I promised last week to catch up on the news we missed when I was too exhausted to write anything following my wife’s surgery.
Only to see my laptop fail yet again yet again over the weekend.
So instead of spending the day at the hospital with my wife, I’ll be at the computer repair shop for what seems like the millionth time this year, hoping that they can once again get it up and running. And keep it that way for a change.
With a little luck — or maybe a lot of luck, the way this has been going — we’ll be back tomorrow to catch up on some of what we’ve missed.
Update: Or maybe not.
No luck yet; keep your fingers crossed that we’ll be back on Wednesday.
The good news is, my wife had her surgery yesterday; everything went well, and she’s resting more or less comfortably.
Hopefully, this will resolve the serious health problems she’s faced for the last several years.
However, the long day has left me physically and emotionally exhausted. Especially after coming home to find this.
So please forgive me for not updating this site today. We should be back on Monday, and I’ll do my best to catch you up on any important news we may have missed.
And thanks for all the kind words and wishes; I may not have a lot of use for Facebook, but it brings a lot of comfort on days like this.
It’s tragic enough when anyone is needlessly killed in a crash.
Worse when it’s a child. Especially one who doesn’t appear to have done anything wrong.
The Long Beach Post reports that a boy in his early teens was killed while riding his bike in the city Thursday afternoon.
According to the paper, the boy was riding with a preteen girl, headed east in the crosswalk on Conant Street at Woodruff Ave at 3:55 pm, when they were both struck by a driver turning left off westbound Conant onto Woodruff Ave.
They were taken to a local hospital, where the boy passed away. The girl remains hospitalized in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.
Neither victim has been publicly identified.
The driver stayed at the scene.
This is the 57th bicycling fatality in Southern California this year, and the 25th in Los Angeles County.
It’s also the third bicycling death in Long Beach this year, and at least the 13th since 2011.
Update: According to the Long Beach Report, the two victims were waiting on the sidewalk to cross Woodruff on their bikes, and didn’t enter the crosswalk until the light turned green. The driver turned into them as they were riding across the street.
Anyone with information is urged to call LBPD Collision Investigation Detail Detective Brian Watt at 562/570-7355.
My deepest sympathy and prayers for the victim and his loved ones.
Today we’re trying something slightly different by moving news about bike racing and pro cycling into its own section at the bottom, which seems to work better for quiet news days like today.
A Moreno Valley bike rider was critically injured in a collision Wednesday afternoon, after allegedly swerving out of the bike lane into the driver’s path. Thanks to Erik Griswold for the heads-up.
Will Ferrell is one of us, completing what a Washington news station calls an “amazing” “marathon” bike ride with four friends, going 147 miles down the California coast from Monterey to Santa Barbara over several days. Although the station can’t seem to grasp the concept that he might have done it just because he wanted to.
People for Bikes looks at San Francisco’s plans to use traffic diverters to create a neighborhood bikeway, noting that reducing automobile traffic on one street does not necessarily mean an increase in traffic on surrounding streets. LA’s bike plan calls for a network of similar streets, none of which have been built, or seem likely to at this point.
Las Vegas is installing 800 steel bollards to along the Las Vegas strip to protect pedestrians from terrorist attacks, as well as plain, old fashioned careless drivers. Which is exactly what Los Angeles needs to do, but doesn’t seem to have any interest in, along Hollywood Blvd.
Australian authorities are blocking the ports to keep a hit-and-run driver from fleeing the country after she left a 13-year old bike-riding girl to die in the street. There’s something seriously wrong with anyone who would drive off and leave another human behind to die, let alone a child.
San Francisco advocates pen an open letter to the mayor calling for improvements to the city’s Vision Zero program, including making immediate improvements at the site of any death.
London’s former bike czar calls a proposal from the mayor to ban bikes on busy Oxford Street, which currently sees 5,000 riders a day, an unqualified disaster.
Just one day after the unexpected announcement that ofo had introduced dockless bikeshare to Griffith Park, came the equally unexpected announcement that LimeBike had established a beachfront in Councilmember Joe Buscaino’s 15th District.
According to a press release, LimeBike has partnered with Buscaino for a three-month pilot program, calling it the first time a dockless bikeshare company has operated in any of America’s five biggest markets.
Or maybe the second, since it comes a day after ofo’s landing in the City of Angels.
The bikes cost $1 for 30 minutes, or 50 cents for students; entering the code LIMELA after downloading the iOS or Android app will get you 25 free rides until November 20th. The bikes can be picked up anywhere one is available, and left anywhere once you’re finished.
Low income residents can pay just $5 a month for up to 100 rides, with an option for cash rather than credit card.
Let’s hope Angelenos take better care of the bikes than people have in other cities; bikes abandoned in creeks and trees could mean the end of what promises to be a very useful program that could benefit a lot of people.
And help make bicycling more accessible to everyone.
Bicyclingtalks with SoCal’s own Coryn Rivera, saying she has the potential to become America’s best ever bike racer. Which would mean surpassing a certain Texan, who once was great but officially isn’t anymore.
A Medium post says the effort to recall Councilmember Mike Bonin is really an Alt-Right campaign in disguise, and calls recall leader Alexis Edelstein a flesh and blood version of a Russian Facebook bot.
Buy a special North Carolina license plate, and help give a kid a new bike helmet. Although giving the kid a safer place to ride his bike would probably help a lot more.
A Florida paper examines the benefits of bike paths in terms of health, financial investment and crime, noting that rails-to-trails conversions generally have lower crime rates than the abandoned railways they replaced.
And it might surprise many women to learn that riding a bicycle 75 miles is harder than childbirth.
………
On a personal note, my wife will be having major surgery this week to correct a condition that has the potential to be life-threatening.
I’ll do my best to keep up with this site every day, but please accept my apologies in advance if I miss a day or two, or have to settle for a shortened post.
And if anyone would like to submit a guest post, now would be a great time to do it.
