UK social media bicycle advocates are actually trolls. Here’s why.

An appeal to emotion.

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See original tweet thread here.

Appeal to emotion or argumentum ad passiones is a logical fallacy characterized by the manipulation of the recipient’s emotions in order to win an argument, especially in the absence of factual evidence.

Indeed Moose, there are certain roads your 7 yr old can’t bicycle on. Why would you want them to?

Even if all roads were designed with the intention that a 7 yr old could bicycle on it, would it still be ‘safe’? Your premise is that they would certainly be safe.

I disagree. Here’s why.

A 7 yr old is somewhere between a kindergartner and a 1st grader. (depending on your local school requirements for age placement in their respective grade).

Spatial Awareness

Spatial awareness is the ability to be aware of oneself in space. It is an organised knowledge of objects in relation to oneself in that given space. Spatial awareness also involves understanding the relationship of these objects when there is a change of position. Occupational Therapy for Children

For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that your child is developing appropriately for their age group.

Question: How spatially aware are 7 yr olds?

Pre-operational Stage 2-7 years

Children begin to represent spatial features through drawing and modelling. Their topological thinking is evident in their drawings. For example, in the drawing of a duck below, done by a five-year-old, the sky and the ground are represented as separate objects – there is no comprehension of the horizon. Both eyes are drawn on one side of the head because, to the child, the important feature is that they are inside (enclosed within) the head shape (McNally, p.29). As is typical around this age, the child does not yet possess the type of thinking that can be described by Projective Geometry, and which would allow him/her to imagine the other side of the duck.

Concrete Operational Stage 7-12 years

Gradually, between the ages of about 4 and 9 years, the child begins to perceive and represent objects from different points of view and incorporates ideas of perspective. The placement of features or objects in relation to each other and taking account of vertical and horizontal relationships becomes part of the child’s way of viewing the world. These sorts of ideas can be classified as belonging to the type of geometry called Projective Geometry. In the drawing of ‘Dogs playing soccer’, done by a 7 year old, evidence of this type of thinking can be found. When asked why the dogs had only one eye she replied, “The other one’s on the other side but we can’t see it”. When questioned about the numbers of legs drawn for each dog, she explained that the dogs on the left were running so we could see all their legs, but the dog on the right was standing still so two legs were hidden from view (the third appendage is a tail!).
Dogs

The child also begins to use the ideas associated with Euclidean Geometry such as distinguishing between straight and curved lines, specific shapes (like squares and circles), the length and number of sides and angles. These ‘measurement’ concepts allow children to bring objects and parts of object into relative proportion in their drawings.

The development of the co-ordination of horizontal and vertical planes is illustrated in the sequence of drawings below (McNally pp.45-46). Children ranging from 4 years to 10 years were asked to draw liquid in a tilted jar on a table, and to draw people or trees on a hillside. The youngest drawer clearly demonstrated Topological thinking, with the liquid simply shown inside the jar, and the people enclosed by the hill. Gradually, as spatial thinking matures, the co-ordination of vertical and horizontal can be seen.

Hills
Answer: Not very.Why is spatial awareness important to this topic?

Spatial awareness, for those who don’t already know, is the difference between a child recognizing another bicyclist on the road as a potential hazard or not.

It’s certainly possible for a child to be taught how to recognize hazards and how to avoid them. But that does require education. And Moose and her merry band of infra only advocacy trolls don’t like education.

To them, education is that thing ‘vehicular’ cyclists do because they don’t have infrastructure and thus need to know how to operate around cars. While bicyclists on separated bicycle specific infrastructure don’t have to worry about anything. Because they’re totally safe and will never experience an injury because ‘No Cars’!

Again, for arguments sake, we’ll presume that all roads are designed with 7 yr olds in mind and that no motorized vehicles will ever travel on these specially designed roads.

Does Moose Jr/Miss present a hazard to other bicyclists and do those bicyclists present a hazard to Moose Jr/Miss?

Here are a few examples of bicyclists being injured or killed on bicycle specific infra i.e. no cars allowed.

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Did the bicyclist encounter a 7 yr old and swerved to avoid them? It’s what people do when a small child is weaving all over the road. They try to avoid them.

Most likely not. I suspect the bicyclist hit debris on the trail and lost control. Or even more likely, was going too fast and lost control.

Which then flips the script. Do other bicyclists present a hazard to a 7 yr old?

The following article is descriptive of an electric bicycle. But anyone who rides road bikes knows that you can achieve impressive speeds even without an assist. Those speeds prevent you from safely navigating a path where children are tooling around unsupervised. It could be argued that adults on bikes should behave sensibly around children on bike paths. But it could also be argued that adults in cars should behave sensibly around bicyclists.

Ultimately what we end up with is a the same situation that we say we want to avoid on public roads. It all boils down to education.

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A 10-year-old child was seriously injured in a crash involving an adult on an electric bicycle in Fadden on Thursday morning.

Police are investigating the collision on a shared pathway near a primary school in the area about 8.45am.  Read more here.

Unsupervised and uneducated children present a hazard to themselves and other road users. Period.

Which is why you don’t see Dutch children bicycling unsupervised.

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And when the children are bicycling, they are under direct supervision of an adult.

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Notice that the bicycle path is wide enough to accommodate side by side bicycling. Something which is not seen in the UK or America as the standard for bike lanes and paths. 

