I recall more bikes then cars passing!
Yes- I watched it again! You approach a bike and pass an entering car but otherewise no other traffic whatsoever for morethena minute! With the sun up! (barely or nearly set)
Spoooky in a great way.
I just told my tenent to buy ice for tonight as he’s headed tothe grandcanyon tomorrow and then back to los angeles and refused to let me confirm his ac worked months ago… so now i tested it afterhe said he’s stopped using it as it warms the place up….
so on pagec2 of todays wsj notice “reddy ice holdings” is paying nearly a million bucks out to ‘customers’ charged ‘too much’ for ice by the freezers of it… what a coincidence!
I used to haul ice from here- using cheap electricity at night, warming my kitchen floor terrifyingly for somoe of my household’s members, down the riverbed many miles on my handlebars- a huge home made block. It’s too late for him to freeze his own and my freezer is overflowing with angus beef bought for a pittance….
if only we could sue all the road bike companies for collusion on price …
it’s not ice…
but there not competing on price
that’s why your alone on the asphault even when cars don’t excuse it
it’s not that bikes are tocheap
but unlike ice
there incompleteness is not as obvious
a complete bike has more then disc brakes or awesome paint jobs or incrediblly horizontal supply chains.
it has a limited profit margin regardless of it’s cost
if it costs twenty times as much as an apparently identical one from selected specs at walmart….
it costgs atleastseveral timsa s much to omake
MIT has a contractwit hdenmark i’m just learning about lastnight
for a wheel like that long promissed to run on petrol ages ago
except this one involves students frommany majors
and is active
a new video from six weeks ago isi up
i’ve yete to get tothere actual site
but $600 is the price I’v seen so far
the suspense is heavy
within days i’ll either put a treadless 100 lb tire bought from a franchise at a 3rd of the bargain list price on a antique internal speed seatless for now or be as or moreamazed if not dissappointed.
the concept almost forgotten
we only need one container ship full of such rear wheels
a kickstarter campaign to have them built
with french fflat at least incredibly resistant tires
blue tooth
a hundred bucks or so of lifetime warranted energy rubber banding
wirelessly intelligently social
not just well welded with metal
but also data wise
i’d add ‘mesh’ networking not just even more expensive air quality documentingi sensors
and kick cars back onto private property only for good!
cars got ontoo or streets when slavery was legal even in democratic districts
when the death penalty had never been held uncostitutional
isn’t it timre for more of us to recognise there not withany actual right toremain
only I say buy buying the wheel that costs hundreds to make and sells for under a thousand can we realise this mundane really task
but i do think that that alone is sufficient
just try a different rear wheel
one not lighter
or more exotic in it’s spoking
so heavy breathing isn’t required- only optional
making us more likely to welcome a penny an ounce tax on poison guzzled as a gateway to five hour energy and obesity if not worse skinny fatness remaining all the rage
$600 is less then a free cell phone hash ever cost
For peace? An end to driving all our corn away from starving peoples,it’s not too much to ask us tobuy.
the saucer like center
is from early sci fi films
makers of cars have banned themin europe over two summer olympics ago
Enterprise back then put my fiance in a sedan with her hpedal to the medal with a bil after a few days of thousands…
leaving her grand just ubought road bike and station wagon bought for cash wit h30 mpg highway just like the one she grew up with , apartment, NSF fellowship more generous then the jokers, and even her college leased just truend in barely driven toy behind– not just me
her 500 dollar lcd
not just antique but maximum ram cards in the desktop her brother sent her back tome totry to thrown in the back seat instead ofmy down pillows
well that was yesterday
it’s amazing
i remember the lcd and the big hdtv tuner pumping commercial free diving etc. scenes with herh having flown away for weeks prior, just prior
and then the call
about the spikes
in the noncorporate lot
the bill
teh invoice
not needingi another signature
and tghe calls that followed
here dream of onot getting a phd but settling for forest service
turned into labwork wit hglassware
and sshe loved the french race
the spandex
but morethen that
for her as well i fight
she was too old at 22 as was my last last year i joked with her- but she didn’t find that funny
and the teenagers yeet to meet me across all these years
many in there 30’s now i suppose
i’ve never felt blood lust like when teh car compaines almost all of them whre on the ground- there throats exposed
FINISH THEM MY GUT SAID
Last night Ran got updated in a good drama previewed on NBC
revenge
in feline form
tonight stars earn stripes
not previewed to my knowledge
only teased
i have chosen the patient coarse
but i will not relent
i will always be lawful
as discreet as folly does not prevent me from being
i welcome survival expect success but will risk my life much more that is clear
Nader used to advise- get a congressional committee to provide protection
I’m noto kidding
it seems like that sort of thingi comes at too high a price
is he sitting out thish eelction?
