Icy roads ride report

I have belly ached and moaned this winter whenever road conditions got icy or slippery enough to prevent me from riding. That's because until about a month ago, I didn't have any tires available to me other than skinny road ones. And so I fell down a lot on the ice.

But, about a month ago, I adopted an abandoned mountain bike. It had been left unchained behind my place of employment, by the dumpsters. We brought it in and waited for about three weeks for somebody to come inquire about it, but nobody did, and now it's mine.

I got to take it out on the ice yesterday after it snowed the whole previous day long.



I had made it several blocks and was in a neighboring residential area when I had an encounter of the up-close and vehicular kind. Recapping it to a coworker in an email:

The car was some yellow thing. Maybe a Volkswagon? It was parked parallel to the street on my right, and the windows were COMPLETELY iced over. Hardly a peep hole to see through. So as I got close to it, it backed up suddenly, SLAMMING into the car behind it. Nothing shattered but there was a loud thunk. And then it pulled out into the street when I was right next to it. I had to swerve out of the way and almost wiped out in the process. I yelled at them to stop, but they sped off.

The car had Florida tags, so maybe they don't know much about things like Ice or Snow. Or Driving. Or Not Being A Miserable Human Being. While it may not be fair, I'm harboring some ill will towards all things Floridian today.

I have since let Florida off the hook.

I yelled at the driver to stop because I intended to instruct them to scrape the ice off their windows before continuing. In the moment, latching on to the fact that they had Florida tags, I really did think they might not know about ice scraping. I was prepared to show them how to do it with a credit card if they didn't have a scraper.

That all passed through my head in a split-second while the car spun its wheels and sped away.

A few houses further along, an older gentleman stood in his driveway where he had seen the whole thing. He look bewildered.

A quick thinking bystander was able to photograph the incident:



My ride continued towards, and into, Wash Park. The roads in Wash Park had not been cleared and it was just covered with ice. I got a bad case of the wobbles and nearly fell over. So I dismounted, portaged my bike through the ankle deep snow, and got back on the main road. As I was pedaling off again, a jogger acknowledged the fact that I was riding in the cold and slippery by hollering at me, "You're a brave man!" To which I assured him it was safer for me on the dry street than in the icy, more slippery, park.

I did not stop to show him the print-out of the photograph of my previous encounter with the yellow car.

I made it the rest of the way to work after stopping once to warm my hands.



Safe and sound, at my place of employment, I unclipped my helmet, swung my leg over the back of my bike to dismount, and tore my pants.



Between the new tear and the skunk stripe that comes from riding through wet stuff without fenders, these pants were trashed!

My boss looked concerned upon my arrival, and then looked visibly relieved when I emerged from the bathroom in a fresh, crisp change of clothes.

Eight hours of work ensued, and when it was time to return home, the sun had been out all day and the roads were completely clear. I wore just two t-shirts under my jacket instead of the two long-sleeve shirts from that morning. What a difference!

Between my weather gear and my work clothes, here is a list of all the clothing I carried with me.

• Buff. Worn like a balaclava in the morning and a head scarf in the afternoon. (My buff is my favorite piece of cycling gear. I use it all year long.)


• Two long-sleeve t-shirts. For the morning ride.


• T-shirt and button down shirt. For work.


• Another, heavy long sleeve shirt. For work.


• Tights and (currently trashed) khakis. For morning ride.


• Blue jeans. For work.


• One pair of wool socks, one pair of wool gloves.


• My reflective cycling jacket.

Shirt total: 5
Pants total: 3

That's roughly the amount of clothing I pack for a long weekend vacation!

Pedefish

So I was riding my bike to work yesterday when I encountered a pedestrian. You know, like ya do. But this pedestrian was Doing It Wrong.

Allow me to enumerate the ways in which this pedestrian was Doing It Wrong.

1. She was jogging in the bike lane.
   
   Which is not the biggest deal there ever was. But it was more than a little annoying because there is a nice, cute little dirt path alongside the road. Low impact, easy on the knees: ideal for jogging!
   
   In fact, there's a place for everyone here. Cars go in the road, bikes go in the bike lane, and pedestrians/joggers go on the walking trail.
   
   Get where you go.


2. She was jogging in the wrong direction, against traffic.
   
   Salmon! Pedestrian salmon! Pedefish.
   
   Pede. Fish.


3. She was jogging her McBiglarge dog alongside her.
   
   Hey all you dog walkers everywhere! If you are walking your dog, or jogging with your dog, or doing anything with your dog anywhere, then please, for the love of Buddha-sprinkled Christflakes, position yourself between your dog and oncoming traffic. Be that traffic pedestrian, bicycle, or otherwise. Dogs to the outside. Always.
   
   Some people are nervous about dogs. As a cyclist, I have been chased before and I have been lunged at before.

And so you have a good idea of what she was doing.

But what was I doing? Let's take a look. Because this is important.

See, every now and then, my own dog is a part of my commute. When necessary, I take him with me and drop him off at the pet-sitter before continuing on to work.

If he's looking particularly spry and peppy, well then I loop the leash around my seat post and let him trot along beside me.

But if he looks a little lazy, as he did on this particular morning, and if I lack the time to indulge his lackadaisical meandering, then I'll pull out the tricycle and put him in the rear basket.