I’m a certified bicycle instructor. But I didn’t always used to be. When I first started bicycling for transportation, like the Dutch do, I didn’t (and still don’t) have first class bicycle infrastructure. My child was significantly older than a 7 yr old. She was 15 yrs old. And very nervous about bicycling on a heavily trafficked public road. Having bicycled with her on low speed residential roads, I learned two things.

  1. If she was ahead of me she was totally exposed to anyone else around her. There is a YouTube video where we are being harassed. And in the video she is angry about the harassment and cycles fast and ahead of me. The driver then corals her against the curb with his car. When she was directly by my side she was protected from this maniac. After that incident we had a long conversation about staying by my side.
  2. When people are bicycling two abreast they can have an easy and relaxed conversation. As we navigated hostile roads, we discussed the way we would manage portions of the road before we arrived at them. This helped ease both our fears and provided safe and predictable passage. Not only for ourselves but also for those around us.

Predictability, even on a bike path, is crucial to road safety. And yes, bike paths are roads.

What makes these social media advocates trolls?

I’m so glad you asked.

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This is a photo shopped picture of Dutch children and in the original photo, they’re bicycling on a school designated path.
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Here are the same children. 

No one is advocating for children to bicycle independently on roads with trucks or lorries. Literally NO ONE!

Trolls love memes. Especially false one’s that lead to wrong thinking.

The first tweet in this blog is the beginning of the thread. Moose was trolling someone who was arguing for or against something. We’ll never know because they deleted their tweet. Which I don’t blame them. Dealing with troll’s is exhausting.

I saw through her crap and called her out on it. Which then prompted the trolls to come crawling and scurrying out from under their rocks. They resorted to name calling, logical fallacies, specious logic, and everything else trolls do. Except actually have a conversation about why we don’t actually design roads for the exclusive use of 7 yr olds.

Jesus FUCKING Christ! Use some common fucking sense.

What makes someone a troll?

A troll is defined as someone who is trying to give you an emotional jerk. They often use logical fallacies and/or use specious ‘logic’ (such as the ‘logic’ used in the Google memo.) Specious logic has the appearance of logic, but isn’t logic. In the same way that ‘Creation Science’ isn’t actually Science. They make it sound good and give you interesting pictures to look at, but when you break down their argument, you see that it doesn’t hold water.

The presumption with the UK trolls is that everyone who advocates for education in bicycling is anti-infra. Or as they term them, a ‘Vehicular cyclist’.

Education is the foundation of all community action. People don’t know what they don’t know. And giving everyone a free for all on public roads doesn’t increase safety. Why do you think the Dutch have mandatory bicycling education? Do you think it’s because their infrastructure is so terrible?

But more importantly, the people we need to persuade, the movers and shakers in the public realm of transportation planning, aren’t going to be swayed by specious logic and logical fallacies.

UK social media cycling advocates are not doing bicycle advocacy any favors by behaving like trolls. You aren’t winning friends or persuading anyone, who isn’t already there, to your side.

Your pugnacious and repugnant behavior is giving the media fodder to make bicycling and bicyclists look bad.

The idea behind advocacy is to win friends and influence people. Not call them names or try to make yourselves appear superior to others.

Moose, Evo Lucas, Sw19cam, you’re common garden variety trolls and you’re ruining cycling.

You’re welcome. Assholes.

 

 

 

 

Bike Commuting’s Worst Enemy Isn’t What You Think

Arian Horbovetz's avatarThe Urban Phoenix

When I tell someone I bike to and from work every day, I typically get one of four responses.

  1. “Hey man that’s awesome, keeps ya healthy, helps the environment right?”
  2. “How do you do that every day?  Don’t you get cold?  What about rain and snow?”
  3. “I like to drive too much, I just don’t get riding a bike like that when you can drive.”
  4. “Oh, that’s interesting, do you not own a car?”

The fourth is more from people who I just met… it’s the “feeler” question, trying to see if I ride my bike because I’m either poor (which I kind of am) or I have a DWI (which I don’t).  But you get the idea.

enlight1-40 When traveling to Rome, New York, I use their bike share program to get around.

enlight1-34 I use bike share to get to where I need to go in Buffalo as well.

These…

View original post 779 more words

States rights. Right?

 

Last night I was listening to a book on audio. It’s called “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.”
by Nancy Isenberg

Everything I had studied and taken in over the years, up to that point, began to click. It was like watching a mind boggling large jigsaw puzzle suddenly assemble itself and seeing the picture it was hiding when it laid scattered around.

Then I knew.

The first thing I want to make clear is that for some people this won’t be anything new or especially revealing. We’ve seen this coming but not understood what it was or how to address it.

I first became aware when I was arrested for riding a bicycle, legally and safely, on a public road.

That’s when I started researching and studying these subjects. Because I knew they were connected but I couldn’t tell you how they were connected. OR why. It was this jumbled jigsaw puzzle of a million pieces and I had the border done but couldn’t see how to piece together the individual parts which made up the whole.

Mostly it was because I was missing so many of the pieces. Even now I don’t have them all but the picture is complete enough that I can extrapolate the rest and see what I’ve, what we all have been missing.

I am not a writer. Putting this together in a coherent piece is a struggle for me. It’s Thanksgiving morning and a lot of people have willfully chosen to ignore all talk of world doings and politics. If this wasn’t important. Yes, THAT important. I wouldn’t be up at an unreasonable hour struggling to put this together for you. The least you can do is read it and keep  your snide grammar nazi comments to yourself.

Let’s begin.

We are a continually evolving species. This is the epoch of our next painful evolutionary burst.