ALL IT TAKES IS WHAT YOUR VIDEO SHOWS
streets without cars
it would cure cancer of course
almost all disease would be but memory
few would be harmed
none not deserving of that
LA being the worst- deserves tobe first
it’s those wheels that end tyranny
not guns anymore
not gunpowder
but maybe nanophosphate in reasonable portions
not in hummers new
but old schwins even rusted ones
i’d suppporteven drastic measures
no bike less then 35 pounds allowed in public
or even none that is legal in europe without a license
what europe bans
is precisely what finishes the car industry
there crime on two wheels
is the cure for motor city
copyed verbatim it makes a rfp for ending war
i’d even be willing to let bikes almost as slow as they’ll tolerate be legal here
not just 19-20 mph ones
but many miles slower per hour at leasts in the first few years
whatthey allow on roads
we must ban
first bikes
then inevitably cars
leaving only $600 dollar wheeled or spandex ridden fiber left
and a time again for art, music, science even- finally.
I don’t know if it actually proper to ‘like’ this post, but you get my ‘like’ I assume. More and more, people are becoming enraged, insensitive, rude, and just plain ol’ ca-ray-zee! When does it start to turn around 🙁
P.S. IF Gemma by “post” meant just that and not my comment I apologise I spent a lot of time determining that she did not but do still have doubt about it- it’s certainly plausibly deniable and I apologise if I read her wrong. IF so my comments are about those who would critise car haters like myself as needing to get a life or whatever. I know of on better one that bankrupting local dealers of America’s greatest infamy in the greater world then this and wish I coudl devote more then a pricious few hours a week now to it. Soon…..
Gemma even if you shouldn’t of understood this from my feedback above if you read much more of my contributions you’ll perhaps appreciate that I could not be aware MORE of how there are actually people who find there ability to live lives of essentially comfort and pleasure to some how have anything to do with being good themselves or rather anything but complicit with a world that is filled with horror and almost unchecked evil perhaps with no greater example then the shameless ownership and operation of cars in this relatively civilised country but for that. Even more inexcusable are the ‘bike’ advocates who think that thinking that we in our present numbers matter at all if making amends, remorse, accountablity etc. are all all to be considered even attempted. Rather I push myself to dare say as it is clearly the case, we ARE the problem in by changing ourselves we can actually help.
I wish there was something like ‘crazy’ or even that in the past. I wish I was able to defend myself without stigmatising those who are ill by saying I’m not like them, but I am healthy, and your need to contribute aspersions against my brilliance or my sobriety or my utter calm in pushing my heart soul and highest insights to friends above raises questions for some of us myself included about your need to fake it by engaging in derision however offhanded the bullying.
In speaking these truths something has happened to my hope- it has been not just easy but exciting in it now leading- in faith, that this can be done. I actually now believe without effort- effortlessly, that profiteers will have to kill me or I’ll make driving as politically incorrect as smoking, cavorting with teens, eating meat, and wearing fur. I’ll do it soon. I’ll eventually stop eating meat, but will not live another day thinking people will be able to sell there cars foro much more then scrap value regardless of how little they have driven them.
In not being stupid, in being blessed with a decent education and at my prime intellecutally, having declined to enlist my potency to ‘engineering’ or ‘defense’ or as is routine to the highest bidder with little concern about the impact of the work not done- yes, INCLUSIVE of notes like these not being read by even one person even if only a small chance of that occuring ever for not having even been written, I _resist_ and when I see that word word written in chalk on concrete tears avail themself if welcome and of this I am most proud.
Try it sometime. RESIST.