Which is what I did on this morning.

So let's return now to the scene already in play: me in the tricycle with the dog in the rear basket, barreling head-on towards the god-damned jogging lady brandishing her over-sized dog at me like a doomstick.

My unwieldy tricycle is already taking up most of the bike lane. I see this ignorant pedefish coming toward me, and behind me I see several cars approaching, so I can't take the lane to get around her.

So my first plan is to engage her in a game of Chicken. I retain the middle of the lane, setting a course right for her. My intention is to convey the message that she needs to get up on the sidewalk and out of the way. (In retrospect, I really wish I had instead used more verbal and more non-verbal language to convey this message.)

She doesn't get out of the lane, but instead just kind of sidesteps into the gutter by the curb and pulls her big dog close to her. The big dog, of course, still being between me and her.

Being in the gutter leaves inadequate room in the bike lane for me to pass her, so I reluctantly take a few inches of the car lane as the cars pass by me, way too close for comfort.

And at this point, the dogs see each other and big dog starts lunging while the jogger lady is yanking his leash and shushing him sharply.

So on the left I'm trying to not get hit by a car while on the right I'm trying to pay enough attention to be able to kick the dog if it gets too close and snarly.

And then it's over.

It takes just under a second for us to pass each other, and I think I'm home free.

But then my own dog's excitement gets the better of him, he loses his balance and falls out of the basket into the street.

He hits the pavement and tumbles towards the curb. Not, thankfully, into traffic.

I think I dragged him for about 6 inches before I was able to come to a halt.

And I think it took about 5 seconds for me to get off, scoop him up, put him back into the basket, and finally pull off to the side of the road.

I probably spent a further 10 - 20 seconds looking him over for scrapes and scratches, and squeezing and moving all his limbs to see if he yelped or cringed.

Even though a little fear at this point had given way to a little anger, I was still mostly preoccupied with my dog's well-being, and so I began to pedal on -- getting right back on the horse, as it were -- not wanting to give him enough time to become scared of the trike.

We covered the four or five blocks remaining, and arrived at the pet-sitter.

Once there, I go to get him out of the basket and he's trembling. Once on the ground, I walk him up and down the block two or three times to watch for limping and to gauge his composition.

He seems fine.

So I check him in and continue on to work.

---

It's about 36 hours after the fact now and I'm still pissed in a very real way.

There are about 3 or 4 things I will do differently in the future if presented with a similar situation.

For the time being, though, all I can do is be thankful nobody and nodog got hurt, and continue to be pissed.

Worst bike route in Denver

This is the worst stretch of bike path in Denver.

It's Route D9, along 38th Street, between Lafayette Street and Arkins Court. There are posted signs here indicating that D9 continues on the sidewalk.

There are three problems right away with this.

1. It is otherwise illegal to ride on the sidewalk! This is another case, along with prejudiced traffic lights, where the city is not consistent in its message or in its standards when it comes to cyclists.


2. Riding on the sidewalk generally agreed upon to be a very dangerous thing to do. Pedestrians aren't expecting to see you, and motorists pulling out of driveways, alleys, and parking lots can't see you.



3. Lastly, this particular stretch of sidewalk is particularly nasty. It's always covered in debris and broken glass, and at one point it goes under an overpass where it's dark and spooky. You're guaranteed at that point to encounter broken glass, chances are very good you'll have to ride around some cardboard boxes somebody was sleeping on earlier, and I've more than once had to stop and get off and walk around somebody either walking on that very narrow bit of sidewalk or actually still sleeping on the cardboard.

Last week, I was riding along on this sidewalk after a long ride on the river trails when what is happening in the above illustration happened to me. This old purple Buick in a driveway inched toward the sidewalk ahead and to my left, and then stopped. The windows were tinted and the sun was glaring, so I couldn't see the driver very clearly, but the car had stopped and I was close and in plain sight so I assumed they saw me.

Apparently they didn't, for when I was almost at the car, it lurched forward to turn across me and enter traffic. I could see that its Trajectory Of Lurch intersected my own forward trajectory just a couple feet ahead of the two of us, so I pulled hard on my brakes and yelled, "STOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!"

The car did stop, and I bumped gently into it with my front tire, which wedged neatly between the back of the front right tire and the front of the front right wheel well. The driver had her hood sticking out slightly into traffic, and so put the car in gear and starting backing up. I hollered again, "Wait, wait, wait!" as I kind of hop-scooted along with her to prevent my front tire from binding up in the wheel well and getting all kinds of messed up.

She stopped and I extracted myself, backed up, swung around and continued across the front of the car to the other side -- the driver's side -- where I stopped. The lady jumped out and apologized effusively, saying she hadn't seen me because she was looking the other way at the oncoming traffic.

We both assured each other and ourselves that we and our prospective vehicles were okay, and that there were no hard feelings anywhere, and then we continued on our own separate ways.

That, folks, is why riding on the sidewalk is bad!

Don't do it. It's against the law.

I resolved at that moment not to do it even when the posted signage indicates that I should.

I will from now on be observing a self-imposed Mandatory Detour around that stretch of D9. Because it's dangerous and shouldn't be ridden on.