It started in what is now Europe. People had become overpopulated in each of their individual countries. The wealthy needed to get rid of the poor “waste” people. Prisons were overcrowded and there was a lot of suffering in the streets. Technology had advanced mankind into a more robust species and people were surviving at a higher rate. The age of enlightenment had come upon man and the church could no longer hold full sway over her people. Things had gotten rowdy and quite out of control. In an effort to maintain the old zeal a lot of people were killed through persecution. Whether it be religious, class, or education people who were deemed unfit for society were murdered or thrown out.

Wealth wasn’t something you could acquire, you were born into it.

The discovery of the northern continents was a boon to the evolution of man in many ways. But it was also a hindrance for those who enjoyed maintaining control. How do you control a free society?

People were taught that the word of god was real and infallible. Anecdotal evidence was all an uneducated swath of society needed to “believe.” And believe they did. So much so that they policed themselves and others. The order of law was a religious process, which even then held a tenuous grip.

As our nation grew and we were exposed to other cultures and belief systems, we started questioning our own.

Our founding fathers established this nation on the understanding that it was an infant and would not reach full maturity until a date well beyond their years. The term “nature” and “nature’s god” isn’t one we are familiar with today. Words also evolve over the years and we add new words to our vocabulary all the time. As well as evolve the definition of old worlds to mean something entirely different than its original meaning.

For example: Slut; didn’t always mean a promiscuous woman. Its original meaning was “lazy” and it could be used for both men and women. But that has changed now.

What hasn’t changed is our inherent nature to classify things and hold separate those whom we deem different from ourselves. Namely class hierarchy.

I’d always been puzzled by the Indians. Not Native Americans but Indians in India. They are one race but they have one of the most vicious caste (class hierarchy) systems in place. It niggled at the back of my brain as I studied American history.

We are all one people. We don’t treat each other differently based on the color of our skin. We treat each other differently based on our station in life. Which in America, we are told that each one of us has the potential to reach the stars. But we don’t. Or at least some of us don’t. That doesn’t mean racism doesn’t exist. What I’m trying to say is that the problem we are seeing today is in many ways larger than our outward differences.

The obvious is too obvious.

Like a magician using sleight of hand we are distracted by racism, xenophobia, and sexism. It’s intentional and the intent is to distract us from what is really happening. A lot of people are going to disagree with me and that’s fine. You still need to hear this.

The nations are rising up to make war with each other. America is on the cusp of being disassembled and separated for corporate gain. But also to make us weak and more compliant.

We truly are stronger when we come together as one people and one voice. There is something we all have in common. We are all people and we are all being divided by class. Not gender, not race, not religion.

Class.

The haves vs. the have nots.

The GOP has taken over the Senate, the House, and the Oval Office. They will nominate conservatives to our Supreme Court. That is on the federal level.

Each state has a constitution and the 10th amendment grants each state their rights to govern individually.

Title X
“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

     “The Tenth Amendment was intended to confirm the understanding of the people at the time the Constitution was adopted, that powers not granted to the United States were reserved to the States or to the people. It added nothing to the instrument as originally ratified.”1 “The amendment states but a truism that all is retained which has not been surrendered. There is nothing in the history of its adoption to suggest that it was more than declaratory of the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment or that its purpose was other than to allay fears that the new national government might seek to exercise powers not granted, and that the states might not be able to exercise fully their reserved powers.”2 That this provision was not conceived to be a yardstick for measuring the powers granted to the Federal Government or reserved to the States was firmly settled by the refusal of both Houses of Congress to insert the word “expressly” before the word “delegated,”3 and was confirmed by Madison’s remarks in the course of the debate which took place while the proposed amendment was pending concerning Hamilton’s plan to establish a national bank. “Interference with the power of the States was no constitutional criterion of the power of Congress. If the power was not[p.1510]given, Congress could not exercise it; if given, they might exercise it, although it should interfere with the laws, or even the Constitutions of the States.”4 Nevertheless, for approximately a century, from the death of Marshall until 1937, the Tenth Amendment was frequently invoked to curtail powers expressly granted to Congress, notably the powers to regulate commerce, to enforce the Fourteenth Amendment, and to lay and collect taxes.

States retain a significant amount of sovereign authority[p.1516]“only to the extent that the Constitution has not divested them of their original powers and transferred those powers to the Federal Government.”57 The principal restraints on congressional exercise of the Commerce power are to be found not in the Tenth Amendment or in the Commerce Clause itself, but in the structure of the Federal Government and in the political processes.58 “Freestanding conceptions of state sovereignty” such as the National League of Cities test subvert the federal system by “invit[ing] an unelected federal judiciary to make decisions about which state policies it favors and which ones it dislikes.”59 While continuing to recognize that “Congress’ authority under the Commerce Clause must reflect [the] position . . . that the States occupy a special and specific position in our constitutional system,” the Court held that application of Fair Labor Standards Act minimum wage and overtime provisions to state employment does not require identification of these “affirmative limits.”60 In sum, the Court in Garcia seems to have said that most but not necessarily all disputes over the effects on state sovereignty of federal commerce power legislation are to be considered political questions. What it would take for legislation to so threaten the “special and specific position” that states occupy in the constitutional system as to require judicial rather than political resolution was not delineated.
Cornell University Law School

Conservatives and Libertarians are seeking to rend the fabric of America. The threads which bind us will soon be cut.

As I’ve stated previously and it’s common knowledge; the GOP now controls all branches of Government on the Federal level. But being that we are granted state rights we should consider ourselves safe.