It is not enough to enjoy fresh air across our bodies on antique designs at the expense of denying modern technology to the public. I have more sympathy for someone making payments on a SUV, even an electric one, then bike owners who are opposed to sharing the road with more useful and much more green SPEED CONSISTENT infrastructure that mere $600 upgrades to existing two wheeled infrastructure allow. The optibike town for example has criminalised using them. I will muddy the water. I will dare tweet simultaneously. I am not a team player in any league that considers such evil part of there ‘diversity.’ Fortunately as our movement matures those who have been driving mainly by sociopathy become the exception, as by and large WE care about others, and will not hog our path, will not believe recreation is MORE important then survival as a species or even at the expense of merely polar bears etc. and much of our population leading lives of even greater misery.
Democrats supporting car’s- is actually surprising to me. Again we used to be against the death penalty, and not being able to take that even for granted is minor compared to the progressive party thinking that calling a priest will keep us out of hell for any tolerance of there support if not mere lack of banning yet in this nation. There is a too silent but ever growing sane faction- whose rising disgust can be harnessed. A lot of animals are going to need to get a less glorious ‘job’ soon then selling inCARnations of evil like ‘hybrid’ hustles on four mounstrously heavy and expensive wheels.
Already ‘grad’ students in ivory towers given free samples of energy storing excellence are rebelling and putting them in skateboards instead of ‘transit’ ”””bus’s””” or pretty boy toys. Segways without logic, harnessing electrons like yesteryear animal skin was tuned to drum, clarinet, and metal made to symphonic art.
IF you enjoy warm winters while they toil till it hurts, innovating, for example figuring out how to limit the amount of current a hub motor will get to protect the speed regulation without compromising the acceleration, and doing so publically, not secretly so it’s utility can’t be democratically applied, in cold dark climes because we have yet to adapt to technology- and much of what could be blissland here is instead GIVEN to cars, plugging access to our coast from wider enjoyment, from a real science and engineering place like Cal Tech being public here. I”ve never believed that the winters help focus. THey are what cars impose upon us. THey are not needed by us to be there, they force settlers to not migrate away. To explore and outbid those who sit alone or with a few kids and maybe no partner on acres bought for a pittance of however many millions- acreage wasted that could have ALL TEH LAND DEVOTED TO UNIVERSITIES BE HERE.
SUre people like four seasons but not most of them. Our real estate is expensive but more from being wasted then in shortage here. Bikes can create affordable paradise, can tow homes from detroit if only given time on the highway to do so. It is not hard at all to start working on the solutions.
But enemies are everywhere- those wanting to demolish instead of dissassemble, who care about reducing expenses while raising prices because they think they have a need for the windfall. At our expense!
FIrst by inches- government sites for complaints about cars on government servers- for no cost, no stamp, anyone can step out of line and point out how insane there family buying a car was- how bad they have learned IT (the thing given the best room in almost all houses being built now) to be, how ‘angry’ this makes them, how as the widow of the slain – and so far completely unavenged ‘police’ detective chimes now APPARENTLY the road is not the problem… IT WAS THE CAR SHE WILL HAVE GUTS TO SAY IF NOT ISOLATED FOREVER FROM THOSE MANYMANYOTHERS WHOSE LIVES HAVE BEEN snuffed out without yet rubbing them raw enough to dare be so unbridaled- widowed, but bridaled still by motorcity,somehow,sure,I’m an emparicist I concede facts- but opine it’s unsustainable as long as me and those equiped to take my place by my speech and others like me share, openly, earnestly straight dope.
I have nothing to fear from those making faces, twirling there fingers. I’m a scholar of many subjects, including that. I am no whimp. Bring it on. Frivilous only are the defenses of any family who has anyone working for the automoble industry, who have in there home glossy or in there browser histories PR in which there tradeshows are almost identical to those of the porn industry- the same scantilly dressed too young girls showing cleavagge toting booze as if women still can’t vote, even seen in fuel cell conferences, high heels, but watching- eyes open, brains free to judge and be patient. The ‘revolusion’ is coming and cars not people will die this time- but of natural causes- of no takers, because better uses for our streets will be mandated- people outnumber even stockholders in. Women will stop considering anyone who drives as “marriage” material. Just watch- or join in. IT’s happening now, so to answer your question, you don’t have to wait at all. ELectrofying cars is the hysterical blatter you actually are prompted by. It’s you who have nothing on. Be ashamed.