NO!

32 states now have a Conservative governor and it’s worse. 45 states have a senate controlled by the Conservatives.

I’m going to start using Conservative with a capital “C” to delineate the mad men from the truly liberty loving in this country.

I’ll give you some examples.

1) One who espouses a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change.

2) One who believes in less government being better government.

3) One who believes in such “outmoded” ideas as civil liberties (freedom of speech, separation of church and state, right to keep and bear arms, that kind of thing)

4) One for whom the Republican Party no longer truly speaks.

5) a word that today’s so-called “conservatives” don’t know the definition of.
“Today’s so-called ‘conservatives’ don’t even know what the word means. They think I’ve turned liberal because I believe a woman has a right to an abortion. That’s a decision that’s up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right. It’s not a conservative issue at all.” — Barry Goldwater

Urban Dictionary

AND

This article from The Atlantic. Which I’ll give you an excerpt.

Roughly two-fifths of Americans call themselves “conservative.” What do they mean by the word? It depends. And during a Republican primary, that can be problematic. Every candidate is vying to be the standard-bearer for conservatism, and exploiting the fact that its meaning is variable.

Conservatives have taken over both the Republican and the Democratic parties.

A conservative Democrat is a member of the Democratic Party in the United States who holds conservative views on social or economic issues. Despite that party’s longstanding reputation as a liberal political party, the Democratic Party has always had a conservative wing.
Conservative Democrat – Conservapedia
www.conservapedia.com/Conservative_Democrat

See also: Blue Dogs.

There is an emerging Alt-Left but Hillary Clinton isn’t the embodiment of it.

Here is a Daily Kos article from someone who is a liberal and has experienced the Alt-Left.
Here is an example of how the Alt-Right are trying to define the Alt-Left. It’s important to note that the Alt-Right is labeling anyone who cares about those who are different as Alt-Left. Telling a baker they can’t discriminate against a gay couple isn’t Alt-Left. But this is what the Alt-Right are telling their followers the Alt-Left is.   <<< This is NOT Alt-Left but this is what the Alt-Right are telling their followers, so be aware.

My own experience with the Alt-Left came when I was attacked and besmirched by bike lane loving cyclists. Nothing screams LIBERAL like talk of bike lanes. Right? Then how in the world would these same people attack me for riding a bike? Because they are Alt-Left. A mirror image of the Alt-Right. Equally pervasive and dangerous.

Hillary Clinton is the embodiment of people who want a progressive, apple pie loving, gentle America. You can disagree but in this age of propaganda paraded as “fake news” and fake news paraded as “News.” You really need to reconsider your position.

I saw this coming but I couldn’t name it or explain it. I was confronted with it up close and in my face. But it was so close to my face that it was blurry and undefined. Everything else has been out of the corner or my eye. By taking a step back and looking around, the picture has come into focus.

But I digress.

Conservatives and Libertarians.

The two sides of one evil.

I will state plainly now the intention of our president elect.

Control of Government will go solely to each state. I suspect but have not found evidence that states will be divided into groups. If my hunch is correct then I believe it would be along judicial lines. Here is a map.

The federal government will be dismantled under the excuse of “Article X.” But that doesn’t mean he won’t retain control of power. What it means is he will do exactly what he has said he would do and run America like a corporation. Each state or the circuit court boundaries of states would be like a manager. Then the chain of command would tree out just like in a corporation. The right of the people to redress their government would be removed because their wouldn’t be a government to redress.

If you read the “Federalist Papers” you will see that there is a homogeneous reason for having a United States. The freedoms we have come to enjoy would be wiped out. All progress gone. Child labor? Yes, that’ll be a thing again.

All of the rights which we now enjoy and take for granted will be wiped out under this administration. Women will be the first target. They will keep the obvious obvious as a subterfuge to that which is not obvious.

This is also a global movement. Brexit wasn’t the first. I think Poland was the first.

Read this: As long as America B is left in the lurch by what passes for modernity, it will inevitably try to pull the entire country back to some imagined golden age of the past before all those “others” hijacked the red, white, and blue. Donald Trump has hitched his presidential wagon to America B. The real nightmare, however, is likely to emerge in 2020 or thereafter, if a far more capable politician who embraces similar retrograde positions rides America B into Washington.

This article was written with the assumption that Trump would not win and that a worse fate awaited America in 2020.

I told my friends and anyone who would listen that if Trump won the primaries he WOULD win the General Election. I was told I was crazy. Then he won.

I told my daughter. I was too afraid to labeled a crackpot to speak openly about my fears. I told her that if Trump won the General Election we would be in a serious time of trouble and people would die. Maybe even us.

But that if Hillary won the General Election we would have 4 years to prepare.

Kentucky’s Gov. Matt Bevin was that time to prepare but I didn’t see it. It was too close to my face. What happened to me in Kentucky is going to happen to a lot of people. White people will not be safe. Black people will not be safe. Religious people will not be safe.

To be safe you have to be the “right kind of white and have the right kind of religion.”

No Lubbers, Crackers, Clay Eaters, Niggers, Spics, Muslims, and etc.

It’s going to get that bad.

Seriously.

READ! BOOKS!

The overriding goals of Donald Trump and his allies in Congress are the same as the goals of the conservative movement throughout the modern era: to expand the wealth, status, and power of the privileged few at the expense of everyone else. That’s why big tax cuts for the rich are the top priority.

Talk Poverty

I’ve explained this badly. I feel that I have. But I also think that there is enough information out there that if you cram over the next month. You’ll get caught up and see what I’m seeing.

So Book lists!

Read these books.

6-books-to-help-understand-trumps-win

Also read:

12 books and you’ll be fully up to speed.

The last thing I’ll add is that this is also going to be a religious movement. Churches will be taxed and active participants in Government or whatever new form of Government they are cooking up.

I prognosticate that the events we see unfold over the ensuing years will be so wretchedly horrifying that it will be an end to religion once and for all.

Part of me wonders if we aren’t entering into the birth of a new era. One which will see the old fade away and be replaced by something entirely new. But what will that be? Will it be good, better, or worse?

Only time will tell.

The only thing I can say with any positivity is that if we don’t fight. If we don’t get involved. It’s over and it will all have been for nothing.

 

Further reading.

These assholes. The Federalist Society.

Liberals are an endangered species.

White Nationalists world wide.  Read “White Trash: 400 years of untold history” to understand how this is relevant.

Form local action communities. Start preparing for resistance.

The fact that this happened on this election cycle gives me hope. But we have to start at a the local level. We have to start at the bottom and work from the ground up.

 

180 degrees

Excellent response to a bad situation.

Motor Mania, White Supremacists, and Bike Lanes

images (8)

What in the world could these three topics possibly have in common?

A lot actually.

On an evolutionary scale humans are not well adapted to motor vehicles. Which is why; after all the money poured into safety programs to make roads and cars safer; we still have an astonishing death toll and injury rate.

Technology has far outpaced our ability to adapt to the high rates of speed. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t. But it certainly does mean we should be more judicious and realistic in our expectations.

The auto industry lobbyists have created a political environment which is designed to encourage auto use.

Where the roads are designed and engineered for a human pace, we will still find destructive drivers. It’s not the roads or even the cars which give us so much grief. It’s the people.

Which brings us to white supremacists. The desire to cluster in groups and classify people based on outward appearance is detrimental to our ability to evolve and move forward in society. As long as we think in terms of “them” and “those people” we are fucked.

White supremacists have an inherent taste for Ford Trucks. This isn’t by accident. Henry Ford was a classic white supremacist and anti-Semite. He purchased a newspaper for the sole purpose of having an editorial section which would “expose” the “Jewish Conspiracy” and expel both Jew and those who were Jewish sympathizers out of the country. It is worth mentioning that the editorials were based on a fictional story. But Henry Ford “believed” them to be true. He blamed his distaste for reading on his willful ignorance. Highly praised by Hitler, Henry Ford and is brand of vehicles were soon to become a symbol of nationalistic pride. Even their t.v. commercials, radio ads, print ads, and social media ads are worded to reinforce a sense of the “white” working man’s conservative pride.

When it comes to cyclists and harassing interactions with motorists, Ford Trucks rank high on the list of drivers most likely to harass and victimize someone riding a bicycle.

It is the supremacists desire to eliminate anything and anyone whom he/she perceives as a threat to their kind. Telling cyclists to behave under duress, to just “smile and wave” as some asshole comes along and threatens your life, is internalized racism against your own group. It’s a classic sexism that women deal with on a daily basis and men practice it on each other, most often when they are cyclists.

Which brings us to bike lanes.

I bet you’re wondering how I’m going to tie all this together. I hope I don’t disappoint.

Nobody likes to be harassed while exercising their basic rights. The desire to enjoy a stress free commute or bike ride is something that anyone who rides a bike desires. Even myself. Segregation is  a word which is often used by white supremacists and cyclists alike.

Each group has something in common. They all want to be separated from each other. Whites from blacks and auto drivers from cyclists.

Sharing the road in its basic sense is saying “To move forward in society, we must all get along.”

And it’s right. We can not reasonably separate (separation is a more appropriate word than segregation) everyone at every point in the road. There is some point where we are all going to have to get along. We don’t have to like each other but we can respect each other.

Choosing how you talk to someone is a huge part of that cohesiveness. Communicating by hand signals, revving engines, honking horns, and vocalization can all be used to harm or clearly express an intention. The former is most frequently seen in the social misfits of society i.e. the white supremacists. The later is to simply convey a message and show courtesy to your fellow road travelers.

Telling people that segregation isn’t going to solve their problems will continue to fall on deaf ears. If you don’t believe me just talk to an advocate for bicycle infrastructure. Telling them that segregation/separation can make motorist and cyclist interactions more strife filled will have them spouting off a litany of phrases which can almost word for word be matched to the speech of your average racist.

So how then can we bring together better infrastructure without the taint of racism?

  1. Remove all mandatory use laws from legislation.
  2. Remove all language which implies that bike infra is require, superior, or necessary for safe cycling.
  3. Educate drivers that they are required to yield to pedestrians and cyclists; when appropriate.
  4. Mandatory cycling education for drivers and students. This can be a classroom experience for those who are physically unable to cycle.
  5. Lower speed limits.
  6. Reconsider zoning laws to increase construction which promotes walking and biking as the main form of transportation.
  7. Quality Bikeways which give a sense of expected and respected to the cyclists who are using them.

A bikelane is a gutter paint strip. A bikeway is carefully thought out, designed, and engineered highway for the exclusive use of cyclists.

The majority of it will always boil down to education. Truly the best way for us to overcome systemic racism is education.

Education, Legislation, and Infrastructure.

Has the Jessamine County Attorneys office embraced the Sovereign Citizen movement?

Has the Jessamine County Attorneys office embraced the Sovereign Citizen movement?

A lot of people viewed my case with a flawed assumption. They erroneously believed “If the police are ticketing you, you must have done something wrong.”

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has shown that often the police will use made up excuses to pull you over and then kill you. If you are white the police still use made up excuses to pull you over and, instead of killing you, they write you bogus tickets.

Since 2009 there has been a movement on the rise. A dangerous, corrupt, fanatical, wide eyed, foaming at the mouth movement.

I, unwittingly, ended up getting a taste of this movement. The focus of the article, written by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is on Sheriffs department. I can personally attest that this movement doesn’t end with your local sheriffs office. The #SoverignCitizen movement has also had a huge impact in the local police force and in the Jessamine County Attorneys office.

They pick and choose which laws they wish to follow. All other be damned.

I recommend reading – Poison Tea: How Big Oil and Big Tobacco Invented the Tea Party and Captured the GOP

Jessamine County attorney Brian Goettl and his staff have been known to operate outside the law. Brian Goettl is a Tea-Party Republican, he holds an elected position. At what point do we say “Enough is Enough”?

I strongly urge you to #VoteEmOut!

Cyclist Cherokee Schill on her work commute
There is a huge rumble strip to my right and this truck is on my ass. Making it doubly dangerous for me to move anywhere but forward. It is NOT illegal in Kentucky for a cyclist to operate a bicycle on the road. Brian Goettl told me I was “Morally” obligated to ride the white line. He himself admitted that I was not required to operate on the shoulder. But he still went ahead and prosecuted me for exercising my legal right to the road and to be safe. 

 

 

Tactical Urbanism: Let there be light

Tactical urbanism is an umbrella term used to describe a collection of low-cost, temporary changes to the built environment, usually in cities, intended to improve local neighbourhoods and city gathering places.

Capitalism, Consumerism, and Auto Culture.

They all have at least one thing in common.

 

People.

Not just any people, these organizations are made up of people who get to decide, for us, what best suites the majority of people. If it doesn’t serve their bottom line of profit or enhance consumption, then it isn’t in their best interests and they will not pursue it, even if it means some people will suffer for their inaction.

That’s fine if we are talking about window dressing or paint color. But when people have the potential to be hurt by their inaction it is time to take action.

Priority and safety is the focus of moving auto’s from point A to point B. This is a huge financial drain on us and on our cities. Worse, those who directly benefit from increased auto use are the people who operate auto corporations, not the people driving on the street.

Street lights help people feel safe and that this is a direct benefit to the user. No one wants to jog along a dark street. Better street lighting encourages nighttime driving. Well lit streets give a community a feeling of ease and a sense of safety. Though there are some studies which show that increased lighting on well paved area’s doesn’t increase safety. But tell that to someone fumbling around in a dark parking lot or trying to make out street signs as they look for their friends house at 2 a.m.

Trails which move people on foot, bike, or wheelchair do not see the same safety measures given to those systems which have the greatest benefit to auto’s and those who directly benefit from selling you an auto. The real problem, as I see it, is incomplete or one sided education of our urban planners. People who don’t use the very trails they design or if they do use it, they don’t use it in the way that those most vulnerable are using the trails. Mainly during low light conditions. Students, working families, and/or anyone else who is tied up with the day to day cares of this world have the evening to enjoy the trails. Early morning commuters who want to enjoy a stress free commute, deserve quality trails. So why should they be left to stumble around in the dark?

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The post on the right.

When you have exhausted every avenue available to you. When your words fall on deaf ears. What is there left to do?

Shall we fold our hands and say “At least I tried.”

Did you try?

Is it possible that there is something more you can do?

Enter Tactical Urbanism.

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Creating safer communities through direct involvement.

When you’ve been told that the cost of installing lighting along the trail is too expensive. Or you’ve been told that it just isn’t feasible. What you are really hearing is “Your concerns are not important.”

But your concerns are important. You as an individual are important, both to yourself and to someone else. Taking a positive step to help those in your community is an act which is both selfless and selfish. By taking an active part in your community you are bettering it not only for yourself but for all of those around you.

Sometimes our city planners need us to show them the way. It’s not that they can’t figure it out. It’s that they don’t have the motivation to do the research that we have done.

Tactical Urbanism is one positive and friendly way to show them just how easy it is to install some lights.

I highly encourage you to take an active role in the betterment of your community. You can learn more about tactical urbanism from the original creators through this link: Here.

People need to feel connected to their community. This connection creates, not only a sense of belonging but also, a sense of responsibility. When people take responsibility for their community the direct benefit is a safer community. Isn’t that what we all want?

Women, Freedom, and Bicycles.

I came very close to going to prison. Not because I had done anything wrong by cycling on U.S. 27, but because the system is flawed. It works for those who have the money to buy the right connections.

Purvi Patel and I were in the same boat but for different reasons. Her story could have very easily been my story. I’d had two late term abortions due to severe fetal anomalies. Even writing the last part of that sentence sits wrong with me. I shouldn’t have to include my private medical information so that you’d feel empathy for me instead of disgust. But there we have it. Rape culture and victim blaming.

I can’t speak for Purvi Patel’s legal council or the laws that were used to charge her. I’m not familiar with either. What I can speak about with confidence is the mixed reactions people had when her story broke. Some people felt empathy, while others wanted to crucify her. I recall trying to raise awareness about her story and a woman wrote to me saying that “she dumped the body in a dumpster!” as though that should seal her fate. It reminded me of the pseudo cycling advocates who say “She’s cycling on the road!” as though that was all the evidence they needed that I was doing something wrong.

I’ve worked in a hospital before as hospital staff. My first experience with hospital waste came from my first summer job I had before college. I was working for the college laundry and we serviced the hospitals dirty linens. The stuff you find in there is shocking. The stuff you see in a hospital is shocking. But it’s only shocking to the people who live in suburban and urban bubbles. People whose closest foray into the medical world is watching edited for T.V. medical dramas don’t understand. Real life is much messier and less black and white.

So they judged her without knowing her and they prosecuted her with barely a peep from Civil Liberties giants like the ACLU.

Recently I saw an article declaring high speed internet in rural locations as our next civil liberties crisis. I thought, wow! What a crock of shit! Huffington post highlighted a story about a man who was struggling to earn enough through his online business to support his family. This has the ACLU galloping to fight for “justice.” Internet is important and it’s a great tool for learning but there are other avenues and no one is having their freedoms destroyed because they can’t connect at speeds greater than 25mbps.

Meanwhile Purvi Patel might very well languish in prison for 20 years because she felt conflicted about a pregnancy, shared those feeling via text msg, and had a miscarriage that was probably more of a relief for her than it was a loss. Then she put the already dead fetus in the trash. Much the same way that your local hospital does. Though most have their medical waste incinerated to prevent biohazards from getting into the environment. It’s all very regulated.

My first late term abortion I opted to have my pregnancy induced. It was just a matter of time and time wasn’t on my side. The baby had at this point died in utero and I was becoming sick. Every woman is different and every woman’s body handles a dead fetus differently. Maybe Nicholas was alive right up until the birth and they told me they couldn’t find a heartbeat to help me feel better. I don’t know. What I do know is that he was dead when he came out and I got to hold a 25 week old fetus in my arms. They are fragile as spun glass. Very tiny too. In fact the anti-choice posters they wave at Planned Parenthood don’t look like 6-12 week old fetus’. They look more like my son Nicholas at 25 weeks. Which is to say that those people are lying to you. They are lying to you when they tell you that Purvi Patel’s baby was born alive. They will feed you half lies and tell you that they are semi truths while denying that a half truth is a whole lie.

Much like this picture of me here.

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*That’s me. Before I learned lane control. I was getting a lot of close in the lane passes. 

The picture is carefully taken to show you what looks like a nice wide shoulder. Looks pretty smooth too. But it’s not and the broken white line you see to my right is the beginning of a turn only lane. The same turn only lane that I used to illegally cycle forward through and almost got killed on one occasion. So I stopped and tried riding further right only to find that the motorists were taking the right turn at such high speeds that they didn’t see me and I almost got killed again. So I said fuck it and started riding in the lane. Where it was legal and safe. Besides broken glass, rumble strips, pot holes, right turning motorists (at high speeds), and intersections. I still had to deal with people rolling coal on me and throwing things at me. One person even tried to run me over while I was attempting to merge onto the shoulder. They passed me on the shoulder and almost struck me. So I said fuck it! I’m not breaking any laws by staying in the right hand lane and that’s where I’m safe, so that’s where I rode.

If you didn’t know all that just looking at the picture would make you question my “morality,” which is an absurd thing to do but it’s what humans do and we as a species are absurd.

The courts didn’t have a legal leg to stand on but with an inept conservative Republican, who is also a Lexington KY road cyclist, for an attorney. One who specialized in contract law and had never conducted a courtroom trial, I was screwed and I knew it. People ask me why I didn’t ask for a continuance when the ASSistant C.A. Eric Wright introduced a new charge at my trial. Mostly I wanted my relationship with my attorney to be over but also because I felt bad for the people who had paid air fare to come out and defend me. I really just wanted the whole thing to be over. I knew my attorney wasn’t prepared to represent me and I knew I was going to lose on those first three tickets. I wanted to win. I wanted to win so bad I could taste it. But the odds were stacked against me and I knew it. Filing an appeal was my next option but the new attorney I hired, thanks to all of your generous donations, advised against it. As did Ohio bike lawyer Steve M. He knew that the case was poorly represented and Steve had given it his best but there was only so much Steve could do with the local attorney who sat through the whole trial like a bump on a log. The guy who filmed my news segment, the one from which the picture is taken and my local attorney are tight. Both cyclists. Both men. They are not bad people. What they are is really out of touch people. People who think Trump is going to make America Great again or that Hillary Clinton has a fighting chance against Trump. They are really out of touch with working class Americans.

My new attorney said we had two options, file a mistrial due to incompetent legal counsel. Which I didn’t want to drag Steve’s name into. Or accept a plea agreement. The plea agreement was only accepted by me because I did not admit to any guilt. That was my one stipulation above all else. Jude Booth had already ruled my cycling on the road was legal.  The City of Nicholasville agreed to drop all charges, have the first three tickets expunged from my record and the fines waived (taxpayer dollars down the drain), and all I had to do was agree to not cycle on U.S. 27 for two years. We threw in that the police had probable cause to pull me over. But I didn’t give a shit about that because the U.S. Supreme court later ruled that cops can pull you over if they “think” you’re breaking a law but you’re not actually breaking a law. Meaning that the cop could think you’ve broken a law or he can make up a law and that would count as probable cause. Like I said the whole system is fucked up. So I gave them probable cause and agreed to not cycle on U.S. 27 for two years. Since U.S. 27 runs directly through downtown and I knew that the county attorney and his crew were as corrupt as fuck. I had no choice but to move away. I couldn’t go to my bank or the grocery store without using U.S. 27 and you know they’d throw my ass in jail for breaking the plea agreement if I said or did anything they didn’t like. Even though I wasn’t cycling on the main road to Lexington it was still U.S. 27 and I didn’t trust those fuckers.

But I would have fought and continued fighting if I wasn’t pressured into moving to Louisville. I really did want to fight but at the same time I didn’t because I was so overwhelmed and tired. Having someone constantly telling me to move and even going so far as to tell us to stay with them was enough to influence my decision.

I think Purvi’s legal team really didn’t have a clue as to how to defend her but I do know they put more effort into it than my local attorney did.

I also know that the same type of people who think I’m against bicycle infrastructure are the same type of people who think that Purvi Patel threw a live infant in the trash. Ignorant, out of touch, privileged, mostly male but some women too, and they are all assholes.

The environment that we are currently living in is so geared away from freedom and the people who live in it are so apathetic that they can’t even get 100k signatures to free Purvi Patel BUT! they get over 100k signatures to ask for the freedom of a man who strangled and killed a woman. 

He might very well be innocent or he may be guilty as hell! But the fact that the New York Times wrote an extensive article showing that Purvi Patel did NOT kill her baby and that it WAS dead before it ever came out of her vagina is still not enough to garner enough interest to reach more than 18k signatures.

As a woman who was getting a lot of hate from the Mountain Biking community, male auto drivers, and an unwarranted amount of hate from the “progressive” male dominated Democrats of Lexington KY; I knew my pooch was screwed. That and I was fucking tired. Tired of the hate, tired of the controversy (where none need exist), and above all else tired of the attention and people hanging on my every word.

I fought Nicholasville KY because I wanted to keep my home and my kids. I wasn’t looking to be the face of cycling. It wasn’t a stunt to bring attention to cycling or even VC cycling. The VC cyclists were the only group that said “Fuck yea! You have the right to cycle anywhere the hell you want!” That and that alone is what attracted me to them.

As I got to know some of them I realized that the group was comprised of assholes too. Just a different kind of asshole. So I dropped out of the group. No one got a hold of me or brainwashed me into Cycling Savvy. I approached it from logic, the law, and personal experience.

I fantasized about a bikeway that had bike lights and riding on a trail with no fucking self entitled motorists.

I hate bike lanes. Not because I hate bike lanes but because the overwhelming majority of them are crap. Pure fucking crap. I cycle less here in Oregon because of them. I still only cycle for transportation. But If I can take the bus, I so will. I still get harassed for lane control. Even though it is specifically legal to control a lane here in Oregon.

Sometimes I see the bike lobby much the same way I see the “right to life” lobbyists. Always crying about life and how precious it is until the life that matters isn’t one they are particularly interested in.

Abortion without apology and Cycling without apology. They are both our civil rights.

Self autonomy and freedom!

Vote Bernie Sanders!

 

*Before I learned about lane control I cycled on the right third of the lane.

 

 

Bicycle Parking

I wrote a blog about how people should operate vehicles in parking lots. You can read it here.

In some areas it is next to impossible to find a place to lock up your bicycle. Pleasure cyclists, occasional cyclists, and roadies rarely have kickstands or Dutch locks. My bicycle has both. It’s better than sliced bread. Seriously.

If you’ve been frustrated by your plea’s for bicycle parking falling on deaf ears, never fear, I have a solution for you.

One of the easiest ways I’ve been able to draw attention to the disparity in bicycle parking facilities is by using the parking facilities already present.

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Instant bicycle parking. Just add a lock and a kickstand.

If you don’t have a kickstand on your bicycle, well, you’re screwed. Unless you can find someone who has a sturdy bicycle, with a kickstand, and is willing to let you lean your bicycle on theirs.

This “lack of bicycle parking facilities” protest is better when it’s done with friends.

Some people will say that they feel bad, taking up so much space. Screw them! I don’t see too many motorists torn up about taking up a full parking spot, especially to haul just one person. Why should you care if you are taking up a space to haul one person? It’s almost like some of you cyclists aren’t really cyclists. Some of you are so apologetic for cycling, you remind me of a beaten animal who slinks back to its abuser and apologetically licks the abusers hand. Seriously! Get some PRIDE! Show a little backbone! You’re a cyclist! Motorists should be falling over backwards THANKING YOU!

Cyclists are awesome.

We don’t tear up the roads we travel on. We don’t spew toxic chemicals into the air. We don’t run down your family pets as they cross the road. Hell! We save the pets motorists dump on the side of the road!

 

So stop feeling guilty for using a parking space. You are not a second class citizen. You deserve convenient and secure parking.

What’s more Pedestrians deserve the sidewalk. Nobody wants to trip over your bicycle(s) as they try to navigate the, often, too narrow sidewalk.

No person in a wheelchair should have to struggle to get past your bicycle as it blocks the sidewalk.

As a cyclist I believe it is our duty to look out for pedestrians.

Here is a possible kickstand solution for you roadie types.

http://upstandingbicycle.com/upstand-bike-stand/

You’re welcome!

A simple U-Lock works or you can add a Dutch style bicycle lock to your bicycle. Not recommended for the roadies. Your cycling bro’s will totally laugh at you (but inside they’ll be jealous).

*Legal note:

Some towns have passed ordinances making it illegal to park a bicycle in an “auto” parking spot. Most have a clause about this ordinance only applying if there is a bicycle parking facility. Read and know your state, county, and city laws. Civil disobedience is a beautiful thing.